[Part One available at: https://scrubreport.com/2026/07/12/short-story-icarus-nine-part-1/]

Stationmaster Polk steepled his chrome-plated fingers. “The way you say that would make me suspicious, if I didn’t know how much of a nervous wreck your ship is.”

“Oh, right,” Paola smiled disarmingly. “You’ve met before.”

“Really, though…what’s with the light haul?” Polk’s eyes were dark wet slits in split orbs of flesh. “Heard most folks had a good crab season.”

“Granté and Hiss had a bit of a misadventure,” Paola said, which was technically true, if a bit reductive.

“That sounds like a fun story.” Polk smiled horribly. “I’d love to hear it.” A pause. “From one of your men, not you, if you please.” Another pause, just long enough for Hiss to get the joke. “I guess just the one of them, really. I don’t speak…fidget-hands.” Polk waved dismissively. “Go on, then.”

Granté forced a smile and told the stationmaster his name. “It’s a bit embarrassing, really.” He cleared his throat. “Started off like any other crab hunt…you know, pull ‘em in, load up on spears…”

Danzer rolled out her neck with a series of pops that made Granté wince. The big woman smiled at him, fluorescent lights dancing across steel canines.

Polk was listening to something in his earpiece, eyeing Granté and the others with something edging on suspicion. “Your ship’s acting up in my maintenance dock.”

Paola leaned forward. “What the hell did your people do to Peak?”

The stationmaster flinched – slightly, but enough for Granté to take note. Danzer did, too, if the disdainful curl of her upper lip was anything to go by.

“We didn’t do anything,” Polk snapped, recovering himself. “Your ship disengaged the fueling couplers on its own, and we’ve got traces of multiple unidentified systems – ”

“Paranoia never made anyone look pretty,” Granté risked.

Danzer threw back her head and cackled. Polk’s metal fingers curled into fists, scraping the tabletop hard enough to leave rents.

Granté coughed loudly, dragging the room’s attention back to him. “Like I was saying. We popped the spears, nailed most of ’em – but the last kark got loose in our ventilation system. Mean bitch, too.”

“That just sounds like you got sloppy,” Polk said.

A distant rumble briefly shook the room, fading just as quickly.

“When he puts it like that, it kind of does,” Paola said, eagerly chucking Granté under the bus.

Granté gave her a foul look, and there came a pause so thick you could hear one of Polk’s gunners stifle a snicker from across the room. He realized he’d just about reached the point in the story where the crew spaced a squad of Customs agents and decided to change tack. “I like to think of it in terms of metaphor.”

Polk made a face. “I don’t like metaphors.”

Granté bulled ahead. “Acquired taste. Imagine the Unified Territories’ border as a wall. There’s the Shatterpoints past that, then this station, with us on it, and the Freespheres past that.”

Polk blinked slowly. His eyes were yellow, like watered-down egg yolks. “Are you going somewhere with this?”

“Well,” Granté said, playing it out, “if the Utes went after the Freespheres – full invasion footing – and you knew they were coming, what would you do?”

The stationmaster shrugged insouciantly. “Get out of the way.”

“Right,” Granté said slowly. “You’d need to know when, though. Otherwise you’d just tip them off.” 

“Ten seconds,” Peak murmured.

Danzer frowned. One of her eyes flickered like there was a lightbulb in it. “They’re talking to their ship.”

“What are you trying to pull, Paola?” Polk leaned forward, belly bulging up against the lip of the table. “You know I hate it when you play games.” He licked his lips, a pink slug dragging along the underside of his mustache.

Paola shrugged. “Just wasting your time.” She took hold of the nearest table leg and ducked.

The Pequod loomed up beyond the voidports. Granté dove from his chair and grabbed for a table leg. Peak cut loose with its newly-installed rotary cannons and the voidports exploded – a hail of glass thrown inward and then, just as fast, sucked into endless dark.

The howl of the abruptly-opened vacuum smothered the sounds of gunfire into flashes and shockwaves. Granté tried to draw his pistol cross-body, fingers clumsy; to his left, one of the stationmaster’s men reached out, spasmed, spun away with a slow arc of crimson trailing from the back of his head. Beyond the body Hiss scowled at his gun, jammed at the worst of times, and tossed the weapon aside.

The backup shutters slammed down, chopping the fingers off one of Polk’s gunners. Oxygen poured into the room from hidden ceiling vents and Granté stumbled to his feet, head ringing.

Danzer and the shooters flanking her had been chopped apart at the waist and were spread out in pieces across what was left of the tables. Polk lay sprawled against the wall with one leg caught on his shredded chair, pawing at his stomach and trying to put his guts back where they should be.

By the shutters, Hiss wrestled with one of Polk’s heavies, a musclebound man with short-cropped brown hair. Granté leapt over and kicked the shooter across the jaw and he flopped senselessly in Hiss’ arms. The mute man gave Granté an annoyed look, broke his dance partner’s neck, and rolled the body aside.

Paola stalked around Polk’s table. The fat man gurgled something that was almost words and she shot him in the face.

“You two alright?” She knelt next to Polk and unclipped the security tag from his wrist.

Yeah, Hiss signed.

Something slapped at Granté’s boot. He glanced down – a young woman, purple hair in a rough bun, pale skin covered in blood but most of it not hers, grasping for his ankle, baring her teeth. He wiggled the barrel of his pistol at her, shook his head infinitesimally. The rage bled from her eyes and she played dead. “Let’s go.”

They made for the exit through hissing sets of chromed doors and splitting hexagonal hallways spiderwebbed with fluorescent guidelines.

Seeing as Peak had made a rapid egress from the maintenance docks (several of which had been torn in half), the crew went for the next best exfil point: Salvar Station’s security dispatch bay. Polk’s security tag would keep the place’s automated turrets from firing on them, and most of the stationmaster’s favorite cronies were dead, but that didn’t mean the trip would be safe.

“Hey!” came a ragged voice.

Paola rounded on the sound, gun already up, and swore. “Really?”

It was the girl Granté had spared – stumbling after them with a hole through her side and crimson staining her vest, one hand tracking bloody smears along the cold chrome wall. Not a lethal wound, not immediately, but painful, and debilitating enough that none of them shot her straightaway.

“Take me with you,” she said.

Hiss stepped forward. The girl flinched away, caught herself, and glared at him in an approximation of bravery.

“What’s the move, Hiss?” Granté hoped he wouldn’t shoot the girl.

Let’s patch her up, at least, Hiss signed. She reminds me of somebody. He took the girl by the shoulder and jabbed his gun into her back.

“Easier if one of them does it, right?” the girl nodded to Granté and Paola. “That way you can sign without dropping your gun.”

The Pequod’s crew exchanged an irritated glance.

Granté took over the hostage-wrangling. “Peak – you wasted everyone in there pretty easy…why not her?”

“Technically, I also failed to kill Stationmaster Polk and two of his men,” Peak said primly. “But I thought Paola might prefer to exchange words with the Stationmaster, and as for his henchmen – henchwomen? Henchpersons?”

“Henchmen,” Granté supplied.

“Henchmen, then. They were too close to Hiss and Granté.”

“You’re not answering the question,” Granté said, nudging the girl along. From ahead came an ominous clangor, like armored boots sprinting closer.

“I didn’t want to add further stress to the situation,” Peak replied.

Granté thought back on the girl’s face, tried to think of who she might remind Hiss of, who she might look like –

His stomach fell. “Oh, no. Oh, hell no – ”

“Lady Spectra of House Vestal, Fourth in line to the Stewardship of the Unified Territories of the Milky Way,” Peak said, trying to sound official.

If a pin dropped just then, it would have echoed.

[to be continued]