Mace's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Mace Holt had eleven hours of fuel and no port that would take him. His ship showed as destroyed in the Void Return registry, a lie he never fixed and now couldn't outrun. Every legal dock scanned his hull, flagged the ghost, and sent patrol boats. So he drifted between stations, hungry, running dry, chasing the one thing that could clear his name: proof the registry was wrong. He needed intel. Intel needed docking. And docking needed a name he didn't have. He pointed the ship at the only place that didn't ask questions. The Black Market Trade Hub & Bar hung in the dark like a rusted lantern, its wooden face patched with scrap and strung with faded awnings. No scanners here. No patrols. Just traders who took anything but questions. Mace tallied his cargo on the way in. Two crates of filtration coils. A box of Atlas Currency thin enough to see through. Not enough for fuel and food both. The bar swallowed him in smoke and low voices. He found the botanist at a corner table, a gaunt woman in a soil-stained coat. She hunched over a sealed glass case. Inside, green leaves pressed against the glass, alive. Mira Roane. He'd heard she traded cuttings for passage because nobody else in Void Return grew anything. "You're the dead man," she said, not looking up. "The one whose ship still flies." "Fuel and supplies," Mace said. "I've got coils and coin. I need a name inside the registry office. Someone who moves records." Mira turned the case in her hands. "I don't sell names. I sell passage." Her eyes lifted. "Get me and my plants off this station, somewhere with soil. Do that, and I'll fill your hold. Fuel. Food. A full run." Mace weighed it. Passage cost him nothing he didn't already burn. "Done." A chair scraped behind him. A man in stained grey combat armor dropped into the seat uninvited. Headphones clamped his ears, welded there, thumping faint music. He grinned like the whole place was a joke only he understood. "Moss Fegan," he said. "I do security. And she's not going anywhere until she pays what she owes the men who own this floor." He nodded at two figures rising near the door. "They flagged your ship on the way in, by the way. Bounty's live now. Legal ports, black ports, all of them." Mace's stomach dropped. His only safe harbor had just become a trap. "But," Moss said, leaning close, "I like long odds and short flights. Get us all out before they lock the docks, and I'll cover your back the whole way." Mace looked at the botanist, the grinning operator, the men closing in. He'd come for fuel and a name. He was leaving with a crew and a bounty. "Then we move," Mace said, "now."