The star’s rays illuminated the station emerging from behind the gas giant’s horizon.
The nearly kilometer-long barrel-shaped structure, which had been circling the planet in a nameless numbered system for over a century, had seen better days.
A long time ago, a group of young, ambitious colonization companies had built this station, expecting it to become a fuel hub — but they miscalculated.
The next wave of expansion fizzled out and died before they’d anticipated.
Much earlier, in fact.
For nearly a century, the station stayed afloat, even bringing its owners a modest profit.
Then the nearby worlds began to decline.
Lacking their own transport and unable to offer even relatively unique goods in decent volumes, situated on the fringe of explored space, living almost on a subsistence economy, hundreds of planets with millions of beings were of no use to anyone.
Even the Republic’s tax service never came this far to collect arrears.
The owners — back then it was still a seven-hundred-meter station — made a desperate attempt to save the situation.
They expanded capacity, increased its length, bought ships and equipment, shipped in machinery.
In short, they tried to turn their brainchild into the commercial center of the region.
To set up at least some raw material processing and organize goods production.
But fortune was merciless.
Pirates appeared, swept through the surrounding worlds with fire, and stormed the station.
The former owners went for a breath of vacuum, and the invaders gained a convenient base, settling in the sector.
The quasi-state they created didn’t last long.
Half a century of active operation, and a mercenary army flew in to deal with the brazen freebooters.
Many had chipped in for the righteous cause.
The pirate squadrons were crushed in a series of bloody, short-lived battles.
The conquered worlds were brought freedom through bombing and punitive actions.
What little remained was thoroughly wrecked.
The final chord of this drama in the remote backwater sector was the storming of the long-suffering station.
That time, the fickle goddess of luck was favorable — or maybe it was the employers’ greed?
Does it even matter?
The main thing is the pirates were destroyed, and the structure, transformed though slightly crooked, continued its orbit around the gas giant.
But the troubles didn’t end there.
About forty years ago, someone in the Senate tallied up the total arrears, penalties, and fines registered against the worlds nominally within the Republic.
He pulled the right strings — or maybe just issued the appropriate orders — and in the end, a squadron from the Judicial Forces visited the fringe.
By the time they showed up, everyone had long given up on the region, almost a sector, lying at the edge of explored space.
Even the companies that had once financed the mercenaries and tried to get something from the captured station had preferred to shut down all projects.
No one even came to take the personnel back.
Only the most valuable specialists were retrieved.
Unlike the pirates and mercenaries, the Justicars acted methodically.
It was a coup de grâce to the region’s economy.
Though, as for mercy, things weren’t so clear-cut here.
The station — by then belonging to no one in particular and barely functional — went onto the Republic’s balance sheet and became a sort of petty revenge from the devastated fringe worlds against the Core.
For decades, they tried year after year to sell it to anyone at all, but no one was fool enough to buy.
For decades, officials had to allocate token sums from the budget for its upkeep.
Pocket change, but it grated on the eyes and irritated like crumbs in the bed or a pebble in the shoe — only, unlike them, you couldn’t just throw away a station.
Bureaucracy, you know.
But everything ends eventually.
At the next auction, a buyer suddenly appeared.
Rumor has it that the aging chairman of the state property committee, who had long and seriously considered organizing a sabotage operation against the hated station, actually teared up when the bid came in.
In short, never had such an insignificant deal been processed so swiftly.
The station’s new owner was an aristocrat from Urilian. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Filth!” Bramir te Lerak exploded as the battered caravan emerged from hyperspace.
“You spent most of our money on this?!” He jabbed a finger toward the viewport.
“What an idiot you are, after all,” Fural te Noiza sighed.
“I didn’t so much buy the station as a host of inhabited planets in the sector around it.”
“What do we need this backwater for?!
We should return home and reclaim what we lost!”
“If you weren’t an idiot and did everything I told you, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Why, I…”
“Bramir, you’re a fool.
You’re not even much of a warrior.
Admit it already and calm down.”
The crimson-faced brute scowled and threw a hate-filled glance at the wiry, gray-haired man standing beside him.
How he hated him… and feared him.
Always, for as long as he could remember, from earliest childhood, he’d felt an irrational fear of him.
How he wanted to surpass him, but could never even come close.
He didn’t have what his milk-brother had.
Though he didn’t realize or admit it himself — which is why he suffered.
“Will you challenge me?” Fural raised an eyebrow mockingly.
“No,” Bramir subdued his anger with fear.
“Two hundred years we prepared to ascend to the pinnacle of power in our homeworld again.
You failed us, but I managed to pull my people out from under the blow and save some of yours.”
Arguing with the obvious was pointless, no matter how much he wanted to.
He just couldn’t muster any arguments.
“Well,” the gray-haired man shrugged, “once before, we seized power by returning from exile.
We came with a mighty fleet, and Urilian was ours for seven centuries.
We’ll do it again,” he concluded coldly.
“Yes, Alpha,” Bramir bowed his head.
* * *
The cantina where I’d decided to grab a bite turned out to be a fairly decent establishment.
It reminded me more of a mid-range cafe than a seedy bar.
No grills or hookahs filling the air with suffocating smells — just a couple of groups smoking cigarettes, which was tolerable.
Thank the training results and the excellent ventilation.
Drawing on experience gleaned from interacting with my teacher, I immersed myself in the Force, but unlike my master, I also touched the thoughts of the patrons.
In principle, the cacophony of feelings, emotions, and thoughts tormenting the three dozen people present formed a barely intelligible echo in which it was impossible to pick out anything specific — but I didn’t need that.
A general impression was enough.
And it wasn’t a good one.
In fact, it was far too not good.
Not only was I nearly sick, but I also bristled, unsheathed my claws, and barely managed to control a paw that had reflexively twitched toward my sword.
The couple of people sitting by the entrance, who happened to be nearby, nearly had a heart attack.
I muttered an incoherent explanation-apology, calmed the poor souls a bit with the Force, and, moving to an empty table, began to meditate.
The droid waiter that approached took my order and left.
Its appearance passed in the background for me, same as my choice of food.
I was working.
Having detached myself and regained my mental balance, I started sorting through what the Force had whispered.
The images it gave me, combined with what had flashed through the “echo,” completely killed my appetite.
Still, everything the robot brought was eaten.
Though what it was or how it tasted, I couldn’t tell.
My body acted on its own, rapidly satiating and replenishing calories.
But it was far from keeping up with my boiling mind.
I was, literally, scanning the thoughts of everyone around me.
Strangely, the Force didn’t give me an exact direction for some reason, so I had to go through almost everyone.
Mundane worries, ordinary concerns, simple dreams and aspirations I saw in the heads of the dining people allowed me to detach even further and wrap myself in a kind of armor of detachment.
To become a veritable block of ice.
The Force be merciful.
If not for this cocoon, I probably wouldn’t have been able to avoid doing something stupid when I found my target.
The moment I touched the thoughts of the technician sitting by the window, all my peace nearly shattered.
Nevertheless, my fur only slightly bristled, and my ears just twitched.
My tail and the rising snarl were instantly suppressed by will.
Inhale for five counts, sharp exhale in three-count series.
Repeat.
There — I was calm again, cold, and detached — but I wasn’t going back into the maniac’s thoughts.
“You will go back in, oh yes you will,” the beast inside me whispered, then growled and curled into a ball.
He was right.
Damn right.
I didn’t want to, but I had to.
The pictures were too vivid.
It was unclear whether he was savoring the recent past or anticipating the immediate future.
I needed to figure it out.
If it was the former, the creature pretending to be a harmless sapient would be carried out of the cantina feet first.
If the latter, I’d have to follow him.
This time, I consciously wrapped myself in the armor of detachment, artificially sealed my heart in an icy shell, and, pinning my tail under my foot, reached for the maniac’s mind.
That’s it.
I can’t do this anymore.
I disgust myself and desperately want to wash.
When you read someone else’s thoughts, it’s not like watching a movie.
It’s not even a simulation — it’s much worse.
There’s a huge difference between crushing someone’s mind to make or push them to do something, and temporarily becoming someone else.
Not only do you live through individual episodes of another person’s life, but you also accept them — and then later… you have to heal your palms, torn by your own claws, and calm your mind.
It’s hard.
That technician was too fixated on his memories and anticipation.
Everything was so jumbled that it was hellishly difficult to sort out.
But I understood the most important thing.
A coward, afraid to go become a mercenary or bounty hunter — well, you could get killed there — was deciding which body part to start dissecting his next victim with.
Lucky creature.
It would live a little longer.
It was easier for me to tail him than to extract the necessary information from his head.