Page 4 of Fought and Found

"Noted. Options?"

"Comply, resist, or be creative. I have a strong preference but I suspect you have already decided."

Before I can answer: "We are being hailed. SRS Salvage and Retrieval Solutions." Sprout's orb vibrates once, a tight oscillation I've never seen before. "They are not requesting. They are informing us that we will be boarded."

The proximity alert pulses red across the cockpit. My tea has gone cold. The notebook presses against my ribs. Fourteen minutes until a Tier 1 Xarthian specialist reaches my airlock, and the biggest recovery corporation in the sector has decided my sealed research container is worth chasing into contested space.

I set down the mug. Pick up Betsy properly — two-handed grip, safety off, barrel check.

Something in my sternum shifts. Not the formless ache from the notebook. Something sharper. Something with teeth.

My eyes go to the co-pilot's seat. I don't know why. Just for a second. The tea ring on the armrest. The pristine cushion.

"Well." I roll my shoulders. Crack my neck. The voice comes out steady and warm and absolutely not how I feel, which is how Morrison taught me to do it. "At least it's not boring."

2

The Weapon

Xor

Thecourier’sshipsmellslike a garden, which I file under maintenance failure and proceed.

The airlock — Loss-3 magnetic seal, a model discontinued six years ago for being trivially easy to breach — opens into a cockpit that revises my assessment. Not maintenance failure. Deliberate aesthetic catastrophe.

Fairy lights. Strung along the ceiling in loops, warm-spectrum, casting soft shadows across navigation displays that should be running clean and are instead cluttered with tea ring stains. A small ceramic creature of indeterminate species wedged between the throttle and the comms array. There is a second cardigan draped over the co-pilot’s chair — orange, embroidered with some manner of small predatoryEarth animal I do not recognize. The chair itself is pristine. Unused. An operational waste of space that someone has chosen to preserve for sentimental reasons I do not intend to speculate about.

The blaster within her reach has a sticker on the grip.

A flower.

I have boarded sixty-seven vessels in nine years of Tier 1 operations. I have encountered resistance, compliance, cowardice, and one marriage proposal I am not prepared to discuss. I have never encountered a floral sticker on a combat weapon. This is either the most unprofessional courier in the Outer Rim or an elaborate psychological operation, and I am not ruling out either.

Director Trell’s briefing materializes in my memory, calm and precise:Simple interception, Xax. Don’t overthink it. Board the vessel. Secure the container. Depart.My compliance rate is 98.2% across nine years of Tier 1 operations. I do not overthink assignments. I complete them. There was a reported breach of SRS comms encryption eighteen months ago — sophisticated, targeted, a relay-chain exploit Trell classified as isolated and unlikely to recur. I accepted that assessment. I was a compliant operative.

The courier should be at the tactical station. She was fourteen minutes ago — I tracked her proximity alert through the hull, monitored her readiness posture on thermal as I breached the seal. Seated, armed, braced. Correct response protocol for an incoming hostile. I could have written her threat assessment report myself. Adequate. Not interesting. Standard OOPS.

She is now standing by the galley unit, pouring hot water into a ceramic mug with a chip on the rim, her back to me, humming.

I am standing in her airlock with all ten claws extended and my tail in combat posture and the woman whose proximity alert chimedfourteen minutes ago has put down her weapon, walked to the kitchen, and put the kettle on.

Either this woman has suffered a catastrophic lapse in threat assessment, or she has looked at what came through her airlock — seven feet of Xarthian combat specialization with nine years of field kills — and decided it merited tea. I am not certain which option is more insulting. Both suggest a degree of operational dysfunction that explains why OOPS couriers have a 40% insurance surcharge.

The blaster is on the console. Not in the holster. On the console, within reach of the pilot’s chair, safety still off. She has set it down as a choice, not an oversight. I know the difference. The grip angle is wrong for forgetting — it is positioned for retrieval, fast draw, a weapon that has been deliberately placed by someone who wants it accessible and also wants both hands free for the kettle.

She is armed by proximity. She is making tea.

I am recalibrating.

“I am Xor Xax, Tier 1 Recovery Specialist with Salvage and Retrieval Solutions.” The words land clean and flat in the cluttered little cockpit. “I am here to secure the sealed research container currently stored in your cargo bay. You will surrender the item, submit to a standard cargo transfer, and be free to continue your route. Your cooperation would expedite this considerably.”

Textbook. Delivered in the tone Director Trell approved for non-combatant targets: authoritative, impersonal, implying consequences without specifying them. Targets comply. That is how this works.

The courier turns around.

I conduct a rapid physical assessment. Short. Notably short — the top of her head would reach approximately the third ridge of mytactical plating, which is not an observation that advances the recovery but which my spatial processing has volunteered regardless. Compact build, soft at the waist and hips in the way humans are when they prioritize comfort over conditioning — though her weight sits in the balls of her feet in a way that did not come from standing behind a galley unit. Honey-blonde hair in a braid that has lost all commitment to discipline, escaping at the temples. Brown eyes that are —

Not frightened.