Page 1 of Tracked and Taken

1

The 0900

Natalie

He fills my doorway at 0858 and the first thing wrong with the meeting happens before he sits down.

Not his height, though six-foot-five does something to a door frame that is not architecturally endorsed, or the rosette markings across his shoulders, black on charcoal, catching the fluorescent light like tattoos designed by a panther. Not even the silver eyes sweeping my office in the same sight-lines-exits-advantage sequence I run on any space I enter, because that would only be professionally offensive, and professional offense I have fifteen years of experience deploying.

It’s the scent.

Warm. Dark. Sun-heated wood and something spiced underneath, carried on a ventilation cycle calibrated to move compliance reports, and is now delivering a Draelith across four feet of regulation airspace like I ordered him up special. My office absorbs it. My lungs absorb it. Some back corner of my brain, which has been professionally inert for four years, sits up and takes notes.

I stop straightening the pen holder. It has been straight for nine minutes. My hand withdraws before it can touch it again.

My comm clicks. Ardent, my deputy, my second, the only person on this station I trust to run the morning watch without calling me about it.

“Boss. Morning handover. Nothing on fire. Level 6 permit dispute is still going, the new dock officer on Bay 3 needs a refresher, and Petra Phan has been seen in the Finder’s Market eating something that may or may not belong to her.”

“Noted. I’m in the 0900 with SNAG. Hold the station.”

“Holding. How long?”

“An hour. Maybe less.”

“Want me to sit in?”

The offer is genuine. Ardent would sit in, take notes, and run the meeting with the calm efficiency of a deputy who has never once needed me to tell him what matters, and I would not be alone in this office with a Draelith tracker and a scent problem and a pen holder I’ve straightened nine times.

“I’ve got it.”

“Copy. Comm me if you need extraction.”

Warm, dry, deadpan of a man who has been my deputy for three years and has learned exactly which buttons to press and how often. He is not talking about tactical extraction.

“Goodbye, Ardent.”

“Bye, Boss.”

The comm closes.

“Vosk.”

“Torres.” The smirk. I cataloged it yesterday in the SNAG office; at close range the catalog updates itself into something sharper, and it does something to the angles of his jaw that I refuse to have an opinion about. “You have seventeen monitors.”

“Twenty-three. Six are on a secondary display I don’t show visitors.”

“Visitors.” A single word of amusement that shouldn’t carry the weight it does. “Is that what I am?”

“You’re in my office because Director Morrison instructed me to share classified security data with a civilian contractor who has fifteen movement violations and no respect for access protocols.” The chair across from me is angled to put the overhead light on a visitor’s face; the desk holds the distance that professional conduct requires. “That makes you a visitor. Visitors don’t get the secondary display.”

“What do I have to do to stop being a visitor?”

“File a movement report.”

“That seems like a lot of paperwork for a promotion.”

“Welcome to Junction One.”