"Permission granted. Do you wish an escort from your present position to the dock?"
"Yes, please send an unarmed tug to lead me through the gate, match me up, and point me at the dock. Tug operator and anyone else that observes my presence or the flitter must not repeat must not log the serial number of my flitter or any of its features. Clear all your people to beyond five meters in all direction from the passageways I'll be using, and from the spunnel comm center. I am armed with a hand weapon set for maximum effect without collateral damage to non-organics. My mission requires such precautions. Do you accept these conditions?"
"I accept."
"Noted. Have an unarmed guide at the air lock to precede me to the spunnel console. Instruct him to not speak to me, no questions, and to not interfere in any manner in what I do. When I've completed my work in the comm room the guide is to lead me back to the air lock. The same tug is then to get me through the Gateway, same conditions, and I'll be out of your way. When I'm gone conduct your highest-level UIPS security briefing. This mission is classified UIPS Black. Understood?"
"Understood. Ready?"
"Ready. I am moving toward the Gateway and will be there in two minutes. Have your man flash his reds and greens at one-second intervals. I will respond with standard flitter yellows at the same spacing. Over. Out."
Zolan carefully adjusted the controls to slip the flitter away from the screening vessels. Clear, he maneuvered his craft close to a space buoy that marked the route through Fandango.
A yellow-green striped tug appeared in the distance and grew larger. The Gateway's diameter could expand to pass the largest freighters or close completely. It could be straight or as convoluted as a randomly configured corkscrew. The tug passed through, flashing the agreed-on signals.
Zolan responded. The tug stopped, reversed heading, and waited for him to line up. Inside the force field, the route took them over, under and around huge freighters and through swarms of shuttles, tugs, and barges. Five hundred meters from the depot Zolan pressed a disk on his control column and a mag beam reached out and locked on to the tug.
The tug's thrusters glowed brighter with the power to match up both craft. Aligned, Zolan released the tug, and gentling his thrusters, brought his flitter to rest on a landing platform that had articulated from a portal.