33. Ursa
URSA
Contested space does not look contested from the inside of a half-lit freight transfer.
It looks like darkness outside a narrow viewport, the faint smear of distant stars, and the pale reflection of my own face floating over reinforced glass while the ship’s engines hum beneath my boots with a steady vibration that feels almost reassuring if I do not think too hard about how little metal separates my body from vacuum.
The cabin smells of disinfectant, cargo netting, overheated filters, and old fear pressed into fabric by too many passengers who have sat through too many inspections pretending they had nothing to hide.
Somewhere forward, the ventilation system ticks unevenly, pushing recycled air across my damp palms while the medical containers strapped along the walls give off a faint chemical chill.
Rana crouches in the aisle with her toolkit open between her knees, one hand resting near a compact pulse pistol disguised inside a diagnostic scanner.
She watches the forward hatch with calm eyes.
Too calm, really. Anyone that calm during a suspicious inspection has either survived worse or intends to cause worse.
Possibly both.
The inspection cutter has been pacing us for six minutes.
Six very long minutes.
Across the aisle, the real medical courier has woken up and now sits rigidly with both hands wrapped around her harness.
The cargo handler who spent the first leg watching silent comedy has finally turned off his feed.
He keeps licking his lips and glancing toward the ceiling as if answers might be written in the overhead panels.
The pilot’s voice comes over the comm, tight beneath forced professionalism. “Inspection vessel is requesting docking seal confirmation. Please remain seated until instructed.”
Rana looks at me.
I look at her.
“Still think this is an inspection?” I ask.
“No.”
“Great.”
“Figured honesty would help.”
“It does not.”
She checks something on her compad, then angles the screen so I can see a sensor ghost trailing behind us. The unmarked ship has closed distance. Its profile flickers in and out, distorted by the transport’s weak civilian-grade scans.
“They waited until we committed to the corridor,” Rana says. “Cutter takes the polite position. Ghost ship sits aft. If we run, we run into its guns.”
My mouth tastes like metal.
“What do they want?”
“You.”
“That seems conceited.”
“It also seems accurate.”
I touch the cuff transmitter beneath my sleeve. My deadman recording is set. My packets are distributed. The most important drive is hidden inside Rana’s fake medical cartridge, tucked into a toolkit that may or may not survive the next ten minutes.
I should feel prepared.
Mostly I feel furious that preparation has limits.
The transport jolts.
Not hard.
A tug more than an impact.
The sound that follows is wrong, a deep metallic groan that travels through the hull and up my spine. The medical courier gasps. The cargo handler swears. Rana rises smoothly, pistol already in her hand.
Then the lights go red.
The pilot shouts over the comm, voice suddenly stripped of polish. “Brace! We have weapons lock from aft vessel!”
The first shot hits before anyone can move.
The cabin becomes motion, sound, and pain.
A blast slams into the transport’s rear quarter, throwing me sideways against my harness hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.
The overhead panels flicker white, then red, then black, and emergency strips flare along the floor.
Containers tear loose from the wall in a screaming tumble of metal brackets and snapped webbing.
Something strikes my shoulder. Heat bursts across my skin.
Someone screams. The ship pitches, and the artificial gravity stutters in a nauseating ripple that makes every object in the cabin seem to lose faith in direction.
Rana hits the opposite seats, rolls with the impact, and comes up bleeding from the corner of her mouth.
The second shot takes communications.
I know because every open channel on my compad collapses into static at once.
Gnash’s last message disappears beneath a dead signal icon.
I stare at it too long.
Rana grabs my arm. “Move!”
The transport lurches again, and this time the lights stay red.
A cargo container near the forward bulkhead has split open, spilling sealed surgical packs across the aisle.
The medical courier is still strapped in, sobbing through clenched teeth while blood beads along her temple.
The cargo handler’s harness has jammed, pinning him against a bent seat frame.
The pilot’s voice crackles through internal speakers, broken and distorted. “Aft systems damaged. Main comm array down. Port stabilizer failing. All passengers remain?—”
Another impact tears the sentence apart.
A flash of heat blooms behind the rear bulkhead.
The smell changes immediately.
Burned insulation.
Plasma scoring.
Smoke.
Every survival instinct I have acquired since Horus IV wakes up at once.
“Rana, aft compartment,” I say. “If fire reaches the medical tanks, we lose the whole cabin.”
She stares at me for one incredulous fraction of a second. “Are you giving orders?”
“Yes.”
“Figures.”
She shoves her toolkit toward me. “Keep that alive.”
The evidence.
I grab the toolkit with my good hand. My shoulder screams. I ignore it because my body has poor timing and I have larger problems.
The medical courier fumbles at her harness, fingers slipping. I cross the aisle toward her, half-crawling as the deck bucks beneath me.
“Look at me,” I tell her.
Her eyes lock on mine, wide and terrified. “We’re going to die.”
“Maybe later. Not yet.”
“That is a terrible reassurance.”
“It’s honest. What’s your name?”
“Sera.”
“Okay, Sera. I need you to press your hand here.”
I take her wrist and guide her palm to the cut at her temple. “Hold pressure. You’re medical, right?”
“Courier, not doctor.”
“Close enough for a crisis.”
“That is not how medicine works.”
“It is today.”
A startled laugh breaks through her panic, thin and shaky but real.
Good.
Panic hates interruption.
The cargo handler groans from the bent seat. “Hey! Little help would be appreciated before I become furniture.”
I look over. “Name?”
“Dane.”
“Dane, can you breathe?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you move?”
“My pride, maybe. My legs are having committee meetings.”
Rana’s voice carries from the rear compartment. “Fire suppression is damaged. I need hands back here!”
I shove the toolkit under Sera’s seat. “Guard this.”
She looks at it, then at me. “What is it?”
“Something people are trying to kill us over.”
Her face goes pale.
“Fantastic,” she whispers. “No pressure.”
“Actually, all pressure.”
I turn to Dane and kneel beside his seat. The frame has twisted around the harness latch, trapping him. Blood soaks through one sleeve, but his eyes are focused.
“I’m going to pull.”
“I love when strangers say ominous things.”
“On three.”
“Do you actually mean three, or are you one of those monsters who pulls on two?”
“One.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Two.”
The ship jerks as another near miss rocks us, and I pull.
The latch tears free with an ugly snap. Dane tumbles forward into me, and pain flares through my shoulder so sharply my vision whites at the edges. He catches himself on the deck, breathing hard.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Earn it. Help Rana.”
He looks toward the smoke thickening near the aft bulkhead. “Sure. Fire. Great. I was hoping for fire.”
We scramble toward the rear compartment, where Rana is fighting with a damaged suppression panel while sparks spit from the wall above her.
Smoke rolls along the ceiling, dark and greasy.
The aft access hatch hangs half-open, bent inward by pressure distortion.
Beyond it, I see a narrow service space lit by emergency strips and the orange pulse of contained flame crawling around a ruptured power conduit.
Rana coughs. “Manual extinguisher.”
Dane points. “There.”
He lunges for the red cylinder clipped near the hatch, but the ship banks hard. He slams into the wall, swears, and grabs the cylinder on the rebound.
Rana tears open the panel with a tool that looks illegal in several jurisdictions. “Ursa, the secondary comm junction runs through this wall. If the main array is down, we might punch a burst through the emergency beacon, but I need power stabilized first.”
“We’re still being fired on?”
“Do you hear the horrible noises?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the sound of yes.”
Dane sprays suppressant into the hatchway. White foam blasts over the flames, hissing as it hits hot metal. The smoke thins slightly, then thickens again when another conduit sparks.
Sera’s voice comes from the cabin. “There’s another ship on starboard!”
I crawl back far enough to see through the viewport.
The unmarked vessel slides into view against the stars, darker than the space around it, its hull lights dimmed. It is larger than the inspection cutter and uglier, built for function rather than permission. A weapons port glows along its flank.
My stomach drops.
“They’re not trying to destroy us,” Rana says behind me.
A shot slams into the transport’s underside, and the whole cabin bucks upward.
I slam one hand against the deck to catch myself. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“They’re disabling us. Engines, comms, control. They want us alive enough to board.”
The medical courier lets out a small, horrified sound.
Dane lowers the extinguisher. “That is somehow worse.”
“Yes,” Rana says. “Thank you for following.”
The pilot’s voice returns through broken speakers. “We are losing port stabilizer. Emergency beacon damaged. Unidentified vessel demands power-down and boarding compliance.”
Rana looks at me. “They’ll dock in under five minutes.”
“Can we jump?”
“Not unless you’ve got a superluminal drive in your boot.”
“I used that space for evidence.”
“Priorities.”