13. Ursa #3
“Gobold wants something simpler. He wants you afraid enough of Coalition capture to accept Alliance steel in your corridors. He uses words like deterrence and advisory support, but his version of stability requires armed presence close enough to force escalation if anyone twitches.”
Gnash grunts. “Yes.”
“And Wilcox knows it.”
“She serves the Alliance.”
“She serves Earth inside the Alliance, and those are not identical interests.” I highlight several of her comments.
“She pushed back whenever Gobold’s proposals risked civilian trade or Earth merchant exposure.
She doesn’t trust you, but she also doesn’t trust the Alliance military to protect human interests if this becomes a chest-thumping contest.”
“Chest-thumping contest,” Gnash repeats.
“It is a technical term.”
His mouth curves faintly. “Human diplomacy is colorful.”
“Human diplomacy is mostly paperwork and caffeine, but we have our moments.”
He studies the projection again. The longer he looks, the more I sense his anger shifting into calculation.
This is the version of him people keep underestimating.
The strategist. The builder. The man who can put revenge in one hand, survival in the other, and still ask which weighs more when his people are at stake.
“You saw all this in one session,” he says.
“I saw the beginning of it. I need the prior draft history to be sure.”
“Restricted.”
“I assumed.”
“You want access.”
“Yes.”
His eyes cut to mine. “You ask much.”
“I do.”
“Most people flatter me before asking much.”
“I can try that, if you want, but I suspect we’d both find it uncomfortable.”
He steps closer, and my awareness of the room begins losing ground to my awareness of him. The scent of him reaches me beneath the metal and incense, warm, dark, and unfamiliar in a way that has become dangerously comforting. His voice drops.
“You think I should trust you with restricted negotiation drafts.”
“I think you should decide whether you want pretty traps identified before or after they close.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is absolutely an answer. It just isn’t decorated.”
He stares at me long enough that the guards by the door remember urgent business elsewhere without being told. The door opens, closes, and leaves us alone beneath the fading glow of my projected notes.
“Why help me?” he asks.
The question is quiet enough to hurt.
I look at the treaty clauses because looking at him makes the truth harder to organize.
“Because another war here would kill people who have no seat at that table. Dockworkers. Refugees. Children in coolant-leaking schoolrooms. Merchants who just want to get through a corridor without becoming leverage.”
“And me?”
I breathe in slowly.
I smell Coalition incense, old smoke, and the dangerous edge of honesty.
“Yes,” I say. “And you.”
Gnash does not move, but something in his expression opens, just a fraction. It is not softness exactly. He is too guarded for that, and maybe I am too. It is the look of someone who has been bracing for a blow so long that kindness arrives like an unfamiliar weapon.
“My enemies will say you are compromised,” he says.
“They won’t be entirely wrong.”
His eyes flare.
I force myself to continue. “My feelings are involved. I’m not going to insult either of us by pretending otherwise. But compromised does not mean useless. It means I need to be more honest, not less. I can care what happens to you and still tell you when you’re about to make a mistake.”
A low sound leaves him, rough and almost disbelieving. “You have already done so more than once.”
“And I’m just getting started.”
“That sounded like a threat.”
“It was more of a professional forecast.”
He laughs then, deep and sudden, and the sound fills the negotiation chamber so completely that I forget the room was built for conflict. It rolls through me, warm as engine heat, and I feel the bond answer with a sharp little pull behind my ribs.
Gnash reaches toward the projection and closes one claw through the air, collapsing the notes into a neat encrypted bundle. “I will give you access to the prior drafts.”
My breath catches. “Gnash.”
“Limited access. Supervised archive room. No external transmission until we discuss what you find.”
“That last part is dangerously close to prior restraint.”
“It is dangerously close to keeping my station alive.”
I hold his gaze. “I won’t let you bury the truth.”
“I am not asking you to bury it.”
“Then what are you asking?”
His hand lowers to the table beside mine, close but not touching. “Help me understand the battlefield before I choose where to bleed.”
The words go through me cleanly.
For a moment, the chamber, the treaty, the factions, the station, all of it recedes until only he remains.
Gnash, who could have treated me as a symbolic prize after publicly claiming me.
Gnash, who could have dismissed my notes as civilian arrogance.
Gnash, who instead stands before me asking for judgment because he has recognized the value of my mind.
Desire is dangerous enough.
Respect may be worse.
“I’ll help,” I say.
He nods once, solemn as an oath. “Then we begin tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“The drafts are ugly. You like ugly truths.”
“I like sleeping occasionally.”
“No, you do not.”
“That is unfortunately accurate.”
His mouth curves again, and I hate how much I like earning that expression from him.
I gather my compad and shut down the last of the holo-notes. “For the record, letting a journalist into restricted treaty archives because she annoyed your enemies is either visionary leadership or terrible judgment.”
Gnash steps toward the door, waiting for me to fall in beside him. “Skahar says most leadership is terrible judgment with better posture.”
“Skahar may be the wisest person on this station.”
“He will be unbearable if you tell him that.”
“I’m absolutely going to tell him that.”
“Cruel woman.”
“Honest woman.”
He looks down at me as the chamber door opens, and the corridor beyond exhales cooler air across my face. The station hums around us, dangerous and alive, while somewhere beyond its walls diplomats sharpen language into knives.
“Yes,” he says softly. “That is what I said.”