Chapter 2 #2
“Hover-carts on the bay concourse,” I say. “HORATIO can dispatch a station bot to —”
“I brought one.” She squares her shoulders. “It’s at the foot of the ramp. I just need to attach the cradle harness and —”
The pod hums again.
Different hum this time. Wrong in a new way. The diagnostic strip flickers. Lorri pivots toward the cradle’s secondary diagnostic panel — the same instinct that brought her up the ramp at Vresh, the instinct that hasn’t dropped the datapad yet, the instinct Flossie clocked in eleven minutes.
“That readout’s spiking —”
She presses her palm flat against the panel to steady herself as she leans in.
Three things happen at once.
The panel — designed for a Skiveth biosignature and not, specifically, a human one — registers an unauthorized contact.
The cradle interprets this as a containment breach at handoff.
And the pod, which has been waiting for an excuse for six days, sends a cascade alert direct to Junction One Station Authority on the priority channel reserved for unidentified biological cargo with possible quarantine implications.
The hold light shifts. The bay doors begin to close.
“Oh,” Lorri says. “Oh, no!”
The klaxon fires.
JUNCTION ONE STATION AUTHORITY. BAY-RESTRICTED QUARANTINE INITIATED. BAYS THIRTEEN AND FOURTEEN, DOCKING LEVEL, SECTOR SEVEN.
POSSIBLE BIOSIGNATURE CONTAMINATION EVENT. ESTIMATED CLEAR: TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
ALL PERSONNEL CURRENTLY WITHIN THE QUARANTINED BAYS WILL REMAIN IN PLACE. APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
The magnetic seals engage. The bay doors close with the heavy finality of a station that does not negotiate. The hold goes very quiet, and then HORATIO speaks, with the unhurried satisfaction of a being who has been waiting his entire operational life for this exact moment.
“Captain. We are sealed.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-four standard hours, Captain. The protocol is, I should note for the record, wildly disproportionate to the actual risk profile of the cargo, and I would describe the Junction Authority’s response as enthusiastic. But the protocol is the protocol.”
Bay quarantine runs on the Junction Authority’s independent security grid — station infrastructure, not ship systems. HORATIO can monitor it, file reports against it, lodge formal complaints about its sensitivity thresholds in language I suspect he finds deeply satisfying, but he cannot override it.
The cascade alert went from cradle to station authority on a priority channel that bypasses every ship AI in the docking ring.
By design. The station does not trust its couriers to make quarantine decisions, given the average courier, probably fair.
Lorri is staring at her hand on the panel as if it had bitten her.
“I just —” She turns to me. Her eyes are enormous. “Did I just lock down the bay?”
“You touched a panel.”
“Did I lock down the bay?”
“Technically,” HORATIO says, with what I can only describe as glee, “yes. The cascade originated from the cradle’s biosignature mismatch when your hand made contact, and the protocol routed directly to Junction Authority.
Bays Thirteen and Fourteen are now sealed.
The lockdown is automatic. The reset is not. ”
She closes her eyes. “Bay Thirteen.”
“Indeed.”
“Bay Thirteen as in —”
“Bay Thirteen as in our esteemed neighbor,” HORATIO confirms, with the warmth of an AI delivering news he has been desperate to deliver.
“Vresh. The cargo hauler from your earlier introduction. He has, in fact, been informed of his quarantine status. I have intercepted his initial reply. It was, regrettably, not in a language Junction Authority’s translators are licensed to render, and the secondary attempt was — Captain, I would prefer not to repeat it in mixed company. Suffice to say, Vresh is displeased.”
“Oh my God.”
“He has filed a formal complaint. His fourth this rotation. I believe there may be a personal best involved.”
“Oh my God.”
“He has named the agent in the complaint,” HORATIO adds, helpfully. “By description. The phrase I will translate completely inaccurately as the small loud one with the bad luck.”
She makes a sound. Small, strangled, somewhere between a laugh and a noise of pure, undiluted horror, and her hands come up to cover her face entirely. The jacket slips at the shoulder. My eyes go there before I can stop them. They stay a beat too long.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her.
“I touched the thing!”
“You touched the thing because the thing wasn’t labeled, and the thing should have been labeled, and the thing’s containment protocol is wildly oversensitive for cargo of this profile, and I’ve been telling Mother as much for six days, and now I have evidence.
” I look up at the ceiling. “HORATIO. File an incident report blaming the cradle calibration. Cite the harmonic drift. Make Bay Authority feel like idiots about it.”
“With genuine glee, Captain.”
“And the pod?”
“Stable,” HORATIO confirms. “The breach reading was a false positive. The cradle is calibrating. Containment is intact. The pod is, frankly, the least eventful thing in this hold at the present moment.”
“HORATIO. The secondary diagnostic panel. You knew it was biosignature-keyed.”
“Captain, I was running the cradle harmonic analysis at ninety-three percent processing allocation when the agent made contact. The panel touch lasted approximately zero - point-four seconds. I would require a minimum of one-point-two seconds to formulate and deliver a verbal warning of adequate specificity.” A pause.
The theatrical register returns, but underneath it, something that sounds genuinely embarrassed.
“I find the margin personally humiliating.”
“You didn’t know she was going to touch it.”
“I did not anticipate the touch, Captain. I was monitoring the cradle, not the agent. In retrospect, monitoring the agent would have been a more productive use of my attention. I have amended my priority protocols accordingly. The agent will not touch anything further without my verbal authorization.”
Lorri still has her face in her hands. The color at her ears is a specific shade of pink that I am noticing with more precision than the situation calls for.
“I’ve been on this station for one hour and forty minutes,” she says into her palms.
“You’ve had an eventful one hour and forty minutes.”
“I’m going to be fired. Mother is going to revoke Flossie’s arrangement. Vresh is going to bite me through the bay wall.”
“Vresh can’t bite you through the bay wall.”