"There is evidence of both previous surgery and a little bit of genetic futzing. The genome looks basically natural, though - it's not efficient enough to be constructed.It seems that they have a mass of neural tissue, much like a brain, in the center mass. It's well-developed enough to confer sentience, so it's not clear why I couldn't detect any. We have no data to compare against to see if it's a hive mind or not.
As for programming, it doesn't have electronic components built into it. There's no direct proof of biological programming, but that would be hard to find anyway.
The armor is a fairly good pressure suit, and they seem to have some ability both to hibernate and to cannibalize their internals for energy. The one who attempted to destroy itself had activated that ability to the extreme."