The GI leader who solves GrayCris's scheme with Murderbot, insists on treating its wounds, and is shattered by Miki's death.
Don Abene steadily works the geo pod console while reasoning out, with Murderbot, that GrayCris's goal was never to kill the team but to let the terraforming facility collapse and destroy the evidence, and that Wilken and Gerth were sent only to disable the tractor array. Noticing Murderbot bleeding, she calmly insists on treatment, unafraid when it flinches from her touch, and has Miki tend its wounds instead, gently accommodating its need not to be touched. Determined to save the facility even amid the escape, she directs the researchers to knock the combat bot's work zipper off course.
Her defining moment comes when the last combat bot breaches the shuttle: her instinct is to order Miki to save its own life, revealing both that she had left the bot free to make its own choices and that she truly loved it. Miki refuses and dies protecting them all, and Abene is left sobbing in anguish, comforted by Hirune. She never learns that the SecUnit survived; its quiet love for what she and Miki had is part of what it carries away.
An adult woman with warm brown skin lined at the mouth and eyes, long dark hair streaked with white hanging loose, her face grief-stricken and streaked with tears by the end.
Expedition leader; the decent, loving human whose bond with Miki and trust in the SecUnit define the book's heart.