“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells

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Story can be read on-line: https://reactormag.com/rapport-martha-wells/

Rating: 3/5 Stars.

A Murderbot Diaries story that fills in some background on the characters we encounter in “Fugitive Telemetry” and “System Collapse”, although it logically takes place after the events of “Artificial Condition”. Perihelion and its crew are trying to infiltrate a Corporation Rim station to examine a pre-Corporation Rim habitat. Unfortunately, the station itself is in the midst of a hostile takeover, meaning lots of hostile security people.

Peri (aka ART to Murderbot) guides the party through the station. But as the danger mounts, Peri shows off some hacking skills that the crew were not aware of. And it would need one crew member to show empathy with Peri to discover just how it picked up those skills from a ‘friend’ it met on a previous trip.

Story read from 2025/07/11 to 2025/07/11.