Page 9 of Reaper Said Mine

By the morning I leave for Ceres Relay, I have two bags, four encrypted backups, one network-issued emergency beacon, and a private file labeled QUESTIONS FOR GNASH that has grown to seventy-three entries.

Dawson sends no personal farewell, only a message from Legal reminding me that IHC-Now accepts no liability for death, dismemberment, ransom demands, neurological trauma, forced marriage, involuntary servitude, or "species-specific cultural misunderstandings resulting in bodily harm."

I read that last part twice.

Then I sign.

At the transfer gate, with departure announcements echoing overhead and the taste of overbrewed terminal caf coating my tongue, Bellamy sends one final file.

It contains a grainy image from Guyver Station's market ring.

A Reaper child sits on the shoulders of a massive warrior, laughing with her arms spread wide while merchants crowd the walkway around them. In the background, partially hidden by a hanging banner, I see Gnash watching the market traffic flow past. The image contains none of the staged brutality that usually accompanies his public reputation. Instead, he looks like a ruler keeping watch over people who consider themselves under his protection.

Bellamy's message appears beneath it.

Do not die before you find out what this means.

I stare at the image until the boarding call flashes red.

Then I pick up my bags and walk toward the ship that will take me to the one interview nobody else can get.

CHAPTER 2

GNASH

Guyver Station does not have a quiet heart.

The command center sits deep inside the armored spine of the station, where the walls are blackened from old fires and reinforced with plates stolen from three different fleets. Holo-displays rise in jagged tiers around the central tactical pit, each one throwing colored light over scarred deck plating, exposed conduits, and Reaper warriors hunched at their stations like predators forced to learn accounting. Beyond the thick viewport, the Badlands twist in a bruised sweep of violet gases, pale lightning, and distant starfire, beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful when it catches the light before entering a man’s belly.

The deck hums beneath my bare feet with the movement of ships docking, undocking, refueling, arguing, paying, cheating, and sometimes discovering that cheating me costs more than honesty ever would have. The air tastes of metal, hot dust, and the dark bitter brew my engineers call caf even though I suspect they make it from stripped insulation and contempt. Voices overlap across the pit, rough Reaper syllables mixing with trade cant, Alliance standard, and the clipped tones of the Coalition envoys who have decided my station is suddenly civilized enough to court.

Civilized. That is the word they use when they want your knives put away before they rob you with contracts.

Skahar stands beside me with both hands braced on his cane, watching the Coalition proposal rotate above the table. His hide has gone the color of storm ash with age, and one of his horns broke decades before I was born, leaving a jagged stump polished smooth by time and old irritation. He wears his years like another weapon. Most Reapers grow louder as they age, desperate to convince the young they can still bite. Skahar has become quieter, which makes fools lean closer.

That is usually when he takes a finger.

"You are scowling at the document again," he says.

"I am considering whether setting it on fire would improve its honesty."

"Fire improves many things. Treaties are rarely among them."

"The Coalition offers recognition, defensive cooperation, trade stabilization, limited sovereign acknowledgment, and access to sanctioned markets." I flick one claw through the holo, sending the legal subclauses spiraling outward like severed entrails. "In return, they want docking priority, military inspection rights, observer placement on my station, tariff review authority, data-sharing provisions, and a beautiful little clause giving them emergency access to all defense corridors during periods of regional instability."

Skahar snorts. "They spelled occupation with many words."

"They have lawyers. Such creatures are paid by the syllable."

Across the tactical pit, one of my dockmasters raises her voice. "Lord Gnash, the Kiphian freighter Red Wake has paid standard tariff and requests departure clearance. Their captain is complaining about inspection delays."

"Is the cargo clean?"

"Mostly."

I turn my head. The dockmaster shows her teeth in the closest thing she ever gives to a smile. Her bone spurs glint along her forearms, and a fresh bandage crosses the bridge of her nose from last night’s disagreement with a smuggler who believed forged manifests were charming.

"Mostly is a word for priests and poisoners, Vakka. Tell me what they are hiding."