As Nick turned the corner, he could see the Miss Motoko looming high above him. Her broken mass was listing hard to port and would probably have capsized had she not come to rest against the pier.

Drones buzzed around the gaping hole that used to be her aft cargo hold like gnats. Their bright beams of light searching the half dissolved metal for any traces of the nanotech that had pulled the ship apart, atom by atom.

Shipping containers littered the pier below the void. Some partially melted away, others simply broken open by the impact. Every imaginable item was scattered in the wreckage, from cyborg upgrades to new Apple ThinkMates.

A tech came bouncing out of a broken reefer on Nick’s approach.

“Howdy bossman, ugly huh?” he asked.

“Yep,” Nick replied, “Military grade?”

He already knew the answer. No doubt in his mind, he’d been up close and personal with it before, had the scars to prove it. Real military grade, not that cheap black market shit.

Definitely it was bad news.