Xena's Arc

Chapter 1 of 13

Xena stood at the edge of the docking ring and watched the third captain that morning wave her off. Her sword hung heavy at her hip. Her leathers smelled of horse and smoke. Somewhere past the port's blue lights, on a mining moon she could not name yet, Seven of Nine was waiting, and Xena had sworn to find her and stand at her side. She had crossed half a world and a piece of the sky to get this far. She could not cross the rest on foot. A freighter crew laughed at her from their loading ramp. One of them tapped her scabbard and asked if she planned to hunt asteroids with it. She did not answer. She walked to the next berth, where a slim man in a black and red uniform was arguing with a customs drone about a crate. A raccoon in a blue-green shirt sat on the crate, chewing a ration bar. The man turned, saw her, and grinned like he had been waiting all shift for something interesting. "Tom Paris," he said. "You need a ride, or a fight?" "A ride," Xena said. "To the Vega mining belt." He looked her over. The sword. The leathers. The dust. "Can't take you like that," he said. "Port authority will pull my license before we clear the ring. No blades, no hides. Passengers wear cloth." Xena unbuckled the sword and set it on the crate beside the raccoon. The raccoon stopped chewing. Tom Paris raised an eyebrow. She pulled a bundle from her pack, a plain gray tunic she had taken in trade two nights back, and held it up. "I keep the blade in a case," she said. "I wear your cloth over the leathers. I pay in coin or work." He thought about it while the raccoon sniffed the pommel. Then he tossed her a crew jacket from the crate. "Cargo hand," he said. "Not passenger. Passengers get searched. Hands get waved through. You lift crates until Vega, and you keep the sword in a locker I show you." Xena pulled the jacket on over her leathers. It fit badly. It fit enough. She followed Tom Paris up the ramp with her sword wrapped in the gray tunic and the raccoon trotting behind her, and the hatch sealed behind them with a sound she had never heard before.