4. Kheltor
KHELTOR
The criminal underlevels of Orpheus Station have their own logic.
It is not the logic of law or order or the careful diplomatic language that governs the upper corridors.
It is the logic of corners—who controls them, who watches from them, who disappears around them and does not come back.
I learned this logic years before I learned how to read a treaty.
The lower sectors of every station in the Alliance operate by the same principles: movement means intention, stillness means surveillance, and every transaction is a debt until one party decides it isn't.
Nina Torres keeps pace behind me without being told to.
I can hear her processing the environment—the particular quality of silence from someone cataloguing threats rather than simply experiencing fear.
The corridor we're moving through branches off the main sublevel seven artery into unmaintained maintenance access routes the station's official schematics label non-operational.
They are not non-operational. They are simply not the station's responsibility anymore, which suits the people who use them perfectly.
She steps over a broken coolant conduit without looking down. She is watching the alcoves.
"Stay close," I say. "Don't make eye contact with anyone at the stalls unless I address them first."
"Is that Vakutan custom or actual tactical advice?"
"Both," I say, and move forward before she can respond.
Zevra's current operation is located in a chamber that was probably a relay station three infrastructure generations ago.
Now it is a pocket market for information, sliced data, and items that don't survive customs review—lit by salvaged bioluminescent strips that cast everything in green and cold white, staffed by two guards the size of cargo containers, and anchored by one Pi'rell woman who has made more credits selling other people's secrets than most merchants make selling legitimate goods.
She spots us from across the room before her guards do.
"Kheltor." Her expression carries amusement sharpened by calculation, something warmer surfacing in it as she takes the two of us in.
"You're becoming a regular. I should charge a subscription rate.
" She looks at Nina with the focused attention of someone pricing inventory.
"Human. New. Customs markings." Her attention sharpens. "Interesting company for you."
"I'm not here for commentary," I say. "I need transit records for maintenance corridor seven-alpha through seven-delta. Specifically anything routed through those paths in the last thirty days."
"Transit records." She turns to a hidden console concealed in her robes and pulls a flat data surface from somewhere in its depths.
"Transit records in abandoned corridors.
For a security commander who officially doesn't acknowledge those corridors exist." Her finger traces something across the surface without looking at it.
"That's going to cost you more than your standard rate. "
"Name it."
She does. It is excessive. I agree to it without negotiating, because the information she names a high price for is always worth what she asks. Zevra's value is that she does not exaggerate her product.
What she shows us is worse than I anticipated.
"Five diplomats," she says, laying the data flat between us on the table surface.
"Four Coalition, one Alliance. All moved through seven-alpha in the last twenty days.
Not voluntarily—I can tell you that much from the weight and movement data logged on the floor sensors.
The cargo codes used match your ghost company.
" She taps one entry. "The payments clearing these routes are coming from a private account structure that routes through at least three different institutional fronts before it dissolves.
Whoever is doing this knows how to hide money. "
"Can you trace it?" Nina asks.
Zevra glances at her with fresh interest. "I can try, for an additional?—"
One of the guards takes a single step toward Nina, putting his considerable body between her and the data surface. The posture is deliberate. A reminder that she is small, human, and in a room she has no authority inside.
Nina doesn't step back. She looks at the guard the way she looked at me in the checkpoint corridor—measuring exactly how much she dislikes the obstacle in front of her—and then returns her attention to Zevra as though he is a structural inconvenience rather than a threat.
"I'm trying to find five missing diplomats," she says. "If you know where they went and you don't tell us, and they're dead, that's information you sold at a discount."
Something shifts in Zevra's face again—the Pi'rell version of amusement, as far as I can read it. "I like her," she says to me.
"She is a complication," I say.
I catch Nina looking at my forearm. The old scars there are visible where my armor modification leaves the joint exposed—a long diagonal across the inside of my wrist that forks near the elbow, too smooth to be anything but blade damage, too extensive to be anything but deliberate.
She is not staring with pity. The expression is closer to something she has not yet categorized.
When she realizes I've noticed, she shifts her focus to the data surface.
The silence lasts half a second too long.
Then the lights go out.
The first shot burns through the air where Zevra's head was before she moved, and I already have Nina by the arm and down before the second follows.
Training doesn't require thought—it requires that thought gets out of the way.
I put my body between her and the muzzle flash and assess: two shooters at the chamber entrance, one more coming through the secondary panel on the left wall, weapons hot and positioned for immediate termination rather than robbery.
This is not a robbery.
I return fire toward the entrance, drive the first two shooters back, and hear Nina shouting something at Zevra.
The Pi'rell is moving—not frozen, which matters. Nina has grabbed the exposed data surface from the table and is shoving it toward Zevra while pointing toward a narrow gap in the chamber’s back wall with the specific decisiveness of someone who located every exit the moment she entered the room.
The third shooter clears the secondary panel and I take him down before he completes the movement.
Twelve seconds. The chamber goes quiet.
Zevra is gone through the back gap. Nina is pressed against the far wall, breathing hard and still holding onto the data chip she pulled from the console in the chaos—evidence recovery, not combat instinct, but the result is the same.
I pull the fallen shooter's weapon from the ground.
The charge configuration is not standard black-market equipment. The housing is reinforced, the frequency calibration precise, the manufacture code stamped in a place that civilian weapons don't carry stamps.
It is Orpheus Station security issue.
Current generation. Active service cycle.
Someone inside my own security structure sent three shooters to kill an information broker the moment she began pulling transit records tied to missing diplomats.
They moved within minutes of our arrival, which means either Zevra's location was already watched, or our movements have been tracked since sublevel seven.
I look at the weapon for a long moment.
Then I look at Nina, who is watching me from across the chamber with evidence in her hands and the same conclusion already visible on her face.
Whatever is operating beneath Orpheus Station, it is not afraid of security command.
It is inside security command.