She sent the message again.
Still silence.
The station was visible on her screen now, a spherical core with two coplanar rings. Classic Terran design. It wasn’t very large, but given that its purpose was research rather than luxury living, the size seemed appropriate.
She transmitted her message again just to make sure the security programs were aware of her. If Jericho was right, their awareness would protect her from the station’s automated defense. If he was wrong . . . well, things could go downhill very fast.
She was approaching the outer ring now, and Jericho had not exaggerated the problem: the thing had been ripped to pieces. Her practiced eye picked out elements of backstory: long cuts where scavengers had tried to remove materials, sections seared by assault weapons, craters and tears where high-velocity objects had smashed into the station’s shell. The space surrounding must have been strewn with debris at one time. Had Shenshido gathered all that up, or did Tridac swing by periodically to take care of housekeeping? Or had scavs hung around the periphery of battle like vultures, hungry to claim any scraps that drifted outside Shenshido’s defense zone?
ALERT: ENTERING SHENSHIDO CORPORATE TERRITORY. TERRAN CORPORATE LAW APPLIES.
She was close enough now to get a good look at the station, and her ship fed data into her brainware while she studied it. That was yet another reason she’d wanted to use her own skimmer. Part of an outrider’s job was to evaluate colonies from a distance, so her skimmer was loaded with software designed for that purpose. As she approached the outer ring her ship noted the presence of spider bots, highlighting them on her display and providing her with hard data regarding their function. But she didn’t need data to know how dangerous they were. The warring moons of Oberon Nine had used similar bots, and she had no desire to tangle with them again. She sent out her call sign again, just to make sure whatever AI was running those things knew that she was legit.
Easy, boys. No scavs here, just a licensed bounty hunter. Again there was no answer, but by now she didn’t expect one. Either Shenshido was uninhabited, or there was some reason its inhabitants weren’t answering her.
It was time to find out which.
She watched the spider bots closely as the skimmer searched the outer ring for a safe place to dock. Apparently there wasn’t any. Most of the mooring sites had been ripped open or blown to bits, and the few that remained didn’t look stable enough for her liking. The last thing she needed on this crazy assignment was for an airlock to blow while she was in it. She turned the skimmer inward, to search for a suitable site on the inner ring, or perhaps on the station proper—
—and three of the spiders lifted suddenly from the station’s surface, heading straight toward her.
Her heart skipped a beat, but she did nothing. The skimmer was designed to function in a planetary atmosphere, so it had a more substantial outer shell than the spiders were used to; it was also streamlined to reduce drag, so there were few edges for them to grab onto. If these three attacked, she might have enough time to shake them off before others joined the fray. Right now her best bet was to continue on her course as a legitimate visitor would do, following Jericho’s instructions to the letter, sending out all the signals one would expect from a regular transport vessel. If he was right about how they operated, that would be enough to hold them at bay. But damn, they were hard to ignore! Tully and she had nearly gotten killed in the Oberon system.
The three came close and circled the skimmer once, twice, three times. Apparently whatever they saw satisfied them, for they finally returned to their perches. She exhaled loudly in relief. Apparently Jericho had been right about how to deal with them.
She pulled the skimmer into orbit between the inner ring and the core, so its sensors could search both surfaces for a viable entrance. Various anomalies were displayed for her to evaluate, some of them downright bizarre. In one place she found a jet suit that had been tethered to a strut like an abandoned pet; what sense did that make? Surely anyone with a brain would strap on his nav jets before he exited the station, not after. But not far from that, the ship located a small emergency hatch on the core itself, probably designed for human maintenance crews. Hopefully there was some kind of maintenance facility inside, tied to the station’s global systems.
She directed the skimmer to position itself so that her own escape hatch was directly over it. It had no mooring seal, but that wasn’t a problem; the skimmer was equipped to adapt to whatever kind of tech it encountered. Compared to some of what Tully and she had dealt with, this was hardly even a challenge. An expandable tunnel extended from her own skimmer to the structural ring surrounding the maintenance hatch, adapting itself to fit the ring and establish an airtight seal. A short time later the ship told her SEAL CONFIRMED.
Now the big question: to arm, or not to arm? It was best not to look belligerent when confronting unknown agents, and she knew that anything she carried on her could be detected by the station’s security. But this was hardly a casual visit. And besides, she was supposed to be a bounty hunter, wasn’t she? It might look suspicious if she wasn’t carrying something.
She decided on a compromise, and chose a few of her more subtle options. A coat lined with safeskin. A set of taze rings. A collapsible shock rod. After some consideration, she added a shock pistol to the collection. It was small enough to fit into an outer pocket, and unlike the other choices, wouldn’t require her to be close to an opponent. The rest she left behind. Anything that might damage Shenshido or release toxic substances into its air supply was not likely to be tolerated by its masters. Of course, she had her usual folding blades and a coil of razor wire hidden in her boot soles: not easy supplies to get to in an emergency, but unlikely to be discovered by hostile parties. The blade had gotten her and Tully out of some tight spots in the past.
Tully . . . She sighed. How she wished he was present to share this adventure with her! And not only because she could use the backup. She missed his wit, his energy, even his annoying quirks. She’d brought his most prized memento along with her, to remind her of him, and though the colorful glass phallus looked ridiculous strapped into the pilot’s chair, it was oddly comforting. As though his spirit was still with her, ready to have sex with any new Variant race they came across.
She stuffed some additional emergency supplies into her outer pockets, then headed over to the skimmer’s escape hatch and pulled it open. A few feet below her, the status readout on the station’s hatch proclaimed that the temperature, pressure, and air composition inside the station were within acceptable human parameters. Good. She unsealed the small hatch, hesitated for a moment, then pulled it open. A small ladder led down into darkness. It was far from inviting, but at this point anything that wasn’t going to attack her was acceptable. She ordered the skimmer into lockdown, then began to climb down through the opening. As soon as her head cleared the hatch’s frame, it closed automatically behind her.
She was in.
The lights hadn’t come on, so she was left hanging in cave-blackness. Not a good start. But as she called up the icon that would trigger the emergency light on her headset, overheads finally flickered on, revealing the stark gray walls of a very small airlock. Big enough for one person with standard gear, maybe two people at most, but no more. She climbed down to the floor of the lock and positioned herself in front of the inner hatch, staring directly into the sensors that would be taking her measure. “Open lock,” she ordered. For a moment she thought it wasn’t going to respond; then it unsealed, revealing a small staging room with a narrow door at the far end. Tools and pressure garments festooned the wall like holiday ornaments—which confirmed her guess about this being a maintenance facility—but there were no people anywhere. She took a moment to listen for any sound of human activity before she started across the room. Nothing. The place was as still as a morgue.