Chapter 3 Zara
The free-trade station at the Delmon border is called Crossroads, which is the most on-the-nose name for a place that exists specifically because nobody wants to govern it.
It's a collection of docking platforms, refueling bays, and market stalls welded together over decades by people who understood that the spaces between jurisdictions are where the real economy lives.
No Helix logo anywhere. No corporate flags.
Just docking fees, fuel prices, and the universal understanding that you don't ask questions.
I love it. The messy, unregulated, beautiful chaos of a place that exists because the official systems failed and people built their own.
In another life, I would have run this place.
I would have optimized its traffic flow, redesigned its vendor allocation system, and reduced the average refueling time by thirty percent through better queue management.
The logistics coordinator in me sees the inefficiencies like neon signs: the docking bay bottleneck where three ships are trying to use two berths, the market layout that forces foot traffic through a chokepoint at the food stalls, the refueling depot's pricing board that hasn't been updated to reflect current supply costs.
I'm on the run from a megacorp and I'm mentally redesigning a black-market refueling station. This is who I am. This is who I will always be.
"Stay close," I tell Kael as we disembark. "And try to... minimize."
"Minimize what?"
"Everything. Your height. Your glow. Your general overwhelming physical presence."
He dims his markings until they're thin blue threads and lowers his head slightly, which reduces his height from towering to merely enormous. He's wearing a piece of cargo tarp I fashioned into a cloak because nothing on the shuttle was designed for someone his size. He looks like a moving tent.
It's the best I can do.
The station's main concourse is crowded, which helps.
Crossroads attracts every species in the Lattice, so an eight-foot figure drawing a few looks isn't the catastrophe it would be on a human-majority station.
I see Keth traders, lean and reptilian, haggling over circuit boards.
A cluster of Delosi, whose translucent skin makes them look like walking stained glass.
Two humans in beat-up flight suits arguing about engine parts.
The air smells like ozone and spiced food and engine grease.
I need three things: fuel, food, and information. The fuel and food are straightforward. The information is the hard part.
"Fuel depot first," I say. "Then the market for supplies. Then I need to find someone who knows the smuggling routes."
"You have a plan."
"I always have a plan. I have three plans. Plans are the only thing between us and a Helix detention cell."
We refuel the shuttle first. The depot operator is a Keth woman with scarred hands and bored eyes. She charges me double the posted rate because I'm paying in emergency credit, which means I'm desperate, which means she can. I don't argue. Arguing draws attention.
The market is next. I buy ration packs, a water recycler that actually works, a basic medical kit, and a second set of clothes for myself because I've been wearing the same logistics uniform for two days and I smell like stress.
I look for something Kael can wear besides cargo tarp.
I find a vendor selling surplus military gear from some conflict I've never heard of and buy the largest jacket they have.
It fits his upper body. Barely. The lower arms have to fold inside.
"This is restrictive," he says, adjusting.
"It's a jacket. Nobody's going to take you seriously wrapped in a tarp."
"Why does it matter if I am taken seriously?"
"Because we're about to try to hire a smuggler, and smugglers don't do business with people who look like they can't take care of themselves."
He considers this. "Humans judge competence by appearance."
"Humans judge everything by appearance. Competence, threat level, trustworthiness, whether to make eye contact in a corridor.
It's our primary data input. We see before we listen, and what we see determines whether we listen at all.
" I straighten the jacket across his enormous shoulders.
The fabric strains. The seams hold, barely.
"So right now, what people see needs to say: 'competent travelers who can pay for services and are not worth the trouble of reporting. '"
"And the cargo tarp communicated otherwise."
"The cargo tarp communicated 'recently escaped fugitive wearing whatever was available.' Which, to be fair, was accurate. But accuracy isn't always the right messaging."
He tilts his head. "You are teaching me deception."
"I'm teaching you branding. Different discipline."
"Humans judge everything by appearance. It's one of our worst qualities. Let's go."
Finding a smuggler at Crossroads is not hard.
Every third person on this station is running something they shouldn't be through somewhere they're not supposed to go.
The trick is finding a smuggler who is both competent enough to get us through three star systems and unprincipled enough to do it while Helix is hunting us. That's a narrower field.
I try the bar first. It's called The Drift, which is another painfully literal name, and it occupies the center of the concourse like a permanent fixture of bad decisions.
I leave Kael at a corner table, where he sits with his lower arms hidden and his upper arms folded and his markings dimmed to near-invisible, and I approach the bar.
The bartender is human, fiftyish, with the kind of face that has seen everything and decided to stop being impressed.
"I need transport," I say. "Three systems. Quiet route. No manifest logging."
He doesn't look up from the glass he's cleaning. "Try the board." He nods toward a public postings screen on the far wall.
"The board is monitored. I need word of mouth."
Now he looks up. Assesses me. Sees the logistics uniform under my new jacket, the emergency credit chip in my hand, the way my eyes keep scanning the room.
"Corner booth," he says. "Captain Voss. She's the one with the boots on the table."
I follow his gaze to a corner booth where a woman is sitting with her feet up, a drink in one hand and a datapad in the other.
She's mid-forties, lean, with cropped grey-streaked hair and a scar that runs from her left eyebrow to her jawline.
Her boots are scuffed down to bare metal in places.
She's wearing a flight jacket with a ship name stenciled on the shoulder: Rust Bucket.
I approach. She doesn't look up.
"Captain Voss?"
"Depends who's asking."
"Someone who needs transport through three systems with no questions asked."
She looks up. Her eyes are grey, steady, and they move past me to the corner where Kael is sitting. They stay there for a moment.
"That your friend?"
"Associate."
"Your associate is Vorath."
"Is that a problem?"
"It's a variable." She swings her feet off the table and leans forward. "Three systems. No manifest. No logging. That's not a bus ride, sweetheart. That's a smuggling operation."
"I'm aware."
"What are you running from?"
"Does it matter?"
"It does if it's going to follow you onto my ship. I don't take jobs that bring Helix to my door."
My stomach drops. I keep my face neutral. "What makes you think it's Helix?"
She smiles, tight and humorless. "You're wearing Helix-issue boots.
Your credit chip has a Helix corporate watermark.
And you've got a Vorath sitting in the corner trying not to glow.
Helix has been running 'biological specimen' transports through Delmon for two years.
I know what those transports carry. And I know what it looks like when someone cracks one open. "
I say nothing. My heart is hammering so hard I'm certain Kael can feel it from across the room.
Voss leans back. "Relax. I said I don't take jobs that bring Helix to my door. I didn't say I turn down people who piss Helix off. There's a difference."
"A financial difference?"
"A personal one. Helix killed my business partner three years ago.
Impounded his ship because he was running refugees out of the Calloway system.
He didn't have weapons. He didn't resist. They shot him through the cockpit window and filed it as 'piracy suppression.
' He was sixty-two years old and he was carrying a family of four. "
She says this flatly. Like a weather report. The anger isn't on the surface. It's structural, built into the foundation of every sentence.
"What's your destination?" she asks.
"Haven Station."
Her eyebrows rise. Just slightly. "You know about Haven."
"I traced it from shipping anomalies."
"You traced the most classified refugee operation in the Lattice from shipping anomalies."
"I'm very good at my job."
Voss stares at me for a long moment. Then she picks up her drink and takes a slow sip.
"Haven is three systems out. The route I'd take goes through Calloway, then Thessan, then the Drift Margin to the Haven sector.
Each system has its own hazards. Calloway has Helix patrols, Thessan has a gate toll run by people you don't want to negotiate with, and the Drift Margin is uncharted, which means no nav beacons and a lot of ways to get lost."
"How much?"
"Ten thousand credits."
I have four hundred. My face must show it because Voss laughs, short and sharp.
"I don't do charity runs. But I also don't have a functioning coolant regulator, and the one I ordered from the parts dealer hasn't come in because parts dealers are liars. If you can solve my ship problem, I'll negotiate on price."
"What's wrong with the coolant system?"
"Everything. The primary regulator cracked during a hard burn last week. The backup is running at sixty percent. If I push the engines past half power, the core overheats. I've been stuck here for three days waiting for parts."
I pull up my datapad. "What model is your ship?"