Chapter 4: Flight from Kett Station

The warning came from the berth-to-berth map.

Not from any of the ship's external monitors, not from the station security channel Farro had been running on low volume since Gander's arrival, but from the schematic still open on his navigation console — the one he'd pulled up forty minutes ago to track whatever had been moving in the upper tier of the outer ring. The map updated on a twenty-second refresh cycle. Farro was three keystrokes into the pre-departure sequence when the cycle turned and four new presence indicators appeared simultaneously in Berth 47's access corridor: solid amber, which meant station personnel, except that station personnel moved in ones and twos and these four were moving in a formation that had a word for it, and the word was not personnel.

He hit the intercom.