This Virtual Night

by C. S. Friedman

  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.

  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?

  You thought they were just maintenance bots, not worthy of your attention.

  Suddenly there was a grinding sound at the front of the pod. Shit. Were they trying to break in?

  HEART RATE REDZONED, his wellseeker warned. BP REDZONED. ADJUST? “Shut the fuck up,” he growled. He tried to visualize the icon that would turn the wellseeker off again, but it was hard to focus on anything other than the sounds now coming from different sections of his hull; they must be trying to cut their way through from all angles. If they broke into the pilot’s chamber while he was unsuited he wouldn’t stand a chance.

  He struggled to unstrap himself from his seat, but his hands were trembling so badly it was hard to manage. Finally he got free and pushed himself toward the rear of the pod. There the evac was waiting, its frame a gaping maw. For a moment he hesitated, knowing that once he committed to evacuation his odds of survival were slim. But if he stayed here his death was certain. Grabbing the evac frame, he pulled himself into position in the center of it, trying to remember the proper order of steps from his safety training. Feet onto the shoe blocks. Hands into the waiting gloves. Head pressed back to trigger the evac program. Suddenly there were robotic arms coming at him from every direction, and it took all his self-control to remain totally still as they wrapped a pressure suit around him, lowered a helmet over his head, strapped an oxygen pack and jet frame onto his back, and sealed every seam. CONFIRM EVACUATION? the system asked when it was done, projecting the letters across the inside of his visor. At the far end of the pod the hull was beginning to twist, as if some giant hand were crushing it. The navigational display sputtered and went dark. Sparks shot across the chamber as the main lights went out. “Confirm!” he gasped.

  Gas rushed into the pressurizing channels in his suit, squeezing him so tightly that he couldn’t draw a breath. Then the emergency lock behind him opened and the vacuum of space sucked him out, along with a swarm of small objects torn free from their holders. He was spinning in the darkness, and the station was above him, then below him, then above him, below him . . . He fought back nausea as his stabilizers finally kicked in, and the small directional jets built into his suit stopped his rotation. Stars and space swam around him for a few seconds more, and as they finally settled he twisted around to look for his ship.

  The bots were dismembering it. A few of them had extruded vast silver nets as fine as spider silk, which they were using to gather up the segments that others had cut loose. A pair of bots flew around the dissection site, a net stretched between them, probably looking for smaller bits that might have floated away.

  Shit.

  They were coming around the far end of the wreckage now; any moment their sensors would detect him. He had to get out of their search range, fast. He triggered a short burst of propulsion to thrust him backward, praying that the jet spurts coming from the bots themselves would mask the energy expenditure. He dared no more. With agonizing slowness he drifted away from the wreck, while the pair with the net rounded its far end and turned toward him. Then suddenly there was a flash of light, so bright that it triggered his suit’s defense mechanism. His visor went opaque, blinding him. Darkness filled his suit, thick and stifling, making it hard to breathe. What were the bots doing now? Had they noticed him? He was helpless to do anything to save himself. Panic welled up inside him—

  And as suddenly as it had darkened, his visor cleared. He drew a long, shaky breath, and struggled to get his bearings. The light must have been from some kind of explosion, because all that remaine
d of the ship now was an expanding cloud of small fragments; the bots were flying around crazily, trying to gather them all. That took attention away from him, but as soon as they’d netted all the visible pieces they would probably do a final scan of surrounding space, to see if they’d missed anything. He might be beyond their range in a physical sense, but his suit’s energy signature would blaze like a star to that inspection. He was going to have to shut down everything if he wanted to remain unnoticed.

  Including his life support.

  While the bots chased down the last fragments of his ship, he reactivated his wellseeker and let it release a bit of sedative into his blood stream, taking the edge off his panic. Then he waited, heart pounding, as they gathered up the last of the fragments of his dismembered ship. Most of the bots were turning back toward Shenshido, but a particularly large one began a circuit of the debris field, its sensors turned outward. Clearly it was searching for outliers. Micah drew in one last deep breath, and—

  Now.

  No more air. No more thrumming of the suit’s pressure system. He had no clue what was supposed to happen to a human body when a suit’s pressure failed, but probably he’d suffocate from lack of oxygen before that became an issue. He watched in silence as the mechanical eye of the bot turned in his direction. Stared right at him.

  Then it turned away.

  He brought his life support back online, then drew in a deep, deep breath of air. The bots were all heading toward Shenshido now, their nets and their booty trailing behind them as they accelerated into the darkness. One by one he lost sight of them.