It was an ugly old station, hanging like a cast-off moon in the shadow of a gas giant—but in this moment, it was the most beautiful thing Mik had ever seen, because it was about to save her life.

Alarms blared and red lights flashed over the console: Life support offline. Total system failure.

“I know, I know,” Mik chanted, gripping the controls. Like everything else, autopilot was offline, so she had to steer manually as she approached the station. The ship—a planet-hopper not designed for long jumps between systems—shuddered around her, threatening to come apart.

“We’re almost there. Just hang on a little longer for me—” She tasted blood in her mouth, and she was pretty sure most of it was hers.

At a glance, Mik could tell this station was older, probably constructed 40 or 50 years ago. Sprawling, domed stations like this had long since gone out of style.

Her nav system stuttered and blinked: Neb Orlis Mall and Diversion Station. Must be a shopping complex, the kind that catered to travelers stopping off for fuel and supplies on their way through the system. Mik hadn’t seen one of these in a long time. They went out of fashion years ago.

“This is the Kono, requesting permission to dock,” she said into the comm, in Volis, the pidgin trade language common in this sector.

A subdued voice answered in the same language:

“NOMAD Station Control to Kono, we’re picking up multiple system failures on your vessel. Do you need a tow?”

“Negative, I can bring her in myself.” She hoped so, at least. “Repeat, requesting permission to dock.”

The traffic controller seemed to consider it. “Permission granted,” he replied at last. “Beaming docking codes now.”

Together, Mik and the Kono limped to the spaceport. When the docking clamps were in place, she knew the worst of the danger had passed, but she felt no relief. She just patted the console and hauled herself out of the cramped cockpit.

Mik walked stiffly onto the dock, struggling to keep her gait even as pain radiated through her right hip.

Shocked-looking port workers immediately converged on the ship. Only when they began hosing it down with pale blue fire-retardant foam did Mik realize the back end was billowing smoke, tongues of flame licking at the plentiful oxygen.

In that moment, Mik seemed to be the only person standing still. Around her, the port was bustling, a riot of color and motion, the air full of the many-layered clamor of alien languages.

The bays were layered in the spaceport, stacked three or four deep, each level connected by a nervous system of lifts and catwalks. The bay directly below this one was occupied by a light freighter, while the one above was empty. Glancing around, Mik gauged the port to be at less than half capacity, maybe even a third.

Foam was still slopping off the sides of the ship when one of the port workers approached her. He was human, like Mik, maybe in his twenties. Almost as tall as she, he was reedy-looking, with red-brown skin and deep-set, dark eyes.

A mechanic, she guessed, based on his stained coveralls, as well as the engine grease worn into the lines of his hands. The name NEAL was stitched onto the breast of his coveralls, dull yellow against gray-green fabric.

He gave Mik a wary look, slowing his steps. That was probably because she hadn’t yet washed the blood off her face.

“I don’t know what you did to this ship,” Neal said at last, in Volis. Mik hadn’t heard an accent quite like his before. She couldn’t guess where he might be from.

“But you don’t won’t be taking it out any time soon. I’m surprised you didn’t blow apart before you got here.”

Mik was probably more shocked than he was. By some miracle, the shot to the rear engine hadn’t disabled the ship. She managed the jump from Gallim II after things went sideways, setting a frantic, sloppy course for the nearest system, which happened to be this one, Izar.

The stress of FTL (faster than light) had almost crumpled the hull, but she made it. They did it together, she and Kono. Now that she’d made it this far, she just had to hope that she wasn’t pursued.

“You do repairs, right?” she asked the mechanic.

His thick eyebrows arched. “It’d cost you more to patch it up than the whole ship is worth,” he said. “Look, if you want my professional opinion, I’d sell it for scrap and hitch a ride out of here. You can get the money today. We don’t get a lot of passenger vessels coming through, but you could probably find a freighter willing to—”

“No,” Mik said, so sharply that Neal blinked in surprise. “I’m not selling my ship.”

She couldn’t. Kono was the only thing in the galaxy that was hers, even if she’d started as someone else’s. If she lost the ship, then she really wouldn’t have anything.

Neal sighed through his nose. He gave her a look, soft-eyed: not quite pity, but something closer to understanding. “Well, the docking fee is one-hundred-fifty credits per week.”

“For one shuttle bay?” Mik balked. “That’s ridiculous—”

“I don’t make the rules, okay? You can pay or you can leave—but since you can’t leave, they’ll seize your ship if you don’t cough up the credits.”

Mik didn’t agree, nor did she argue. It amounted to the same thing.

“They’ll patch you into the station’s power, no extra charge,” Neal added, like he thought that might her feel better. It didn’t. “Anyway, you’ll have to register with the station. You got a manifest?”

“Yeah.” The ship’s serial number wasn’t original, but Mik did good work. She’d never been caught before, and she doubted the employees on an aging station in the ass-end of space would be looking too closely.

“Any… sensitive cargo?” Neal tipped his head a little, eyebrows raised.

Mik recognized that look; she saw it all the time when she was running with the Blues. There must be a syndicate on this station, and this was her cue to pay them off if she wanted to move any smuggled goods through their turf, unnoticed by port authorities.

“No,” she said simply, because she lost anything really valuable back on Gallim II, before she made a break for it. “I’ll get you the manifest.”

She was looking at Neal with new eyes as she spoke. She hadn’t noticed any gang symbol on him before, whether a tattoo or some item of clothing, but that didn’t mean he was unaffiliated.

She had a brand of her own, of course: The indigo crescent moon inked into the skin at the nape of her neck, usually covered by her shirt collar or her hair. The symbol was unlikely to mean anything to anyone in this part of space, she thought, but better to keep it hidden.

A little later, at the processing center, she let the dull-eyed worker behind the desk scan her freshly-made identifying documents. They were “issued” in another system, which Mik could use to explain any irregularities—but either the documents passed muster, or the worker didn’t care.

It was almost painful for Mik to hand over her chip, knowing 150 credits were about to be drained from it. She had so few to begin with, and none to spare.

But the high price bought her a week—to recover, to get Kono flying, to figure out what in the twelve hells she was going to do next.

She needed to scope out her options.

As she made her way into the station proper, Mik stepped around travelers who’d just disembarked their ships, exploring what the station had to offer while they waited for their ships to refuel or their transport to come in. If only Mik were in their shoes.

Mik passed shops and small eateries, most of them obvious tourist traps. One sign caught her eye, however: “MOONRISE,” spelled out in glowing letters, hanging above the entrance of a small cafe.

An employee who interacted with the public might have some idea of the station’s makeup, Mik thought—the kind of business that was done here, and the people who did it. Even if the barista wasn’t inclined to share, Mik could sit down for a minute and gather her thoughts over something to drink.

She opened the door.