"Then Arada came up and patted my shoulder. “I’m sorry. This must be very upsetting. After what that other Unit did to you... Are you all right?” (All Systems Red)
Dr. Arada is a biologist working with PreservationAux. She and Overse are marital partners, and later she goes on to lead the survey that meets the events of Network Effect.
Biography[]
Arada is a biology specialist from the polity of the Preservation Alliance. She and Overse are marital partners, and they have family on the planet nearest to Preservation Station. They're both close friends with Ratthi.
Arada is a member of the PreservationAux survey team when large fauna from the surveyed planet attacks her team. This attack is the kind of thing that the group's briefings should have prevented, and she pitches in to help track down the cause of the problem. They find there are several sections of their data packages that were modified, so as a group they decide to investigate one of the nearby blanked out sections on their maps.
The survey gets worse when they discover that another survey team on the same planet has fallen silent (DeltFall), and PreservationAux sends an away-team to investigate the cause. Arada is in the group that stays in the habitat, while Overse joins Mensah, Ratthi, and Murderbot on the away-team. When the away-team returns, having come under attack at DeltFall's habitat, Murderbot is badly damaged and the truth about its inactive governor module comes to light. Arada is empathetic towards Murderbot in the wake of this.
The team is forced to evacuate the habitat not long after this. While they're on the run, Arada helps Bharadwaj and Volescu analyze data from their trip to the blanked-out area, which eventually leads to the discovery that GrayCris is after the planet's alien remnants. In the end the team is able to trigger GreyCris' emergency beacon and call for help, leading to their rescue.
After the events of All Systems Red, Arada and Overse go back to Preservation. They make appearances at the end of Exit Strategy, reuniting with the team after Mensah's rescue and the incident with the gunship. After they've had a chance to settle, Arada tells Murderbot about an upcoming survey that she's going to lead, and asks if it will join the group and oversee security. Murderbot can't accept immediately, but it does later.
Arada and Overse travel planetside to visit their family, before returning to Preservation Station to finish their PreservationAux survey's reports with their team. (Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory.) From there she and Overse become swept up planning the upcoming survey expedition, spending time at the (planetside) FirstLanding university to do this. At some point Arada takes a course in weapons. (This becomes relevant later, when Arada uses these new skills when Thiago is taken hostage during her survey.)
The survey covers an independent site outside the Corporation Rim. Towards the end of the survey, their sea research facility is attacked by raiders who take Thiago hostage. Murderbot retrieves him, with Arada shooting one of the raiders nonlethally in the process. The (mobile) research facility launches as soon as Arada and Thiago are safe, and they're able to escape and re-dock with their base-ship.
They just barely make it back to Preservation pace when ART, captured and controlled by 'Targets' (lost colonists and targetControlSystem, kidnaps Murderbot, Amena, and everyone in Arada's facility safepod when it attaches to ART's hull. Eventually they're all able to regroup, and they agree (under duress) to help ART rescue its kidnapped crew. They succeed, despite the many detours and dangers this entails, and towards the end of Network Effect they're able to meet with an envoy from Preservation, reuniting with their friends and going back home.
Personality[]
Arada can best be summarized in the words of her partner, who described her as a "terminal optimist". She's emotionally open and sensitive, reaching out to teammates, asking after their wellbeing, and (in Murderbot's case) recognizing personhood and becoming one of its quickest defenders. Her upbringing in a generous polity means that the cutthroat extortions of the Corporation Rim are unthinkable, and her first impulse is to offer aid wherever she can. This suits her well on Preservation, but in the Corporation Rim these qualities can dip easily into naivete, putting herself and her friends at risk. When she accepts the stranded Barish-Estranza vessel's offer to come aboard for a conference, this gives them an opening to take her and Murderbot hostage, and they only narrowly escape. In general she finds it difficult to emulate Corporation Rim standards of ruthlesness, struggling to treat Murderbot like an object and shying away from charging them for life-saving equipment.
As ill-suited as her outlook is outside of Preservation, she is flexible and adaptive. She trusts her partner and teammates when they warn her of incoming dangers, and she reacts accordingly. Despite her discomfort she pretends to hold Corporation Rim attitudes towards constructs to fool potentially dangerous corporates (apologizing to Murderbot during this process and after). She also takes a weapons course after the GreyCris incident, and becomes good enough to help Murderbot rescue Thiago when he's kidnapped.
Physical Appearance[]
Arada is an unaugmented human described as having short hair and light, golden brown skin.
Arada is also mentioned to be wearing a Preservation Survey grey jacket during the call to the Barish-Estranza ship, which ART edits to look blue. The standard PreservationAux survey uniform is grey.
When Arada and others are trapped in their research facility's safepod outside ART's hull, she wears a Preservation EVAC suit. Later, when she and Murderbot go to the Barish-Estranza transport to bring supplies, Arada uses standard Perihelion crew clothing as a disguise. These uniforms are described simply as 'dark blue', and in Arada's case, "It was casual and practical and she looked comfortable and natural in it". (Network Effect.) She also uses one of the Perihelion EVAC suits, which are apparently better quality than the Preservation suits, and have secondary internal protective suits for planetary exploration.
Official Art[]
The Murderbot Diaries has an illustration of an offscreen moment in Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory where Murderbot, realizing that Mensah has been accosted by an unwanted reporter, rushes to her rescue. Ratthi says afterwards, “SecUnit jumped over my head!”, and when Mensah left the group Arada's bare feet had been in Overse's lap. Arada, Bharadwaj, Gurathin, Murderbot, Overse, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi were all present in this scene.
