“Additionally,” Patel says, extracting a document from her data pad, “I’ve drafted a preliminary job classification for an Operations Specialist position. Grade Seven, with full frontier benefits and residential authorization.” She extends the pad toward Dove. “Should you choose to formalize your current arrangement.”
Dove takes the data pad. Stares at it. Her lips part, and for a moment she doesn’t breathe.
“That’s—” Her voice comes out rough. Wrecked. “That’s a real job offer.”
“Contingent on final approval, which I anticipate will be straightforward.” Patel almost smiles. Almost. “Your documentation was exceptional, Captain Foxton.”
Dove’s eyes shine. She nods once, jaw tight, fighting the tears with the same stubborn refusal she brings to everything.
“Thank you, Inspector,” she manages. “I—thank you.”
Patel collects Omarion with a glance. “We’ll complete our final walkthrough and file from our shuttle. Expect formal confirmation within seventy-two hours.” She pauses at the corridor junction. “And Specialist Storm? You may want to retract your claws before we include them in the photographic record.”
I look down. My claws are still fully extended, still gleaming under the station lights. My markings still blaze in territorial patterns.
I retract them. It takes more effort than it should.
The shuttle lifts from the docking platform. Through the viewport, its running lights shrink to pinpoints, then vanish.
The station is ours. Empty of strangers. Safe.
Dove hasn’t moved. She stands in the operations center holding the data pad with the job offer, staring at the viewport where two ships departed—one carrying bureaucrats who just changed her life, the other carrying predators who no longer have teeth.
Her hands are shaking. Fine tremors that travel up her arms, through her shoulders, through her whole body. Adrenaline crash. I know the feeling—every nerve still firing, the danger passed but the biology not yet convinced.
“Dove.”
She turns. Her eyes are bright, fierce, furious.
“You quoted the escrow amount. To their faces.” Her voice vibrates. “You stood there with your claws out and your markings blazing and you told them the number. Like it was nothing.”
“It is nothing. Compared to what they wanted to take.”
“Seventy-three thousand credits is not nothing, Cetus.”
“We had this argument already. You lost.”
“I didn’t lose. I strategically conceded.”
“You called it semantics and tried to pace a hole in my operations center.”
“It was emphatic disagreement with cardio benefits.”
Something cracks between us—the tension of the last hours fracturing along fault lines that have nothing to do with collectors or debt or inspections.
“You were going to fight them.” She steps closer. Her voice drops to something raw. “Physically fight them. Three armed collectors—one of them eight feet of armored chitin with four arms—and you were going to tear into them with your bare claws.”
“Yes.”
The word hangs between us. No qualification. No apology.
“If they had touched you,” I say, and my voice drops into harmonics I can’t control, “if they had tried to enforce that detention clause, if that Vaxillan had put one chitin-plated limb on you—yes. I would have fought all three. With witnesses present and consequences guaranteed.”
“That’s insane.”
“Probably.”
“You could have been arrested. Charged. Lost the station, lost custody of Tavia—”
