Mikaela's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Mikaela wanted to breed snakes for a living, and she needed a real home to do it. Her ship could not hold a proper rack of terrariums. It could barely hold her. The station had handed her a fourteen-page debt notice she disputed line by line, and until she cleared it, she could not buy the small cottage she had found and priced. She had counted every group that tried to ground her. This station was the newest name on that list. She stood in the empty cottage now, keys borrowed from the seller for one hour. Wooden shelves lined the walls. Carved lizards climbed the porch posts outside. It was built for exactly what she wanted. The seller would take a deposit today or move on to the next buyer tomorrow. Mikaela had the cash for the deposit. She did not have the cash for the deposit and the disputed debt both. A voice called from the doorway. "Okay so, this place is very you." Luna Chen leaned against the frame, teal and pink hair pushed off her face, ankle bracelets clicking as she stepped inside. She was Mikaela's client. Mikaela had agreed to fly her to a decommissioned orbital station before a corporation wiped a file with Luna's mother's name on it. Luna picked up hard skills without being taught, and she had four backup plans she had never bothered to read. "You can't afford it," Luna said. It was not a question. "Not with the debt hanging on my dock clearance," Mikaela said. "They freeze my ship, I fly nobody. Not you either." Luna crossed to the wall of shelves. She ran a finger along a mounting bracket, then crouched and studied the power ports near the floor. "So the station's billing system," she said. "It runs on the same old corporate framework as the one I'm trying to reach. Same junk. I've been reading it for weeks." "You said you didn't read your backup plans." "Different thing." Luna smiled. "Your fourteen pages. Show me." Mikaela pulled up the notice on her handset. Luna scrolled, thumb moving fast. She stopped twice, then tapped a line. "Here. They're billing you docking fees under a contract number that closed before you arrived. It's an autofill error. It repeats on nine of your pages." She looked up. "File one dispute against that number and the whole stack collapses." Mikaela read the line. Luna was right. She had disputed every page as separate. She had never seen the single thread holding them together. She filed it there, standing in the cottage. The station cleared her dock hold within the hour. She paid the seller the deposit before he reached the door. The cottage was hers. But the seller warned her the roof would not survive the next storm, and Luna's station data wipe was now three days out. Mikaela had a home and no time to fix it.