17. Ursa
URSA
The parts of Guyver Station tourists never see do not bother pretending they are civilized for anybody’s comfort.
The corridor beneath the diplomatic ring narrows until the ceiling feels too close, even for me, and Gnash has to duck beneath bundled conduits wrapped in heat-scored insulation.
The walls sweat condensation where coolant lines run behind patched panels, and every few meters, someone has welded a different kind of metal over an old breach or fracture.
The air tastes of steam, machine oil, fried spice, wet cloth, and the faint medicinal sharpness of disinfectant fighting a war it will never fully win.
Beneath my boots, the deck plating vibrates with cargo lifts, water pumps, distant engines, and the constant motion of thousands of lives stacked inside the armored bones of a station everybody outside this place keeps describing as a pirate stronghold.
After the attack in the negotiation chamber, medical cleared me with one cut sealed, one headache threatening mutiny behind my eyes, and one lecture about shield-feedback tremors that I mostly ignored because the medic kept glancing at Gnash as if expecting him to eat the scanner.
Gnash wanted me in a guarded suite. I wanted anything but a guarded suite.
We compromised, which in practice meant he put four armed shadows at a distance I could tolerate and then personally escorted me into districts no outsider delegation has been allowed to enter since he took Guyver from the Combine.
I suspect he thinks this is protection disguised as a tour.
I suspect he is not entirely wrong.
“This is not on the official station map,” I say, stepping over a cable thick as my wrist.
“No,” Gnash replies.
“Helpful answer.”
“You did not ask a useful question.”
“I’m injured. Be nicer.”
“You said the injury was a scratch.”
“It is a politically useful scratch.”
His mouth curves, and the expression makes the dim corridor feel warmer. “You are learning diplomacy.”
“I am learning extortion. Different department.”
He slows as two young Reaper warriors hurry past carrying a pressure regulator between them.
Both stop hard when they see him, almost dropping the equipment.
One looks barely older than a teenager by human standards, with short bone spurs along his jaw and grease smeared across his forehead.
The other has a fresh scar down one arm and the exhausted look of someone who has slept in engineering coveralls more than once this week.
“My lord,” the younger one says.
Gnash studies the regulator. “West reclamation pump?”
“Yes, lord. It seized again during night cycle.”
“Again?”
The older warrior winces. “We replaced the bearing with the one from storage.”
“The one Vakka marked scrap?”
A terrible silence follows.
I look between them and decide this is one of those moments where journalism and survival both recommend keeping my mouth shut.
The younger warrior swallows. “It was less scrap than the other scraps.”
Gnash stares at him for several long seconds, and the poor kid looks like he might molt out of stress. Then Gnash reaches out, takes the regulator in one massive hand, and rotates the housing until he can see the fitted bearing.
“This will fail under load within six hours,” he says.
The older warrior lowers his head. “Yes, lord.”
“You knew that.”
“Yes, lord.”
“Why install it?”
“Because the nursery district lost water pressure twice yesterday, and the good replacement was assigned to the ambassadorial guest wing.”
The corridor becomes very quiet.
Gnash’s expression does not change much, but I feel the shift in him through the bond, a low current of anger pointed inward rather than outward. His claws flex around the regulator housing with enough pressure to make the metal creak.
“The guest wing can bathe in complaints,” he says. “Take the good bearing from diplomatic reserve. Install it in west reclamation. Send the bad one to guest filtration if you must use it somewhere.”
The younger warrior’s eyes widen. “Lord?”
“If Ambassador Theryki’s tea tastes of rust, she may add it to her list of grievances.”
The older warrior’s mouth twitches. “Yes, lord.”
“Do not use failed scrap in civilian water systems again.”
“No, lord.”
“And do not hide ugly choices from me because you assume I prefer polished ones.”
The two warriors thump fists to their chests, and this time the gesture carries something deeper than obedience. Relief, maybe. Respect. The older one glances at me with curiosity, then hurries after the younger down the corridor.
I wait until they are gone before looking up at Gnash. “You know the bearing specs for water reclamation pumps?”
“I know which systems keep children alive.”
“That was not a no.”
“No.”
“You are a nightmare to anyone trying to brief you badly.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He turns his head toward me, and the severe line of his mouth softens. “You approve?”
“I approve of leaders who know what breaks before the people under them drown in it.”
He looks away first, which is becoming one of my favorite discoveries about him.
The mighty Warlord of Guyver Station can stare down ambassadors, generals, and mechanical assassins without flinching, but praise aimed directly at the part of him that cares makes him act like I have drawn a weapon in a language he does not speak.
We continue downward into a district where the station’s patched brutality gives way to life crowded into every available corner.
Walkways branch across a wide interior shaft, with stacked housing modules welded into the walls like metal nests.
Laundry hangs from railings in bright strips of color.
Children chase one another across grated bridges while adults shout warnings from doorways.
Someone is cooking flatbread on a jury-rigged griddle, and the warm yeasty smell mingles with pepper oil, hot plastic, and the damp mineral scent of recycled water.
Holo-lamps in mismatched casings cast gold, green, and violet light over painted door panels, prayer charms, hand-scrawled signs, and names etched into bulkheads.
The place should feel desperate.
It does not.
It feels poor, crowded, loud, and alive.
People see Gnash and straighten. Some touch fists to chests.
Some nod. A human woman with silver threading through her braids lifts a hand in greeting while arguing with an Alzhon man over a crate of greens.
A Reaper child with too-big boots stares at me until his mother nudges him behind her leg, then peeks again with spectacular lack of stealth.
Gnash stops near a communal repair bay where three teenagers are dismantling an old service drone. “Lekk.”
One of the teenagers freezes with a tool halfway inside the drone. “Lord.”
“Why is that drone not in the schoolroom?”
“Because it was dead.”
“That was not my question.”
The teenager, a human boy with dark curls and grease on his nose, gives Gnash the weary confidence of someone who has been caught before and survived. “We are bringing it back to life for educational purposes.”
A Reaper girl beside him nods solemnly. “Very educational.”
The third teenager, an Alzhon with bright tendrils tied back in a cloth band, adds, “Also, if it works, we can make it carry laundry.”
Gnash folds his arms. “Does your teacher know?”
Lekk looks at his companions.
His companions abandon him with their eyes.
“No,” he admits.
Gnash looks at the drone, then at the exposed power core, then at the three of them. “The coil is inverted.”
The Reaper girl leans over the machine. “I told you.”
Lekk groans. “You guessed.”
“I guessed accurately.”
Gnash points to the power core. “Fix the coil. Return it to the schoolroom for inspection before activation. If it explodes before the teacher clears it, you will spend a month cleaning duct filters.”
All three teenagers recoil as if he has threatened execution.
“Yes, lord,” they say together.
As we walk away, the Reaper girl whispers loudly, “I told you the coil was inverted.”
Lekk hisses, “Everybody heard you.”
I glance at Gnash. “You realize they adore you.”
“They fear duct filters.”
“They argued with you about a stolen drone.”
“It was repurposed.”
“You are defending them.”
“It may carry laundry.”
I laugh, and the sound bounces off the metal walls before I can swallow it. A few heads turn. Gnash looks at me as if that laugh is something he has won but does not dare claim.
We pass through a mess hall built inside what used to be a cargo storage chamber.
Long tables fill the space, scarred and bolted to the floor.
The air is thick with broth steam, charred meat, fermenting root mash, citrus cleaner, and bodies packed close together.
Warriors sit beside dockworkers, refugees, mechanics, and children.
Reapers tower over humans, Alzhon, Grolgath, and species I cannot immediately identify, but no one moves with the brittle silence of captives.
They complain, bargain, tease, shove bowls across tables, and make space for one another without ceremony.
A scarred Reaper woman with one missing horn spots Gnash and marches toward him with a ladle in her hand.
“My lord,” she says.
He stops. “Narra.”
“You promised me two more heat exchangers.”
“I promised you one.”
“You said one with your mouth and two with your face.”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
Gnash’s eyes narrow. “My face makes no supply commitments.”
Narra gestures with the ladle toward the crowded tables. “Then tell your face to stop lying. We are feeding a hundred and twelve more bodies than last month, and if you want protein stew hot enough not to kill the soft-bellied ones, I need exchangers.”
“Soft-bellied ones?” I ask.
Narra looks at me, eyes dropping briefly to my press badge and then to the sealed cut at my temple. “Humans, mostly. Some Coalition defectors. A few traders who claim spice gives them philosophical symptoms.”
“It does,” a man calls from one of the tables.
Narra points the ladle at him. “Your philosophy is gas, Renn.”
The hall erupts in laughter.