This time he didn’t go right back to work. He ordered the pod to keep the transit display active, and he watched as the web shifted and pulsed, strands rearranging themselves like fairy filaments in a breeze.
ALERT. MANDATORY COURSE ADJUSTMENT. PLEASE CONFIRM.
Damn it to hell! Not another one!
Was this because he was flying an MKJ47, a ship so pitifully small that everyone in outspace expected him to just get out of their way? The proposed new flight path was a full seven degrees off course, which would turn him away from Harmony altogether. That was unacceptable.
He called up data on the new ship. The owner was unknown. The call sign was one he didn’t recognize.
CONFIRM NEW FLIGHT PLAN, the autopilot pressed.
He turned on the comm. “ACKER502A-85, this is MKJ47-9A. Your current trajectory conflicts with our registered flight plan. Over.”
No answer.
“ACKER502A-85, please adjust your course. Over.”
Still no response.
CONFIRM NEW FLIGHT PLAN, the pod insisted.
“Yeah,” he muttered, because there was no other choice. “Confirmed.”
This time the adjustment was sharp enough that his body was pressed sideways against the safety harness for a moment. He was going to have to find a safe path around this last asshole before he could head toward Harmony again. He ordered the autopilot to display his options.
ALERT. MANDATORY COURSE ADJUSTMENT. PLEASE CONFIRM.
He stared at the display in disbelief. Apparently the first ship had shifted course. Right into his new flight path. What the hell was going on?
Maybe they were playing traffic games, competing to see who could force the greatest change to Micah’s course from the greatest distance. He’d never played that game himself but he knew that there were people who did, usually spoiled brats who had the keycodes to their family’s vehicle and way too much time on their hands. For a moment he considered putting his pod on manual and seeing how these guys dealt with a good old-fashioned game of chicken, but better sense prevailed. This was a vehicle designed for dull, uneventful, automatic transportation, and he could well discover in the midst of maneuvering that he had overestimated its capacity to dodge obstacles.
CONFIRM, the pod pressed.
The new course it was proposing would be twenty degrees off true, a major detour. That was not acceptable. He suggested another detour that would get him back on course sooner, but the autopilot told him that one, too, was blocked. And then another. Was this all just a coincidence, caused by the heavy traffic? Or were there more ships interfering with him than he’d realized, spread out in just the right pattern to frustrate his efforts—anticipating where his autopilot would want to go, blocking those exact paths? It was a paranoid thought, but he couldn’t shake it.
He expanded the transit display, projecting his current course onto it along with a query for possible course adjustments. It turned out those damned ships had cut off most of his options, including all the routes that led to Harmony. A chill ran through him as he saw where the available ones would take him.
Nowhere.
He was headed toward open space now, a sector that had no stations, no habitat, not even a supply depot. The paranoid demon in his brain whispered that the ships had driven him this way with a chessmaster’s brilliance, positioning themselves so that his autopilot would expect them to get in the way and would take preemptive action to avoid them. And if they kept it up he soon would be forced to fly into the endless darkness. Emptiness without refuge. Eventually he would run out of fuel, while they, in their larger ships, would have enough to get them home. And then there he would be, entombed in darkness, swallowed by the fate all outworlders feared. . . .
Who’s paranoid now, Micah?
This was no childish game. Those ships had purpose. But who would want him to disappear into the barrens of space? Tridac wouldn’t want him dead, would they? They still needed to question him, right? Unless they already knew who screwed with Dragonslayer, and wanted to protect that person. What better way than to provide a different scapegoat, whom the Guild would never be able to question?
A new kind of fear took root inside him: a visceral sensation, cold and nauseating. This was real fear, he thought with wonder. Not the gaming simulacrum he invoked with his carefully scripted illusions, but raw survival instinct, the gut-wrenching terror of an organism staring into the face of Death. It was a horrifying sensation, but it was also perversely fascinating, and even as he reached out and pulled down the manual control panel with shaking hands, his mind was cataloging all those sensations, storing them away for future reference. A game designer to the end, he thought bitterly.
The manual controls couldn’t be manipulated by brainware; he had to actually use his hands. It took him three tries to get the pod to accept his security codes—damn those MKJ47 protocols!—but finally the autopilot surrendered control to him. He would still need the ship’s navigator to calculate possible flight paths, but he could make his own decision now about which one to follow. And if he chose one that swung a bit too close to one of these assholes’ ships, and forced it to veer off course . . . well, that would serve it right.
I could call for help, he thought. But what was he supposed to say to Transit Authority when they answered him? There are some ships interfering with my flight path, and I think it may reflect a deliberate effort to herd me into the empty depths of space . . . no, I don’t know who they are . . . well, they’re still pretty far away, so I’m just speculating about their intentions . . . I understand, I’ll get back to you when I have more concrete data.
He pulled the shuttle into a sharp angle, hoping the sudden move would take his pursuers by surprise. It bought him a few precious seconds, which he used to swing around the far end of the traffic stream. There was a group of freighters off his stern, and if he could slip in between them he would be safe from any further interference; anything that got in their way would be forced to yield the right of way. But it turned out there was another small ship on his tail, closer than the others. Damn it, how many of them were there? Even the smallest one could run circles around his MKJ47. Why the hell hadn’t he upgraded when he had the chance?
He turned again, cutting sharply across the flight path of a tourist shuttle and a corporate transport, trying to escape his new pursuer. Warnings appeared on his screen, some of them formal requests for course correction, others less polite. GET OUT OF THE WAY, YOU ASSHOLE!!! He pulled his craft into a tight curve to slip between two small pods, no doubt sending their autopilots into conniptions. If he managed to survive this mess he’d likely be spending his next year in traffic court.
Which would be on Harmony, so that’s fine by me.
By the time he swung back toward the convoy the new pursuit craft had positioned itself directly between him and the freighters. For a moment he was tempted to fly straight toward it—let’s see who flinches first!—but he knew his MKJ47 didn’t have the power or maneuverability he would need to pull that off without getting himself killed. Fuck. He was sweating now, and because he’d turned off his wellseeker he couldn’t adjust his stress level. Sweat dripped into his eyes while he tried another sudden course change, and then another. Smaller ships veered out of his way, traffic parting for him like the Red Sea. Maybe his crazy flight path made their autopilots think the MKJ47 was out of control. Get away from the crazy person! He laughed, but the sound was tinged with fear.