Safe Harbor (The Refuge Run, #2)

Chapter 1 Nola

The posting said "medical officer." Two words.

Clean, clinical, the kind of job listing that looks straightforward until you read the location coordinates and realize the straightforward ends approximately three star systems ago.

It did not say "edge of known space." It did not say "no backup.

" It did not say "station may or may not be operating within legal parameters. "

But it did say "triple standard rate," and that's the part I read three times before hitting accept.

I read the fine print later. By then I was already on a transport shuttle with seventeen hours of nothing between me and a station called Haven, which sounds like it was named by someone who has never actually been to one.

In my experience, the nicer the name, the worse the place.

Sunrise Medical. Hopecrest Clinic. I once did a rotation at a place called Serenity Ward that had blood on the ceiling tiles.

The intake nurse there told me, with a perfectly straight face, that the name was "aspirational.

" I asked aspirational for whom. She didn't answer.

Haven Station. Sure. The Lattice is full of stations with hopeful names bolted to the hull like wishful thinking.

I've worked at seven of them. The ratio of name-to-reality is approximately zero.

But the pay is real and my student debt is real and the distance between here and everywhere I've already been is exactly what I need right now, because "everywhere I've already been" includes three failed placements, a broken engagement, and a mother who calls every Sunday to ask when I'm coming home in a voice that means "home" the way a tractor beam means "home," which is to say: inescapably.

Haven Station. Let's see what you've got.

The shuttle rattles past a dead relay marker, its navigation beacon long since burned out, just a dark cylinder tumbling end over end in the void.

There are dozens of them out here in the Fringe, leftover infrastructure from when the mining corporations thought this sector was worth developing.

They thought wrong. The mineral surveys came back disappointing, the corporations pulled out, and everything they built got left behind like furniture in an apartment nobody wants to rent.

Now the Fringe is populated by the things the inner systems don't want: debris, radiation pockets, nebulae too dense for reliable navigation, and apparently, me.

The shuttle rattles. It's the kind of rattle that says the structural integrity of this vessel is a suggestion, not a guarantee.

I've been on worse. Mining colony transports have a specific vibration that tells you the bolts were installed by whoever was cheapest, not whoever was best. This is that vibration.

The seats are the same molded polymer that every budget transport uses, the kind that goes numb after hour three and starts actively hurting by hour ten.

I've been sitting for fifteen and my lower back has filed a formal complaint.

I pull up the contract on my datapad for the fourth time.

The employer is listed as "Haven Station Operations, Ltd.

" The address is a set of coordinates in the Fringe, which is the polite way of saying "past the last jump gate anyone respectable uses.

" The contract is six months. Standard med officer duties: triage, treatment, vaccination schedules, supply management.

The pay is obscene. Not luxury obscene. Debt obscene.

Six months at this rate covers a third of what I owe.

Eighty thousand credits. That's what a medical degree costs when you come from a mining colony and don't qualify for corporate scholarships.

Four years of study, living on meal vouchers and caffeine pills and the furious determination of someone who watched her mother's hands crack and bleed from mine work and decided that would not be her life.

Two years of residency. One year of working double shifts at a station clinic where the most common ailment was "got drunk, fell into something sharp.

" Then Marcus, who had a nice smile and a talent for making me feel like I deserved nice things, cleaned out my savings account and disappeared into the Lattice.

That was eight months ago. I'm not bitter. I'm careful. There's a difference. I repeat this to myself with the frequency of someone who is at least a little bitter.

The shuttle intercom crackles. "Approaching Haven Station. Docking in twenty minutes."

I look out the viewport. The station is not what I expected.

It's big, for one thing. Not corporate big, not military big, but bigger than a standard outpost. It looks like it was assembled from parts of six different stations, which it probably was.

Fringe stations are built from whatever floats by.

I can see at least three different hull alloys patched together, seam lines visible even at this distance, a communications array that looks military surplus with one dish pointing slightly off-axis, and what appears to be a cargo bay large enough to hold a mid-size freighter.

The whole thing sits in the middle of an asteroid field.

Tumbling rocks drift past the station's silhouette in slow, ancient orbits, catching light from a distant binary star and throwing it back in glints that look almost deliberate.

The asteroid field stretches in every direction, a maze of mineral-dense rocks and dead moons that scrambles long-range sensors and makes approach navigation treacherous.

Perfect hiding spot, if you're the kind of station that needs to hide.

And for a second, before cynicism reasserts itself, I think: that's actually beautiful.

There are ships docked. More than I expected.

A beaten-up freighter with rust patches the color of old blood, two smaller transports with mismatched hull plating, and something sleek and dark that doesn't match the rest of the neighborhood.

The sleek ship looks like it's embarrassed to be here. I relate.

I check my kit. Two standard med bags. Portable scanner.

Emergency surgical tools. Three months of basic pharmaceutical supplies because the contract specified I bring my own starter stock, which is not a great sign.

Fully stocked stations don't ask their doctors to bring the medicine.

Fully stocked stations also don't pay triple rate, because triple rate is the premium you charge for the things the posting doesn't mention.

The shuttle docks with a clang that travels through the floor and up my spine. The airlock cycles, a mechanical grinding that takes longer than it should, and the door opens.

The docking bay is functional, not pretty.

The ceiling is high, maybe three stories, with support struts visible where the decorative paneling was stripped out long ago, probably sold for scrap.

Gray walls, industrial lighting that has the particular yellow cast of bulbs running below recommended wattage.

Cargo containers stacked along the far side, some labeled in scripts I recognize and some in scripts I don't. The air hits me first: recycled air, engine coolant, the faint metallic taste that every station has, and underneath it something vaguely organic that I choose not to investigate.

Every station smells like itself. This one smells like too many people and not enough ventilation, which tells me the environmental systems are strained.

There are people here. More than I expected for a docking bay.

A handful near the cargo containers, loading or unloading, their movements practiced and efficient.

Two near a maintenance panel, both in worn jumpsuits, one of them a species I recognize as Vorath based on the four arms and the faint luminescence along the jawline.

A human woman with cropped hair is directing cargo movement with hand signals.

And one standing directly in front of the airlock, waiting for me.

He's Keth. I know the species, at least in textbook terms. Reptilian features: scaled skin in darker tones of green.

Lean build, taller than me by half a foot, which doesn't sound like a lot until you're looking up at amber eyes with vertical slit pupils that don't blink at the same rate human eyes do.

He's wearing a dark jacket over what looks like a security uniform, the fabric worn at the elbows and collar, and there's a weapon on his hip that he's making no effort to conceal.

He looks tired. Not sleepy tired. Bone tired.

The kind of tired that lives in the shoulders and the jaw and the way someone stands like they're calculating how much energy each movement costs.

I know that kind of tired. I've been that kind of tired.

Residency teaches you to recognize it in others because it teaches you to survive it in yourself.

"Nola Reyes?" His voice is low, clipped. Not unfriendly, but not friendly either. Neutral in a way that feels deliberate, like friendliness is a resource he can't afford to spend.

"That's me." I shift my med bags. "You're my welcoming committee?"

"Thresh. Station security." He doesn't extend a hand. The Keth don't, as a rule. Physical greeting is a human custom they've observed and declined to adopt. "Follow me."

No small talk. No "how was your trip." No tour guide energy. Just "follow me," and he turns and walks, assuming I will. Which I do, because I'm not about to stand in a docking bay at the edge of nowhere arguing about manners with someone who is clearly running on fumes and obligation.