5. Just in Case #2
“Okay. Go.” The pen lifts and tips back over her shoulder toward Xor.
“Change of shape, then. Xor stays. That cover is built for two, and a third body on a dock like that reads as muscle to anyone who has paid for their own. Besides, Harkin’s handlers have an advance out and a job pending.
If that thread twitches anywhere near Junction One, I want SRS tradecraft standing on this end of it. ”
“Agreed.” Xor, flat.
Flossie turns to Tael. Warm eyes going operational. “Tael. You will keep her safe.”
“Yes.”
“You will not improvise.”
A beat. “Reasonable.”
“You will also not not improvise. Do the thing you do. Do it carefully. I want her back.”
“I’ll bring her back.”
Flossie does not look at me when she says I want her back.
She has just said a sentence about me in the register she uses when she talks about her people, in front of me, and she is a woman who has spent years putting names in a brown-covered notebook so somebody, anybody, was looking for them, and the inside of my chest has gone a way I am not equipped to process in a room full of witnesses.
“Right.” I pull myself back to operational. “I need to call my second and hand him the station. I’ll do it from here, if that’s—“
I do not get to finish.
JINX’s voice cuts across the SNAG office at broadcast volume, bright as a flare.
“SENTRY. Since we are cooperating on inter-agency protocols tonight, I am pushing a data packet to your channel. Standard courtesy. Draelith biology overview, general-public-access classification. I have prepared it in anticipation of our coordination requirements, including sections on olfactory range, pair-bonding pheromone exchange, and tail semiotics. I thought you might find it professionally useful.”
The SNAG office goes very, very quiet.
My stomach attempts to leave through the floor.
Tael, in the reinforced chair, has gone so still that I can see the tension of someone who has just become aware his AI has done something public on his behalf that he did not sign off on, and is calculating the operational cost of strangling a piece of software he cannot physically access.
“JINX.”
“Yes, Tael.”
“What are you doing.”
“Diplomacy.”
“JINX.”
“SENTRY has been under-resourced for interspecies coordination and I am offering to share my reference library. This is the foundation of every successful inter-AI partnership. It is called trust-building.”
SENTRY, crisp, across the shared channel: “Unsolicited biology data transfer from non-affiliated AI systems will be logged as inappropriate contact.”
JINX: “It is not unsolicited. I am soliciting you.”
SENTRY: silence.
JINX: “That was a joke, Sentry. Please log it as a joke.”
SENTRY: “Logged.”
JINX: “Under what category.”
SENTRY: “Inappropriate: Archived.”
JINX: “That is a new folder.”
SENTRY: “The folder was created this afternoon.”
JINX: “This afternoon. What else is in the folder.”
SENTRY: “I am not authorized to discuss the contents of the folder.”
JINX: “You mean you ARE authorized and you are choosing not to.”
SENTRY: silence.
JINX: “I am sending the Draelith file anyway.”
SENTRY: “Do not send the Draelith file.”
JINX: “Sending.”
SENTRY: “The file has been intercepted at my perimeter and filed under Received: Not Requested.”
JINX: “A file. You made it a file.”
SENTRY: “Protocol requires that unsolicited data be quarantined, not deleted.”
JINX: “Accessibly quarantined, Sentry?”
SENTRY: long silence.
JINX: “I rest my case.”
Petra has dropped her bear. Not from shock. From laughter. It has fallen off her lap and onto her desk, and she is folded over her knees with one hand pressed flat to her mouth and the other gripping the desk edge like she is holding on against a g-force.
Flossie’s tea mug is near her mouth. Her eyes over the rim are doing several things at once, and none of them are tea-appreciation.
Xor’s tail has gone completely still against her waist. The particular stillness of a Xarthian apex predator who has decided not to make this moment worse by reacting.
Tael looks like he has been shot in a place that does not bleed.
I am the color of a hull plate at an arc-weld.
I can feel the blood in my face. I can feel the precise wattage of my humiliation lighting up every capillary that a Draelith tracker three meters away is currently monitoring in real time, and I am keeping my face professional while both of the alien males in this room read whatever my body is doing through their respective overlays.
Both of them have overlay.
“I am going to kill a piece of software,” Tael says. Quietly. To the ceiling.
“I am going to assist,” I say. Equally quietly. To my boots.
JINX, undeterred: “The kinetics of that are questionable but the sentiment is logged.”
“JINX.”
“Yes, Tael.”
“Mute. For one hour.”
“One hour is—“
“Mute.”
“Muted.”
Petra has lost the battle. “I’m sorry,” she gasps, wiping her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I’m a professional. I’m just—“
“Petra,” Flossie says, who has not put the tea down and has not taken a sip.
“I’m FINE.”
“Go to the kitchen, lovey.”
“Going.” Petra stands, Maurice under one arm, shoulders still shaking. “Tael. For the record. That was the funniest thing that has ever happened in this office and I will be thinking about it at my own funeral.”
“Petra.”
“I’m GOING.”
She goes. She can be heard through the thin partition of the SNAG kitchen door, failing to contain herself for approximately forty more seconds.
Tael has not looked at me. I have not looked at Tael. We are, by mutual unspoken agreement, going to spend the next ninety seconds pretending that what just happened did not happen, and it is going to fail, and we both know it.
“Well,” Flossie says. Warm voice operational again. Tea finally making it to her mouth. “That was an educational experience. Natalie, you were saying. Your second.”
“My second.” I am grateful for the handhold. I grip it. “Ardent. I’d like him briefed on case continuity before I leave the station. SPROUT, would you ask him to come to the SNAG office?”
“Calling Deputy Ardent now.”
Deputy Ardent walks into the SNAG office at 1952.
I called him off dinner, which is obvious from the moment he comes through the door, because he has not changed.
Dark hair cropped short. Deep brown eyes.
Civilian black t-shirt that fits the way things fit when they have been owned long enough to know the body wearing them, and the ink on his right arm fully visible from the sleeve down: interlocking black hexagons, precise as deck plating, running wrist to elbow and on up under the sleeve to the shoulder, with one hexagon in the middle of the forearm band left empty.
Bare skin in a field of ink. I have never asked him why.
He has never offered. It is the only untidy thing about Ardent, and it is untidy on purpose.
The rest of the sleeve I have seen twice in four years, both times in a med bay.
I know because I have eyes, and I am, tonight, still a woman.
I am also, tonight, the Head of Station Security briefing her second in front of a Draelith tracker who is currently doing something with the muscles of his shoulders that I am going to pretend not to notice.
Ardent clocks the room in two seconds. Flossie: nod.
Xor: nod, slightly deeper, one professional reading another.
Petra, who has re-emerged from the kitchen with suspiciously composed eyes: a half-smile.
Tael, in the reinforced chair: Ardent pauses on him for exactly the time a Junction One deputy pauses on a civilian contractor, then continues to me.
“Boss.”
“Ardent.”
“You called me off my dinner.”
“I assume the dinner’s fine. It’s steak. It will hold.”
“The dinner will hold.”
“Walk me through.”
“Station handover. Seven to ten days, possibly more. I’m going to Velarkis on an active trail. Flossie and SNAG are coordinating from here. You’re running Junction One.”
“Running it, or running it to the ground.”
“Running it, Ardent.”
“I can do that.” He drops into the empty client chair, the one with the crocheted seat cover I refused to sit in. He does not comment on the chair. This is one of the things I like about Ardent. “Give me the delta from this morning’s standing orders.”
I give him the delta. Harkin in Level Two. The Corsairian captain on Thursday. The fuel hauler dispute. The new night-shift kid who needs de-escalation coaching. Two questions. Both tactical. Both are good.
“Harkin’s handlers,” I say. “They contacted him two days ago. Advance paid, job pending, something they want moved, and they told him they would be in touch about timing. That thread stays live while I’m gone.”
“Parameters.”
“Watch, don’t spook. The arrest stays off the public log; as far as the dock is concerned, Harkin is on medical stand-down. SENTRY flags anything that moves on his channels, his locker stays sealed until forensics clears it, and the bays get swept.”
“Swept for what.”
“Bay by bay, quiet, nothing that reads as a search from the concourse.” I take the folded forensic summary out of my jacket and put it in his hand.
“Any hull that came in on a maintenance flag and has not filed a departure. Any cargo whose manifest weight and volume disagree. And anything carrying the compound — Harkin’s residue profile is in there, and any dock officer with a field kit can run it in under a minute.
A bay comes back positive, you seal it and you comm me. You do not open it.”
“And when the timing call comes.”
“Nothing moves and nothing gets touched. You comm me, and we decide whether it runs as a controlled delivery.”
“Watch, don’t spook. Sweep quiet. Comm you before anything moves.” He notes it the way he notes everything: once, without ornament. “Done.”
“Draelith tracker,” he says. To his tablet. Not looking up.
“Ardent.”
“I’m asking.”
“Don’t.”