Chapter 41
Forty-One
The inspectors’ ship was the most pristine vessel Holly had ever seen on a landing pad.
It was tear-shaped, silver-white, and so clean it looked like it had been manufactured that morning.
No scuff marks, no patched panels, no evidence that it had ever encountered the grime and wear of actual space travel.
It sat on pad one like an accusation, gleaming in the unsteady light of the force field that Holly and Sam had spent the past three days holding together with a hardwired bypass that would not survive close examination.
Holly stood on the pad beside Sam and watched the ship’s ramp lower. Her stomach was a fist. She had not slept the night before, and the porridge Luv had forced on her sat in her gut like a stone.
Two figures descended the ramp.
The first was enormous. Eight feet tall, easily, with pinkish-gray skin that had a smooth, rubbery quality. His mouth was tiny, almost vestigial, set in a broad face that showed absolutely nothing. He carried a d-pad the size of Holly’s torso, and his uniform was white, pressed, and immaculate.
The second barely reached Holly’s knee. He was stout, with deep green skin, a thick beard that brushed the front of his white uniform, and enormous blue eyes that moved constantly, taking in everything.
He walked with a pronounced limp, one leg shorter than the other, and carried his own d-pad tucked under a muscular arm.
Holly didn’t know the name of either of their species.
She didn’t ask. The white uniforms and the Way Station Registry insignia on their chests told her everything she needed to know.
Behind them, from the open bay of the ship, a cloud of small bots poured into the air.
Dozens of them, each no bigger than Holly’s hand, moved with coordinated precision as they fanned out, scanning every surface of the spaceport.
The inspectors looked around before they even glanced at Holly, having already begun their review, starting with this part of the station.
Since it lay outside of the dome, jutting up from one of the long sides of it, they apparently felt it efficient to begin right away.
Holly waited, and after what felt like hours, but was only about five minutes, the bots concluded their scans and clustered into a tight ball.
There, they hovered behind the inspectors like an ominous swarm of bees.
“Ms. Greene-Moone?” The tall inspector spoke in a voice that was surprisingly soft for his size.
“I am Inspector Tol’rak. This is Inspector Drell.
” He gestured to his diminutive partner, who gave a curt nod.
“We are here to conduct an operational review pursuant to a complaint filed under Regulation 4.7(c). We, and our review bots, will require full access to all systems, infrastructure, and facilities for the duration. Any hindrance or attempt to disable our equipment will result in immediate suspension and action from Galactic Enforcement that will result in fines and possible charges.”
These were serious words. “Of course. You’ll receive no obstruction from anyone here,” Holly said, swallowing hard.
Her voice came out steady. She was proud of that.
“I’ve prepared all relevant documentation.
Repair logs, maintenance records, my own assessments.
” She held up her d-pad and flicked the files toward them, sending the data through the system to their nearby d-pads. “This contains everything we have.”
Inspector Tol’rak accepted the data with a nod. Inspector Drell grunted. “We’ll verify against our own data,” Drell said. His voice was gravelly and clipped. “No offense intended.”
“None taken.”
Sam did the same with his own d-pad. “Spaceport systems, power grid diagnostics, and water infrastructure reports. All current.”
Drell scanned Sam’s data. “Thorough,” he said. It was neither a compliment nor a criticism. It was an observation.
They rode the elevator down together, the four of them, and the cluster of bots, in miserable silence.
The doors opened and discharged the inspectors into the square, where they moved with the methodical precision of people who had done this hundreds of times and had no interest in conversation, pleasantries, or excuses.
Tol’rak walked slowly, his long stride shortened to accommodate the space.
Drell moved quickly on his short legs, his limp barely slowing him, and his enormous blue eyes missed nothing.
He paused at a junction conduit, tapped a finger on the interface, checked a reading, and made a note. He did not share the note.
All Holly could do was watch.
She and Sam waited in the square as the inspectors moved through the station like shadows.
Across the square. Into the hotel. Through the residential corridors.
Into The Emporium, where Orba and Sula stood like statues, hand-in-hand.
Into Harry’s shop, with Harry scowling beside his front door with crossed arms and saying nothing, which may have been a first. They took Moone Loop Road, which would take them along the garden paths, where the damage from the water dump was visible in flattened rows and exposed soil and the sad remains of crops that Mish and Alyce had not been able to save.
Above them, the dome’s partial lighting cast uneven pools of brightness.
The areas Holly and Sam had managed to restore over the past three days were lit, unevenly, in a yellow-white that was close to normal but not quite.
The areas they hadn’t reached were dark, relying on the reddish glow from outside.
The temperature was better than it had been, but not ideal.
“At least we got some of the lights back,” Holly said quietly to Sam as they followed the inspectors along the forest path. “And the heat. That’s something.”
“Something,” Sam agreed. “Force field’s holding, too. For now. But if they run a deep diagnostic on the power grid, they’ll see the inconsistencies.”
“I know.”
“Water’s the worst of it.” Sam kept his voice low.
They had tried to drain the caverns through a tube run to the pond.
It was working until something chewed through it in the brush between the cavern building and Oliver’s cabin.
An animal, judging by the chew marks. Likely one of the quiet little creatures hiding out and living in the wooded sections of the station.
Mineralized water had flooded the area before anyone could shut off the main.
“We just couldn’t catch a break,” Sam muttered.
Holly closed her eyes briefly. Another failure. Another thing she couldn’t control. “At least the caverns aren’t completely flooded anymore.”
“Waiting for the water to drain some, then turning off the water main stopped it from getting worse, but the damage is done. We’re looking at replacing most of the piping from the main conduit outward, and that’s a major job. Expensive.”
Holly caught a glimpse of the inspectors at the overlook bench Sam had installed. Drell sat on it, gazed out through the dome at the gas giant for approximately four seconds, then stood and moved on. Tol’rak made a note.
The whole inspection took four hours.
Four hours of two strangers and their cloud of buzzing bots cataloging every crack, every fault, every deferred repair that Holly and Sam had been fighting to address since the day she’d arrived. Four hours of standing in her own station and feeling it judged, systematically and without mercy.
When the inspectors finished, they returned to the square.
The bots converged from every corner of the outpost, streaming back to the two inspectors like iron filings drawn to magnets.
They clustered again behind Tol’rak and Drell, and transmitted their findings in a series of chirps and pulses that lasted several minutes.
Tol’rak and Drell stood in the center of the square, speaking in tones too low for Holly to hear.
Holly stood near the fountain and waited.
She was not alone.
The residents of Moone’s Landing had gathered in the square, even the ones who kept to themselves and whom Holly barely knew.
They were drawn by the knowledge that what happened in the next few minutes would determine whether they had a home.
They formed a loose semicircle behind Holly.
She could feel them there, and the weight of their presence was both a comfort and a reproach.
Alyce stood to her left, arms folded, her expression set in the stillness she wore when she was bracing for impact.
Her braids were pulled back tight and her gold eyes didn’t blink.
Sam stood on Holly’s right, arms at his sides, stiff-backed and silent.
He had not spoken since the inspectors began their deliberation.
Harry was behind her, for once without a teacup or a cupcake or a joke.
His white hair was uncombed and his face was drawn, and he kept glancing toward his shop as if willing the fungi inside to survive whatever came next.
Mish stood beside him, her bun listing to one side, her hands clasped in front of her.
Her fourteen children were not present. She had left them at home, perhaps sensing that this was not a moment for them to witness.
Orba and Sula had emerged from The Emporium and stood at the edge of the group, their opalescent skin catching the uneven light.
Their expressions were serene in a way that Holly envied.
They looked as if they possessed information no one else had, but then, they always looked like that.
Tyer leaned against a lamppost at the fringe, his angular face unreadable, and Cody stood nearby, arms crossed.
For once, a frown creased his brow, as if he was finally grasping the gravity of what was happening here.
Even Luv was here, positioned just behind Holly’s shoulder, her optical sensors a steady blue.
Rasker stood at the back of the crowd. Apart, as he always stood at gatherings.
Holly had glanced at him once when the group assembled.
He was frowning, his eyes narrowed, his d-pad tucked under his arm, and the expression on his face was one she couldn’t interpret.
She had been unable to interpret him for days.
Since the festival, since the night they’d spent together, the vibe had shifted.
She didn’t know if it was the crisis pulling them apart or something else entirely.
Doubts had crept in during the sleepless nights and the endless hours in the control tower.
Small, poisonous doubts that she hated herself for entertaining but couldn’t silence.
He was a consultant. He had been sent here to acquire this station.
And now the station was failing, spectacularly, in exactly the way that would make a sale inevitable.
He had been disappearing. He had been on his d-pad constantly.
She didn’t believe he had anything to do with Moone’s Landing’s failures.
But she worried that he was sensing the inevitable and had reverted to the businessman.
Or worse, that he’d always been the businessman, and had just been having some fun with her while waiting out the station’s inescapable decline.
That uncertainty was another wound on top of all the others, and it contributed to her avoiding him for the past three days.
Also, there simply hadn’t been time for anything that wasn’t directly related to keeping the station from collapsing.
But the avoidance had created a distance that felt deliberate, even if it wasn’t, and when he had tried to offer comfort, a hand on her arm, a quiet word, she had pulled away.
Not because she didn’t want it. Because she was afraid of what it meant if she accepted it from a man whom she wasn’t sure she could trust.
Holly swallowed and turned her attention back to the inspectors.