Page 70 of Tracked and Taken

“Copy.” I let three seconds pass. “Vosk. The dispatch note. Operator is not operational. You read Kesh in it before Rethlor finished the sentence. Why.”

A longer pause. His eyes are on the lift panel. The single claw on his left hand has retracted.

“At V-6, in the doorway. His body was wrong, Torres. Rosettes going gray at the edges. Walk off. His shoulders holding an angle a Draelith male’s shoulders do not hold unless his thermoregulation is failing. He was running on compensation. I clocked it in the four seconds before he disappeared and I did not have a reason for it. The dispatch note is the reason.”

“Regulatory tells of a male whose systems are failing.”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean, Vosk.”

A pause.

“Later. On the ship. Not in a Parr’s Anchor lift. I promise you.”

I let it go, but I am not dropping it

The lift doors open.

The docking corridor is empty when we step out. Rust-plated decking, amber cycle lights, the echo of boots on station metal.

We make it eight meters. Three males step out of the service alcove.

Station muscle. I clock them in the first half-second: human, bulky, civilian clothes with the wrong silhouette, under-armor shoulders, knives at the hip, the rolling gait of men paid for twenty years to intimidate arrivals off their valuables. They have assessed two well-kitted off-worlders, and the woman in front looks, by their arithmetic, like the easier target.

They are going to find out shortly that this is the wrong math.

The lead male smiles, gap-toothed. “Evening, friends.”

Tael’s tail flicks once. Preparing to uncoil.

I put my hand on his chest. “Wait.”

“Torres—“

“Wait, Vosk. This one is mine. Let me work.”

Half a second of him reading my face. He steps back a half pace. “Copy.”

I walk toward the three men. Not aggressive posture. Customs-counter posture, the one I learned in my first year at Junction One when a hauler pretended not to have a hold I could see from the dock. Relaxed. Slightly tired. Hand in the pocket of my field jacket.

The lead male does not know what to do with this. His training runs to two configurations: fight and freeze. A woman walking toward him at the pace of someone about to ask him the time is neither. He hesitates. I take the hesitation.

Slow walk, fast commit. The compact baton comes out of the pocket and goes to his left wrist, the wrist locks, his own momentum puts him on his knees. Foot to the back of his calf; he goes prone. Knee to the small of his back. His sidearm is in my hand before his face touches the deck.

Four moves. Three seconds.

The two behind him have registered that a woman in a clean field jacket has put their lead man on the ground without hurrying, that she now holds an acquired sidearm, and that the six-foot-five Draelith behind her with the claws out has not moved. They turn. They walk. They clear the corridor at the pace of men who have decided retreat is career-survivable and engagement is not.

I zip-tie the lead man to a bulkhead pipe. I do not take his datacard; he is not worth the storage. I stand. I turn.

Tael has not moved from his half-pace step-back.

His face is different. Pupils at full, and not the operational full; the other full. Jaw loose. All five claws on his right hand extended, which I have seen once, at V-6, and not since. The purr is audible through four meters of corridor. His gaze is on my mouth, then my hands, then the place I am standing over a man I just put on the deck, and the look is not professional. The look is hunger with a leash still on it.

He is not moving.

I cross the four meters, but I do not touch him. I stand a foot away and look up.