The hull groaned as the shuttle docked. Tessera's forward thrusters cut with a cough, then silence. Nathan Correll stayed in the pilot's chair a moment longer, eyes fixed on the docking readout as if waiting for it to blink red. It didn't. Port Tanelin's customs AI accepted the forged license without fuss, like a weary clerk stamping papers he never read.
Beyond the viewport, the station sprawled in lazy arcs, rusted struts and plated ribs cobbled together over decades, drifting in Ascalon IV's dim glow. The gas giant churned below, orange and scarred like a cauterized wound. Tanelin, once a thriving customs post and mid-Vale trade node, now sagged into irrelevance, useful only to those needing to disappear.
Correll stood. The airlock hissed behind him, and the gravity field made his boots heavy, too heavy for a station this size. He adjusted quickly. He always did.
Correll stepped off Tessera's boarding ramp into the dank corridor of Port Tanelin's Bay 17-C. The station's visible decay struck him immediately, corroded panels, flickering lights, and makeshift repairs held together with desperation more than skill. Yet beneath the chaos, he noticed something odd: the life support readouts on his wrist scanner showed perfect atmospheric balance and optimal pressure regulation.
For all its crumbling infrastructure and forgotten corridors, Port Tanelin's core systems ran with the precision of a military timepiece. Maintaining life support mattered more than aesthetics out here on the ragged edge of the settled worlds.
"Local customs registry accepts the contractor code," Kay said in his ear, voice low and dry. "No flags, no delay. We're either lucky, or this place is too broken to care."
"Both," Correll muttered. He unbuttoned his coat. The station's climate control was clearly on the fritz again. The place felt like a hot armpit.
"Twenty-seven flagged phrases on open bandwidths," she added. "Most chatter's about stolen power cores, one about a missing child, and three mention sealed cargo at seventeen-C."
Correll unzipped his collar. "That where we're headed?"
"Could be. The manifest's light on detail. Half the contracts here are probably double-sold anyway. Want it or not?"
He paused. Then: "What's the pay?"
Kay simulated a sigh, just air in the auditory channel. "Enough for fuel, and for that powdered excuse for coffee you like. The kind that clumps."
He smirked. Just barely. "Tempting."
"I'm nothing if not indulgent."
Correll stepped through the hatch into air that reeked of hot metal and sweat. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, some flickering blue, others yellow. The customs corridor stretched ahead, a long spine of dented bulkhead doors and peeling plastertech posters.
A cleaner-bot passed, trailing red that might've been rust. Correll didn't ask. He moved with practiced economy, quiet steps, coat loose at the hips, gloved hands relaxed but ready. No visible weapons, though he was armed. Always.
Posters covered the walls: debt forgiveness for neural trial volunteers. Offworld jobs on Ardent Rise with corporate benefits. Correll ignored them all. Lies, mostly. Or worse, truths that killed slower.
Kay’s voice returned. “Signal trace says the job came through two intermediary relays. Last one was a dead node routed through an obsolete tax server. Someone went out of their way to bury it.”
He frowned. “Anonymous?”
“Yes. But not sloppy. Whoever sent it didn’t want it flagged. Didn’t want it traced. And they paid upfront.”
Correll stopped beside a viewport. Outside, the gas giant’s limb rose like a dying fire behind the station's skeletal frame. In the corner of the deck below, a toddler crouched beside a crate, eating something out of a foil pouch. Nobody looked twice.
He looked away.
“Feels wrong,” he muttered.
“You say that every time.”
He didn’t argue. He kept walking.
Correll shifted uncomfortably as a technician showed her apprentice how to install a jerry-rigged filtration unit.
"We're out of twenty millimeter filters, so we've got to make this one work," she muttered, not looking up. "Management wants clean water but won't pay for new membranes." She tightened a coupling with more force than necessary. "Got two districts depending on this node."
"Altruists don't care much for the undercity," the apprenticed shrugged, testing.
She shot him a weary look. "Well, some of us do. But we all have to make do with what we have." The woman turned back to her work. "Hand me that spanner?"
Correll continued along the passageway. The unwritten code of the outer stations hung in the recycled air around him: keep moving, maintain silence about others' business, avert your gaze. And above all, never inquire about what job brought another operative to this forgotten corner of space.
The less you lingered, the less likely you were to be recognized if Internal Security came snooping around.
He reached the junction for the lower cargo decks. Bulkheads here were newer—post-fab alloy, fused hastily over older walls that still showed company logos half-scoured away. One still bore the faded emblem of Dominion Freight, back from when this place had rules.
A camera above him whirred. Tried to pivot. Failed.
“Someone’s watching,” Kay said. “Just not with eyes.”
He nodded once. Said nothing.
The elevator stuttered on approach, its gate rattling. He stepped inside and keyed the descent to Sublevel Three.
“Seventeen-C’s two decks down. Your contact’s listed as Fornic Dellen. Terminal log says he’s been flagged for repeated violations of cargo registry policy, minor personnel disputes, and three counts of bioethics violations. So…”
Correll raised a brow. “Sounds charming.”
“Like a rose in zero-G.”
The elevator doors rattled shut and Correll descended into the dark.
“Coffee situation’s dire,” Kay said quietly. “Your rations won’t stretch past mid-cycle. If you don’t want to drink something made from powdered kelp, we should take this job.”
He didn’t answer. Just walked.
After a moment, she added, “You haven’t taken a real contract in weeks.”
“Haven't seen one worth taking.”
“That one with the smuggling crew out of Aphecx Station paid fine.”
“Not in conscience.”
She didn’t argue. Just let the silence stretch a little. Then: “So you’re saying we need to start a philosophy club to cover fuel?”
He let out a slow exhale. “Kay.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
She smiled at him from a dusty maintenance display. “You love me.”
His jaw tensed. “That’s not relevant.”
“Just checking.”
Correll moved through the corridor like he was born in places like this—half-lit, low-pressure walkways slick with recycled condensation and the stale hush of oxygen scrubbers overdue for maintenance. His boots didn’t echo. They never did. Years of training had taught him how to walk through metal halls like a shadow that had forgotten how to speak.
His neural implant flickered in the base of his skull once as Kay switched channels to maintain contact with the Tessera. Then her voice came through.
“Seventeen flagged phrases in the last four minutes. Want the shortlist?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’ll give it to you anyway,” Kay said, warm and amused. “Looks like a man in Sector 7 is offering a reward for the return of their stolen sports card collection. Oh—there's a lady in Sector 3 who's offering topless housecleaning services. Maybe you should try that?’”
Correll grunted. Ahead, the corridor spiraled downward, bordered by rusted vent shields and an old fiber-optic rail blinking red warnings. A weathered recruitment poster covered the junction, promoting the Vale Naval Reserve in six languages, its text blurred by years of grime.
"I miss the ones that said 'Free Meal Credit with Organ Donation,'" Kay remarked dryly. "At least those were honest."
Correll reached the access panel to Bay 17-C and paused. He pressed his palm to the reader, feeling the faint whine as it scanned his glove's embedded false print. The panel buzzed suspiciously as the half-dead software rejected his license.
"One moment," Kay said. "I'll hack in."
Her face appeared on the reader's console. She looked as she always did: thirty-something, pale, dark hair tucked behind one ear, eyes calm. Not corporate-bred beautiful. Just... whole. A composite of muscle memory and grief. As she smiled, her image stuttered—left eye freezing while the right completed its blink, a microsecond glitch revealing the constructed nature beneath the familiar facade.
She blinked slowly. "I could fry the lock. Or charm it."
Correll leaned in, brow furrowed. “Charm it.”
The screen flickered. Her voice deepened, silkier now, with that synthetic lilt old sec systems preferred. "Override accepted, darling," she purred as the lock clicked open.
He didn't laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
"See? I still got it," she said, back in her normal voice.
"You were always terrifying with legacy OS flirt routines."
"Don't be jealous. You should see what I can do with vending machines. They give me extra soy packets."
Correll pushed through the door. The air reeked—coppery, faintly antiseptic. A man limped past, eyes glazed, dragging a pallet of sealant drums. Down the corridor, a child cried once, sharp and fast, then went silent. Not just quiet. Learned silence. Instructed.
Overhead, an intercom buzzed, stammered something in Trade Cant, and died mid-announcement. Two cyborg dockhands argued by a coolant station, one with a leaking shoulder valve, the other with blood on his shirt that wasn't his. No one noticed the man who passed between them like a shadow stitched in worn leather and gray stubble.
No one ever did. Not for long.
Kay hummed a half-remembered tune through his neural link. Something she’d heard on a backwater station broadcast last cycle. It didn’t match the setting. That was the point.
“Still not too late to get back on the ship,” she said gently. “Forget the job. Steal some noodles. Vanish.”
Correll slowed. Looked at nothing.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Then, quietly, “Let’s see the cargo first.”
And he kept walking.
Kay didn’t say anything. But her presence warmed at the edge of his mind. No judgment. No push. Just her, steady as breath. The one voice that never asked him to explain.
Ahead, Bay 17-C loomed.
And behind his eyes, Kay was already scanning every shadow.
The door to Bay 17-C grated open with the tired hydraulics of a machine long past its prime. Inside, the hangar yawned wide—a cathedral of rusted metal and flickering tube lights, stacked floor to ceiling with pale-blue cargo crates stenciled in block-code. The whole place stank of refrigeration gel, scorched sealant, and blood dried just enough to go unnoticed.
Correll stepped through the threshold, boots silent, expression unreadable. He didn’t walk like he was entering a place of business. He moved like he was casing an ambush. Out of habit.
Across the hangar, a crew of four men and one woman unloaded a grav-crate from a dented skiff with all the care of surgeons working drunk. The smallest man—fiftyish, jowled, with a paunch packed into a vest marked “F. DELLEN, OPS COORD”—waved a tablet in lazy arcs as he argued with a dockhand over mislogged tonnage.
“Which one of you’s the Pentar contractor?” Correll asked.
Fornic Dellen didn’t look up. “You asking or auditing?”
“Taking the security escort contract logged under Yavin Locke,” Correll replied. “Manifest 8Z-55. You flagged an unsealed manifest last cycle. Local registry shows the job’s still open.”
Dellen squinted at him. “You’re not Locke.”
“I am today.”
The man shrugged, unconcerned. “Show me the tag.”
Correll pulled back his glove, held out the forearm, and let the subdermal ID pulse through the skin. Dellen scanned it with the tablet, then handed it back without care. “You get hazard pay if a crate ruptures. Don’t touch anything unless someone bleeds first.”
“Understood.”
“Just stand where you can be seen, try to look mean, and if anyone tries to steal something, shoot the bastard in the leg.”
“Understood,” Correll repeated.
Dellen turned back to the grav-crate, barking something in Trade Cant that might’ve been an insult or an inside joke. Either way, the crew laughed too hard.
Kay’s voice entered Correll’s neural implant like a whisper under skin. “Two of them are carrying unregistered sidearms. That woman’s hiding a shock prod in her tool wrap. Also, your new best friend Dellen has six sealed warnings for labor violations and one confirmed assault. Guess what kind.”
“I’m listening.”
“Against minors.”
Correll’s jaw worked once, then went still. He moved to the side of the bay, standing with his back against a rust-pocked bulkhead, eyes scanning the layout: four exits, one drone perch, a blind spot near the cargo hoist where someone could vanish without a sound.
Then he saw it. Movement.
Behind a stack of crates marked Nutraceutical Grade – Not for Civilian Use, something shifted. Small. Quick. A blur of limbs and fabric.
He didn’t move his head, only adjusted his stance by an inch. Kay had already flagged it.
“Biometrics are irregular,” she said quietly. “Pulse elevated. Respiration shallow. Not a thief. A runner.”
Correll stepped forward slowly, enough to put the crates between him and the crew. Dellen didn't notice, too busy swearing at a gravlift's misalignment. The others kept hauling.
Behind the fourth crate, huddled in the space between two pallets and a dead power conduit, a boy crouched low. Maybe twelve. Skin pale beneath grime. One eye swollen. His wrists were cuffed, one of them blinking with a juvenile tracking tag, Altruist-issue. The kind used for indenture enforcement. Or worse.
He looked at Correll with the blank desperation of someone who had run too long and no longer believed in rescue.
Kay said nothing. For once, there was no joke. No data dump. Just silence. Her presence in Correll's neural link flickered—not from connection issues but something closer to emotional overload, her programming struggling to process the raw human suffering before them.
Correll didn’t speak. He stepped back out from the crates, calm, measured. Walked over to Dellen and said, “Who’s the boy?”
Dellen snorted. “Stowaway. Local trash. Probably been crawling in and out of shipments for weeks. We’ll vent him once we hit open orbit.”
Correll’s expression didn’t change. “He’s tagged.”
“Yeah. Corporate juvenile property. Probably jumped a contract. Not my problem. He costs me more in cleanup than he’s worth in labor.”
One of the other dockhands chuckled. “You should’ve seen him last cycle. Bastard bit me. I say we just drop him in the tank now.”
Correll said nothing. But his left hand drifted toward his belt.
Kay’s voice slid in again, low and precise. “If you’re going to intervene, do it fast. The big one’s reaching for something under the crate manifest. Probably a stunner.”
Correll didn’t hesitate.
In one smooth motion, he stepped forward, grabbed the crewman’s wrist mid-draw, twisted it until bone popped, and drove the man to the ground with a short, brutal sweep of the leg. The man shrieked.
The second dockhand reached for his belt, moving with the sluggish panic of a man who knew he'd already lost. Correll drew a shock rod from his coat, short-ranged and hot, and slammed it against the man's ribs with a sickening crack. The electricity surged through the dockhand's body, making his muscles seize violently as he collapsed, piss soaking through his pants while he thrashed uncontrollably on the ground.
The sound of shrieking and breaking bone beneath flesh sent Correll's combat reflexes into immediate overdrive. He pivoted, dropping low, muscles responding before conscious thought could form. His fingers closed around the convulsing dockhand's throat, squeezing until he felt the cartilage compress under his grip, the man's pulse throbbing desperately against his palm.
"Correll, STOP!" Kay's voice cut through the tactical haze. "He's neutralized."
The urgency in her voice jerked Correll back to himself. His fist froze mid-strike, trembling slightly as the killing momentum arrested itself. He released the man's neck, stood and stared menacingly at Dellen.
The smuggler stumbled backward, mouth open. “What the fuck—?”
“The job’s done,” Correll said. “You’re lucky I didn’t finish it.”
He turned toward the crates. “Run,” he said, quietly but clearly.
The boy didn’t hesitate. He sprinted for the emergency ladder embedded in the far wall. Gone before the others could blink.
Kay’s voice sharpened. “I've got signatures on some more of Dellen's crew coming. I’ve locked aft access. You’ve got ninety seconds before they cut the override.”
Forgetting what he originally came for, Correll stepped over the groaning crewman and walked for the exit. Dennis screamed for help.
Behind him, the hangar lights flickered once. Then steadied.
No one followed.
Correll heard the boy's footsteps echo away down the emergency ladder, fast and light and uneven. No one gave chase. Not yet.
Behind him, Fornic Dellen was still shouting, but it had lost its shape—no longer orders, just noise. The kind of shouting a man used when trying to remind himself he was in control. Correll didn’t look back.
The first dockhand was still writhing on the floor, breath hissing through clenched teeth. The second was still unconscious. The air smelled like burnt ozone from the shock rod, and the sharp, unmistakable tang of shit mixed with vomit.
Kay’s voice crackled soft through the neural link. “Six more warm signatures moving toward Bay 17-C. One’s big. The other’s carrying something heavy. We’ve got a minute, maybe less.”
Correll didn’t respond. He was already walking—past the crates, past the spilled gear, past Dellen, who stumbled back another step.
“You just screwed yourself,” Dellen spat. “You touch a contract worker, that’s breach. That’s—”
Correll stopped. Turned.
Dellen flinched like he expected to be hit.
“You said you’d vent the kid,” Correll said, voice low and flat.
“That’s procedure,” Dellen snapped. “Runaways get reported, not rescued. That’s how it works. You don’t get to pick and choose.”
Correll studied him, eyes storm-dark and unreadable. “You always this brave when someone can’t fight back?”
Dellen’s mouth twisted. He looked like he wanted to say something clever, but couldn’t find it in time.
From a nearby crate, blood had pooled down one side. Old, crusted, dark. Correll glanced at it, then at the label. Not for Civilian Use.
“Cargo's tagged nutraceutical,” he said. “But you’re running contract brats through here like livestock. What else are you smuggling?”
Dellen's face went red. “You think you’re some kind of fucking hero?”
“No,” Correll said. “I think I’m done watching men like you talk.”
He stepped closer.
Dellen raised both hands, palms out. “Look, I’m just doing the job. You’re not even registered, you think this ends clean for you? I report this, you disappear into drift. That’s it.”
Correll leaned in, just enough that Dellen could smell the dry metal scent of sweat and space and old leather. “Try it,” he said. “See who comes looking.”
Kay murmured in his ear: “They’re cutting the aft lock. Thirty seconds.”
Correll turned and walked away without another word. As he passed the unconscious dockhand, he knelt, removed the man's stunner, and slipped it into a pouch on his belt. Insurance. Not theft.
The overhead lights in the bay flickered again. A klaxon stuttered somewhere in the upper level—a warning tone, not yet an alarm. The station was waking up, piece by piece.
Back near the hangar doors, Correll paused. He looked once more toward the emergency ladder. The boy would be gone by now—deep into the station’s guts, past the waste reclamation shafts, maybe even through the abandoned sectors near the east barracks. If he was smart. If he was lucky.
Kay’s voice again: “Override hits in five. Four. Three…”
The hangar door unlatched with a shudder. Correll stepped through just as it slid shut behind him.
He didn’t look back.
The corridor outside was quiet. Dim amber lights ran along the floor in jittery strips. An overhead speaker murmured something about a “biosecurity breach” in a different sector—Sector 9B, maybe 11. Correll had stopped paying attention to station lies years ago.
He walked in silence.
Kay said nothing. Not right away.
Then: “That was a terrible decision, tactically.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And illegal.”
“Yeah.”
“But good.”
Correll allowed himself the faintest smile.
“Just don’t make it a habit,” she added.
He reached the docking lift, pressed the call button, and waited as the rusted gears above groaned to life.
“Kid might survive now,” he said. “That’s something.”
The lift opened. He stepped inside.
Kay’s voice followed, quiet, close. “It is.”
Correll heard the boy's footsteps echo away down the emergency ladder, fast and light and uneven. No one gave chase. Not yet.
Correll allowed himself the faintest smile.
The corridor hummed with old current and stale air, a narrow artery of decaying station metal lit by maintenance strips that flickered like tired eyes. Correll moved through it at a steady pace. Not hurrying, not sneaking, just going. The kind of pace that made most cameras pass you over. No heat signature spike. No panic. No reason to zoom in.
His gloves were still scuffed from the dockhand’s jaw. Blood dried slow in this air, and he could feel it crusting at the knuckles.
Behind him, the hangar was locked down. Kay had sealed it herself.
He didn’t look back.
At the corner of the next junction, a cleaner-bot trundled past dragging a faulty squeegee, its path jerking sideways every few seconds. One side of its chassis was streaked in something dark—maybe rust. Maybe not.
Kay broke the silence, voice low in his neural link. “One of the dockhands is moving again. The other’s still out. Station security just flagged a Level-1 dispute but reclassified it as a maintenance accident.”
“Convenient,” Correll muttered.
Kay sounded amused. “I might’ve deleted a few tags.”
He passed a poster half-peeled from the wall: a smiling child holding a vat-grown kitten, the words Your Credit Score Could Be a Second Chance! stretching cheerfully across the top. Below it, someone had spray-painted a crude sigil in black: a crude cross through the Altruist symbol.
Correll didn’t slow.
“They’ll check the logs,” he said.
“Eventually. By then we’ll be drift-locked and three jumps out.”
He nodded. “Good.”
Silence again.
Then Kay added, softly, “That was a real risk back there.”
“I know.”
“You always take risks for people you don’t know?”
Correll didn’t answer.
Not because he didn’t have one. Because he did.
The corridor angled toward a junction labeled in peeling glyphs and broken letters: Dock 3 – OUTBOUND SHUTTLES. Above the arch, a rusted maintenance drone clung to a pipe like a sleeping bat.
Across the floor, a trail of dirty footprints led toward the lift. Small ones. Barefoot. The boy’s, maybe.
Correll followed them without thinking. It wasn’t habit. It wasn’t duty. He just wanted to make sure the prints led somewhere.
They did.
Right up to the edge of a vent grate pried half-open with a bent rebar rod. The trail disappeared into the dark.
Kay watched through the neural link, saying nothing.
Correll crouched. Glanced inside.
No sound. No motion. Just air warm from turbines and stale with rot.
He reached forward, gently pulled the grate back into place, and stood.
“You didn’t have to,” Kay said after a long pause.
“I know.”
“You didn’t even ask if he was worth saving.”
“I didn’t need to.”
That shut her up for a second.
Then: “There’s a power transfer error on Dock 3’s primary bay. If you don’t take off in the next ten minutes, Dellen's goon squad will be all over Tess.”
He stepped back aboard the Tessera, keyed the hatch with a thumbprint still half-stained in someone else’s blood, and sealed the door behind him.
The ship’s lights were dimmed to standby. The hum of systems idle but ready. A half-warm mug of synthetic coffee sat forgotten in a corner console, its surface undisturbed.
Kay flickered onto the co-pilot’s screen a moment later, her projection clear and still.
She watched him strap in. Watched the way his hands moved: steady, practiced, but not calm. She didn’t say anything for a long moment.
Then: “We burned the job, Nathan. We’ll need a new one.”
Correll tapped the thruster check. He knew from her tone that we meant you. “We’ll find another one.”
Kay sighed, then nodded slowly. “You okay?”
He looked straight ahead, eyes fixed on the forward canopy.
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
The ship powered up. Outside, the station carried on, a patchwork of morality under a patchwork of lights, where survival and profit reigned supreme.
Correll didn’t care. He had forged his own path, and that was as much as an old soldier with a guilty conscious he could hope for.
His hands moved without thinking—systems check, throttle calibration, drift vector calculation—each motion clipped and precise. The old Ranger reflexes. Habit pressed into muscle. The console flickered under his fingers, worn edges gleaming faintly in the sterile cockpit glow. A thread of station smog smeared across the viewport like a bruise.
Kay’s voice came through the cabin intercom, casual now. “Secondary thruster is two percent over tolerance. I’d worry, but I know you won’t.”
Correll didn’t look up. “Not unless it catches fire.”
“I’ll prepare the marshmallows.”
A faint smirk touched the edge of his mouth. Just for a second.
The ship vibrated as the external clamps disengaged. Beyond the docking bay, the dark curve of Ascalon IV swelled against the stars. The gas giant’s clouds were thinning, its orbit decaying. The planet had less than a century before full collapse. Port Tanelin wouldn’t survive it. No one was bothering to plan otherwise.
“Nathan,” Kay said quietly. Her voice had shifted. Less banter. Something softer. “You did the right thing. And you're right—we'll find another contract.”
He didn’t respond. She didn’t push.
Instead, she appeared on the co-pilot display, her projection rendered in soft blue, no flicker now. Shoulder-length hair tucked behind one ear. Eyes steady, but not sharp. Just watching.
“You always say the job matters more than the people,” she said. “But I’ve noticed something.”
He adjusted the pitch trim, not meeting her gaze.
“You don’t believe that,” she said.
Correll sighed. “If I keep doing things like that, we’re going to run out of stations.”
“Good,” Kay replied. “Most of them smell like ammonia and guilt anyway.”
She flicked through a datafeed just for something to do: background chatter, encrypted listings, drift gossip.
“Latest station tabloid says the manager of Tharon Station walked in on his wife having sex. You'll never guess what he said.”
Correll grunted. “What?”
She blinked. "'Well, this isn't working out.'"
He actually laughed. A short, rough exhale. But real.
Kay smiled at him. Not coy. Not teasing. Just there.
The Tessera slipped from Port Tanelin's gravity field like a bead of mercury in water—smooth, silent, leaving nothing behind.
The station dwindled into distance: a rusting half-ring against the star-smeared corpse of Ascalon IV, its pulse lost beneath the hum of reactor exhaust. No one hailed them. No alarms. No pursuit. Just a dead station with too many ghosts and not enough memory to care.
