Chapter 89: Driftmark Station

Driftmark Station spread across the forward canopy until it swallowed the stars.

It was a brutal monument to industrial endurance.

The core was an ancient nickel-iron asteroid four kilometers from tip to flank, its pitted black surface scarred by centuries of laser excavation, strip-mining trenches and thermal boring tunnels.

Welded around its bulging equator was a vast pressurized ring of matte-grey habitat cylinders, interlocking transit tubes and fat smelting chimneys that exhaled thick billowing plumes of condensing steam into the void.

Dozens of docking arms, mooring gantries and open berths lined the outside of the ring, and all of them hummed with the steady pulse of deep-space trade.

Ore barges with rusted hulls heaped with crushed pyrite drifted into holding lanes like floating iron hills.

Sleek alien skiffs with shimmering rainbow sails darted between the mooring towers like silver minnows, and jagged prospecting gunboats bristling with drills and turrets vented cooling gas as they settled into their clamps.

Ships of every design and every size swarmed around the pylons like fireflies around a lantern.

Camila had both hands pressed flat to the rail.

"It’s so big," She whispered. "There are so many of them too..."

"Kill the cruise burn, Aoi," Leo said, leaning forward in the throne with his eyes on the glowing approach grid.

The sun-stone hung steady against his chest. "Attitude thrusters... Fifty meters a second."

"Thruster transition complete," Aoi answered, her fingers moving crisply across the dials. "We’ve crossed the outer threshold of their three-hundred-kilometer perimeter... The batteries have our transponder and there are no weapons locks."

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!

The comms array on station one lit up with a high docking hail and threw a flashing amber glow across the deck, however nobody reached for it.

Harper stayed in her gunnery seat with her hands flat on her knees. Camila held her breath at the rail.

Elena stood poised at station two with her eyes on the display, and Jin-Ah only swiped her slate to trace where the signal was coming from.

Leo had set the rule and it had never once been broken... Outside voices were answered by the captain and nobody else.

Leo pressed the master toggle on his armrest.

CLICK!

"This is the Wanderer-7," he said, his voice deep and measured. "Requesting commercial docking clearance and a berth assignment."

STATIC-HISS!

The channel cleared, and a harsh rasping voice rattled through the speakers in the standard trade dialect, with a heavy wet click at the back of its throat.

"Wanderer-7, Driftmark Primary Traffic Control... Your transponder logs you as an unaligned Tier-1 corvette. Approach Lane Gamma-Nine is clear for your vector... However, before docking clamps can be authorized for an unregistered hull, station protocol requires an in-person quarantine inspection... You will cut main power, vent your airlock and allow an armed four-man customs team aboard to verify life-form manifests, cargo legality and pathogens before your crew sets foot on the concourse."

The words dropped onto the bridge like a weight.

Harper’s jaw clenched and her fingers twitched toward the weapons rail. Aoi’s eyes tightened behind her glasses, and Elena’s gaze flicked to the throne, watching to see how their twenty-one-year-old captain would handle his first taste of alien bureaucracy.

Chloe was watching too, from her seat behind him.

Her sleeves were pulled down over her hands, and her eyes had gone very flat and very still at the words "armed team" and "aboard."

Leo leaned back into the leather and propped his chin on his knuckles, and his voice came out calm, even and completely immovable.

"Negative, Driftmark Control... That’s not going to happen."

A sharp indignant burst of static spat through the comm.

"State your objection, Captain! Refusal of inspection is grounds for immediate docking denial and impoundment under Guild charter..."

"My objection is the safety of my ship," Leo cut in, and his voice dropped half an octave and carried the weight of a man who would vent his own drives before he surrendered his threshold. "We’re an independent vessel carrying refined ingots, custom ammunition and fresh produce for your market. My ship doesn’t open its airlocks to armed boarding teams in open space... Ever."

He let the silence hang over the channel for two deliberate beats.

"If your customs office needs verification, run a full exterior scan from your mooring pylon... Radiological, biological, spectral, whatever you like. You’ll see our air is clean, our holds are sealed and we’re carrying nothing volatile... If that’s acceptable, assign us a berth. If it isn’t, we’ll turn around and take ten thousand Zuni of refined metal and fresh food to the next outpost, and your market can stay hungry. Your choice, Traffic Control."

The bridge went razor-tight and silent.

Camila clasped her hands over her leather apron with her heart thumping.

Jin-Ah watched the control station’s signal amplitude flicker on her slate, and Elena’s eyes narrowed in quiet respect.

He’d held the door shut without a flicker of doubt, and he’d put a price on their cargo in the station’s ear before they’d even tied off a line.

For several long seconds, the only sound was the hum of the core beneath their boots.

CLICK!

The controller let out a deep guttural noise like wet stones grinding together, which seemed to be the alien version of a sigh.

"...Acknowledged, Wanderer-7. Exterior scan initiated via Pylon Nine. Hold position at fifty meters."

HUMMM-SWEEP!

A wide fan of emerald sensor light swept over the bow and washed the cockpit in cool green as the station’s grid probed the Graventhal hull, the slate battleplates and the sealed holds.

Ten seconds later, the light died.

"Scan verified... Atmosphere non-hazardous... No radiological contaminants... Clearance granted to Berth Forty-Four, Sector Delta-Three... Disengage all primary weapons, lock your thrusters to station guidance and stand by for arrestor clamps. Welcome to Driftmark, Captain and don’t cause trouble on our walkways."

CLICK!

The channel went dead.

Leo released the toggle and let out a quiet amused breath through his teeth, and when he looked around the dais, every one of them was staring at him with wide shining eyes.

"See?" he said, and a boyish grin broke across his face. "A little spine goes a long way... Let’s go park this bird."

Harper let out a loud barking laugh and slapped her thigh.

"Damn right, Cap! Tell that gravel-mouthed bastard where to shove his boarding ramp! I was ready to rack a slug if he pushed it!"

"Your diplomatic posture was remarkably effective, Captain," Elena said, stepping down from station two with her hands folded at the small of her back and inclining her head in elegant approval. "A firm boundary set before landfall is the only language frontier ports respect... If we’d let them across our airlock, their ’inspection’ would have ended with half our cargo confiscated as a tariff."

"Docking alignment locked," Aoi reported with deep satisfaction. "Berth Forty-Four clamps engaging."

CLANK! THUD-CLANG!

A heavy shudder ran through the fifty-meter frame as two enormous hydraulic arms reached out from the asteroid’s cradle and locked their magnetic pads onto the corvette’s ventral hardpoints.

HISS-PULL!

A pressurized telescopic tube extended from the station’s mooring collar and latched onto the starboard airlock with a sharp hiss of equalizing air.

"Seals confirmed," Jin-Ah said, tapping the green rune on her slate. "Station gravity is point nine standard, generated by the ring’s spin... Air is seventy-six percent nitrogen and twenty-one oxygen, with traces of sulfur and ionized dust so it’s quite breathable."

Leo stood from the throne and rolled his shoulders then he turned to face them, and the grin faded into a steadier look.

"Listen up before we go... Rules for the station." He held their eyes one at a time. "We stick together. Nobody wanders down a side corridor without telling me first... Helmets clipped to your belts, because I don’t trust anybody else’s air seals. Jin-Ah handles the money and the numbers... Nobody signs anything, agrees to anything or shakes on anything without me standing there."

He looked at Harper.

"...That means no buying plasma torches on impulse."

"Aw, come on..."

"Harper."

"Yes, Cap."

Then he turned to the seat behind the throne, and his voice gentled, though it didn’t soften one bit.

"Chloe. You stay on my left the whole time. If anyone gets close and you start to feel the red, you put your hand on my arm, and you look at me, and you breathe... Nobody on that station sees your eyes change and nobody should see the red thing... not once. If the wrong person sees what you can do, we’ll have every bounty hunter in three systems at our airlock by morning. Understood?"

Chloe looked at him for a long moment then she held up one sleeve, showing him exactly where her hand would go on his arm.

"I’ll take your left side..." She lowered the sleeve. "And if somebody touches you?"

"...Then you put your hand on my arm a little harder."

Chloe seemed to accept that as a reasonable compromise.

As the others started down the stairs, Aoi lingered by the astrogation table, gathering her slate with more care than a slate had ever needed.

When Leo passed her, she spoke without looking up.

"About the other night," She said quietly. "I’d prefer it if we didn’t..."

"Discuss it on the bridge?" Leo said, just as quietly. "Sure."

He paused beside her, close enough that his sleeve brushed hers. "We’ll discuss it somewhere else... Lesson three’s still on the schedule."

Aoi’s slate hit him squarely in the ribs.

"...Ow."

"Move, Captain," she said, her ears flaming red, and swept past him down the stairs with her spine perfectly straight.

Leo rubbed his ribs, grinning, and followed her. At the top of the stairs, he found Jin-Ah watching him with her head tilted, her expression perfectly neutral.

"Lesson three, eh?" Jin-Ah repeated.

"Don’t," Leo said.

Jin-Ah made a small note on her slate and went down the stairs without another word.

They gathered at the starboard airlock, and that was where the next argument started.

"Why does she get to go first?" Harper demanded, jerking her thumb at Elena, who had placed herself at the front of the line without consulting anyone.

"Because I’m the only one aboard who knows how to walk into a room," Elena said, without turning her head. "First impressions are a weapon, Harper... You’d walk in staring at the plumbing."

"...Their plumbing’s probably amazing!"

"My point exactly, mechanic."

Harper opened her mouth, saw Leo raise one eyebrow at her, and shut it again with a click of her teeth.

She dropped back a step, muttering under her breath, but she stayed close enough behind Elena that she’d be the first one through the door

...if anything went wrong, and her hand rested on the belt where her heavy wrench usually hung.

Elena noticed. Her chin lifted another degree, and she said nothing about it.

Behind them, Camila hugged a small crate of tomatoes to her chest.

She’d insisted on bringing a sample "so they can smell it," and nobody had had the heart to argue.

Jin-Ah held her slate flat against her vest with the market figures already loaded, and Aoi stood at Leo’s right with her hands clasped and her eyes on the hatch seals.

Chloe had taken her place on his left without being told twice with her sleeve resting lightly against his forearm as if she were rehearsing.

The cycle light above the inner door blinked from red to amber.

Leo looked down the short line at all of them, at the crate and the slate and the wrench belt and the sleeve on his arm, and felt something swell in his chest that he didn’t have a name for.

A while ago, these people had been strangers screaming in a dark corridor... Now they were lining up at a door to an alien world with their chins up, and they were looking to him.

The amber light turned green.

At the front of the line, Elena stood with her heart hammering against her ribs in a strange fierce rhythm that she took great care to hide.

She’d put on her grey flight uniform, pressed and immaculate, and pinned her honey-blonde hair into an elegant twist that bared the proud line of her throat.

Outwardly she was the picture of composure with her chin lifted at precisely three degrees, her eyes looking cool and her spine as straight as a dress rapier.

Inside, her stomach was tying itself into tight unfamiliar knots.

This was no gala in an orbital spire full of groomed executives in silk suits...

This was an unaligned outpost floating in a lawless void, crowded with species she’d only ever guessed existed.

For all her family’s money and pride and all her own genius, she had never once in her life stood face-to-face with an alien being.

She stepped across the outer threshold, and her boots clicked on the corrugated steel grating of the docking tube.

Behind her, she felt Leo’s hand settle lightly on the back of her shoulder, just for a second, and then lift away.

HISS-PUMP!

The heavy station hatch slid aside.