Page 126 of Reaper Said Mine

“No,” I say. “We give them the one they feared.”

Together, we leave the negotiation chamber while Guyver Station seals itself around the attackers’ mistake, and every violent part of me begins preparing to hunt with patience.

CHAPTER 17

URSA

The parts of Guyver Station tourists never see do not bother pretending they are civilized for anybody’s comfort.

The corridor beneath the diplomatic ring narrows until the ceiling feels too close, even for me, and Gnash has to duck beneath bundled conduits wrapped in heat-scored insulation. The walls sweat condensation where coolant lines run behind patched panels, and every few meters, someone has welded a different kind of metal over an old breach or fracture. The air tastes of steam, machine oil, fried spice, wet cloth, and the faint medicinal sharpness of disinfectant fighting a war it will never fully win. Beneath my boots, the deck plating vibrates with cargo lifts, water pumps, distant engines, and the constant motion of thousands of lives stacked inside the armored bones of a station everybody outside this place keeps describing as a pirate stronghold.

After the attack in the negotiation chamber, medical cleared me with one cut sealed, one headache threatening mutiny behind my eyes, and one lecture about shield-feedback tremors that I mostly ignored because the medic kept glancing at Gnash as if expecting him to eat the scanner. Gnash wanted me in a guarded suite. I wanted anything but a guarded suite. We compromised, which in practice meant he put four armed shadows at a distance I could tolerate and then personally escorted me into districts no outsider delegation has been allowed to enter since he took Guyver from the Combine.

I suspect he thinks this is protection disguised as a tour.

I suspect he is not entirely wrong.

“This is not on the official station map,” I say, stepping over a cable thick as my wrist.

“No,” Gnash replies.

“Helpful answer.”

“You did not ask a useful question.”

“I’m injured. Be nicer.”

“You said the injury was a scratch.”

“It is a politically useful scratch.”

His mouth curves, and the expression makes the dim corridor feel warmer. “You are learning diplomacy.”

“I am learning extortion. Different department.”

He slows as two young Reaper warriors hurry past carrying a pressure regulator between them. Both stop hard when they see him, almost dropping the equipment. One looks barely older than a teenager by human standards, with short bone spurs along his jaw and grease smeared across his forehead. The other has a fresh scar down one arm and the exhausted look of someone who has slept in engineering coveralls more than once this week.

“My lord,” the younger one says.

Gnash studies the regulator. “West reclamation pump?”

“Yes, lord. It seized again during night cycle.”

“Again?”

The older warrior winces. “We replaced the bearing with the one from storage.”

“The one Vakka marked scrap?”

A terrible silence follows.

I look between them and decide this is one of those moments where journalism and survival both recommend keeping my mouth shut.

The younger warrior swallows. “It was less scrap than the other scraps.”

Gnash stares at him for several long seconds, and the poor kid looks like he might molt out of stress. Then Gnash reaches out, takes the regulator in one massive hand, and rotates the housing until he can see the fitted bearing.

“This will fail under load within six hours,” he says.