Page 7 of Cloverleaf Station

“Cloverleaf Station, come in! Fuck’s sake, I’ve been firing messages off into the dark for half a fucking hour, what, are you jerking it over there? Cloverleaf Station, come the fuck—”

“Who is this?” Kieron asked as he activated the comm. He’d shut down the long-range scanners because they didn’t work well in the hot zone, and besides, what was the point? Nobody else would be foolish enough to come out here right now … right?

“Finally! I thought I’d have to physically knock on your damn door before you decided to open up for me.”

“Who is this?” Kieron repeated, letting his annoyance show through. “Not that it really matters, because the station is closed for the season, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll head in the opposite direction at top speed before you get yourself killed.”

“Oooh, you’re sparky, I like that,” the voice said with a laugh. “But that’s not what’s happening here, friend. I’m coming in fast, you’re going to open a bay door for me, I’m going to park, and then we’re going to get to work.”

Whoever it was, he was a madman. “I have no orders to allow anyone in here, and I’m not—”

“Check your comm log again, Sparky, because as of three weeks ago, I purchased the contract to oversee this station from the Alliance. That means all operational decisions go through me, including who gets in and when.”

What the … who the … “Who are you?” Kieron managed, his voice firm even though his mind was tumbling so hard in his head that he felt dizzy.

“Oh, sorry, forgot that part. I’m Elenus Desfontaines, CEO of Lifeship Enterprises and your new boss. Now open a fucking door for me so I can come in and introduce myself properly.”

What.

The.

Hell.

***

“I’m going to be in docking position in five minutes,” Mr. Desfontaines went on, like he hadn’t just thrown Kieron’s entire planet off its axis. “You’ve got minus thirty seconds to open one of the bay doors for me.”

“There’s no ready room in the single operational bay for your ship,” Kieron responded automatically, his mind running calculations even as his hands began to shake. “I need twenty minutes to get my ship moved and ensure you don’t run into anything on your way in.”

“Nonsense, this is a trim little craft, and she’ll scootch right into a corner. Bay Five, right?”

How did he know that?

“I’ve got access to all your computer logs,” Desfontaines went on, and Kieron’s heart suddenly squeezed so hard in his chest that he almost lost consciousness for a second. “If they’re accurate—which they’d better be—then I’m sure you can get your ship moved over just, what, a meter to the left as one enters the bay, and I’ll be able to glide in right beside you.”

“I’d have to exit and reenter to make that space. I need more time.”

“You’ve got ground rollers, don’t you? They show as operational. Use them instead. Four minutes now.” The computer began an automatic countdown to opening the bay’s outer doors.

That fucker had remote access to the control system. He couldn’t force the doors open from the outside, but he could start the sequence, gear everything up for the opening. If they stayed in that ready state for long, their circuits would start to fry.

Kieron didn’t waste time swearing, just took off at a run toward the bay. He did have ground rollers, stacked up in the back corners of the bay, but he hadn’t bothered to leave them initialized since his was the only ship in here, and it would require extra fuel to keep them operational, even in an inactive state. There was no time for that, not on this asshole’s schedule.

He was going to have to move the ship himself.

“Station,” he shouted to the AI as he ran, “reduce gravity in Bay Five to one-tenth Earth norm.”

“That will exceed stated energy parameters for—”

“Override parameters, just do it!”

“Affirmative.”

Kieron lost ten seconds grabbing his maintenance boots from his room and another twenty seconds in the sealed operations room between the station and the bay, waiting for the gravity shift to be completed. Then the door opened, he stepped inside—

And nearly propelled himself straight into a stack of reusable cargo pallets. Shit. It had been a while since he’d had to get around in such light gravity. He activated the magnetic seals on the bottom of his maintenance boots, the ones he wore when he was doing low- or zero-gravity repairs, and was immediately resituated on the floor.

All right. Now to see if his gut instinct with the gravity change had been correct. He headed over to the wall next to his ship, all ten tons of her, ran out the cables that he normally used to keep cargo from floating into space and attached them to her landing struts.