Stripped to her vitals, all but the simplest decisions diverted from her computer, the Raven reminded Brad of his old freighter when he first took her over. The Raven's maintenance records showed that she had slipped to less than marginal. Hodak's expertise with duct tape and hand tools would get credit for the successful escape.
Planet Pluto, in her ashen melancholy, lay dead ahead. Sprawled across the frozen methane plain a couple of points to starboard Coldfield's lights shimmered through its frost-crusted, barely translucent dome. Stretching away from the twenty-kilometer-wide city, the mottled terrain spread in all directions, slashed by ravines and man-made, soil-fused excavations, roads and bridges. Mooring towers, launch and landing pads spotted the barren landscape across which crawled processions of utility tugs.
Near-space cargo and passenger shuttles and taxis landed at and departed from pads adjacent pressurized air docks into the city. Deep-space transports and utilities rode high, immobilized by fore-and-aft mag-beams at the pinnacles of two-hundred-meter mooring towers.
The Raven drifted closer. Brad noted the hard orange glow of energy packs encapsulated in vehicles moving about on the dome and surrounding land surfaces. Adjusted magnification defined the vehicles as personnel carriers, flatbed trailers, dome fissure-fusers, and methane frost scrapers. Coldfield was a busy place.
Charon drifted into view from over the horizon as the Raven nosed forward. Only Lamplight's dome and high-intensity flashers that pinpointed its landing pads, gateways and walkways broke the moonlet's solid gray-green landscape. Further out, the logistics depot slid slowly across the sky like a glowing green-and-orange sausage.
Zolan keyed a signal to Pluto Traffic Control as the Raven crossed the line into the planet's jurisdiction. He added the ship's name and call sign. Several minutes passed without response. Zolan leaned back from the console and winked at Brad. News of their presence had preceded them and the locals were likely wondering why had the ship appeared in their skies.
The receiver squawked, "Raven. Stand by for escort."
A yellow-and-green-striped space tug drifted alongside and flashed its 'Follow Me' signal. Brad nodded at Zolan who acknowledged the tug's instruction. Adari trimmed the Raven's controls and clamped a mag beam on the tug. She and the tug driver exchanged salutations and prattled navigational details as the escort moved off with the Raven following like an elephant leashed to a flea. Adari logged their destination: Slot 09 along Coldfield marker 13K.
Their passage was slow. Despite the heavy traffic of tugs, taxis, and other small craft the lanes were orderly and the flow steady. Traffic thinned as the ship drifted across surface-parked lots for small vessels and disappeared entirely as the Raven closed on its mooring towers.
The escort rattled off the coordinates and the Raven fixed her position. Adari released the mag-beam. The tug slipped around to starboard and mag-nosed the clumsy vessel into its slot. A command from the tug and mooring beams glowed at the fore-and-aft towers to immobilize the Raven. Adari and the tug driver exchanged rough civilities and the escort was up and away.