20. The Pat
The Pat
Flossie
Morrison’s office hasn’t changed.
I don’t know why I expected it to. The desk is the same reinforced steel she requisitioned eleven years ago because “standard furniture is designed for people who don’t throw things.
” The coffee mug is in its place by the comm array — black, chipped, the words WORLD’S OKAYEST DISPATCHER faded to gray.
I gave her that mug my second year. She threatened to recycle it. She has used it every day since.
She’s standing. Not sitting. Standing behind the desk with her arms folded and her blue eyes already doing the inventory.
Steel-gray hair, practical bun, not a strand out of place.
Mid-fifties and built like a bulkhead — compact, immovable, the kind of presence that makes a room smaller by taking up more of it than physics should allow.
I know Morrison’s tells the way I know my flight controls.
Coffee mug in hand means she’s in control.
Coffee mug on the desk means she’s about to shout.
Arms folded means she’s holding something back.
Left eye twitch means the shouting is four seconds away.
And when Morrison goes quiet — when the voice drops and the blue eyes go flat and the room loses its air — that’s when you should be genuinely afraid, because quiet Morrison is Morrison who has stopped managing her feelings and started managing yours.
Right now: arms folded. Coffee mug on the desk. We’re in shouting territory.
Her gaze starts at my face. Tracks down. Finds the bite mark at my collar — the place where his mouth was, where his teeth grazed, where the skin is still tender and flushed and I didn’t cover it because I am done covering things.
Morrison’s left eye twitches.
Four seconds. I count.
“Sit down, Florence.”
Full name. Nuclear. Morrison has a temperature gauge, and it runs on my name: Flossie is warm, Knight is professional, Florence is furious, and Florence Amelia Knight is a detonation I have heard exactly once, after the Kessler Point hull breach, and I do not wish to hear it again.
I sit. The chair in front of Morrison’s desk is deliberately uncomfortable — hard seat, no armrests, positioned so the light from the viewport hits your face.
Morrison designed this office for debriefs.
Every piece of furniture is an interrogation tool.
I’ve sat in this chair after the Kessler Point run with my hands still shaking.
I’ve sat in this chair after a courier opened sealed cargo and accidentally psychically bonded herself to the contents.
I’ve sat in this chair after one of our pilots crash-landed on a warlord’s fortress and Morrison had to negotiate with an alien military commander who kept calling the courier his “gift.” I have sat in this chair so many times that the seat has a Flossie-shaped impression and the impression is a map of twelve years of debriefs, each one beginning with Morrison’s arms folded and ending with Morrison’s coffee mug in hand and me walking out alive.
It is also, this morning, prosecuting a case against several muscle groups that were doing something entirely different in a different chair a few hours ago.
I keep my face professional. The chair knows. I know. Nobody else needs to.
Her eyes haven’t left the bite mark.
“Morrison —“
“Don’t.” One word. The tone that stops bar fights and dock disputes and once, memorably, a Corsairian boarding party.
“Before you explain. Before you charm. Before you say ‘lovey’ and make it sound reasonable.” She unfolds her arms. Places both palms flat on the desk.
The posture of a woman bracing for impact.
“Business first. Then we discuss the Xarthian-shaped situation you have brought onto my station.”
Business first. Morrison’s love language. Fine.
Through the wall, at the very floor of hearing, the purr. Steady. Waiting. It settles into the bite mark like a hand. Morrison’s left eye twitches — not at me, at the wall — and neither of us says one word about it.
“Drask,” I say.
“Drask.” She reaches for the comm array.
“He’s hailing. Timed it to your docking.
I’ve been holding the channel for twenty minutes because I wanted you in this chair when we took it.
” She looks at me. The blue eyes sharp and proud and furious all at once — the Morrison contradiction, the woman who is already angry at what I’m about to tell her and already preparing to help me anyway. “Together?”
“Together.”
Drask’s voice fills Morrison’s office like smoke.
Calm. Professional. The particular brand of pleasant that means someone is calculating whether you’re worth more alive or dead and hasn’t finished the maths.
“Ms Knight. I was beginning to think the mineral corridor had solved my problem for me.”
I use the warm voice.
Not the charm voice — the real one. The one I use when I mean business so thoroughly that the warmth becomes the threat. Morrison recognizes it. I see her mouth tighten with something that is definitely not approval and is definitely not not approval.
“Mr Drask. Alive and well, thank you for your concern. The route was educational.” I pull the notebook from my cardigan pocket.
Open it on my knee. The brown cover, worn soft.
My handwriting, round and quick, and on the most recent page: his transaction code.
His buyer’s reference number. The pattern that Sprout cracked in four seconds and I wrote down because I write everything down and people keep underestimating how dangerous that is.
“About your deadline, Mr Drask: I’ve decided we won’t be needing it.
I’ve been thinking about better uses for the time.
” I’m enjoying this. I shouldn’t be — the male tried to kill me, tried to use Xor as a weapon against me, hacked SRS comms and spoofed a kill order on a civilian courier.
But I am sitting in Morrison’s office with Morrison beside me and the notebook in my hand and for the first time since he boarded my ship I am not running.
I am sitting. And the sitting feels like power.
“Your transaction code. Your buyer’s reference number.
Ten times the container’s listed value — that’s not procurement, that’s auction pricing.
You’re brokering stolen research samples to an unnamed buyer using Cygnus BioWorks as a front and SRS as an unwitting delivery service.
None of whom know about each other.” I let each piece land.
The rhythm Morrison taught me: fact, pause, fact, pause.
Let the target do the maths. I learned this in the debrief chair.
I am deploying it from the debrief chair.
“Your encryption methodology is in SRS’s hands.
Your comms architecture hack is documented.
Your buyer code is flagged in three separate systems. Which means your buyer’s anonymity died with it.
Nobody bids on evidence, Mr Drask. Your sale ended the moment I wrote it down. ”
“The courier has been busy.” Still amused. Still testing.
The purr through the wall drops half an octave. He can hear every word of this. The frequency finds the bite mark, my sternum, lower — my body answering him mid-negotiation, which is outrageous and also steadying, which is the whole of us in one sentence. Morrison’s eye twitches at the wall again.
“The courier writes things down, Mr Drask. Compulsively. Ask anyone.”
“Impressive.” A recalibration in his voice — the broker adjusting, reassessing, recalculating the cost of a courier who was supposed to be a line item. “For a single operator with fairylights and no institutional —“
“About that,” I say.
Morrison leans forward and opens her mic.
She does not introduce herself gently. Morrison has never done anything gently in her life.
Her voice arrives on the channel the way a dreadnought arrives in a system — the kind of presence that makes the physics of a room rearrange themselves around it.
I have watched Morrison use this voice on dock managers, customs officers, pirate captains, a Corsairian warlord who was holding one of our couriers hostage, and one memorable corporate representative from ApexCorp who left the conversation visibly sweating.
Morrison collects powerful men who underestimated her the way I collect tea.
“Mr Drask. I am Director Morrison. I run OOPS operations for the Junction One sector, which means I coordinate logistics, security, and intelligence across sixty-nine active trade routes. I have managed courier crises involving warlords, psychic bonds, alien biochemistry, gladiator arenas, and one incident with weaponized Christmas presents that I am still filing the paperwork on. The courier you have been threatening is mine. She has been mine for twelve years. And the institutional backing you just questioned is standing right here.”
Morrison doesn’t threaten. Morrison presents options. I have watched her do this to men twice her size and three times her resources. Every option she presents is a corridor, and every corridor ends with the same wall.
“The data Ms Knight described is verified and backed up across three separate OOPS secure servers. The container has been processed for delivery to the Tessaro Foundation through channels you will never access. Your buyer code has been flagged. Your operational methodology is in SRS’s hands.
You have no leverage, no product, and no anonymity.
” Morrison’s beat — the one that makes admirals sweat.
“Middlemen survive by being invisible, Mr Drask. How visible would you like to be?”
Silence on the channel. Five seconds. Seven. I count them against my own heartbeat, steady, Morrison-trained, the pulse of a woman who has just watched her mentor dismantle a broker’s confidence with the efficiency of a surgical strike.