5. Ursa
URSA
By my fourth morning on Guyver Station, the market ring no longer looks like a threat assessment dressed in bad lighting.
It looks like a neighborhood.
The distinction unsettles me more than the weapons ever did.
The concourse curves ahead in a long sweep of welded decks, hanging shop signs, balcony stalls, patched pressure doors, and hand-painted directional markings that only sometimes agree with the station map.
Warm light spills from food kiosks and repair bays, turning the scuffed metal floor bronze where thousands of boots, claws, and mag-soles have worn paths through old grime.
Children chase one another between cargo sleds while vendors shout prices over the grind of lifts and the hiss of steam from cooking vents.
The air is warmer here than in the diplomatic levels, full of spiced oil, machine lubricant, wet metal, unfiltered bodies, roasted fungus, citrus peel, and the sharp clean sting of disinfectant drifting from a med-kiosk at the corner.
My boots stick slightly where someone spilled something sugary near a tea cart, and the cup in my hand burns pleasantly through the thin protective sleeve.
The drink inside tastes like bitter herbs, salt, and a dare, but the vendor swore it would keep me awake for twelve hours without making me see dead relatives, which is more than I can say for newsroom caf.
A Reaper security officer falls into step beside me as I pass the fountain made from the old engine casing.
"You are in the wrong corridor again," he says.
I glance up. It is the same black-skinned officer who handled my arrival, the one with the crooked regrown spur along his cheek. I learned yesterday that his name is Vesk, though he did not offer it. A sanitation worker shouted it while telling him to stop blocking access to a drain.
"I am in a permitted civilian commercial corridor," I say.
"This is Market Spur Four. Press lodging is on Spur Two."
"I know where my lodging is."
"Then why are you not there?"
"Because I am working."
He looks around the concourse as if the word working has personally insulted him. "You call loitering near breakfast stalls work?"
"I call speaking with residents work."
"You have been speaking with everyone."
"That is often how journalism functions."
His mouth twitches, though he quickly buries the expression beneath official disapproval. "You asked a coolant technician yesterday whether Lord Gnash has improved waste heat recapture efficiency."
"He had."
"You asked a nursery instructor about school enrollment."
"She answered."
"You asked three merchants whether tariffs were fair."
"Two said yes. One cursed for eight minutes and then admitted Helios charged more."
Vesk folds his enormous arms, which makes two passing Fratvoyan couriers veer around him without slowing. "You are annoying."
"I've been promoted. Three days ago I was merely inconvenient."
His eyes narrow with the weary suspicion of someone who has discovered amusement in a place he preferred not to. "Do not mistake tolerance for approval."
"I never do."
A small Reaper child darts past my hip, slips on the sticky patch by the tea cart, and would have gone face-first into the deck if Vesk had not shot one arm out and caught him by the back of his patched vest. The child dangles in the air, legs kicking, silver hair falling into his eyes.
"Griv," Vesk growls. "Walk."
The child twists enough to look at him upside down. "I was walking fast."
"You were falling fast."
"That happened after."
Vesk sets him on his feet. "Where is your guardian?"
"Working Dock Seven."
"Then why are you here?"
The boy looks at me, then at my recording compad, then back at Vesk with the grave calculation of a born criminal. "Educational reasons."
"You are six."
"Education starts early."
I kneel so I am not looming over him, which is an amusing concept given that even small Reaper children are built like compact trouble with teeth. "Do you want to be recorded?"
His red eyes brighten. "Am I getting paid?"
Vesk makes a strangled sound. "Griv."
I keep my expression serious. "I do not pay minors for interviews without guardian consent."
The child considers this. "Smart. My aunt steals."
"From journalists?"
"From everybody."
Vesk pinches the bridge of his nose, careful of the spur there. "Go to Dock Seven before I carry you there by one ankle."
Griv looks delighted by the possibility, then darts away through the crowd.
I stand and take another sip of the terrible tea. "He seems charming."
"He is a menace."
"Those can overlap."
Vesk starts walking again, and I match his pace. "Why are you still here, reporter? Your interview requests are denied. The others left after two days or began filing dramatic pieces about how dangerous the lighting looks."
"Guyver Station is the story even without Gnash."
That earns me a sideways look. "You expect me to believe that?"
"No. I expect my notes to prove it."
We pass a row of metalworkers repairing support brackets beneath a mezzanine.
The heat from their tools washes over my face, dry and sharp, and sparks scatter behind portable shields.
One of the workers is human, one is Grolgath, and two are Reapers.
They argue over brace angles in the universal language of people who believe everyone else is bad at their job.
"What have your notes proved?" Vesk asks.
"That reported violence along the trade corridor dropped after Gnash took the station."
"Because raiders avoid us."
"Because some raiders joined him."
"Also true."
"Because tariffs became predictable enough for merchants to price risk accurately."
He snorts. "Merchants love sounding oppressed while counting profit."
"That also appears true."
A little more approval enters his voice. "You noticed."
"I notice many things."
"Yes. That is what makes you annoying."
Before I can answer, a woman calls my name from a repair bay opening. "Ramone! You still want to talk routes or did station security finally scare you back to the fancy levels?"
Vara Dint is a human freight broker with a cybernetic left eye, a voice like gravel in a fuel drum, and hands tattooed with route numbers from three jurisdictions.
She sits behind a counter built from stacked cargo cases, eating noodles from a tin bowl while six manifests float around her in uneven holo-windows.
I lift my cup. "Security has not committed to scaring me yet."
Vesk’s spurs shift along his shoulders. "Do not tempt me."
Vara laughs. "He's all polish and procedure now. You should've seen him before Gnash started handing out regulations. Used to throw smugglers into empty tanks and let them think about their sins."
"That happened twice," Vesk says.
"Three times if you count the Alzhon spice runner."
"He requested privacy for meditation."
"He was screaming."
"Meditation varies by culture."
Vara points her chopsticks at him. "See? Regulations made him boring."
I activate my compad with her permission and lean against a cargo case. "You said yesterday you would show me pre-Gnash loss rates."
"I said I might if you came back without acting like a holonet ghoul.
" She flicks two fingers, and a route map appears between us.
Red markers cluster along the Badlands corridor before gradually shifting to amber, then green over the last eleven months.
"There. That is five years of shipments.
Lost cargo, ransom events, forced rerouting, escort premiums, bribe fees, the whole ugly hymn. "
Vesk looks at the chart as if he would rather not appear interested and fails.
I enlarge the latest period. "Loss rates dropped thirty-two percent?"
"Forty-one if you pull out that one stupid convoy that ignored lane assignments because their captain thought Reaper traffic control was a philosophical suggestion."
"What happened to him?"
Vara smiles around her noodles. "He paid the fine."
Vesk adds, "Then he paid the second fine for complaining about the first fine while armed."
"And after that?"
"He follows lane assignments."
I record the map and keep my voice even despite the significance forming under the data. "So merchants are safer."
"Safer is a big shiny word," Vara says. "We are less likely to vanish, which is not nothing.
Before Gnash, you had Helios fees, independent raiders, fake customs patrols, desperate Reaper crews, Alliance inspections if you got too close to their lanes, Coalition religious patrols if you drifted wrong, and private security outfits charging miracle prices for mediocre courage.
Now you pay Guyver, you follow the corridor rules, and if somebody hits you anyway, Gnash makes an example out of them dramatic enough that others remember. "
"That sounds like fear."
"It is." Vara sets the bowl down. "Fear can do useful work when pointed at the right people."
"And when it isn't?"
Her face hardens. "Then little girls stream dead towns on the holonet because admirals and executives call consequences complicated."
The words strike the table between us.
Vesk glances at me, and for once his face does not hold mockery.
Vara winces. "Sorry. That came out rough."
"No," I say, because my voice still works and that matters. "It came out honest."
Her gaze lingers on me, then she nods. "Gnash is no saint, Ramone.
Don't let anybody sell you that nonsense.
He has spaced men. He has broken crews. He has taken ships and made captains kneel in their own blood.
But my nephew runs cargo through this corridor now and comes home more often than he used to.
I am old enough to care more about results than clean stories. "
"Would you call him a protector?"
Vara huffs. "I would call him an expensive bastard who protects what he taxes."
Vesk’s deep laugh rolls through the bay. "That is going on his next banner."
"It should. It would be more honest than half the diplomatic trash I've heard this week."