Page 17 of Reaper Said Mine

"What?" I ask.

"You looked interested."

"I am interested in all potential complications."

"You looked personally interested."

"I have never been personally interested in a reporter."

"That is why I noticed."

I hand the compad back toward the table, but the image remains in my thoughts a moment too long. Ursa Ramone, the girl from Horus IV, coming to my station to ask questions no one else has been brave enough to ask me. The idea should annoy me. Instead, it settles under my skin with the curious heat of a challenge.

"Find me everything public on her," I say.

Skahar’s broken horn catches the tactical light as he turns toward me. "You just said you were not granting the interview."

"I am not."

"Then why gather information?"

I look back at the Coalition proposal, at the Combine market lines, at the Alliance scouts creeping near my borders, and at the docking feeds full of ships that depend on my ability to remain more dangerous than every predator circling this station.

"Because everyone else came here wanting my answer," I say. "I want to know what question she is carrying."

Skahar is quiet for several seconds. Then he laughs under his breath, and the sound is older than mockery, older than warning. "Ah, Gnash. There are the famous last words of every fool who ever invited truth into his house."

I smile at the red ruin of the Combine market feed and keep Ursa Ramone’s name in my mouth like the first taste of a storm.

"Then let her dock."

CHAPTER 3

URSA

Guyver Station fills the viewport like a city that learned to defend itself with teeth.

The transport slides out of the Badlands haze toward rings of patched armor, docking pylons, cargo spines, heat vents, and weapon emplacements layered across the station’s central body in brutal, practical geometry. Running lights blink across the hull in uneven chains, red and amber and cold white, guiding traffic through lanes crowded with freighters, courier ships, salvage haulers, diplomatic shuttles, and ugly little escort craft that look as if they were assembled from whatever survived the last war. The closer we drift, the more details emerge from the structure: scorch marks along an outer ring, new plating welded over old damage, banner strips painted with Reaper glyphs, and huge skeletal cranes moving cargo pods with the slow grace of predatory birds. Beneath the transport’s constant vibration, I feel the docking clamps engage somewhere forward, and the sound travels through the deck as a heavy metallic shudder that settles behind my ribs.

A child begins crying two rows behind me.

No one tells him to stop.

That may be the first honest thing about Guyver Station.

The transport cabin smells faintly of stale breath, cleanser, overheated wiring, and the anxious sweat of passengers who have spent the last hour pretending not to stare at one another. A League merchant in a velvet coat keeps licking his lips while his assistants clutch sealed cargo slates to their chests. Two Coalition functionaries sit stiffly near the front, their hands folded in identical postures of diplomatic serenity that do not quite hide the pallor around their mouths. Across the aisle, a human mechanic with a shaved head mutters a prayer to the Precursors under her breath and kisses the back of a worn metal charm.

The arrival announcement crackles overhead in Alliance standard, then trade cant, then a rough Reaper dialect my translator struggles to smooth into civilized phrasing.

"Docking complete. Visitors will present identity, purpose, cargo declaration, weapon declaration, blood-debt declaration, bonded-companion declaration, and disease clearance before leaving the arrival bay. Lying to station security wastes their time and yours. Their time is worth more."

The mechanic beside me closes her eyes. "Oh, hell."

I glance at her. "First time?"

"First time somewhere the welcome message mentions blood-debt paperwork."

"Could be worse."