One of his pursuers was heading straight toward him now, trying to force him out of the main traffic stream. He tried to maneuver around it, but that ran him into a cluster of school transports. Cursing under his breath, he pulled out of the main traffic lanes and headed toward the darkness of space once more. He wasn’t going to make it to Harmony, that much was clear. Did he have any other options? He expanded the navigational display until the nearest stations were visible. And yeah, there was one he could probably get to safely.
Tridac Station.
Maybe that was their plan all along—not to drive him into empty space, but to force him back into the arms of his employers. If so, that was the one place he sure as hell wasn’t going. His hands trembled on the touchscreen as he tried to come up with a way out of this mess. But his fuel reserves were starting to run low due to all the high-speed maneuvering, and he was starting to get warnings about it on his screen. IMMEDIATE DOCKING RECOMMENDED. Tridac was the only berth he could get to in time . . . no, wait. There was one more. A small research station called Shenshido was within range. Information on it should be in the pod’s database. He fed the name to his ship and waited a few endless seconds for it to find the right file.
SHENSHIDO STATION, HARMONY NODE
RESEARCH FACILITY/CLASS ONE HABITAT
CONSTRUCTED BY SHIDO CORPORATION ’070–’073
REGISTERED INDEPENDENT UNDER TERRAN CORPORATE LAW IN ’074
MANAGEMENT TRANSFERRED TO CONSORTIUM OF TERRAN CORPORATIONS ’113
CURRENT USE UNKNOWN
POPULATION UNKNOWN
EXTERNAL SECURITY CLASS 8S
INTERNAL SECURITY CLASS UNKNOWN
Management by Terran corporations. That would include Tridac, but also its fiercest competitors. If Micah could make contact with one of the other megacorps before Tridac got to him, they might grant him sanctuary, if only to frustrate their rival. The chaos of corporate politics which Micah had always despised might yet prove his salvation.
Carefully he set a course back toward Tridac, plotting a wide arc that would swing him close by Shenshido. Hopefully his pursuers wouldn’t realize what he intended until it was too late for them to interfere. They seemed to be falling behind him now, perhaps content with his choice of direction, perhaps just loath to leave the traffic stream. For as long as they were surrounded by other vehicles their coordination was masked; once they were out in the open, Transit Authority might take note of their activity.
Micah wiped sweat out of his eyes and tried to relax, but there was no way his racing heart was going to settle down on its own. He brought his wellseeker back online and had it feed a trickle of anxiety medication into his bloodstream. Not too much—he didn’t want his mental reflexes dulled—but even a few drops offered welcome relief. The knot in his chest loosened a bit, and his breathing became less tortured. The fear was still present, but no longer smothering him. Thank God for modern medicine.
It took him half an hour to get within range of Shenshido. His pursuers were far behind him now, but he knew that if he turned back toward Harmony they’d be ready to block the way again. No matter. He had other plans now. For the first time since going off course he felt a spark of hope.
He was close enough now to get a good image of Shenshido, so he ordered the ship to put that on his main screen. As it came up, he stared at it in disbelief, then slammed his fist into the console, cursing in frustration.
Even with Shenshido’s minimal exterior lighting, he could see that the station was in ruins. The docking ring was little more than a skeleton, struts sticking out from its shell like the bones of some half-devoured beast. He could see multi-legged maintenance bots poised here and there on the wreckage, waiting for the orders that would set them in motion, like insects on a corpse. The station core was in slightly better shape, but there was no sign of human activity. Hell, the station should be demanding his ID by now, or giving him instructions for approach, or . . . something. But there was no signal on any wavelength.
AGITATION DETECTED, his wellseeker warned.
What the hell was he supposed to do now? Even if he wanted to enter the station, the mooring bays were in such disrepair that they probably wouldn’t seal properly. And if Micah didn’t get official clearance to dock, the station would treat him as a hostile entity. Was it armed? With an independent station you never knew. People who made up their own rules didn’t have to respect common protocol.
Tridac would let you dock, he reminded himself. You could always take your chances with them.
Yeah. Right.
He altered course to bring him closer to Shenshido. The move would alert his pursuers to the fact that he wasn’t really headed toward Tridac, but that couldn’t be helped. Would they respond immediately? Or wait to see what he did? He prayed feverishly for the latter as he began to circle the station, searching for any place where he could dock safely. If he’d been flying a more sophisticated ship there might have been more options, but the MKJ47 was just a transit pod, designed to go from point A to point B, autodocking at both ends. It didn’t have the adaptability needed for more creative solutions.
Something on the surface of the station moved.
He turned his attention to that spot, magnifying the display so he could see it more clearly. One of the maintenance bots had apparently shifted position, drawing its arms in beneath it. Then there was a flicker of movement some distance away from it: another bot making the same adjustment. A third followed. All the bots that he passed over were shifting position, creating a mechanical wave that rippled across the ring’s surface behind him. He’d designed too many games with warning signs just like that to ignore the threat it implied, and he pulled his pod up sharply, hoping to get away before the strange robotic dance beneath him turned into something worse.
Too late.
One of the bots shot up from the station, heading straight toward him. Another followed. And then a third. Long silver legs trailed behind them like squid tentacles as they streamed through the darkness, more and more bots joining the swarm, until the display screen was full of them. He tried to get the pod to fly faster, but by the time full acceleration kicked in the first bots had reached him. One struck his ship with enough force that he could feel the control console vibrate beneath his hands, and his external cams showed it splayed out across his hull like some unholy starfish, slender arms clinging to whatever crevices were available. Then another joined it, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. . . . For a few precious seconds he stared at the screen in horror, heart pounding, not knowing how to respond. Then he tried some sharp maneuvers to . . . what, shake them off? The MKJ47 wasn’t built for that kind of action, and the starfish clung to it effortlessly though every twist and turn. Maybe if he got further away from the station they would lose the signal that was guiding them and turn back. He urged the singler to maximum velocity, setting a course away from the damaged ring. But the bots held on tight. There were so many of them now! They covered his entire hull, arms interlocking in a complex lacework. How could there have been so many of them on the station without him noticing?