Jesri bent an eyebrow at the dog. “Why, what do you know about Harsi?”

Rhuar gave her a strained look. “Why don’t you know about Harsi? It’s been a no-go port for thirty years!”

“Huh, really?”, mused Jesri, absentmindedly tugging on her hair. “The last time I docked there-” She coughed. “Well, anyway, that was a while ago. Why is it a no-go? The captain didn’t say anything about it when I mentioned it earlier.”

Rhuar settled back on his hind legs and sniffed. “The Captain is as good as they come, but he’s got no nose for danger. Me, I keep my ears up, hear rumors.” He licked his nose. “Rumors aren’t truth, but they give you a good picture after you hear enough of them. As best I can tell it was kind of a rough port for a long time-”

“Yeah, that’s true,” nodded Jesri. “Sorry,” she added, seeing the exasperated tilt of Rhuar’s head.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the crew running the docks cashed out, sold the codes. They were scum, but they knew which side of the hull held air. The new folks, not so much - their teeth were too big for their mouth, things went bad fast. After that not many people hung around there except them like couldn’t afford to ship out or were making too much money to skip. You were as likely to get your haul beaten out of you than bought if you docked.”

Jesri nodded. “Yeah, that sounds like it would put a damper on traffic.”

Rhuar snorted. “Yeah, a bit. Just killers or idiots dropped by, then not even them after a while. After a few years of no ships coming in, captain’s got to start wondering what a port looks like when its got no outside callers for a span - all on its own in the void.” Rhuar shuddered. “Some of the stories from those who did more than wonder get pretty fuckin dark.”

Jesri frowned. “Well, that’s all pretty concerning,” she said, “but a bunch of starving bandits shouldn’t give us too much trouble at the end of the day.”

Rhuar made an indistinct noise and shot Jesri a look. “Who said they were starving?”

“Ew, ok,” winced Jesri, “pretty dark indeed. Get us lined up in the approach corridor so we’re clear of the docks, I’ll check with Anja to see if there’s another port that would work.”

“Absolutely not,” chirped Anja, the red glare of the medbay placard highlighting her blonde hair with an ominous dull carmine hue. “That port is the only place we can go to pick up the trail.”

Jesri groaned. “Rhuar says it’s pretty rough in there. This could get messy.”

Anja grinned at her. “Sister, rough for the doggie doesn’t mean rough for us. Besides,” she said, “we can just go through the abandoned parts of the station. If it’s been a ghost port for thirty years like he said, it won’t be hard to avoid contact. I’ve been doing it the whole time on Indomitable.”

Frowning, Jesri nodded. “Yeah, there is that. Do we have to go anywhere special?”

Anja shook her head, leaning against the doorjamb. “Nah, any of the sector data terminals should work. We can be in and out quick, thirty minutes tops.”

“Uh-huh,” snarked Jesri. “You’ve said that on some other missions. Like that extraction on Wonderland, with the masquerade ball?” Anja winced and opened her mouth to reply, but Jesri cut her off. “Ooh, or the data drop where we had to hide in the reprocessing tanks for a day? How about the snatch and grab where Colonel Xi got shot in the ass and we had to carry her for-”

“Yes, yes, sister, point made,” sighed Anja. “However, in this case I really don’t see how anything-”

“Don’t you fucking say it,” Jesri snapped, her eyes narrowing.

“-could go wrong,” concluded Anja, smiling primly. Jesri sighed, resting her forehead on her palm.

“I hate you.”

Jesri walked up to the bridge, where Rhuar was standing at the controls. All of his manipulators were extended, either hovering over physical controls or jacked into the console directly. His head jerked from side to side at random intervals - Jesri figured at least some of those jacks were overlaying visual information, maybe even tactile stimuli.

“So?”, he asked distantly, his voice echoing weirdly from several points around the bridge. His head didn’t turn towards her, but small cameras mounted beside the viewscreen were tracking her face as she moved. “How’d it go?”

Jesri moved beside him and leaned against a support beam. “Anja says no joy- we’ve got to dock at Harsi.” She paused, considering. “You know, we’ve already put you two through a lot. If you want we can hit up somewhere else spinward, we’ll hop off and find another ship. I don’t want to ask you to risk your life.”

There was a pause while the ship finished drifting into the approach corridor, the positional thrusters flaring brightly on the monitors. The thrusters died as the ship killed its momentum, then Rhuar unjacked and turned to face her directly.

“I’m not saying I believe your story,” he said, licking his nose. “But I believe what I can see, and I see that at least one of you has high-level Access on that station.”

Jesri blinked slowly at him, her face neutral. “What access would that be?”

He snorted. “Please. I’m not some decklicker with my nose up a priest’s ass. The station is a machine, the machine recognizes Access. Do you know what the Captain and I trade in?” Jesri shook her head, and Rhuar grinned, his tongue lolling out. “We’re locksmiths.”

Jesri nodded, considering. Every station past a certain size had a locksmith or two, and smaller ones depended on the traveling crews like Qktk and Rhuar. Although you could access almost any corridor and walkway in a station, the rooms were another matter. Hence, locksmiths - although the skillset involved made them more of a highly specialized electrical engineer. She could place them at the top of their trade with a few well-chosen words.

“Ok,” she said, “name your price.”

Rhuar licked his lips. “Full Access. As much as you can give me, and the Captain too.”

Jesri was shaking her head before he had even finished talking. “Absolutely not. There’s no way I could responsibly give you access to open engineering, security or weapons systems.” She paced over to the side of the bridge, then swiveled to face him again. “How about this? You stick with us for one or two stops past this, I’ll come with you to two stations of your choosing and give you access to all residential and common areas. Oh, and Kick too.”

Rhuar tilted his head to the side, contemplating her offer.

A small voice had begun screaming distantly inside his head after Jesri said the word “engineering”, and had only gotten louder with each passing second. Rhuar had thought he was asking for access to open any of the regular residential doors on the station they just left, which was full of angry Kita that would probably kill him on sight and give his stuffed corpse to their children. Even that would have been worth the risk, establishing Qktk and Rhuar as the richest people on the station and the most accomplished locksmiths in modern memory.

Rhuar tried cocking his head to the other side.

The little voice was getting louder. Jesri had just implied that not only could she give him that access on *any* station, she could also open the larger, more imposing doors that cordoned the mythical command and control systems of a station. Everyone knew those were inaccessible to mere mortals, sealed until the death of the universe or a wayward black hole tore the station to pieces. The voice in Rhuar’s head was telling him that he should profess his undying love and devotion to this woman and beg her to allow him to remain in her divine presence.

Instead, Rhuar said: “How about three stations?”

Jesri stared at him, expressionless, and Rhuar was afraid he might have pushed it too far. After a few long seconds, however, she smiled slightly and nodded. “Yeah, okay,” she agreed. “If you hang with us for a couple of jumps, you’ll probably have earned it. Set course for Harsi?”

Rhuar nodded and plugged back into the console, turning to face the viewer. Data flooded in, and for an eyeblink he was blind, deaf and numb. At once, reality snapped back in a new configuration. He could feel the metal of his skin, the plasma of his breath. He flexed the engines, feeling them burn strong and hot. “Ok,” he said flatly, his voice issuing from every corner of the bridge. “Heading to the ramp.”

The ship accelerated down the approach lane, and the thrum of the engines seeped into his body from the feet up. As he raced away from the docks down the center of one of the station’s petal-shaped lobes, he inched closer and closer towards the raised vane running down the center of its length. Jesri’s view out the window was unremarkable, but Rhuar saw a kaleidoscope flow of gossamer field lines just above the vane, receding into the distance and curving away from the station towards the great pinnacle at its center.

He felt the shudder as he stabilized in the center of the field, then started to rise slowly with its curvature. “We’re in the pocket,” he broadcast over the intercom. “Brace for transfer.”

He gritted his teeth against the sensation of the field charge soaking the hull like static crackling in his fur, a low rumble slipping from his throat as he accelerated into the deepest part of the ramp’s spaceward curve. As they passed the midpoint, the directional charge from the straightaway was induced into motion by the asymptotic curvature of the pinnacle. The lightning wind swirled around him in gusts and bursts, spiraling into his bones.

He was dimly aware of the other feeds, of Jesri fastened tight into a bridge chair, Anja securing the captain in the medbay’s traction field, but his universe was the ship and the lightning and the void. All at once they were off the curve, the ship leveling out at a perpendicular trajectory away from the station. The invisible tempest crackled, a lucent glow rising just ahead of the bow. Rhuar spun up the drive gently, coaxing the field from potential into action, streams of light splashing against the hull until all at once they bound, twisted, stretched-

Space was pulled away in every direction at once, and the ship was gone.