Chapter 123: A Strange Feeling

Before Leo could even turn toward the lockbox in Jin-Ah’s arms, Vexa moved.

"Oh, fifteen thousand? Is that all?" she chirped, with an airy wave of her hand.

She dipped into the breast pocket of her racing suit, pulled out a sleek triangular token of polished black crystal stamped with the gold crest of the Thyrrian Grand Circuit and slapped it down flat on the counter.

CLINK!

"Here you go, horn-face!" she beamed, nudging it toward the clerk with one finger. "Put it on my private purse! Clear their tariff, give them their shiny beacon and stamp their hull as an authorized affiliate of the Tarn estate... All settled!"

The clerk’s yellow eyes widened at the sight of an unrestricted Tier-A debit key, and he reached for it.

SLAP!

Leo’s hand came down on the counter flat over the crystal token and stopped the clerk’s fingers a centimeter short.

The sharp clap of skin on stone echoed across the quiet rotunda as the clerk froze with his fingers hovering in mid-air and his crest-horns twitching.

"Sir," he said stiffly, "I must ask you to remove your hand from the Champion’s property."

"In a second," Leo said, without looking at him.

Vexa blinked up at him in total bewilderment. "Leo? What are you doing? Let him take it... it opens the gate!"

"Take your card back, Vexa," Leo said, low and flat.

Her pointed ears twitched, and she tilted her head in genuine confusion.

"Why? It’s just fifteen thousand Zuni! I make that in two minutes running a qualifying sprint on the High-Orbit Rings... It doesn’t mean anything to me!"

"It means something to us," Harper snapped.

She stepped up right at Leo’s elbow with her grey-blue eyes blazing and her fists clenched at her sides.

"We’re not your charity case, cat-girl! We didn’t spend weeks choking on asteroid dust, digging platinum out of a monster’s guts with our bare hands and taking rail-fire from pirate gunboats just so some rich racing idol could pay our way through the front door like we’re a box of stray puppies you picked up off the road!"

"Harper is correct," Elena said, stepping up beside Leo’s other shoulder with her arms folded and her chin lifted.

"A daughter of the Sterling line doesn’t accept financial patronage from a woman whose chief accomplishment is driving in circles... Letting an outsider pay our tariff would make the Wanderer-7 a client vessel, indebted to your purse. Our dignity is not an item on your household expense ledger."

"And from an administrative standpoint, it creates an untenable legal liability," Jin-Ah added, hugging the lockbox tighter. "If your key pays our tariff, Nexus Customs logs our vessel as a dependent of the Tarn estate... Under merchant law, that would give your estate salvage rights over our hull in any dispute. The debt would compromise our independence."

Vexa stared at the three of them with her mouth hanging open.

Her long pink tail shot straight up into the air with its tip bristling, and her hands flew to her hips.

"You’re all completely CRAZY!" she yelled, turning the heads of several passing merchants. "I’m not trying to buy your ship! I don’t want salvage rights on your seven stupid rusty plates! I’m trying to HELP you! I’ve got forty million Zuni sitting in three different banks, and you people are standing here crying about your pride over fifteen thousand little coins?! Why do you have to make everything so HARD?!"

She turned to Leo, and her big violet eyes were pleading.

"Leo, tell them they’re being ridiculous... It’s just money! Let me pay it!"

Leo slowly lifted his hand off the counter and left her crystal token lying alone on the black stone.

He looked down into her wide shining eyes and saw nothing in them but honest confusion.

’She really doesn’t get it,’ he thought. ’She’s never had to fight for a single coin in her whole life... and she’s genuinely just trying to be nice.’

"You don’t understand, Vexa," he said gently. "Where we come from, when everything broke, we lost our homes... We lost our families. We lost our sky. The only things we’ve got left out here are what we build with our own hands and what we earn with our own blood."

He picked up her crystal token between two fingers, pressed it back into her white-gloved palm and closed her fingers over it.

"We don’t take charity," he told her. "We pay our own way... Always."

"But..." Vexa’s voice wobbled. "But I want to... I’m not doing it because I feel sorry for you, Leo... I’m doing it because I like you... All of you... Even the angry one."

"I know," Leo said gently. "And that’s exactly why I can’t let you."

Vexa’s face crumpled.

Her ears dipped back flat against her purple hair, and her tail sank slowly down until its tip lay on the marble while she looked at the token in her hand.

’I just wanted to help,’ she thought, and her throat went tight. ’That’s the only thing all that money’s ever been good for... and he doesn’t want it.’

Leo turned to Jin-Ah and gave her a single nod.

Jin-Ah stepped forward, set the heavy steel lockbox on the counter and released its twin magnetic latches.

CLACK-HISS!

The lid swung open on neat gleaming stacks of brass tokens stamped with the gear-and-asteroid seal of the Driftmark Mining Guild.

"Fifteen thousand Zuni," Leo said to the clerk, and his voice rang across the rotunda. "In certified Guild brass... Count it."

The clerk swallowed hard, nodded rapidly and swept the box with his optical scanner.

BEEP-CHIME!

[Nexus-Prime Landing Tariff: -15,000 Zuni]

[Treasury: 21,200 ? 6,200 Zuni]

[Descent clearance granted!]

Harper let out a long breath through her teeth as the brass slid away into the clerk’s drawer.

’Bye-bye, money,’ She thought. ’You were beautiful while you lasted...’

Vexa sidled over to Harper while the clerk was busy logging the brass, with her ears still drooping and her tail swishing nervously.

"Are you mad at me?" she asked in a small voice.

Harper looked at her for a long second.

"...No," she said finally, and scrubbed a hand through her messy hair. "You’re not a bad person, cat-girl. You’re just... rich. Like, stupid rich and it’s annoying."

"Sorry for being rich," Vexa said, very sincerely.

Harper snorted before she could stop herself, and Vexa’s tail gave a tiny hopeful wag.

Leo turned back to Vexa.

"We owe nobody, Vexa," he said softly, with a faint smile. "Not the Guild. Not the Federation... And not you."

His voice gentled even further.

"So when we stand next to you, it’s because we want to, not because you paid for it... You understand? That’s worth way more than any card."

Vexa stood frozen on the marble with the crystal token clutched against her chest.

She looked up at him in his patched black shirt with the sun-stone on his chest, and at the three women standing at his shoulders with their chins up.

’Every pilot I’ve ever met begged for my sponsorship,’ she thought, and her heart started hammering. ’Governors begged. Champions sold their souls to fly under my crest... and he just handed my money back and told me he’d stand next to me for free.’

A scalding pink blush swept up across her cheekbones and turned the tips of her pointed ears a glowing magenta, and her violet eyes went huge and shining as she stared at him.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Behind her, the tail that had been lying limp on the marble a second ago came alive and started wagging so hard that its tip drummed against the floor like an industrial drill.

’By the twin suns... he’s... he’s magnificent...’

Harper saw the blush and the tail, let out a loud suffering groan and folded her arms tight across her chest.

"Great... Now she looks like she wants to eat him with a spoon."

"Restrain yourself, Bell," Elena murmured, though she was watching Vexa’s tail with the wary expression of someone observing an unexploded shell.

"Her tail is moving at approximately four beats per second," Jin-Ah observed quietly. "It was at one point two a moment ago..."

"Don’t encourage her, Park," Elena said.

Vexa looked down at the token in her hand for a long moment then she tucked it slowly back into her breast pocket and patted it flat, and when she looked up again, her voice had gone small and thoughtful.

"Okay," she said. "Okay... I get it. I think."

She sniffed. "Nobody’s ever given my money back before. It’s a really weird feeling... I don’t hate it."

The clerk cleared his throat and tapped his terminal.

"The tariff is validated and logged," he said, sliding a small glowing entry beacon across the counter. "The Wanderer-Seven is authorized for sub-orbital transit. However..."

He looked up from his screen with his yellow eyes narrowing.

"...the landing tariff clears only the vessel’s hull. The seven individuals on your crew manifest remain classified as unregistered Seeded humans from an unaligned sector, and under Article Nine of the Interstellar Settlement Accord, unaligned refugees can’t receive spacefarer identification without an active filing protocol."

"Is there any other way?" Leo asked. "Any faster way?"

"A private residency bond would bypass the audit," the clerk said, without much interest. "Fifty thousand Zuni per individual, held in escrow for one standard year."

"Fifty thousand," Jin-Ah repeated faintly. "Per person. That’s three hundred and fifty thousand Zuni... We currently hold six thousand two hundred."

The clerk shrugged a thin blue shoulder.

Leo’s brow furrowed.

"Then what does the normal way take?"

The clerk spread his thin blue hands.

"Under standard immigration procedure, unaligned survivors must undergo a centralized biological and background audit. Processing through the provincial queue is currently running between four and six regular months, in the orbital holding dormitories... Unless..."

He glanced at Vexa, and his slit nostrils twitched.

"...unless you have a property-owning citizen of high standing willing to act as your formal residential sponsor and guarantee your filing under their own household charter. With a citizen sponsor, your IDs are issued immediately at the surface registry... Without one, you stay in the station’s transient quarters for now."

"Six months?!" Harper’s voice cracked. "In a dorm?!"

"Shared sanitation facilities," the clerk added helpfully, scrolling through his ledger. "Rationed hot water... Curfew at the twentieth bell. The dormitories are very... orderly."

Elena made a sound like a small kettle coming to the boil.

"And our ship?" Leo asked.

"Impounded in the station’s bonded hangars for the duration of your audit," the clerk said. "For safekeeping, of course."

’Safekeeping,’ Leo thought. ’Yeah, right... We’d never see her again.’

"At station rates, our balance covers forty-one days of air, water and berth fees," Jin-Ah said quietly, already running the numbers on her slate. "After that, the station starts auctioning impounded property to cover the shortfall... and the first thing they’d auction off is the ship."

"So we’d be broke, in a box, and then some rich guy buys our ship at auction," Harper said flatly. "Great. Love this planet..."

Elena said nothing, but her fingers tightened on the sleeve of her jacket until the fabric creased, and her face had gone the color of skimmed milk.

’A queue,’ she thought faintly. ’A Sterling... in a refugee queue... for six months...’

Without looking, Harper reached over and bumped Elena’s elbow with her own, just once, and Elena let her.

"Breathe, Elena," Jin-Ah murmured. "Your color is concerning..."

"I am breathing," Elena said through her teeth. "I am breathing with great dignity."

Behind them, nobody noticed that Vexa had gone completely still, or that her ears had slowly started to rise, one millimeter at a time, while a huge dangerous grin crept across her face.

"Ideas?" Leo said quietly, glancing at the three of them. "Anything?"

"We could sell the turret," Jin-Ah offered. "At current market rates, it would cover—"

"Over my dead body," Harper snapped. "Over my cold, dead, greasy body, Jin-Ah."

"It was only a suggestion, Harper. I wasn’t actually going to sell it..."

Leo’s jaw set very hard.

’The tutorial. The cylinder. That stupid frozen void... We’ve been locked in enough boxes already. I’m not putting them in another one, not for six months and not for six days.’

Then Vexa exploded into motion.

"A citizen sponsor?!" she squealed, throwing both hands into the air and leaping half a meter off the marble in completely unhinged glee.

She spun around to face Leo with her wild purple hair whipping across her shoulders and a dazzling fanged grin lighting up her whole face, while her tail whipped through the air in wide ecstatic loops.

"I’m a citizen! I’m a property-owning citizen of SUCH high standing! That’s not charity, that’s paperwork! You can’t say no to paperwork!" She was practically vibrating. "So come home with me first! All of you! I own twelve square kilometers of private highlands in Sector Four, it’s got gardens, it’s got thirty bedrooms and best of all..."

She leaned in close to Leo and winked with outrageous breathless delight.

"...my place has a private hangar big enough for both of our ships!"