1. Ursa #2
"It should be. We have sent three senior correspondents, two former military analysts, and one negotiation specialist whose ego still has not recovered.
Gnash refused all of them. He does not give interviews.
He does not recognize IHC press credentials.
He does not care about public relations because the public already thinks he is a monster, and from what I can tell, he rather enjoys the branding. "
"Then why send anyone?"
"Because every other serious outlet is sending someone, and I refuse to let Nebula Nine or LeagueWire pretend they own the story. You will go, you will request access, you will be denied, and you will file color pieces from the docks until the negotiations collapse or succeed without you."
"No."
Dawson arches one brow. "No?"
"No, that is not what I will file."
A few heads turn toward me with open disbelief now. Bellamy's mouth twitches as though he wants to warn me and congratulate me at the same time.
I step closer to the holo-display. The station's light washes over my hands. "If you send me to Guyver Station, I will secure the interview."
Dawson laughs again, but this time it has an edge. "With Gnash."
"Yes."
"The Reaper warlord."
"Yes."
"The man who allegedly tore a Combine executive's security detail apart in a docking tunnel and mailed the survivors back in cargo containers."
"Allegedly matters."
"Not when the cargo containers arrived."
"If he wanted everyone dead, why were there survivors?"
The question slips out before I can dress it up for the room. Dawson stops smiling. Around us, the newsroom noise beyond the glass walls keeps moving, feeds updating, producers arguing, anchors warming their voices, all of IHC-Now grinding forward on urgency and appetite.
I tap my compad and pull up the first of several reports I have already read twice.
"Every profile says Gnash is impulsive. Every trade report says tariffs through his territory are consistent, predictable, and enforced without random seizure.
Every military brief describes Guyver as unstable.
Every shipping concern quietly admits traffic through that corridor has become safer since he took control.
That is not the profile of a mindless butcher. "
Dawson stares at me. "You have already been researching him."
"I research stories before I ask for them."
"You were told last month this desk was not yours."
"I was told no. That is not the same thing."
His jaw shifts, but he keeps his temper behind his teeth. "You really think you can sit across from that creature and ask questions nobody else can ask?"
"I think powerful men get careless when they assume I am either decorative or doomed."
That earns more than one uncomfortable glance around the table. Dawson's face tightens with the faintest flicker of recognition. He knows I have included him in that sentence. He also knows objecting would make him look like a fool.
"Fine," he says.
The word is so abrupt that even I take a second to absorb it.
Dawson turns back toward the table. "Ursa leaves tomorrow on the noon transfer to Ceres Relay, then a contracted ship to Guyver Station. She files daily dockside packages unless, by some miracle of divine intervention or Reaper brain damage, she secures something better."
My heart gives one hard strike against my ribs.
Tomorrow. The realization hit me immediately. There would be no additional review cycle, no committee delays, and no opportunity for Dawson to bury the assignment beneath bureaucracy until the story lost momentum.
I nod once. "I will need full diplomatic clearance, hazard pay authorization, and independent upload access in case station communications are restricted."
Dawson scoffs. "You will get standard correspondent access."
"No. I will get independent upload access."
His eyes flatten. "Careful."
"I am being careful. That is why I am not going to the Badlands with a corporate leash around my throat. If the station locks down or negotiations turn violent, I need the ability to transmit without waiting for some assistant producer to wake you up and ask whether truth fits the brand strategy."
"That is not how network hierarchy works."
"Then send Bellamy."
Bellamy's head snaps up. "Leave me out of your heroic self-destruction, Ramone."
That breaks the tension enough for a few people to laugh. Even I almost smile.
Dawson does not. "Independent upload access is expensive."
"So is sending a correspondent to die quietly with unusable footage trapped on her compad."
He drums his fingers against the back of a chair. His wedding band clicks against the hard surface, precise and irritated. "You are impossible."
"I am prepared."
"You are arrogant."
"I am underfunded."
Someone coughs into their fist. Dawson cuts a glare toward the sound, then looks back at me with the weary disgust of a man forced to purchase something he intends to complain about forever.
"Fine," he says again. "Limited independent upload access. Emergency use. I decide what qualifies when you return."
"If I return."
The room goes still in a way I do not intend.
I regret the phrasing immediately, not because it is melodramatic, but because it is true.
Guyver Station is not a conference center.
The Badlands do not care how well I write.
Reapers do not care how many awards a network has won.
The Helios Combine has buried better people than me beneath nondisclosure agreements and cleanly worded casualty reports.
The Alliance and Coalition have both perfected the art of calling civilian blood a regrettable outcome.
Dawson's expression shifts. For a moment, under all the polish and vanity and cruelty, I see the executive who understands risk because risk affects liability. "You signed the hostile assignment waiver when you joined foreign conflict."
"I was nineteen. I thought it sounded glamorous."
"It is not glamorous."
"I know."
He looks at me then, really looks, and I hate him a little more for choosing this moment to resemble a human being. "Do you?"
The question carries Horus IV inside it.
I pick up my compad and tuck it beneath my arm again. "Better than most."
No one says anything for several seconds. The station rotates silently above the table, all steel, shadow, and possibility.
Dawson breaks the quiet first because he cannot tolerate any silence he did not design.
"Meeting adjourned. Jana, stay. Bellamy, I need your segment on the Alzhon subsidy fight rewritten before noon.
Ursa, get with Travel and Legal before you do whatever grim little ritual you perform before walking into gunfire. "
I turn toward the door.
"And Ramone?"
I stop, but I do not turn around.
His voice sharpens back into its usual shape. "Try to make yourself camera-ready before you board. If you are going to get killed by pirates, at least give us a decent thumbnail."
The laugh that follows is thin, nervous, and ugly.
I turn my head enough to meet his eyes. "If I get killed by pirates, Dawson, I promise my final thought will be whether my hair had enough volume."
Bellamy makes a strangled sound.
Dawson points toward the door. "Out."
I leave before anyone can see my hands shake.
The hallway outside the conference room is cooler and quieter, though not by much.
Through the glass walls, the newsroom continues its frantic choreography.
Anchors glide toward studios with makeup teams fluttering around them.
Junior producers sprint between desks with the haunted eyes of people who have consumed too much caffeine and not enough sleep.
A breaking feed from Tau Ceti splashes across the far wall, showing floodlights, riot shields, and a caption so bland it could have been printed by a machine with no concept of grief.
I make it twenty-seven steps before Bellamy catches up with me.
"Ramone."
"I am busy."
"You are always busy. That is not a personality."
"I am told neither is solemn intensity, so apparently I am running out of options."
He falls into stride beside me, tall, rumpled, and irritatingly likable in the way of men who can afford to be charming because the room already assumes they belong in it. He carries three styluses in his shirt pocket and loses all of them twice a day.
"That was either the bravest thing I have seen in months or the professional equivalent of jumping naked into a turbine."
"Could be both."
"Comforting." He glances over his shoulder, then lowers his voice. "Are you serious about getting Gnash on record?"
"No, Bellamy. I publicly fought Dawson for the privilege of filing atmosphere shots from a pirate dock."
"Fine, sarcasm received. I am asking because everyone who gets near that station comes back with the same answer. No access. No interview. No private audience. Half of them never even see Gnash except from a balcony."
"Then I will find a better balcony."
He exhales through his teeth. "You know what I mean."
We reach my desk, though calling it mine feels generous.
It is a narrow workstation wedged between a dormant holo-ad sales terminal and a structural column that blocks half my wall display.
I have decorated it with nothing except a small black stone from Horus IV that no one else recognizes and a row of meticulously organized data wafers.
Sentimentality invites questions. Organization does not.
Bellamy leans against the column. "Ursa, the Badlands are not like covering a corrupt governor or a relief scandal."
"I know."
"Do you? Because there is regular danger, and then there is Reaper danger. Those bastards raid ships for fun."
"According to whom?"
"According to the screaming survivors."
"Survivors can be truthful and incomplete."
He looks at me as if I have just suggested adopting a venomous pet. "That is the kind of sentence that gets carved on a memorial plaque."