Chapter 122: Arriving On Nexus-Prime

Nexus-Prime hung in the black like a jewel of impossible size.

Its turquoise oceans gleamed under the light of twin suns, and its emerald continents stretched from the warm equator to the polar ice caps, crossed by glowing webs of cities so big that they shone gold even on the daylit side.

Wrapped around the planet’s waist like a ring was an unbroken glittering river of traffic lanes, where millions of freighters, private yachts and industrial barges moved along their set paths.

For a long moment, nobody on the bridge said a word.

Camila had come up from the galley with a dish towel still in her hands, and she stood at the mezzanine rail and looked at the oceans until the towel slipped out of her fingers and fell to the floor.

"There’s water," she whispered. "Look at all that water... Look at the clouds."

Aoi had come up out of the cartography pit without seeming to notice she was doing it, and she stood at the foot of the canopy with one hand flat against the glass and her eyes shining in the blue light.

Leo stared at the white spirals of weather turning slowly over the oceans, and something huge and painful rose in his throat.

’Clouds... real clouds. When was the last time I even saw one?’

"It smells different," Chloe said quietly from behind the throne.

Harper blinked at her blearily from the edge of the dais. "Kid, you can’t smell a planet through the glass..."

"I can," Chloe said, and kept looking.

Then he saw what was hanging around the planet, and the feeling died on the spot.

Twelve enormous structures sat along the outer edge of the transit shell like dark sentinels, each one three kilometers of faceted matte-black armor bristling with rail-arrays, torpedo silos and triple-barreled proton lances humming with a blue-white glow.

’Okay... those are Tier-4 defense platforms. Those are a lot of guns.’

WEE-WOO! WEE-WOO! WEE-WOO!

The threat receiver at station three let out a shattering screech.

Across Jin-Ah’s hololith, twelve crimson targeting reticles snapped onto the Wanderer-7’s hull at the same time, and the air on the bridge went heavy with the metallic taste of ionized particles.

Harper scrambled up off the dais and threw herself into the gunnery seat, still half asleep, with her hair sticking up on one side and her harness buckles rattling.

BZZZT-CRACKLE!

The emergency frequency tore open and overrode the ship’s comms with a harsh synthetic warning that boomed out of every bulkhead.

"ATTENTION... UNREGISTERED ARMED CORVETTE DESIGNATION WANDERER-SEVEN. YOU HAVE ENTERED THE EXCLUSION ENVELOPE OF NEXUS-PRIME WITHOUT AN AUTHORIZED MANIFEST OR CARRIER CLEARANCE. WEAPONS LOCK CONFIRMED ON YOUR PROPULSION CORE. CUT ALL THRUST IMMEDIATELY AND REMAIN STATIONARY FOR INTERDICTION. ANY CHANGE OF VECTOR OR WEAPONS DISCHARGE WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE!"

Harper’s hands froze five centimeters over the turret controls.

"Lock from all twelve stations, Cap..." she breathed. "Their proton batteries are cycling. If those fire, our plates won’t even slow the beam down... They’ll punch straight through the prow and cook us in our seats."

"Don’t touch the turret, Harper," Elena said from the engineering console, calm on the surface while her knuckles went white on the capacitor rail. "One stray signature from our weapon mount and their fire-control systems will read it as an attack... Stand down."

"The grid is really strong," Aoi said, back in the cartography pit with her silver rings spinning in tight anxious circles. "There are no blind spots between the platforms, Leo... Their firing arcs overlap across every degree of the approach."

"If they fire," Jin-Ah said very quietly, with her eyes locked on her slate, "impact will occur in approximately zero point four seconds."

"Thanks, Jin-Ah," Harper hissed. "Super helpful... Love that for us."

Camila had both hands clasped under her chin, and her lips were moving silently.

Chloe moved from the hatch to stand right behind the throne and put one small cold hand on Leo’s shoulder.

Leo kept his hands still in the crystal cradles.

’Easy... don’t twitch. Don’t even think about Starfall.’

Between his shoulder blades, the guide was completely calm, humming with the deep warmth that meant the way ahead was open.

’It’s not worried... So I’m not worried, I trust her.’

Thirty meters off the starboard wing, the Mirage flared into motion.

FLASH!

With a snarling burst of lilac plasma from all six thrusters, the purple interceptor carved a brilliant arc across the void, cut straight through the targeting beams and planted its needle prow fifteen meters ahead of the Wanderer-7’s cockpit.

Its delta wings flared wide and caught the sunlight like a banner, and its dorsal array broadcast a high-priority transponder sequence that washed over the whole planetary network in an avalanche of gold-tier security codes.

BZZZZZT-CLICK!

Vexa’s voice cut into the planetary emergency frequency with effortless and completely arrogant authority.

"Nexus Control, this is Tier-A Flight Champion Vexa Tarn! Registration Alpha-Zero-Nine-Three-Thyrra! The Neon Phantom of the Core Nebula! Stand your little guns down before you scratch my escort’s paint!"

She didn’t wait for an answer.

"I’m exercising my Tier-A unrestricted corridor clearance! The ship on my stern is the Wanderer-Seven, a private recovery craft under my personal escort and protection, inbound from Sector Delta-Nine... Drop your firing locks and open Lane Four straight to the Registry Spire, or I’ll personally drag your Port Director down to the racing circuits and make him eat my exhaust for three laps! Clear the board!"

Silence fell over the radio band.

For three agonizing heartbeats, the whole bridge watched the huge proton barrels on Platform Three adjust their elevation by a fraction of a millimeter.

’Come on... come on...’

Then the tone of the planetary frequency changed completely.

CHIME-CHIME-CHIME!

The harsh metallic voice of the defense grid vanished, and in its place came the flustered, breathless and extremely polite voice of a senior traffic controller.

"P-Platform Three acknowledging transponder Alpha-Zero-Nine-Three... Champion Tarn! Our arrays failed to reconcile your escort vector with the incoming signature! We apologize most profusely for the delay, Champion! Your credentials are fully validated across all twelve platforms!"

PING-PING-PING!

On Jin-Ah’s slate, the twelve crimson reticles vanished at once and turned into twelve calm blue clearance markers.

Across the void, a wide corridor opened through the defense shell, marked by floating sapphire beacons that led toward a needle-shaped orbital station rising out of the upper atmosphere like a spire of polished diamond.

"Lane Four is cleared for Champion Tarn and registered escort," the controller stammered eagerly. "Proceed directly to Registry Station One, Mooring Ring Alpha... Welcome home to Nexus-Prime, Champion!"

CLICK!

The Mirage rolled over in a slow showy victory roll and banked away to lead them down the sapphire lane.

BZZZZZT-CLICK!

"Did you hear him?!" Vexa squealed over the private channel, and her tail was thumping so hard it sounded like a drum. "’We apologize most profusely, Champion!’ I bet he spilled his drink all over his console! I told you, Leo! I told you you’d need me to get in!"

"You did," Leo said, and he was grinning. "Thanks, Vexa... really."

"Hehe... you’re welcome!" She giggled. "Now follow me, and don’t you dare fall behind!"

Harper let out a long ragged whistle and slumped back in her seat, wiping cold sweat off her forehead.

"Well, damn... I guess being a galaxy-famous racing superstar actually counts for something... Those three-kilometer war platforms just tucked their tails between their legs and said sorry."

"A Tier-A racing title in the Five Merchant Houses carries the diplomatic weight of a minor ambassador," Elena said, and her shoulders finally relaxed as she straightened her jacket. "Her credentials have saved us from an exceptionally untidy engagement."

She paused.

"Though her rhetoric remains predictably undignified."

"Untidy?" Harper snorted. "Princess, we were about to get cooked..."

"Precisely," Elena said. "Untidy."

Leo let out a quiet laugh through his nose with his eyes on the purple needle leading them in.

"Let’s get docked before somebody changes their mind."

Registry Station One hung sixty kilometers above the planet’s largest ocean, a huge wheel of polished glass and gleaming white ceramic.

CLANK-WHIRRR-HISS!

The Wanderer-7 settled smoothly into Mooring Cradle Twelve, and the boarding tube reached out from the gantry and sealed against the starboard airlock.

In the next berth, the Mirage was already resting in Cradle Eleven, and a little crowd of station technicians had pressed their faces to the observation windows to get a look at the Neon Phantom’s ship.

Leo unbuckled, stepped down from the throne and fixed the collar of his black shirt.

"Harper, Elena, Jin-Ah, with me," he said. "Aoi, you hold the bridge with Camila and Chloe... Keep life support on closed-circuit and keep the capacitors primed on low draw. Nobody crosses that airlock except us."

Aoi gave him a calm nod from the cartography table.

Chloe looked up from the mezzanine step with her mug of lemon water held in both sleeves and watched him go with unblinking eyes.

"Bring him back," she told Harper.

"Always do, kid," Harper said, and ruffled her hair on the way past. "Keep the kettle warm for us, yeah? This won’t take long... probably."

Chloe nodded once, very seriously, and went back to watching him.

HISS-PULL!

The ramp extended, and Leo led the three of them through the tube into the main registry concourse.

The terminal had soaring ceilings of vaulted crystal looking down over the blue ocean far below, and polished white marble floors that reflected the soft glow of the light strips.

Thousands of off-world merchants, feathered diplomats and many-limbed trade agents strolled along wide promenades lined with luxury shops and floating exchange boards, and the air smelled clean and faintly floral.

Harper stopped dead in the middle of the walkway with her mouth open.

"Cap... the floor’s shiny," she whispered. "Like, the actual floor. People walk on that."

Elena took her by the elbow and towed her on without a word.

Behind them, Jin-Ah walked with the steel lockbox hugged tight against her chest in both arms, and her eyes kept darting at every stranger who came within three meters.

"There are approximately four thousand three hundred individuals in this rotunda," she muttered to Leo, "and I don’t trust a single one of them."

"...Nobody’s taking the box, Jin-Ah."

"Statistically, someone always tries," she said, and hugged it tighter.

Waiting right outside the gantry, leaning against a fluted pillar with her arms crossed over her white racing suit, was Vexa.

Her wild purple hair was bouncing loose around her face, and her pink tail started sweeping wide excited arcs across the marble the second she saw Leo coming.

CLACK-CLACK-CLACK!

"Look at you, Captain Handsome!" she giggled, and bounced over to his side. "You made it past the big scary guns! I told you my name would open the door... Come on, the customs desk is right over here! Let’s get your papers stamped so we can go down to the surface!"

She grabbed his wrist in her white glove and tugged him toward a huge curved counter of polished black stone in the center of the rotunda.

Behind it sat a tall slender official with smooth pale blue skin, four vertical slit nostrils and sweeping silver crest-horns curving back over his hairless skull, wearing the gold-embroidered robes of the Nexus Customs Directorate.

He looked up, and his pale yellow eyes narrowed as he took in three human women in plain working clothes, a young man with long dark hair and an unaligned sun-stone pendant, and the Neon Phantom of Thyrra bouncing on her heels beside them.

"Ah... Champion Tarn," he said, with polite formal deference. "We received word of your unscheduled arrival on Lane Four. We trust your transit was satisfactory?"

"Fabulous! Best flight of my life!" Vexa declared, leaning over the counter with her chin in her hands. "I’ve got a private hull docked in Cradle Twelve, the Wanderer-Seven! They need full entry authorization, an open descent corridor and private docking clearance for Sector Four!"

The clerk tapped his terminal and pulled up the corvette’s scans, and his silver crest-horns twitched in immediate disapproval.

"An unaligned Tier-1 assault chassis. Seven uncertified slate battleplates welded along the frame. An active twin-barrel rail-turret... and zero registration with any of the Five Merchant Houses."

"Uncertified?" Harper muttered under her breath, bristling. "I welded those plates myself. They’re perfectly certified... by me."

"Hush, Bell," Elena whispered without moving her lips. "Let the man finish insulting us. It’ll be over faster..."

He looked at Leo, and his voice went flat and icy.

"Under the customs ordinances of Nexus-Prime, an unregistered combat-capable hull seeking descent clearance must pay the mandatory foreign entry tariff... The fee is non-negotiable and non-refundable, and must be paid in certified physical currency before your flight beacon is released."

He tapped the black stone, and a glowing crimson figure rose above the counter.

[Vessel: Wanderer-Seven (Unregistered Tier-1 Armed Corvette)]

[Entry Tariff: 15,000 Zuni]

[Payment: Physical currency only]

’Fifteen thousand,’ Leo thought, and felt the weight of the lockbox in Jin-Ah’s arms behind him. ’Almost three-quarters of everything we’ve got... Okay. That’s what we came here for.’

Fifteen thousand Zuni.