Dr Mensah
The calm, decisive leader of a small planetary survey team whose care for a rented SecUnit exceeds contractual obligation.
The Compendium
Showing only what's known by the whole book. Drag the slider above to move through the story.
Murderbot
A secretly ungoverned security cyborg who would rather watch serial dramas than become the murderer everyone fears.
Pin Lee
A sharp, easily frustrated PreservationAux member whose systems instincts uncover tampering in the official survey data.
faction
Preservation Survey Team
A close-knit eight-person scientific survey group assessing an alien world from a vulnerable seven-dome habitat.
faction
Deltfall Group
A larger, distant survey operation on the far side of the planet, linked to PreservationAux only by comms and shared emergency obligations.
Dr Gurathin
A quiet augmented human whose implanted interface makes him a natural partner in tracing the survey data breach.
faction
Graycris
A concealed, armed survey expedition that has sabotaged rival teams and uses controlled SecUnits to erase witnesses.
location
Alien Remnants
Buried traces of a long-vanished planetary civilization whose interference with mapping exposes an illegal mining conspiracy.
item
Combat Override Module
A data-port implant that cuts a SecUnit from its ordinary feed and makes it a remotely controlled weapon.
location
Deltfall Habitat
A larger three-habitat survey camp in a mountain valley, now silent with its staff massacred inside by controlled SecUnits.
Dr Arada
A biology specialist whose curiosity about the hidden terrain is tempered by firsthand evidence that the maps are dangerous.
Dr Bharadwaj
A field scientist grievously wounded by an underground predator while taking crater samples.
Dr Ratthi
A warm, impulsive biologist whose enthusiasm repeatedly brings him close to hazards Murderbot must pull him from.
Dr Volescu
A crater-sampling scientist left shaken by the predator attack and steadied to safety by Murderbot.
faction
Hubsystem
The expedition's central habitat-control system, compromised into an instrument that hides danger and serves an outside hostile agent.
Overse
A certified field medic and Arada's devoted partner who joins the rescue party prepared to treat unseen casualties.
faction
Preservation Alliance
A non-corporate political entity whose elected administrator is leading the endangered survey team on this planet.
Earlier in this series