12. Gnash #2
“Do that,” I tell Vakka. “Full safety recalibration on all Combine-associated departures. Slow, meticulous, irritatingly lawful.”
Vakka grins. “My favorite kind of lawful.”
Krell waits, still tense.
“What else?” I ask.
He hesitates. “The human journalist is in the lower market.”
Everything in me changes direction.
Skahar exhales very softly through his nose. Vakka suddenly finds the relay report fascinating.
I keep my voice controlled. “Why?”
Krell looks as if he has been asked to explain weather. “She said she wanted breakfast.”
“She has food in her assigned suite.”
“She said, and I quote, ‘I did not come to the Badlands to eat diplomatic paste from a wall dispenser while history commits crimes downstairs.’”
Vakka’s laugh cracks through the annex.
Skahar closes his eye and smiles like the old bastard has just been given a holy vision. “Yes. That sounds like her.”
“She went with two guards?” I ask.
Krell’s silence tells me the answer before his mouth does.
I stand.
Vakka clears her throat. “Before you storm through the market like an incoming hull breach, you should know that she refused the guards.”
“She refused.”
“She told them, according to the report, that if they followed close enough to scare sources away, she would do a live segment on Reaper security theater and title it ‘The Warlord’s Babysitters.’”
Skahar’s shoulders shake once.
I look at him. “Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You are laughing inside your skull.”
“It is good to keep something alive in there.”
I move toward the door, grabbing my long coat from the wall hook.
“Continue tracing the relay needle. Lock down departure under safety authority. Tell Theryki I will meet her after the afternoon session, tell Gobold he may request patrol adjustments through proper channels, and tell Wilcox that command access is granted at my discretion.”
“And Zune?” Vakka asks.
I pause at the door. “Tell Zune nothing. Silence makes men like him invent better nightmares than we could provide.”
Skahar’s cane taps the deck once in approval. “There is the boy who learned patience by wanting to kill everyone in a room and counting coins instead.”
“I was charming then too.”
“You were hungry and mean.”
“I remain both.”
I leave before he can answer, though I hear his dry laugh follow me into the corridor.
The lower market smells better than the command annex and lies just as much.
Spice smoke curls through hot air beneath hanging lamps patched from ship beacons.
Vendors shout over each other in Reaper, Trade Cant, Alliance Standard, and three dialects that should have died with their home moons but somehow survive wherever refugees gather with recipes and stubbornness.
Grilled meat hisses on metal grates. Fermented rootcakes steam in stacked baskets.
Engine lubricant, incense, sweat, ozone, cheap perfume, and wet wool blend into a living stink that belongs more to a port city than a pirate station.
Children dart between stalls with the reckless courage of small creatures who trust adults to stop disasters before impact.
Dockworkers crowd food counters in stained gear.
Merchants argue over tariffs with enough passion to suggest none of them are starving, which remains one of my quieter victories.
I find Ursa near a stall selling bitter-leaf buns and fried strips of something no human stomach should approach without legal counsel.
She is not alone.
A wiry Alzhon trader speaks to her with both hands moving fast, his silver facial tendrils fluttering in agitation.
A Reaper woman with a baby strapped to her chest stands beside him, correcting him every third sentence.
Ursa listens with her compad angled low, recording openly but not shoving the device between them.
Her red hair is pulled into a messy knot at the back of her head, and a loose strand brushes her cheek every time she nods.
She wears practical dark trousers, a fitted jacket, and the expression of a woman who has forgotten fear because curiosity got there first.
The two guards she rejected lurk at a terrible distance behind a noodle cart, trying to look casual. They are failing so completely that I almost respect the effort.
Ursa spots me before I reach her. Her eyes flick over my coat, my shoulders, the market’s reaction around me, and then back to my face. The traders see where she is looking and fall silent.
I stop far enough away not to crowd her. “You are difficult to guard.”
“You say that like it’s news.”
“You are in my market without protection.”
She glances pointedly at the two guards behind the noodle cart. “Your protection is pretending to be interested in soup.”
“They are bad at subtlety.”
“They are enormous men with skull spurs hiding behind noodles, Gnash. Subtlety fled the scene and filed for asylum.”
The Reaper woman snorts.
The Alzhon trader looks like he wants to laugh and also wants to continue existing.
I fold my arms. “You refused close escort.”
“I refused intimidation with legs. People stop talking when armed Reapers hover.”
“They also stop stabbing.”
“Most sources aren’t stabbing people.”
“This station has many exceptions.”
Ursa steps closer, lowering her voice enough that the nearby traders can pretend not to hear while absolutely hearing. “I understand the risk. I am not being reckless for sport.”
“No, you are being reckless for work. This distinction does not soothe me.”
Her mouth softens around the edges, and the bond between us pulls like a hand closing gently around my heart.
I hate how quickly my anger changes shape when she looks at me with that steady green gaze.
I hate how much of myself wants to step between her and every blade in the market.
I hate most that she would be right to push me aside.
“I got three useful accounts in twenty minutes,” she says. “The kind no one gives in official interviews.”
“About what?”
“Refugee processing, dock tariffs, and your habit of quietly refunding medical cargo fees when ship captains are too poor to pay.”
I look at the Reaper woman.
She looks at her baby.
The Alzhon trader examines the buns as if they are sudden miracles of agricultural complexity.
Ursa sees the exchange and lifts her eyebrows. “Interesting. That part was true.”
I sigh. “It is not policy.”
“It has a ledger code.”
“Many things have ledger codes.”
“The code is Mercy Adjustment.”
“Vakka is going to lose a finger.”
“Please don’t maim your dockmaster over accurate bookkeeping.”
“She named the code to annoy me.”
“She succeeded.”
The Reaper woman finally speaks. “Lord, with respect, everyone knows the code.”
I open my eyes.
Ursa’s smile grows dangerous. “Everyone?”
The Alzhon trader’s tendrils flutter. “I certainly do not know it officially.”
“Unofficially?” she asks.
He glances at me, then gives up with the survival instincts of a man who understands journalists may be more frightening than warlords in the long run. “Unofficially, captains with sick passengers pray for Mercy Adjustment before docking.”
I stare at him until he discovers an urgent need to reorganize his baskets.
Ursa touches the edge of my sleeve, not gripping, merely reminding. The contact is small. It still travels through me like a flare in darkness.
“That matters,” she says quietly.
“It makes me look soft.”
“No. It makes you look responsible.”
“Responsibility is less frightening.”
“To idiots, maybe.”
I look down at her. “You think I should let the galaxy see this.”
“I think the galaxy already sees what powerful people profit from showing. You can either let your enemies define every act of mercy as weakness, or you can stop helping them lie.”
The answer irritates me because it is too clean and too true. “You always speak as though truth wins by existing.”
Her expression tightens, and I know I have touched an old wound before she says a word.
“No,” she replies. “I speak like someone who knows truth has to be dragged into the light while it bites.”
The market noise seems to dull around us, though nothing quiets.
A vendor calls prices. A child laughs. Metal wheels rattle over deck seams. Yet the air between Ursa and me narrows until I can feel the heat rising from her skin, smell bitter caf on her breath, and hear the soft shift of fabric as her fingers fall away from my sleeve.
I want to kiss her.
The thought is not gentle. It arrives with claws, hunger, and the remembered shock of claiming her before the feast. It is followed immediately by a second thought, colder and harder: every watching eye in this market would carry the story to every faction on the station before the next docking cycle.
Some would smile. Some would scheme. Some would sharpen knives.
Ursa sees enough of my expression to understand something. Her cheeks warm, but she does not retreat.
“Professional boundaries,” she says.
“Terrible things.”
“Necessary things.”
“Also terrible.”
Her mouth twitches. “I’m glad we can establish common ground.”
A comm chime burns against my wrist before I can answer. I lift it and find Theryki’s insignia pulsing with elegant impatience. Of course. The Coalition ambassador has the gift of arriving in any moment like poison poured into wine.
I decline the request.
Ursa notices. “Important?”
“Annoying.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“With Theryki, it often is.”
She studies me. “You’re avoiding a meeting?”
“I am delaying a performance.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes.”
Her face changes, professional irritation and personal warmth colliding. “Gnash.”
“I have delegated.”
“You are in the middle of negotiations that could change control of the Badlands.”
“I am aware.”
“And you’re standing in a market arguing with me about guard placement and charity ledgers.”
“I find this more honest.”
“That is not how leadership works.”
I lean closer, lowering my voice. “Little journalist, you have been correcting my leadership for less than a day.”
“And yet I’ve made strong early progress.”