“I have the dock officer’s report and Jazil’s incident filing,” Flossie says. She is looking at my face. Not the shirt. Not the bruise. My face. “I know about the Vrennak. I know about the quarantine. I know you held your nerve.”
She pauses. The pause is the pause of a woman who has been managing people long enough to know that what comes after the pause matters more than what came before it.
“You completed the task, Lorri. I want you to hear that first. The pod is in our custody. Morrison’s referral stands. You did what I asked you to do.”
The words settle into me. I completed the task. I did the job. The pod is here. Whatever happens next, I did the thing Flossie asked me to do, and I did it while a Vrennak was trying to eat me, and I did not die.
“There’s a logo on the pod housing,” I say. “Two interlocking hexagons. I didn’t recognize it. No company name. Just the mark. And the Vrennak’s biology — Jazil said the modifications were nonstandard. Experimental. Six years in a hand-built stasis pod with a powersignature that doesn’t match any cataloged manufacturer.” The words are coming out in the order SNAG would want them, which is funny because SNAG is about to not want me. “Someone built that pod for that specific creature. Someone modified it. Someone sealed it on a ghost ship and left it for six years. That’s not salvage. That’s storage.”
Flossie’s tea pauses halfway to her mouth. The pause of a woman who has heard something she recognizes and is deciding how much of that recognition to show.
“Noted,” she says. And writes something on the pad beside her mug. Not a short note. Three lines. Underlined. She does not mention it again.
But she does not close the notebook.
“Thank you,” I say. My voice is steady. My hands on the mug are not. The hexagons are in the notebook now. The modifications are in the notebook. The six years and the ghost ship, and the hand-built power signature are in the notebook of a woman who does not forget things she writes down, and whatever SNAG does with that information is no longer my job. Except for the observation itself — that was my job. The last thing I did for SNAG, and I did it well.
“You’re welcome.” She picks up her own tea. Sips. Sets it down. “You also nearly died. On a low-risk handoff. Sweetheart, this was the easy version.”
I know. I have known since the deck plate. Since the Vrennak’s jaw over my face. Since the corridor and the chase and the moment I ran and laughed and realized that the shape of my bravery is not this shape. Not SNAG-shaped. Not the kind of brave that opens the box with the unknown thing inside it and askswho builtthis.My brave is the kind that talks the thing in the box into lying down and then runs like hell when the talking stops working.
“I won’t put you in the field for the hard version,” Flossie says. Kind. Firm. The voice of a woman who will not, for any reason, send someone she cares about into a situation that will kill them. “You are brave. You are not built for this. Both things are true. I am not in the business of putting people I like in the ground.”
The tears come. I do not want them to come, and they come anyway because that is what tears do — they show up uninvited and without a booking and they make themselves comfortable, and they are unsympathetic that you are sitting in an office trying to be professional. The tears are not grief; the tears are relief. The relief of someone finally saying the thing you have been carrying since the deck plate and the Vrennak and the voice that saidyou’re not brokenand meant it.
This isn’t your place. And that’s okay.
Flossie hands me a tissue. No commentary. She waits while I press it to my eyes and breathe and the breathing hurts because my ribs are bruised, and my eyes are leaking, and I am being gently, honorably, lovingly let go from the job I wanted most in the world, and it is the right decision and the right decision hurts and both of those things are true, and I am going to be okay.
“For what it’s worth,” a voice says from the doorway, “you held your nerve with a Vrennak. Most people don’t.”
Petra. Leaning on the doorframe. One leg swinging. She has appeared from nowhere with opinions, which is Petra’s primary operational mode.
“I’ve been listening,” Petra says. “SPROUT routes everything to me.”
“I do not,” SPROUT says, from a speaker I had not noticed.
“Yes, you do, sweetheart.”
“I categorically do not route private conversations to unauthorized personnel. I may, on occasion, leave a channel open for quality assurance purposes. The distinction is important.”
Petra grins. Flossie sighs. The sigh is the sigh of a woman who manages both of them and has accepted that privacy is a theoretical concept.
“Thank you, Petra,” Flossie says, in the tone that meansleave.
Petra leaves. SPROUT closes the channel. Probably.
“Mother Morrison is hiring at OOPS,” Flossie says it like the weather. Like it’s a fact that exists in the universe, independent of this conversation, and this office and this morning. “Courier support. Station-side operations. Logistics coordination. The kind of work that uses everything you showed me yesterday — the calm, the cargo instinct, the ability to handle a crisis — without putting you in a hold with something that has teeth.”
I open my mouth. The argument is right there —I can do this, I can be braver, I can be the right shape if you give me time. The argument has been my companion for twenty-four hours. It is tiring. I am tired. The argument does not fit anymore. It is the wrong shape, like the lucky top after the laundromat, and I am done wearing things that don’t fit.
I close my mouth. I nod.
Flossie smiles. The real one. The one that saysI knew, sweetheart. I knew before you walked through the door. I’m sorry about the Vrennak. I’m not sorry about the rest.
“I’d like to make a call for you,” she says.
“Okay.”
