Chapter 10: THE OPENING
The interview room smelled like recycled air and institutional indifference.
I sat across from a woman whose name tag read "Coordinator Chen" and whose expression suggested she'd rather be anywhere else. Standard HR positioning—desk between us, terminal angled away from my sight, the particular studied neutrality of someone who processed dozens of applicants daily and remembered none of them.
"Kwame." She scrolled through my file without looking up. "Maintenance technician, secondary systems. Four months on Tycho. No disciplinary actions. Performance reviews consistently above average." A pause. "Consistently exactly above average. That's unusual."
"I do good work."
"You do adequate work, according to these reports. But Beja Okonkwo—" she glanced at a separate file "—describes you as 'remarkably capable' and 'the best maintenance tech she's worked with in fifteen years.'" Her eyes finally met mine. "That's a significant discrepancy."
The cargo bay incident. I'd known it might come back to haunt me. Three containers that should have crushed a work crew, stopped by a man who officially had no business being that strong.
"Beja's generous with praise," I said. "I just show up and do the job."
"Mm." Chen returned to her terminal. "The Canterbury position requires someone who can handle emergency repairs in high-stress situations. Ice haulers aren't glamorous, but when something breaks at Saturn approach, you don't get second chances. Why do you want this posting?"
"The quiet."
"Excuse me?"
"Station work has too many people, too much politics. I've spent my whole life in crowds." The lie came easily—I'd practiced it enough times that it felt like truth. "A ship crew is different. Smaller. Simpler. You fix things, you keep people alive, you don't answer to a hundred different supervisors."
Chen studied me for a long moment. I kept my expression neutral, my breathing steady, projecting nothing but a man who wanted to disappear into the black.
"Your skills are overqualified for this position," she said finally. "The previous maintenance tech was barely competent, and the Canterbury's been limping along on prayers and Naomi Nagata's engineering for years. Someone with your record could be doing Nauvoo work."
"I like being underestimated."
Something flickered in her expression—amusement, maybe, or recognition. "Don't we all." She tapped something into her terminal. "You're approved. Ship leaves in ten days. Report to Dock Seven at 0800 on boarding day. Don't be late."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me." She was already reaching for the next file. "The Canterbury's a dead-end posting. Most people who take it are running from something."
I stood to leave. "Maybe I'm running toward something."
She didn't respond. I walked out.
The corridor outside HR was crowded with the usual Tycho traffic—workers changing shifts, cargo handlers moving equipment, the constant churn of a station that never slept. I merged into the flow, heading toward the transit hub, already planning the next ten days.
Packing wouldn't take long. Training could continue until departure. I needed to review the Canterbury's technical specifications, memorize crew rotations, identify—
A face in the crowd stopped me cold.
Scarred cheek. OPA tattoos at the collar. The particular way he held his shoulders, like he expected a fight at any moment.
One of Semi's associates. From Ceres.
Our eyes met across the corridor. Recognition flickered in his expression—confusion first, then dawning realization. His hand moved toward his hip, where Belters on stations like this sometimes carried concealed blades.
I kept walking. Didn't react, didn't speed up, didn't give any indication that I'd seen him. Just another worker in the crowd, heading somewhere unremarkable.
But I tracked him in my peripheral vision. Watched him hesitate, decide against immediate action, fall into step twenty meters behind me.
Following.
I led him through the transit hub, down a maintenance corridor, into a section of the station that saw minimal traffic during off-hours. The kind of place where conversations could happen without witnesses.
He caught up to me near a recycling junction. "Kwame."
I turned. "Do I know you?"
"You know me." He stepped closer, hand still near his hip. "Ceres. Six months ago. You broke Semi's arm and walked away like it was nothing."
"I think you have me confused with someone else."
"No." His eyes were hard, certain. "I remember your face. Semi described what happened—the way you moved, the way you fought. Said you were something else. Something wrong." He drew a short blade, the kind that could gut a man in close quarters. "OPA's been looking for the guy who hit their cache. Sector Seven cell, weapons storage. Ring any bells?"
I assessed the situation. Narrow corridor, limited escape routes, one armed opponent with backup potentially nearby. The smart play was de-escalation—talk him down, establish reasonable doubt, walk away clean.
But he'd seen my face. Knew my name. Would report back to whoever was still hunting the Ceres incident.
Some problems couldn't be talked away.
"Here's what's going to happen," I said, keeping my voice level. "You're going to put away the knife. You're going to forget you saw me. And you're going to go back to whatever life you've built here without mentioning Ceres to anyone."
He laughed. "And if I don't?"
I moved.
The knife hand was easy—grab, twist, pressure on the wrist joint until the blade clattered to the deck. The choke hold was gentler than it needed to be, just enough pressure to cut blood flow to the brain without causing permanent damage.
He struggled for three seconds. Then went limp.
I lowered him to the deck, checked his pulse—steady—and considered my options.
Killing him would be cleaner. Dead men told no stories, asked no questions, posed no future threats. The soldier in me, the part that had survived Afghanistan and Baltimore's worst neighborhoods, knew that bodies were sometimes the only solution.
But I wasn't that person anymore. Or I was trying not to be.
Instead, I searched his pockets. Found a hand terminal, a credit chit, identification that marked him as a cargo handler on Tycho's commercial docks. No OPA insignia, nothing that connected him to any larger organization.
Just a man from Ceres who'd recognized the wrong face.
I accessed his terminal—crude security, easily bypassed—and found his message history. A few contacts on Ceres, mostly personal. Nothing about Semi, nothing about weapons caches, nothing that suggested active reporting.
He'd recognized me by chance. Hadn't told anyone yet.
I deleted the last three days of his message history, then composed a new entry in his personal log: Drinking too much. Memory gaps. Need to cut back.
When he woke up, he'd remember falling unconscious. Might remember the corridor, the confrontation. But the details would be fuzzy, unreliable, the kind of half-memory that alcohol produced.
It wasn't perfect. But it was better than the alternative.
I left him slumped against the recycling junction and walked away.
Beja's office was cluttered with requisition forms and the particular chaos of someone who managed logistics through sheer force of will. She looked up when I entered, her expression shifting from distraction to something warmer.
"Kwame. Heard you got the Canterbury posting."
"Thanks to your recommendation."
"My recommendation was accurate." She pushed a stack of forms aside, making space for me to sit. "You're too good for this station. Too good for an ice hauler, too, but at least you'll be moving. Staying still makes people notice things."
I took the offered seat. "You've been generous. More generous than I probably deserved."
"I've been practical." She met my eyes, and I saw the calculation there—the same sharp intelligence that had let her survive decades in the Belt's logistics economy. "You're useful, Kwame. Whatever you're hiding, whatever brought you to Tycho, you've never let it interfere with the work. That's rare."
"I try."
"You succeed." She stood, moving to a small cabinet that held the kind of bottles stations didn't officially allow. "Drink?"
"Please."
She poured two glasses of something amber and probably synthesized, handed me one, and raised hers in a silent toast.
"To new beginnings," I said.
"To running toward something." Her smile was knowing. "Whatever that something is."
We drank. The alcohol burned pleasantly, a small luxury in a life that had contained few of them.
"The Canterbury's a good ship," Beja said, settling back into her chair. "Old, tired, but the crew knows their business. Naomi Nagata's the best engineer I've ever met. She'll keep that bucket flying long past when it should have been scrapped."
"And the others?"
"Holden's an idealist—too honest for his own good, but the crew respects him. Amos Burton is dangerous, but loyal. Alex Kamal flies like he was born in a cockpit. Shed Garvey..." She shrugged. "Adequate medic. Nice kid. Probably shouldn't be in the black, but the Belt doesn't give everyone choices."
I filed the assessments away. None of them contradicted what I already knew, but hearing it from someone who'd actually worked the shipping routes added texture to memories that were starting to feel distant.
"Thank you," I said. "For everything."
"Don't thank me yet." She finished her drink, set the glass aside. "The Canterbury's a dead-end posting for most people. Whatever you're running toward, I hope you find it before that ship falls apart completely."
I didn't tell her that the Canterbury had less time than she imagined. Didn't tell her that in a few weeks, the ship she was describing would be debris, and most of its crew would be dead.
Some knowledge couldn't be shared.
"I'll find it," I said instead. "One way or another."
I finished my drink and left. Ten days until boarding. Ten days until everything changed.
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