"Damn!" OYrn was heading to the door when a thought struck. "Wait!"

He looked at the tracks on his display again. "They're heading toward me by the most direct routes. Which means I know exactly where they're going to be, and they only know where I am now! Ha!"

"Hope you guys love practical jokes!" His grin turned vicious, "'Cause these are killer!"

He tapped a key on his portacomp and sighed in relief. "YES! They locked out my ID, but the maintenance codes are still in the system. They can't shut those off because they apply to everyone, and my comp is already keyed into that first room. It doesn't need a new ID sequence to make a new link!"

"I'm still in!" OYrn hastily linked to the local network of the bots around him, and started issuing commands. Then he grabbed a few bottles of cleaner and other chemicals off the TagAlongs, filled the proper compartments on the bots, and set the scrub-bots and cleaners out first. He also sent a maintenance bot to retrieve a pipe repair kit from the supply room he'd just left. 

As the maintenance bot departed he followed quickly behind the scrub bots, typing commands on his portacomp to his following mech army as he made his way to a 4-way intersection. His scrubbers turned in the direction toward one of the oncoming patrols. The other patrol was still headed toward the room he'd just left by a different path, but he didn't expect that would last much longer. Not with what he had planned. 

He left his army of bots waiting in one of the side corridors as he raised a TagAlong high enough for him to easily reach the ceiling. A couple squirts of adhesive secured  the sheet of lightly silvered polyfilm there at 45 degrees to the corridor the nearest patrol would approach from. 

The station used the film to adjust solar heating in the hydroponics section. The lightly silvered film was pulled across the transparent outer walls to reflect away the heating wavelengths as needed. OYrn had discovered while working EVA, that it also made a pretty decent 1-way mirror when the inside was darker than the outside. The vid taken by the 'ponics workers inside, of him making faces and rude gestures at himself in the shiny mirror, had gone viral around the station. He hadn't even realized they could see him outside.

OYrn typed a quick command on his comp, setting the lighting of the cross corridors to "night/sleep" mode. The second patrol immediately changed direction. They were no longer heading to his last room, and now turned toward the corridor he'd just darkened. Evidently the crew in the security section had alerted them to the new changes. 

OYrn noted the direction they'd be coming from now, and estimated the time needed to get to him. It would be close, but he should still be able to pull this off. He topped off the chemicals in his remaining two cleaning bots and sent them down the corridor the re-directed patrol would be approaching from, with instructions to clean and polish the floors there. 

OYrn couldn't open the doors at the intersection without his IDchip code, but bots had to be able to move about the station to perform their duties. They had codes and chips too. As long as there were normal conditions on the other side of the doors, and it wasn't specifically locked out against bot access, a bot could pass through most spaces. The two bots whirred quietly through the door, which closed behind them. 

He sent his remaining maintenance bots and TagAlongs into the darkened corridor to the side where they'd be out of harm's way, all except for one maintenance bot that he stationed near the intersection. It held open all the doors except the one the cleaners had just used: One to the approaching patrol and one to the darkened corridor. The door opposite the closest patrol remained closed, while OYrn stood waiting down the remaining side corridor, the other lighted one. The clear "plastic bag" hood of the emergency breathing system he'd picked up during the fire alarm was covering his his head. A slight risk there, but he figured it was an acceptable one. Especially considering the alternative.