Chapter 5: Cerberus Station
He led her down a wide service corridor, its walls lined with nutrient dispensers and faded safety placards in languages she didn’t know. The dock, he explained as they walked, was technically “corporate neutral territory.” It meant, he said, that while Seven Star Sycorax or Helios Consolidated vessels dominated different wings, here at the airlock transfer hubs, everyone paid a universal tariff to Cerberus Outpost itself. The syndicate enforced its peace with algorithmic brutality and armed patrols with bland, polished armor. Security was mercenary but meticulous. For a price.
“Our cargo goes to a Helios tech-branch contractor on the third quadrant,” Jax said, his voice a low rumble against the ambient noise. He glanced down at her. “My contact is Belen Riggs. Don’t smile too much at her. She hates corporate types, thinks it’s insincere. Be polite, answer if she asks you something directly, otherwise just look… bored.”
“Looking bored I can manage,” she said, pulling the cap lower. Her heart thrummed with a new kind of excitement. This was real. She wasn’t Rina Solis here, daughter of anything. She was Katie, crew on a ship. The fiction was thin, but it held.
The walk was long, transitioning from the raw, high-ceilinged docks into progressively more finished sectors. The greasy mist gave way to circulated air that smelled faintly of disinfectant and polymer. The cargo pallets were replaced by people in station-worker jumpsuits, their expressions preoccupied. Signs glowed in Galactic Standard, pointing to habitation rings, commissaries, medical. Jax didn’t consult any of them; his path was memory.
Finally, they entered an administrative sector. The difference was stark. The sounds of industry were muted behind sound-dampening panels. The lighting was a sterile, even white. The floor was a scuffed but clean composite. At the end of a hallway of identical grey doors stood a polished steel counter. Behind it sat a woman who looked carved from tungsten.
Belen Riggs had a sharp, ageless face, her dark hair pulled into a severe knot. Her hands, resting on the countertop, were long-fingered and utterly still. She wore the simple grey tunic of a Helios logistics officer, but no insignia. Her eyes, a pale, watery blue, tracked them as they approached, settling first on Jax with a flicker of recognition, then lingering on Katie with detached assessment.
“Garrison.”
“Belen.”
“Manifest syncs. Your transponder pinged clean. No contraband flags.” Her voice was flat, efficient. She slid a dataslate across the counter. A pale blue line glowed where a signature was required. “Thumbprint here. Authorization code is pre-loaded.”
Jax pressed his thumb to the slate. It chimed softly. He didn’t look at it. “Everything on schedule?”
“The recipient unit is prepped. Dock Seventeen, Bay Nine. Loading window opens in ninety station minutes. It will be a robotic load. Your presence is not required, but sensor confirmation is.” Her eyes drifted back to Katie. “This is new.”
“Katie. She’s riding along for the cycle. Earns her keep.”
Belen’s gaze felt like a biometric scan. “Identification?”
Before Katie could even stiffen, Jax gave a low chuckle. “C’mon, Belen. She’s with me. You want me to file a crew-acquisition form? I’ll do it, but it’ll gum up your throughput for a week while they process why a solo hauler suddenly needs a partner.”
A micro-expression of distaste crossed Belen’s face. Paperwork was the true enemy. She looked back at Katie. “You understand the liability waivers associated with non-registered personnel on a licensed freighter during a corporate contract run?”
Katie met her gaze, keeping her own carefully neutral, a little tired. “He explained it.”
“Hm.” Belen’s attention returned to the slate. She tapped it, and a new line appeared. “Secondary witness, then. Thumbprint here, confirming you are aboard the Marauder of your own volition, understand the risks, and are not an employee, agent, or affiliate of Helios Consolidated or its subsidiaries.”
Katie walked forward. She could feel Jax, a solid presence just behind her shoulder. She placed her thumb on the cool glass. A tiny light scanned her print. She willed her hand not to shake. It didn’t.
The slate chimed again.
“Processing,” Belen said. She made a small, definitive gesture with two fingers, swiping something intangible into a ledger. “Done. Funds will be released to your account upon verified delivery. Dock Seventeen. Do not be late. The window is precise.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jax said, a grin in his voice that didn’t reach his eyes. He turned, a hand coming up to guide Katie gently by the elbow, a touch that was both possessive and protective. “We’ll be out of your air.”
They were twenty paces down the hall when Katie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The air felt suddenly easier to inhale.
“See?” Jax murmured, his hand dropping from her elbow. “Boring. The most dangerous part of this job is dying of sheer tedium.”
“She didn’t like me.”
“She doesn’t like anyone. That’s why she’s good at her job. And why we got through it clean.” He glanced at her. “You did fine. That bored look?Perfect. You looked like you’ve been signing your life away since you were weaned.”
A strange warmth blossomed in her chest at the offhand praise. It was better than any of the accolades her tutors had ever given her.This was earned. They walked back the way they came, the rhythm of their steps falling into sync.
“Ninety minutes,” she said. “What now?”
“Now,” he said, pushing through a heavy door that led back into the louder, grittier commerce ring, “we eat something that didn’t come from a recycler. And I get a real coffee. Cerberus might be a glorified filing cabinet, but the promenade has a stall run by an old Belt miner who knows his beans.”
The promenade was a different kind of chaos. It was a cramped, circular thoroughfare lined with kiosks—vendors selling tool parts, off-the-grid nutrient pastes, dubious pharmaceuticals, genuine liquor, cheap VR sims. The crowd was a mosaic of species and stations: grizzled haulers, techs on break, sharp-eyed traders, and the ever-present, silently gliding patrol drones hovering near the ceiling. A tapestry of smells washed over them—fried protein, machine lubricant, ozone, unfamiliar spices.
Jax led her to a recessed kiosk emitting the rich, bitter scent of roasting coffee. An old man with a face like fissured rock nodded at Jax, wordlessly preparing two black ceramic mugs. Jax passed one to Katie. The heat was immediate through the material.
They found a small, unoccupied ledge overlooking a lower freight rail line. They sat, their shoulders almost touching. Katie sipped the coffee. It was astonishingly good, deep and smoky, with none of the synthetic aftertaste of ship-board brew.
For a few minutes, they just watched the flow of the station. Katie felt a peculiar sense of peace, a lull in the constant hum of her own anxiety. Here, in this anonymous, grimy, vital place, she was invisible. She was free.
“So,” Jax said, breaking the comfortable silence. He nodded towards a pair of young haulers roughhousing near a parts vendor until a patrol drone emitted a low warning tone and they scattered. “Still think running away was a good idea?”
She looked down into her coffee, watching the oily sheen on its dark surface. The memory of her father’s study—the cold titanium desk, the projected star charts of corporate expansion—felt like something from another life. “Yes.”
He was quiet for a moment. “It’s not all like this. There are runs where you don’t see another soul for weeks. Where the silence gets so deep it starts to talk to you. And ports that make Cerberus look like a luxury resort. Places where people like Belen Riggs are the polite ones.”
“I know,” she said, and she found she meant it. The naivete was being scoured away, hour by hour, replaced by a dawning, gritty understanding. She looked at him, really looked at him in the uneven promenade light. The salt in his stubble, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes that spoke of squinting into distant stars, the sheer, worn solidity of him. He was her first real piece of this new world. “But it’s mine. This… mess. This noise. It’s mine. Not his.”
Jax held her gaze. His usual sardonic mask had slipped, revealing something quieter, more assessing. He saw not just a runaway heiress, but a woman steeling herself for a long, hard road. He gave a slow, barely perceptible nod.
“Alright then, Katie,” he said, using the name like a pact. He drained his cup and stood up, stretching. The movement pulled his jacket taut across his shoulders. “Let’s get back. We’ve got a load to watch, and then,” he paused, a hint of the old grin returning, “we’ve got a long, dark stretch to the Cygnus Void. You can start earning that keep by learning to read a passive scan array. It’s boring as hell, but it’ll keep you out of trouble.”
Katie smiled into her cup, the ceramic warm against her lip. The easy feeling between them felt new, a fragile bridge built over shared coffee and station grime. She let the silence stretch for a few more seconds, her violet eyes tracking the passing crowds, feeling the unique vibration of the station deck through her boots. "I can do even more.Much more. And you will like it," she said, turning to look at him with a teasing smile. She winked, her tongue briefly wetting her lips as her fingers brushed the back of his calloused hand resting on the ledge.
She was indeed teasing him and winning the round this time.
"If we stop by the market for groceries, I'll be able to cook some real and tasty food on the run. I’m guessing you live on rehydrated protein bricks."
He barked a laugh, a sharp sound that turned a few nearby heads. "Didn't know princesses can cook. Alright.Fine. Let's buy some food. But we're not making a detour. The provisioning strip is on the way to Dock Seventeen."
"Not all princesses can," she replied, hopping off the ledge. She caught his eye and stuck out her tongue. "Only the best ones."
The market was not a single place but a frenetic, improvised artery that spilled from the promenade into a wider service conduit. Makeshift stalls of welded mesh and scrap metal were lashed to the walls, their canopies a patchwork of stained tarps. The air grew thicker, warmer, laced with smells both tantalizing and alien.
She moved with a newfound confidence, her earlier station-nausea forgotten. She navigated the press of bodies with an instinct Jax wouldn't have predicted, her gaze analytical as she assessed produce piled in climate-controlled crates or sealed in clear polymer. She asked precise questions about origin and freshness in a language he only half-understood, her Galactic Standard taking on a fluent, technical cadge.
She bought a deep-purple root vegetable flecked with silver, something he’d only ever seen in freeze-dried form. She selected a wax-sealed brick of what looked like pale yellow cheese but was labeled as a fungal culture from Luyten’s hydroponic arcologies. She picked out dried Mycenean kelp that shimmered with a faint bioluminescence, sealed pods of what the vendor swore were real Terran olives preserved in brine, and a small, expensive vial of something simply labeled "Arcturan Umami Reduction."
He didn’t know the name for half of it and had never seen the other half. But she was confident and was paying from a sleek, discreet credit chit, so he just went on with it, carrying the growing collection of bags in silence. He watched the way she haggled, not for price, but for quality, her chin lifted in a way that spoke of a lifetime expecting the best. It was disorienting. She wasn’t playing at being a runaway. She was one. But her past was written in her choices, in the casual way she assessed luxury the station barely afforded.
"That's everything," she announced finally, her arms laden with bags that smelled of herbs and unfamiliar spices. "Let's not keep your pal Belen waiting."
The Mag-Lev cargo pallet was already sealed and locked to the Marauder’s aft dorsal hardpoint when they arrived at Dock Seventeen, a hulking rectangle of polymer and composite silently waiting. It made their shopping look pathetically domestic. A dockworker in a grimy exoskeleton suit glanced at a wrist-slate, nodded at Jax, and handed him the final authorization link. Jax pressed his thumb to it, a green light flashed on the pallet, and the business was done.
They cycled through the Marauder’s airlock, the familiar thunk and hiss of home. The cramped airlock dumped them directly into the ship’s tight main corridor. They shuffled sideways, laden with bags, heading for the small galley alcove just past the cockpit ladder.
The inner pressure door to the crew quarters and galley should have sighed open automatically. It didn’t. A red indicator light blinked stubbornly on its control panel.
"Ah, hell," Jax muttered. He set his bags down with a rustle. "Glitch in the servo. Hold these."
Katie piled the bags against the wall, creating a soft barricade of luxury groceries. Jax edged past her, his body brushing against hers in the narrow space. The scent of his skin, coffee and station-metal, cut through the smell of their purchases. He braced a foot against the opposite wall for leverage, his fingers prying at a recessed maintenance panel beside the door.
"Sometimes the magnetic seal just gets a little too enthusiastic after a dusty dock stay," he grunted. "Just needs a manual—"
He heaved. A sharp, sickening pop echoed in the cramped space, more felt than heard through the soles of their feet.
He jerked back, sucking a sharp breath through his teeth. His left arm dropped, hanging loose at his side for a second before he brought his right hand up to clamp his own shoulder. His face, momentarily visible as he turned, was pale beneath the stubble, eyes squeezed shut.
"I'm okay," he said, voice strained. The door, obedient now, slid halfway open and jammed on its track, leaving a gap just wide enough to squeeze through single-file. "Tweaked my shoulder. Muscle spasm. Stupid."
Their mountain of bags now filled the tiny vestibule. There was no space. To get through, they had to pass the bags through the gap, then each other. Their bodies were constantly rubbing, pushing, pressing. His injured shoulder bumped the doorframe; she felt the flinch he tried to suppress. Her back slid against his chest as she maneuvered a bag through; her hip grazed his thigh. The contact was inevitable, clumsy, and charged with a sudden, sharp awareness of injury and proximity. The air grew warmer, thicker than the station's.
Finally, they were both through, the groceries piled on the small galley table. Jax rotated his shoulder slowly, wincing.
"Let's get locked in," he said, his voice tight. "Gotta get us moving."
He climbed the ladder to the cockpit stiffly, favoring his left side. Katie followed, her earlier triumph tempered by a pang of concern she didn't know how to voice. The cockpit was dim, illuminated only by the console glow and the infinite black framed by the viewport. Cerberus Outpost hung in the distance, a gilded scab of light against the void.
Jax settled into the pilot's cradle, movements stiff. His fingers danced across the console with practiced, if pained, efficiency. "This haul will be long: three hours to the next gate, but after we exit it, five days with no docking. We'll reach Nolan Station on the morning of the sixth standard cycle, if all goes well." He initiated the undocking sequence. A low thrum vibrated through the hull as the magnetic clamps released. "We'll stay there for a cycle more. Sleep in normal beds for a change. Nolan’s fancy. It'll be to your liking."
She strapped into the navigator's seat, watching the station recede. The sprawling dock became a geometric cluster of lights, then a single bright speck, then was swallowed by the starfield. The ship slipped into the tranquilized river of the designated lane, heading for the jump-gate shimmering as a distant, silver thread. The console chimed softly with auto-pilot confirmation. The only sound was the deep, rhythmic hum of the ship’s core and Jax’s shallow breathing as he carefully flexed his aching shoulder.
She could see the pain in the rigid line of his neck. "Let me look at it," she said, unbuckling her harness.
He glanced at her, a weary amusement in his eyes. "You can do that as well, Princess? You're full of surprises. If only I knew, I would've started hauling runaway corporate daughters earlier."
She moved behind his seat. "You need to acquire a taste to know what girls are worth hauling and which are not," she said, her voice softer now, echoing their earlier jest but stripping it of its edge. "Even if they all are corporate. Shut up and take off your jacket."
He did, with difficulty. The shirt beneath was a simple grey thermoweave, damp with sweat along the spine. She stood behind him in the dim cockpit light. The console’s glow illuminated a topography of old scars and corded muscle. A long, pale line cut diagonally across his right shoulder blade. A cluster of pitted, small circles—micrometeoroid pockmarks?—marred the skin near his spine. His muscles were hard, defined by labor, not vanity, but knotted now with a fierce tension around the left scapula.
"Here," she said, not asking. Her thumbs found the rigid, seizing muscle at the top of his shoulder. He jerked at the first contact, then a low groan escaped him, part pain, part relief.
Her touch was confident, a knowledge born of expensive spa treatments and expert trainers, now applied with a focused, genuine intent. She worked the knot methodically, her fingers learning the landscape of his back, each scar a story she couldn’t read but could feel. She was fascinated by it all—the evidence of a lived life, a vulnerable topography usually hidden under layers of gruff demeanor and worn leather.
After several minutes of focused work on the acute injury, the muscle began to relent, softening under her relentless pressure. "Lie down," she instructed. "On your bunk. I can do the rest better there."
He didn't argue. In his small quarters, he lay face down on the narrow bunk. It left little space. She knelt beside him at first, working the length of his spine, her hands pressing deep into the hard ridges of his lower back. Then, for better leverage, she swung a leg over him, straddling his hips, her weight resting on her thighs against the sides of his waist. She was now riding him from the back, her knees pressed into the thin mattress.
Her hands moved in long, firm strokes from the base of his neck down to the waistband of his trousers. The intimate position was clinical in purpose but charged in reality. He was solid and warm beneath her. His breathing, which had been shallow and controlled, deepened into long, slow exhalations. Her own breath hitched as she felt the sheer mass of him, the heat that radiated through the thin fabric separating them.
She could feel other tensions besides the injured muscle beginning to stir, a different kind of tightness coiling low in his body. She ignored it, or pretended to, focusing on the physical map of his back, on easing the pain she’d indirectly caused.
The cockpit console chimed softly, the sound piped into the room. A proximity alert. A smooth, synthesized voice announced, "Approaching Biegel Jump-Gate. Final lane alignment in ten minutes."
Her hands slowed. She leaned forward, her hair cascading to brush the skin beside his ear. Her lips, soft and warm, pressed a single, gentle kiss to the place where his shoulder met his neck, right over the newly-loosened muscle. She breathed the words against his skin.
"You should feel better now."
He was silent for a long moment. Then he turned his head slightly on the pillow, his profile sharp in the low light. His eyes were dark, the pain gone, replaced by something far more complex and alive.
He did feel better, on more fronts than one.
"Gate prep," he said, his voice a rough scrape. He shifted, and she slid off him, her own body humming with a transferred awareness. "Need to be at the helm."
He moved past her, back toward the ladder. His step was fluid again, the stiffness gone. He didn't look back. But the space between them in the small room had changed, charged with a finished massage and an unfinished conversation. The kiss hung in the air, a tangible, silent thing.
Katie sat on the edge of the bunk, the ghost of his body's heat still against her thighs. The ship’s gentle vibration thrummed up through the deck. She touched her own lips, staring at the empty space where he’d just been. The game had shifted. The playing field was gone.
The Marauder sped on, a tiny speck of light and life hurtling toward the silent, shimmering maw of the gate.