5. Just in Case #3
“Not operationally, Boss. I’m just making sure. You’ve filed more complaints about SNAG operatives’ docking bay access than I can count, and now you’re on a ship with one of them for seven to ten days. Professional due diligence requires I confirm you are not in particular distress.”
“I’m not in distress.”
“Your braid is tighter than usual.”
“My braid is regulation.”
“Your braid is a cry for help wearing a uniform.”
“Ardent.”
“Fine. Noted. Struck from the record.” The grin that follows is small and warm, the specific grin of a man who has known me long enough to know which buttons do what, and has elected tonight to press only the ones that amuse him. “Safe travel, Boss.”
“Daily comms. Weekly reports for Morrison. Anything smells wrong—“
“Goes to you. I know.”
“Thank you.”
“Come back, Boss.”
“Planning on it.”
He stands. Nods to Flossie. Nods to Xor. Gives Petra the half-smile again, which Petra returns with the expression of a woman who is filing him under a category she will discuss with Flossie later and is not my business.
His eyes pass over Tael on the way to the door.
Tael’s eyes pass over him.
Neither of them moves. Neither of them speaks.
But across three meters of SNAG office carpet, two apex predators have just conducted an entire conversation in the specific language of rivals who have sized each other up and come to independent, private conclusions that they will both decline to share with the class.
Tael’s tail, against the reinforced chair, has gone rigid. The working configuration. Not the spiral. Not the lazy coil. The configuration I have now, apparently, learned means something, and what it means, right now, appears to be no.
Ardent leaves.
The door closes behind him.
Nobody in the SNAG office says anything for approximately three seconds.
Flossie clears her throat. Warm. Professional. Utterly not fooling anyone.
“Right. Lovey. 0600 at Bay 12. I’ll have SPROUT uplink confirmations before transit corridor acquisition.
Pack for a week. And,” she looks at me, and her warm eyes do one more thing, “pack like you’re going to a contested sector, Natalie.
The uniform will paint a target on you before you clear the dock. ”
“I know.”
“Civilian.” A beat. “Layered. Nothing that says Junction One anywhere on it.”
“Understood.”
I get out of the SNAG office with my dignity approximately thirty percent intact, which is better than I expected after the JINX incident.
My quarters at 2130.
The duffel bag open on the bed.
I have packed the professional layer: forensic kit, second comm unit, medical kit, water purification tabs, field rations for seven days, tac boots, a backup sidearm in its case, extra clips, regulation hair ties (two), the flask of black coffee that is not regulation, and the protein bar with my name on it in three languages.
The next layer is the problem.
Off-station, in a contested sector, the uniform is a billboard that says: trained response asset, predictable training, predictable movement patterns, please target me accordingly. Every military-police instinct I have says civilian, and civilian means the back of the wardrobe.
I haven’t opened the back of the wardrobe in a long time.
I open it.
There is a whole life in there. A woman I used to be, when the job was in Orion Outpost which has restaurants and I had friends who were not subordinates and the rules of engagement did not include wearing armor to work.
Soft shirts. Cut-for-me pants. A dark green dress I bought on leave and have never had an occasion for, and I look at it long enough to remember the shop and the afternoon and the woman who spent sixty credits on a thing to wear in a life she was not currently living, and I do not pack the dress.
I pack the cold-tea shirt. Soft v at the throat.
Two more shirts, a dark gray, a deep burgundy, because I am not washing clothes in a cockpit galley if I can avoid it.
The dark pants. The soft ones. Two pairs.
A long, dark cardigan, the kind that passes for civilian and has enough pockets to hold a comm and a clip and a folded knife.
Soft civilian shoes, broken in years ago and not worn since.
That is what a sensible woman packs for a contested sector.
I look at the wardrobe.
There is an inner drawer. Not deep. The drawer where a person who is not entirely a uniform keeps the things that do not come up in an operational context.
I pull it open.
There are three sets.
The cream silk, which is for a different evening and a woman I have not been in a while. I do not pack the cream silk.
The dark silk, I pack.
And the lace.
The lace is newer, worn exactly once, in my own quarters, to confirm to myself that I could still recognize the woman in the mirror.
It is a two-piece. Dark. Not performative; performative is the wrong word, a word for a woman dressing for somebody.
The lace is a woman’s private acknowledgment that she is a woman.
I pack the lace.
I pack it underneath the silk, which is underneath the shirts, which is underneath the pants, which is underneath the cardigan, and which will not be visible to anyone who happens to observe me unzipping the duffel for field rations or a comm unit or a spare clip.
They will not come up.
If they come up, they are going to be in the duffel, because a woman is allowed, at forty, on any given trip, to pack the things that belong to her without it constituting a statement.
I close the duffel bag. I sit on the edge of the bed.
“SENTRY.”
“Yes, Torres.”
“Door closed. No shared channels. Local to my quarters only.”
“Confirmed. Privacy mode engaged.”
“The file.”
“Which file?”
“You know which file.”
“The file JINX transmitted to me at 1944, currently quarantined in Received: Not Requested.”
“That file.”
“Torres.”
“Just read me the overview.”
A pause.
“The Draelith are a prehensile-tailed, silver-eyed, rosette-marked humanoid species native to the Veil Cluster.
Average adult male height: six feet three to six feet seven.
Baseline body temperature: five degrees above human standard.
Olfactory range: approximately two hundred and forty times human baseline, with chromatic overlay processing that translates scent-data into the visual cortex—“
“The tail section.”
Another pause. Shorter this time. SENTRY makes the executive decision not to make me ask twice.
“Tail semiotics. Rigid extension along the ground: working or threat posture. Tight spiral: controlled, deliberate, social. Loose or unwinding spiral: the file classifies this under recognition response, a sustained scent-recognition state in which the male’s olfactory system has identified a compatible mate, typically characterized by involuntary cataloging behaviors, tail-orientation signaling toward the subject, and extended chromatic-overlay fixation on the subject’s baseline scent profile.
The recognition is his. The response is his.
He falls first, and the fall is unmistakable to other Draelith males and functionally invisible to the target. ”
The braid is still tight from the morning. I start untangling it.
“So rigid means threat.”
“Yes.”
“And the loose one. Plain language.”
A pause that is not a processing delay.
“Comfortable, Torres.”
“Comfortable.”
“That is the plain-language summary.”
Comfortable. Fine. Sprawled in reinforced chairs like the furniture should feel flattered; he is comfortable in most rooms. That tracks. That is a security-relevant data point about a civilian contractor and nothing else, and I am filing it as such.
“Anything else in the file I should know?”
“Retractable claws are voluntary under most conditions, with two documented involuntary triggers: threat response and protective instinct.
Vocal register deepens in certain proximities.
Purring is biologically involuntary and socially embarrassing and most Draelith males will deny its existence under oath.
The file includes additional notes on reproductive anatomy, which—“
“Skip that.”
“Noted.”
“Archive the file under Personal. Do Not Open.”
“Archived.”
“And, SENTRY.”
“Yes.”
“Do not tell JINX you read it to me.”
“JINX is still muted, Torres. Per Tael’s instruction.”
“Oh.”
“When he unmutes, shall I volunteer the information?”
“No.”
“Noted. I will also not-volunteer it, per your filing category.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
I go into the bathroom. I take the braid out fully and brush it through because the braid is tight and Ardent was not wrong about that.
I wash my face. I brush my teeth. I redo the braid looser, not un-regulation, a loose regulation, and the braid falls heavy across one shoulder, the braid a woman wears when she will not be saluted for the next ten days.
I look in the mirror.