The stars stretched before Darren could decide where to look.
For an instant each became a white line across the cockpit windows.
Then the lines opened into a blue-white depth that made him grip the edge of his seat.
There was no horizon, no point at which his eyes could settle.
Second Chance continued to vibrate beneath him as though nothing extraordinary had happened.
Tessa checked a reading and released her harness.
“Stay there a minute.”
On Earth, the effect had lasted two seconds in a cinema.
He had watched it with a drink in his hand.
Now light passed over his knuckles, and somewhere beyond the hull there was a journey no aircraft he had ever boarded could begin.
“Puta que pariu.”
Tessa stopped beside the auxiliary panel.
“That wasn’t Basic.”
“No.”
“What does it mean?”
He tried to find a translation that would not spoil it.
“Profound admiration. Some professional concern.”
“Keep both hands off the controls and enjoy yourself.”
She opened the panel.
A loose fastener fell onto the deck, and she caught it with her boot before it could roll beneath his seat.
Darren laughed.
The sound surprised him almost as much as the view.
Rivera had laughed like that once, leaning toward the open door of a transport when a ridgeline fell away beneath them.
Darren could remember the man’s hand catching his sleeve, insisting he look.
For once the memory stopped before the temple.
He stayed with the valley, the idiot grin, the impossible distance below their boots.
A tool struck metal behind him.
“Vale. Middle row, left display. Read me the red number.”
“Thirty-eight point six.”
“Tell me if it reaches forty-one.”
He loosened his grip on the seat.
Tessa had disappeared shoulder-deep into the open panel.
Only her boots and one bent knee remained visible.
“How concerned should the passenger be?”
“Concerned enough to read the number.”
He watched it rise through thirty-nine while hyperspace moved at the edge of his vision.
When it reached forty, he told her.
She asked him to hold a light where she could see a connection, and he waited for permission before unfastening the restraint.
The crouch pulled at his abdomen.
He lowered himself onto one knee instead, braced the light against the seat and kept it steady while she worked.
He knew this part: somebody needed both hands free, and he could make that possible.
The reading stopped at forty point two.
Tessa held the connection for another few seconds before telling him to check again.
Thirty-nine point eight.
Falling.
“Thank you,” she said.
He moved the light only when she backed out.
Grease marked her forehead; an old burn crossed the exposed part of her forearm.
She checked the display herself, then shut the panel with a palm against the corner that did not quite fit.
“You people have ruined this for yourselves,” he said, looking toward the windows.
“What?”
“It’s fucking magic.”
“It’s expensive fucking magic. Hand me the fastener.”
They ate after she had checked the repair.
Tessa heated two packets in the galley and pushed one toward him without asking whether he wanted it.
Darren had fifty-five credits and no reason to become particular about dinner.
Second Chance made noises he was beginning to distinguish without understanding.
A pump cycled behind the wall.
Ventilation changed pitch.
Once Tessa stopped chewing until a faint knock repeated, then continued as though someone had answered a question.
“Yours?” he asked.
She looked up.
“The noise.”
“Loose mount. It can wait until Corellia.”
“Unlike the thing under the panel.”
“That could wait too. I prefer fixing it while it still can.”
He scraped food from the folded edge of the packet.
“You always take passengers?”
“No. They touch things.”
“I held a light.”
“You waited until I asked. That puts you ahead of the last one.”
She gave him directions to the bunk, the wash compartment and the emergency supplies.
When she showed him how to call the cockpit, she made him do it once.
Her voice came back through the speaker above his head while she stood beside him.
“If I don’t answer, use the emergency channel. The label is inside the cover.”
Darren opened it, found the label and closed it again.
“If you’re hurt?”
“Same first step. Tell them the ship name. Don’t let somebody convince you to change course while you’re trying to help me.”
That instruction made him look at her.
“It happened to someone I knew,” she said, and took their empty packets away before he could turn it into an invitation to ask more.
He slept badly.
The bunk was clean and narrower than the cubicle on Nar Shaddaa, and every change in the engine note persuaded his body that it ought to wake him.
Eventually he dressed and went forward.
The cockpit lights were dim.
Tessa had a maintenance log across her lap and one boot resting against the unused seat.
She moved it when she saw him.
“Can’t sleep?”
“I was dead last week.”
Her eyes lifted from the log.
He heard the sentence again.
“Bad figure of speech.”
“Very.”
She watched him sit, then set the log aside.
Darren looked through the window.
Hyperspace had lost none of its strangeness; he had only acquired the ability to think about something else while looking at it.
“Are you bringing trouble onto my ship?” Tessa asked.
He could have made another joke.
She was waiting for an answer she could use.
“Some people on Nar Shaddaa dislike me. Kess among them. Nobody told me they intended to follow us.”
“Did you give anyone our route?”
“Sira. Pell knows I’m going to Corellia.”
“And the files?”
“Pell received them because she embarrassed a broker. He wanted her to stop telling people his product was compromised.”
“That doesn’t make them harmless.”
“No.” Darren rested his hands on his knees.
“Would you have taken me if I’d said all that at the dock?”
“I’d have asked before loading the last crate.”
The rebuke was quiet enough to leave him nowhere useful to push back.
She had known about the files, but he had let their provenance travel separately from the danger attached to his name.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.” She picked up the log, without opening it.
“Tell me before the next thing becomes my problem.”
He nodded.
They watched the light for a while.
“Why Corellia?” she asked eventually.
“Work. Records. Somewhere I can stay without borrowing another person’s protection every day.”
“Do you have a job waiting?”
“No.”
“How much after the passage?”
“Fifty-five.”
She looked toward the window, calculating something he could not see.
“You can keep the bunk while I’m in port. Help with the load when your shoulder allows it. Food aboard. Anything ashore is yours to arrange.”
“It’s an empty bunk. Don’t make me regret filling it.”
He wanted to ask how long she would be there, then realized he was already trying to turn an offer into a guarantee.
“What can you vouch for at entry?” he asked instead.
“That you helped protect freight. I can file a temporary security reference through Helix. Seventy-two hours, if they accept it. It won’t let you take any job you like.”
“Pell said not to invent an employer.”
“Listen to Pell.”
Tessa opened the log again.
This time he let her work.
Later, when she complained about a berth charge, he asked whether there was a cheaper dock.
She told him why the cheaper one cost more by the time you had paid the men who controlled its loaders.
Corellia emerged in pieces: rain blowing under the hangar doors, a night transit line full of exhausted workers, a noodle shop moved three blocks from its old location.
Tessa had opinions about all of it.
Darren knew the names of heroes born there.
She knew where to eat between shifts.
He went back to the bunk before she had to ask for the seat, and slept until she called him for arrival.
Stars returned with a suddenness that made him lean back.
Beyond them lay Corellia, cloud and light beneath an enormous spread of orbital traffic.
Freighters held their lanes while tugs moved cargo sections across the approach.
Farther away, unfinished structures curved over the planet.
Darren searched for a scale he understood and found none.
Traffic control began talking; Tessa answered before he had separated the first instruction from the second.
He kept quiet.
When she asked him to secure the galley, he checked the latches and returned to his seat.
The task gave his hands somewhere to put the excitement.
They descended toward shipyards that kept unfolding beyond the windows.
Tessa made small corrections, accepted a new approach and brought Second Chance into its berth without giving the landing anything like the attention Darren thought it deserved.
Then she sat still with both hands resting on the controls.
“Home?” he asked.
“For a few days.”
The first scan accepted his identichip.
The second lit a yellow bar across the clerk’s display.
“Hutt Space origin chain.”
Darren watched the woman’s hand remain beside the return slot.
Behind him, somebody shifted a bag against the barrier.
Tessa stood at the next counter answering questions about her cargo, close enough to see him but too far away to supply an answer.
“Last transit record is Nar Shaddaa,” he said.
“Purpose of entry?”
“Contract security. Transit.”
“Employer?”
“Temporary reference through Helix Freight. Captain Marr filed it.”
The clerk called up another screen.
Silver implants followed the line of her temple.
She read the reference, then looked past him toward Tessa.
“This says freight protection. Who supervised you?”
“Marr can confirm the work I did with her. It doesn’t cover everything I’ve done.”
“And where were you born?”
“Corellia.”
The name came easily.
He had read it on the identity Pell built for him.
Saying it with the planet beneath his feet felt different.
The clerk turned the display away before he could see what she was checking.
He let his hands rest on the counter instead of reaching for the chip.
At the other desk, Tessa finished signing.
The clerk summoned her, asked whether she stood behind the reference, and received a plain yes.
There was no kick under the counter, no whispered correction.
Darren had already given his answers.
“Seventy-two hours. Professional entry. Employment restricted to the declared contract class. No weapons discharge except lawful defense.”
She pushed the conditions toward him.
He read them before signing.
The pass activated, and his chip slid into the return tray.
Outside the barrier he checked the expiry time twice.
It was not much of a foothold.
It was enough to leave the terminal without looking over his shoulder for somebody to call him back.
Halden Vey’s office overlooked a freight interchange where six lines crossed at different heights.
Tessa introduced Darren while Halden finished a call with someone who had apparently mistaken an audit for a request to make a loss disappear.
“No,” he said into the receiver.
“Changing the description doesn’t return the cargo.”
He disconnected and waved them toward the chairs.
His jacket hung behind the door; physical notes covered the space beside his terminal.
Darren put Pell’s message on the desk before offering an explanation.
“She wants to know whether the broker has grounds for his complaint. These were attached to his reply.”
Halden read the message first.
Tessa remained beside Darren while the auditor opened the extracts.
“Did she alter them?”
“Removed live departure details. She says some entries won’t open. She hasn’t authenticated the rest.”
“Better answer than most people bring me.” Halden turned a record toward them.
“Twenty for an initial review. That buys an opinion on what you have, not a search for everything you haven’t.”
Darren paid.
Thirty-five credits remained.
Tessa’s communicator sounded.
She read the message and swore under her breath.
“Unloaders?” Halden asked.
“Found another berth that apparently pays better.” She stood.
“I’ve got to go before mine becomes storage.”
Darren began to rise with her.
She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, careful of the bruise.
“Stay. You’re paying him.”
She sent him the return directions and left.
Through the window he watched a freight train pass beneath another line, then turned back to find Halden studying him.
“Something particular you hope these will say?”
“I’d rather you read them before I answer.”
Halden considered that, then opened the first usable attachment.
He did not react when Rothana appeared.
Darren did.
The name sat inside a reference to equipment cover, beside charges and dates that meant nothing to him.
For a moment he saw a different set of images: white armor, landing ships, a desert filled with smoke.
His mouth opened before he had chosen a question.
Halden looked up.
“What does that entry cover?” Darren asked.
“Risk. These aren’t ordinary invoices.”
The auditor brought two records together.
Different firms had issued them, but each transferred part of a loss to another party.
He traced the connection with a finger, stopping where an authorization repeated.
“Kuat here. Rothana here. Different declared cargo, different jurisdictions. Same authorization family behind the cover.”
“Could a broker reuse one for convenience?”
“Yes. Could also be a common buyer arranging it. Or somebody making the records look connected.”
Darren made himself look at the dates.
The names he remembered were too ready to turn a possibility into a conclusion.
He had crossed a border on a manufactured identity an hour ago.
A convincing record was not proof merely because he wanted it to be.
“What would distinguish those?”
“Independent records. Which aren’t included in twenty credits.”
Halden leaned back.
“There’s material here I could use in a fraud inquiry. The intermediary interests me more than Rothana. Meridian. I want permission to compare these references against my case.”
“They were sent for review, not resale.”
“I’m not proposing resale.”
Darren called Pell.
She answered with somebody talking angrily beyond the edge of her screen.
He described the proposed exchange while Halden waited, pointedly not touching the terminal. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“What does he get to keep?” she asked.
“Relevant extracts and their source message,” Halden said, leaning into view.
“Restricted to the comparison. No circulation to brokers.”
Pell asked him for his name, then for a written statement of that limit.
He sent it.
She read it and approved the exchange, telling Darren to send her the findings before anyone else’s interpretation of them.
“I’m still waiting for profitable work,” she added, and disconnected.
Halden resumed.
“That buys comparison work, not ownership of my other client’s records.”
“Understood.”
“And you don’t get to tell me what the result should be.”
Darren looked at Rothana again.
“That may be the most useful condition.”
The afternoon narrowed to an office, a cold cup of caf and the movement of Halden’s hand between records.
Darren stayed out of his way.
When he failed to understand something, he wrote the question down instead of stopping the work every thirty seconds.
Halden answered some without being asked.
A repeated number was an authorization reference, not a payment.
An equipment category described what could be lost, not necessarily what had shipped.
Neither established where the equipment had gone.
Then he stopped moving.
“Asteron Fiduciary Group,” he said.
“Coruscant.”
Darren knew no such name.
The absence of recognition steadied him.
“Buyer?”
“Associated with the authorization. That’s as far as I’ll take it.”
He showed Darren the recurrence and a section of military-risk language attached to industrial support equipment.
Atmospheric systems.
Medical production.
Habitation.
Food processing.
A clone army needed all those things.
So did people who had never held a weapon.
“A colony,” Darren said.
“Mining settlement. Remote base.”
“All possible.”
“A private army.”
Halden turned from the display.
“Is that what you hoped I’d find?”
Darren rubbed his thumb along the edge of his notes.
“It’s what I was afraid I’d assume.”
“Then keep the other possibilities on the page.”
He did.
Beside them he wrote what they lacked: destination, buyer, proof that the equipment had moved at all.
Halden waited until he finished before opening Meridian’s registration.
“I can request the underlying commercial entries. That should tell us whether this intermediary actually handled the cover.”
“Will they know you asked?”
“Access is logged. Who sees the log depends on the service and the account. I use it for my work.”
Darren looked at the office door.
“And asking Asteron?”
“Would be a different request.”
“Don’t. Not yet.”
Halden’s hand left the controls.
“You can decide what to do with your material. You don’t direct my practice.”
For a moment the small office felt as close as the meeting room on Nar Shaddaa.
Darren let go of the edge of the desk.
“I’m asking you not to contact them on my behalf. I don’t have enough to explain why I’m interested.”
“That I can agree to.”
They settled on Meridian’s existing records.
No inquiry to Asteron, no questions sent to the suspected buyer.
Halden submitted the detailed request while Darren watched the confirmation appear.
They had accepted a traceable step to find out whether the extracts could withstand comparison.
One returned entry carried a different amount from the extract.
Darren leaned forward, ready to mark it as a discrepancy.
Halden opened the accompanying schedule and showed him the portion excluded from the copied total.
“The broker sent a piece of a record. It can be accurate and still mislead you.”
“So this one matches?”
“This part does. It puts Meridian in the chain. It doesn’t validate every attachment he sent.”
Darren crossed out the question he had begun to write and replaced it with the narrower finding.
That was worth the afternoon, even if it was smaller than the answer he had wanted.
Two hours after the request, they had a narrower chain of references, an intermediary worth examining and no destination.
Halden saved the results.
Darren sent Pell a summary that said exactly that.
Halden offered dinner at a small place beside the archive district.
When Darren hesitated, he said he was paying.
He had kept him past the ship’s meal hour.
The restaurant owner brought their food without asking Halden what he wanted.
Away from the terminal, the auditor looked more tired and less remote.
He complained about a client who could remember every promise made to him and none he had made himself.
Darren listened, then asked why he had chosen this work.
“My father had two cargo skiffs. A partner hid debt against one. We lost the other paying creditors.” Halden moved his bowl clear of a stain on the table.
“He kept saying there had to be a mistake somewhere.”
“Was there?”
“Yes. He trusted the wrong man.”
Darren let the answer stand.
Halden ate a little more before adding that the creditors had not all been dishonest.
Several had lost money too.
His father had hated being reminded of that.
“So finding someone guilty wasn’t enough,” Darren said.
“It didn’t bring the skiffs back.”
His communicator vibrated.
Tessa wanted to know whether he was returning that night.
He answered yes and asked whether there was still work to do.
Her reply named two crates and told him not to try lifting them alone.
Halden read his expression.
“Better offer?”
“A bunk with conditions.”
“Keep it.”
Back aboard Second Chance, Darren held a cargo brace while Tessa secured it.
He told her what Halden had found and what they had agreed not to do.
She listened until he reached the Meridian request.
“Logged?”
“Yes.”
“Could lead back to him.”
“He knows.”
She tightened the last fastening.
“That’s not the same as being ready for it.”
He had no answer that improved on hers.
When she handed him a local timepiece, he accepted it without a joke.
The port schedule was set to local time; she wanted him awake when the loaders arrived.
In the bunk he put the timepiece beside his communicator and checked the entry pass once more.
Seventy-two hours had already begun to diminish.
Thirty-five credits would not buy him much of the time left.
He opened the notes once more and put the unknown destination above the names he recognized.
Then he closed the file.
Somewhere beyond the hull, a pneumatic tool hammered against metal.
He lay listening until the work stopped, waiting to discover which ship noises he could sleep through.