18. Gnash #2
Skahar taps the crate with his cane. “Powerful enemies are paying attention because you have done something they can understand. They never fully understood why you wanted recognition without surrender, why you showed mercy without announcing it, why you taxed instead of burned every ship that irritated you. But love? That they understand badly enough to use.”
Ursa’s shoulders square. “It’s not love they understand. It’s ownership, weakness, scandal, appetite. They’ll translate it into whatever makes the story useful.”
“Exactly,” Skahar says.
I look from the rumor map to her. “Then I deny nothing.”
Ursa turns sharply. “Gnash.”
“No.”
“You cannot just meet every manipulation by standing taller in front of it.”
“I can.”
“You can, but it won’t always work.”
“It will work for me.”
“It may hurt the negotiations.”
“The negotiations are already under attack.”
“It may hurt your people.”
That stops me.
Not because she is wrong, but because she knows exactly where to place the blade.
Skahar’s eyes narrow with approval. Vakka studies the floor.
I look through the viewport at the storm-lit dark.
The Badlands beyond Guyver Station are beautiful from this distance, but beauty is often only danger with manners.
Lightning crawls through violet cloud bands.
Ships pass in disciplined lanes near our defense perimeter.
Every blinking light out there belongs to lives under my protection, people who did not ask to become pieces in the galaxy’s favorite game of border teeth and moral theater.
“If I hide her,” I say, “I tell them she is shame.”
Ursa’s breath catches.
“If I deny what she is to me, I teach my enemies exactly which threat reaches bone. If I send her away from my side for optics, I become another man moving her like a symbol because rooms full of cowards prefer it.”
Her voice softens. “I’m not asking you to hide me.”
“No. You are asking me to think.”
“I have a habit.”
“And I am thinking.” I turn back to her. “I will not parade you for their amusement. I will not make declarations for every open channel. I will not drag our bond onto a negotiation table like a weapon unless someone else puts it there first. But I will not pretend there is nothing between us.”
Skahar’s broken mouth curves. “Better.”
Ursa studies me with careful eyes. “That sounded almost reasonable.”
“I hated it.”
“I could tell.”
Vakka lifts a hand. “Unfortunately, reason will not stop Theryki.”
The projection shifts to a diplomatic transcript caught from a Coalition aide’s private dictation. The aide’s voice plays low and nervous in the room.
“Ambassador reassessing. Human bond appears genuine, not merely performative. Recommend pressure recalibration. Direct romantic scandal unlikely to sever influence. Explore conflict between journalistic independence and station loyalty. Potential: frame Ramone as destabilizing foreign actor or compromised witness.”
Ursa’s mouth goes tight.
My vision sharpens at the edges.
Vakka ends the playback. “Theryki knows the bond is serious. She is changing approach.”
Skahar leans on his cane, watching me as if I am still the hungry boy who learned to count knives before food. “She will not attack the bond where it is strongest. She will attack where it makes questions. Ursa’s work. Your judgment. The independence of both.”
“Let her try,” I say.
“She is trying now.”
Ursa folds her arms and steps closer to the projection.
“She’ll push for formal conflict-of-interest disclosures.
Not because she cares, but because it creates a record.
If I report anything damaging, she calls me compromised.
If I hold back, Dawson and every rival outlet say I’m protecting you.
Either way, my credibility becomes the battlefield. ”
“And mine,” I say. “If I reject her pressure, she says I am led by personal attachment. If I accept, she says the Coalition restored order to a compromised station.”
Vakka exhales. “I hate politics.”
Skahar grunts. “Politics hates the honest first.”
“Zune will enjoy this too,” Ursa says quietly.
Every eye shifts to her.
She taps one thread on the rumor map. “Combine-linked chatter is leaning hard into captive correspondent language. That is not random. They want human audiences picturing me as controlled or endangered. If the story becomes a human woman trapped by Reaper obsession, the Combine gets moral cover for intervention or sabotage framed as rescue.”
The room goes cold around my heart.
“They use her to make me a monster again,” I say.
“Yes,” Ursa replies. “And if you react violently, you help them.”
I drag a hand down my face and feel the ridges of bone beneath my skin. “You are very committed to preventing my satisfying reactions.”
“Someone has to be.”
Vakka points at Ursa. “Can we hire her?”
“She is already overworked,” Skahar says.
“I’m also probably unemployed soon,” Ursa mutters.
I look at her.
She waves it away before I can speak. “That was a joke. Mostly.”
“There is space here.”
The words leave me before caution shapes them.
Ursa stills, and I realize every person in the room understands too much of what I did not say.
There is space here if Dawson burns her career.
There is space here if Earth turns ugly.
There is space here beside me, in my station, among my people, inside whatever future we are insane enough to imagine while enemies gather.
Her expression softens with pain and tenderness mixed together. “I know.”
Skahar rises slowly, using the cane more than usual. “Then make space without making prison. That is the lesson you will either learn or bleed from.”
I look at him. “You are enjoying this teacher role too much.”
“I have waited decades for you to become teachable.”
“Still waiting,” Vakka says under her breath.
I point at her. “I heard that.”
“Yes, lord. That was the design.”
The comm near Vakka’s wrist flashes with a diplomatic priority seal. She checks it, and whatever humor remains leaves her face. “Theryki requests an informal conversation before tomorrow’s session. Small gathering in the upper gallery. She specifies that Ms. Ramone’s presence would be welcome.”
Ursa gives a short laugh. “Of course she does.”
Skahar’s gaze sharpens. “She invites the bond into the room under courtesy.”
“She wants to watch us together,” Ursa says. “No formal record. No negotiated language. Just observation, pressure, gossip, and little poisoned compliments.”
“Then you do not go,” I say.
She turns toward me. “We just covered this.”
“No formal purpose exists.”
“There is a formal purpose. She wants to reassess strategy, and I want to see how.”
“This is bait.”
“Yes.”
“I dislike you near bait.”
“I dislike being bait. That doesn’t mean I ignore the trap.”
My temper rises, and with it comes fear wearing armor. “You were nearly killed.”
Her expression gentles, which only makes the anger more difficult to hold. “I remember.”
“I remember more loudly.”
“I know.”
The room’s machines hum. Outside the viewport, lightning opens and closes inside distant clouds. Ursa steps closer until she stands directly in front of me, small enough that the sight of her defiance should be absurd and strong enough that no one who knows her would dare laugh.
“Listen to me,” she says. “If I hide every time they use me, they control my movements. If you hide me every time they threaten me, they control yours. That does not mean we get reckless. It means we choose when to be seen.”
Skahar makes a low approving sound.
I glare at him without looking away from Ursa. “Do not enjoy this.”
“I am too old to refuse pleasure when it comes limping by.”
Ursa’s mouth twitches, then firms again. “We go to the gallery. We control what we can. No public declarations. No letting Theryki bait either of us into defensiveness. No pretending I’m just another reporter if someone asks the obvious, but no giving them a performance either.”
I consider her words while every instinct in me demands the simpler answer of closed doors and armed corridors. The simple answer is often the worst one. Ursa keeps teaching me that in ways I both resent and crave.