Page 2 of Big Bad Red Protector

That lands harder than I want it to.

I leave before my mouth can get me arrested. But I make sure my departure is slow enough to count as disrespect.

Commander Vos finds me forty minutes later inside the customs administrative office, still filling out entry forms with more force than the data tablet strictly requires.

"Kheltor," he says, sitting across from me without invitation, "is not a problem you want to create for yourself. Not here. Not in the first twelve hours."

"He publicly?—"

"He does everything publicly. That's how he maintains order." Vos sounds like he has talked people off ledges for thirty years. "He is also the reason Orpheus Station's criminal activityrate dropped forty percent since his posting. Give him time to decide you're not a liability before you decide he's your enemy."

I file the advice undernoted but not acceptedand finish my forms.

My quarters are small, functional, and placed on the station's outer ring with a direct view of the restricted corridor sector. Through the narrow observation panel, I can see the distant shape of the structure the officers call the Bridge—ancient, asymmetric, lit from within by something that doesn't behave like any power source I studied in academy.

As I watch, it pulses.

Just once. Soft and deep, like a signal finding its frequency.

Like something looking for me specifically—and finally, after a very long search, finding exactly where I am.

CHAPTER 2

KHELTOR

Three diplomatic cargo shipments have gone missing in eleven days.

I pull the incident logs onto the command display and read them the way I read everything aboard this station: looking for the gap between what is reported and what is true. The first shipment was logged as rerouted during a docking bay pressure fault. The second was flagged as delayed, then quietly closed without resolution. The third was never entered into the system at all. Someone had to authorize that absence. Someone with enough access to leave nothing behind but the shape of a missing record.

I mark all three for personal review and send nothing to Alliance command yet.

The station's morning shift is already producing problems. A Coalition attaché has formally complained that Vakutan patrols are conducting unauthorized sweeps in shared corridor sectors. My second officer, Rennek, delivers the complaint as if the answer is already obvious before he asks the question.

"Tell them the sweeps are within security jurisdiction," I say, "and that if their diplomats were not transporting items they cannot declare, their corridors would not require sweeping."

Rennek takes the note and leaves.

The second piece of business is less convenient.

"The customs recruit filed an incident report." Another officer, a younger Vakutan named Thrav, sets a data chip on the edge of my console. "Torres, Nina. Junior processing division. First day."

I let the chip sit there for a moment.

I remember her. More specifically, I remember the way she stood in a restricted security checkpoint—a human woman half the height of my officers—and told me, in front of my entire team, that customs jurisdiction did not disappear because I disliked the officer in front of me. The precision of the insult was impressive in the way that unexploded ordinance is impressive.

"She filed it against Vakutan security conduct," Thrav adds. "Specifically against the handling of the checkpoint detainee. She is claiming the sweep should have included customs notification under shared-jurisdiction protocol seven."

Protocol seven. Her first day aboard Orpheus Station and she is citing protocol seven.

"File it," I say. "If she wants a response, she can wait for it."

I do not need to read the report to know she is not entirely wrong about the protocol. I also do not intend to tell her that.

The suspicious cargo transport is docked in sublevel bay nine, flagged by an automated scan that registered anomalous weight distribution across four sealed containers. The manifest lists industrial processing equipment bound for a Coalition trade hub. The origin codes are registered to a shipping company that, according to a broker’s last information sale, has not operated active vessels in three years.

I take four officers with me. The bay is quiet—intentionally quiet, which means someone cleared the area before my arrival. I note that, too.

The containers are large, standard construction, marked with Coalition seals. I am halfway through a detailed examination of the third container's lock housing when I hear boots on the bay access ramp behind me.