Chapter 12 The Cavalry #2
“Under nothing.” My voice cuts through, and I feel Horgox’s surprise. Not because I’m speaking up; because of how steady I sound when his whole body is screaming at him to run. “You can’t reclaim what was never legally yours.”
The rep’s eyes narrow. “Who the hell are you?”
“Courier Krilly Baxter, OOPS Junction One.” My heart is hammering.
Horgox can feel it, knows I’m not as calm as I sound.
But his alertness is feeding into my focus, his tactical awareness sharpening my arguments.
The bond making us both better than we are alone.
“And I’m submitting formal complaint to STI regarding systematic violations of the Sentient Rights Accords by ApexCorp Facility Theta. ”
“A courier.” The contempt is audible. “You’re a mail carrier. You don’t have authority to—”
“Bebo,” I say. “Open channel. STI emergency frequency.”
“Channel open,” Bebo confirms. “Broadcasting on STI emergency band. All transmissions from this location are now being recorded and relayed to STI Central Command in real time.”
The corporate rep’s face shifts. Subtle, but I catch it. The realisation that everything he says from this point forward is being documented, broadcast, and preserved for legal proceedings.
“You want to reclaim him?” I step forward.
One step. My heart is a drum, but my voice holds.
“Go ahead. Take him by force in front of an STI officer while broadcasting on an open emergency channel. Explain to a tribunal why your corporation’s idea of ‘reclamation’ requires six armed guards and a transport with weapons ports.
Explain why your facility put neural compliance technology in sentient beings, ran forced combat programmes, and maintained termination queues for assets that developed the inconvenient defect of having a conscience. ”
My voice is harder now, and Horgox’s fierce, stunned pride reaches me through the bond and makes the next words come easier.
“Or you can stand down, let STI process this through proper channels, and pray that the evidence on the data implant he’s carrying doesn’t contain everything I think it does. Your choice.”
The standoff stretches. Six armed guards, weapons angled toward us. Voss and his crew, weapons drawn, creating a thin line of STI authority between corporate firepower and a bonded pair standing in a ruined canyon.
The rep’s jaw works. He’s calculating. The open broadcast changes everything; a forced extraction caught on STI emergency channels would be a corporate catastrophe regardless of what legal authority he claims.
Then his expression shifts. Not retreat. Recalculation. The cold efficiency of a male who has decided that if force won’t work, leverage might.
“Courier Baxter.” His voice goes smooth.
“I hope you understand that harbouring a fugitive corporate asset creates significant personal liability. Your courier licence, your OOPS registration, your standing with the STI—all of it becomes conditional once you’ve been formally identified as obstructing a lawful reclamation. ”
The threat lands. Not because it’s empty; because it isn’t. He’s right. If ApexCorp’s legal team can frame Horgox as property and me as the person who stole him, my career doesn’t just stall. It ends.
My stomach drops, and I feel Horgox react to the spike of fear before I can suppress it. His hand tightens on mine. His guilt, immediate and fierce, the certainty that his presence is costing me everything.
“Don’t,” I tell him, quiet enough that only the bond carries it. “Don’t you dare feel guilty for being alive.”
“Furthermore,” the rep continues, “any evidence obtained by a courier with a compromised chain of custody becomes inadmissible. Your AI’s recordings, your testimony, Mr. Ka’reen’s data implant—all of it contaminated by the personal relationship you’ve documented so visibly.
” His gaze drops to the claiming mark on my throat.
“A relationship that any competent legal team will characterise as evidence of bias at best, and biological coercion at worst.”
Cold. Calculated. And smart enough to make Voss hesitate.
I open my mouth to respond, but new engine sounds cut through the canyon. Smaller, faster, cutting through the standoff with the precision of a ship that knows exactly where it’s going.
Blue and silver hull markings. STI command transport.
The corporate rep’s face goes pale.
The transport lands with a precision that puts every other ship in this canyon to shame. Engines cut. Bay opens.
And Mother Morrison steps out.
Not Luzrak. Not the Kytherian mate she told me she’d send. Not the by-the-book STI coordinator who handles extractions from a safe distance.
Mother.
Steel-grey hair pulled back in its no-nonsense bun.
Coffee mug in hand, because of course she brought a coffee mug to a planetary extraction.
OOPS Director insignia on her collar, and beside it, a temporary STI Field Authority badge that means she’s commandeered jurisdiction for this operation personally.
She came herself. For me. For us.
My throat tightens, and Horgox’s thumb strokes across my knuckles once.
Mother’s eyes sweep the canyon in two seconds flat.
The rubble. The claw marks. The drones still circling.
The ApexCorp security team with their weapons.
Voss and his crew holding the line. And us: a five-foot-two courier and a seven-foot-two gladiator, holding hands, the claiming color pulsing between them.
Her gaze catches on the bite mark above my collar. On the opalescent shimmer in Horgox’s markings. On the bond that’s visible to anyone who knows what they’re looking at.
“Stars above, Baxter.” Her voice could cut hull plating. “Just once, I’d like a simple extraction that doesn’t involve alien mating protocols.”
Despite everything, a sound escapes me that might be a laugh.
Mother turns to the corporate rep, and the temperature in the canyon drops ten degrees.
“Identify yourself and explain why you have armed personnel on my extraction site.”
“We have corporate reclamation—”
“You have nothing until I see documentation proving your ‘asset’ was legally detained in the first place.” She doesn’t raise her voice.
Doesn’t need to. Twenty-three years of running OOPS through every crisis the Outer Rim can produce has given her an authority that makes corporate security armour look like costumes.
“What I have is a preliminary evidence file from a courier AI that suggests your facility has been violating the Sentient Rights Accords since before my courier was born. What I have is an STI open-channel broadcast that’s been recording this entire standoff.
And what I have is the beginning of a very, very bad day for ApexCorp’s legal department. ”
“This is a corporate matter—”
“This was a corporate matter. Now it’s an STI investigation into systematic sentient rights violations, and your armed presence on my extraction site is making my official report considerably more colourful.
” Mother sips her coffee. The casual gesture in the middle of a weapons standoff is the most intimidating thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“You can withdraw your team voluntarily and cooperate with the investigation. Or you can stay, in which case I add armed obstruction of an STI field operation to the charges. Your legal department can explain to a tribunal why six guards with plasma rifles seemed like the appropriate response to a mail carrier and a male who just wants to stop being called a product designation.”
Horgox’s astonishment washes warm through the bond. A small human woman dismantling corporate authority with a coffee mug and a tone of voice.
The corporate rep opens his mouth. Closes it. Looks at his security team. Looks at the OOPS shuttle, the STI transport, the drones still circling overhead recording everything.
“This isn’t over,” he says.
“I certainly hope not.” Mother’s smile is terrifying. “I’m just getting started. Now get your people off my site before I have Lieutenant Voss arrest the lot of you for trespassing on an active STI operation.”
They go. Not gracefully. The transport lifts off hard, engines hot with frustrated aggression, and the drones pull out with it, corporate surveillance retreating in the face of institutional authority that outranks them.
The canyon goes quiet.
Mother watches them leave, sips her coffee, and turns back to us.
“Well, kid. You really know how to complicate a first solo run.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Crashed your ship, freed corporate specimens, bonded with an escaped gladiator, and started an interstellar legal incident. That’s got to be some kind of record.”
“In my defence, the specimens freed themselves. I just removed the collars.”
“And the gladiator?”
“Saved my life. Multiple times. And his name is Horgox Ka’reen.”
Mother looks at Horgox properly for the first time. Studies him with the assessment of a woman who has spent twenty-three years reading people under pressure. His size, his scars, the circuit traceries, the claiming color threaded through his markings. The way his hand holds mine.
“Mr. Ka’reen.” Her voice shifts. Still authoritative, but with something underneath it that I recognise as genuine respect. “My courier speaks highly of you. Given that she’s terrible at flattery, I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Director.” His voice is rough, controlled, the carefully modulated tone of a male speaking to authority figures with a lifetime of reasons not to trust them. “I would die before harming Krilly Baxter.”
“So she mentioned.” Mother’s gaze drops to our joined hands, then to the claiming mark on my throat.
“Repeatedly. At volume. Across multiple emergency channels.” She sighs, and underneath the exasperation, there’s pride.
Real, maternal, hard-won pride. “You’ve got your mother’s stubbornness, kid. Mara would be proud of you.”
My eyes sting. Horgox’s thumb strokes across my knuckles once.