I Googled to see what I was doing wrong and came across this thread. Can confirm this is still happening as at Jan 20th 2021. Went through a second time and pulled the programmers' guards away to fight them, and ended the mission successfully.
What is exactly what you needed to do? Be introduced? How did you make that happen? I did Arbiter Daos' arcs, hoping he would introduce me to Pither, but that didn't happen.