Two
RENJIK HATED SPACE stations.
Even ugly planets had room to breathe. Even the frozen ones. Even the ones trying to kill you. Stations were all corridors and metal and recycled air. Walls pretending to be enough to make you forget they stood inside nothing.
The alliance chose this station as a staging post. It sat a short jump from the proposed negotiation site.
Close enough to respond quickly if the Scozid tried anything and far enough to preserve the illusion that anyone in this situation gave a damn about etiquette.
The station was old, a salvaged military platform repurposed so many times that its current function depended entirely on which corridor one happened to be standing in.
Cargo markings had been painted over. Old hull patches showed through newer sealant.
Half the lights were too bright and the other half were dying.
Renjik stood in one of the docking bays while a team swept the perimeter for the third time, checking line of sight, access routes, emergency seals, and blind corners. The diplomatic shuttle sat in the center of the bay like an animal that knew it was about to be thrown into a bad situation.
Which, to be fair, it was.
A lieutenant finished scanning the shuttle’s underside and straightened. “No anomalies.”
“Again,” Renjik said.
The lieutenant’s jaw tightened. He didn’t argue, just crouched and started a new scan while the others shifted positions, repeating the process Renjik already ordered twice.
The first inspection found two maintenance faults.
The second found a dead sensor relay.
The third might find something that actually mattered.
Or it might not. Renjik didn’t care. The Scozid had a habit of hiding knives in their smiles, and this entire mission was built on the assumption that those knives were visible.
He moved toward the shuttle, boots ringing softly against the deck. His cybernetic arm adjusted with the motion, internal servos whispering beneath the armored housing. The sound was too low for most beings to hear.
He heard everything the arm did. The minute corrections when he turned too sharply. The faint shift in balance whenever his body remembered one thing and reality gave it another. He hated the sounds. He hated that he noticed it. He hated even more that no one else seemed to.
The healers assured him the integration was excellent.
Better than expected, given the damage. Trelxak techs had congratulated each other in his presence like he was some kind of structural success instead of a warrior trying not to break furniture every time his body misjudged the weight distribution of a cup.
He flexed the artificial hand once and watched the fingers curl with mechanical precision. Strong and reliable. Not his.
An officer approached from the far side of the bay carrying a tablet. “The Premiere’s entourage is assembled. Departure is still on schedule.”
Renjik nodded. “Any movement from the Scozid side?”
“Not yet.”
“Which means they’re either late or already in place.”
The officer made a neutral sound that might’ve been agreement. Warriors were good at that.
Renjik took the tablet and skimmed the latest security summaries. Docking corridors clear. Weapons restrictions in place. Signal dampeners tested. Emergency extraction route mapped through three fallback options. All standard.
All inadequate.
No amount of preparation changed the simple fact that they were voluntarily walking into a Scozid performance, and Scozid performances tended to end with blood.
His thoughts drifted over the shuttle. Then, uninvited, to the woman who would be inside it soon. The pull hadn’t faded after the council meeting. That should’ve bothered him, but what bothered him was the realization that Dr. Benally kept being right.
The officer cleared his throat.
Renjik handed the tablet back. “Have the shuttle checked twice more. I want every seal manually verified.”
He blinked. “Manually?”
“Yes.”
“The diagnostics already—”
“Can be fooled.”
The officer dipped his head and left without further argument.
Renjik turned and crossed the bay, angling toward the corridor that led to the diplomatic section. The station’s climate controls were set too cool. The recycled air smelled faintly metallic, underscored by lubricants from the docking systems and the distant bitter scent of machine heat.
He rounded the corner and almost collided with an aide carrying three data slates with the expression of someone one more ask away from a breakdown.
The aide yelped and sidestepped so hard he smacked one slate against the wall.
“Watch where you’re going.” Renjik snapped. The near miss was as much his fault, but he was on edge and not in the habit of modulating his tone.
The aide visibly reconsidered every decision that led him to that hallway. “Yes, sir.”
The diplomatic section of the station was cleaner and somehow more irritating for it.
Alliance personnel flowed in and out of briefing rooms carrying documents no one would read once the shooting started.
Two diplomats argued over seating arrangements.
An aide paced outside a comm room muttering under his breath.
Renjik passed all of it with the same growing certainty that this mission would go badly in a way none of them imagined.
His attention sharpened as he neared the conference suites.
One of the doors farther down the corridor stood open.
Inside, several aides moved around a central table while a woman in a gray jacket stood over a projection of the negotiation site, arguing with a diplomat who looked offended by her tone.
Willow.
She’d changed her clothes since they arrived and now wore a darker jacket. Her hair was freshly braided, though not perfectly; a few strands escaped around her temples. She stood with one hand braced on the table, the other making sharp, irritated gestures toward the station schematic.
“The approach vector is wrong. If you bring the shuttle in on that side, you’re giving them the visual upper hand before anyone says a word.”
The diplomat frowned. “It’s the designated route.”
“And the Scozid selected the site,” Willow replied. “If you think they didn’t account for sightlines and symbolic positioning, you’ve misunderstood them on a level I’m honestly too tired to fix.”
Renjik’s mouth twitched before he could stop it.
The diplomat, to his credit, didn’t puff up like an offended bird. He sighed. “Then what do you suggest?”
“A lower approach from the station’s shadowed side. Force visual parity when the bay doors open. Make them work for their superiority complex.” She looked down, adjusted the holographic model with a quick swipe, and the station rotated.
She was right. The lower approach reduced the advantage of the central observation deck and altered the line of sight from the primary receiving corridor.
Renjik stepped into the room and everyone turned. The diplomat looked relieved. Willow looked annoyed for one breath, before her face smoothed to neutral.
“The anthropologist is correct,” Renjik said.
The diplomat blinked. “Pardon?”
“The approach vector,” Renjik said. “She’s right.”
Willow’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though she was recalculating something. “You heard that from the hallway?”
“I heard enough.”
The diplomat looked between them, clearly deciding that if both the anthropologist and the Ka’atari security lead agreed, his day just became much more complicated. He sighed again and adjusted the route on his tablet.
“Fine. We’ll revise the shuttle approach.”
“Good,” Willow said.
The diplomat left to update the flight team, and just like that, Renjik found himself standing in the same room as the woman who’d lodged herself under his skin, with no diplomatic noise between them and no useful excuse for why his attention refused to settle anywhere else.
Willow folded her arms. “I thought warriors usually announced themselves before materializing in doorways and scaring the life out of civilian staff.”
“If I scared the life out of them,” Renjik said, “they’d be dead.”
One corner of her mouth tipped upward. “I stand corrected.”
That damaged sense flickered again. The same irritating awareness that appeared whenever she was near. Renjik held her gaze.
“You should add another fallback route,” Willow said suddenly, glancing back at the projection as if the interaction hadn’t briefly shifted into something stranger. “If the Scozid trigger a ritual challenge in the receiving corridor, the current exit plan funnels everyone through a bottleneck.”
He stepped closer to the display and studied the layout. She was right about that too. “I’ll update it,” he said.
Willow nodded. “Okay.”
A pause opened between them. Not awkward, just... aware. Renjik looked at the projection instead of her. “You assume the talks will fail.”
“I assume the Scozid don’t invite anyone anywhere without a reason that isn’t peaceful.”
“So do I.”
This time when she looked at him, the irritation was gone. What remained was something sharper. Professional respect, perhaps. Or the beginning of it.
“Well,” she said, “at least we’ll be pleasantly unsurprised when this goes badly.”
He looked back to the station schematic and pointed at the receiving corridor. “Show me where you think they’ll spring the trap.”
Willow moved beside him without hesitation and began explaining.
Renjik listened, but a small part of his mind started paying attention to the way her voice changed when she spoke about things she understood. He met her eyes again. Static brushed across his senses, thin and unreliable, gone before he could make sense of it.
And for the first time in a very long while, Renjik found himself anticipating a mission for reasons that had nothing to do with war.
He decided that was a problem for later.
SHE STAYED BEHIND after the others filtered out, studying the rotating model of the negotiation station.
Renjik left the room twenty minutes earlier with three new exit routes, a revised docking sequence, and a list of security adjustments that made the diplomatic team look ill.