30 C: Arrival

The beyonder scout passed through the center of the last receiving ring in a deceptively leisurely fashion. The impact of the last hard deceleration could be felt within the ship as clearly as the first, but the deceleration that tried to lift her out of her seat was nothing compared to the force of the acceleration that she'd endured during the maneuver that had catapulted her into first place.

An hour later Rafaela decided that part of the reason that passenger ships didn't travel the cargo system was the utter frustration of the slow crawl from the final ring to the station itself. She didn't have any alternative left though. Any maneuver the scout made at this point would have to come out of her air reserves.

Several hours passed as she coasted in on the dregs of her momentum just like a standard cargo pod would. Her patience was not improved by watching the tiny ship that had placed second zip past her, and then slow at the last minute as it slid neatly past the cargo area, beyond even the standard docks, to slide into place within the kind of large open bay that few stations maintained outside of a repair yard.

There was no longer any lag left in the free access streams that were still covering the Princess Race, and Rafaela's expression was rather sour as she listened to a cheerful voice inform her that the third place entrant, her stepsister Doris, had officially docked with Eks Central's C Station. A more thoughtful frown replaced the sourness as Rafaela pulled up the specs on the courier ship Elektra had obtained for her eldest daughter. Her memory hadn't deceived her, and by any reasonable calculation the courier ship should have run out of fuel before reaching the station. Her question was answered in the broadcast.

"Interestingly, a Nova Corp shuttle reportedly supplied fuel to one of the entrants backed by the SkyWater corporation. The young prince's impending marriage is certainly stirring up new alliances and fracturing old ones among the top corporations. And SkyWater, only a generation old, has certainly taken the race seriously. They backed three entrants, all of which managed to place in the top ten," the current speaker explained.

Rafaela felt the same startled feeling that she'd experienced when Elektra had announced that she'd acquired a ship for both of her daughters, and wondered if she'd been underestimating her stepmother's influence and capabilities because she'd only seen her in the isolated Cinder Sector. Nova Corp, like Eks Corp, was a name that everyone knew, but it would never have occurred to her in a million years to try to contact someone from Nova Corp to get more fuel.

She muted the stream when it went back to speculating about the mysterious "Cinderella", SkyWater's winning entrant, who was actually using the cargo ring system to reach C Station. She knew that listening to it might have prepared her for things people might be asking her soon, but it made her too uncomfortable because it pointed out that people were already watching her, even if all they could see was the surface of the scout which the broadcasters had been calling an 'innovative design'.

When the ship was finally caught by C Station's cargo docking system, Rafaela breathed a sigh of relief. Her initial excitement at placing first began to bubble up again. She'd won.

She wasn't surprised to see Eks Corp Security Officers waiting when she exited the airlock, although she hadn't expected six of them. She was quickly identified as the entrant 'Cinderella', and promptly, but politely escorted away from her ship. Each of the officers wore the X woven into their uniforms and flashed identity cards that glowed beneath their fingers.

The cargo area seemed rather quiet for such a large station, but she had arrived rather late in Eks Central's day cycle, so she asked, "Are most things closed for the day?" The four security officers who had accompanied her away from the scout exchanged glances with closed expressions that she couldn't read, and she added, "I didn't expect a docking area on a station this large to be so quiet."

One of the younger officers replied quickly, "Starting two days ago, the traffic queue on the automated cargo system was reduced by half for an entire week."

The others immediately nodded, but no one volunteered anything else as they led her into the inner corridors of the station. A thread of uneasiness worried at the back of her mind as the corridors quickly became smaller, and she came to a halt when they stepped through an unmarked doorway into what was obviously a service corridor.

The security officers didn't look surprised by her sudden stop, but none of them spoke up to reassure her about their destination and she demanded warily, "Where are we going?"

Her only answer was a spike of pain when the officer behind her left shoulder stabbed her with something. She reflexively elbowed him in the face and then kicked out at the woman in front of her, who started to reach toward her.

Their faces were shocked, almost comically so, even though Rafaela felt like she should be the one who was in shock. Her body responded as though it was on autopilot while her mind raced, as she caught an arm and smashed an officer's face into the service corridor wall. The spot where she'd been stabbed burned like it was on fire, and their attacks seemed clumsy and slow.

One of them shot her with a taser, but it must not have made proper contact because her thigh stung oddly but she was still able to reach out and knock the weapon out of the officer's hand. She knew that she couldn't let the others get a better shot and kicked out toward the next one as she spun.

She would have frozen in shock when she heard the crack of his neck, and the young man who'd answered her question about the quiet docking area slid bonelessly to the floor, but her body was already moving to block another blow to her face.

The silence of the fight scared her as much as anything else. No one said anything. No one ordered her to stop. No one asked why she was fighting them. The only sounds were coming from the blows they were exchanging, and for some reason they were still moving far too slowly.

She'd never had any combat training outside of the simple physical exercises that her mother had taught to both her and her father. She'd always thought that those were more like a dance than anything, even though she knew that they were from some kind of traditional martial art in her mother's home system. But her mind recognized the movements that her instincts were using to strike the Eks Corp Security officers.

A moment finally came when they were all down at once, and Rafaela turned and bolted through the door they'd entered the service corridor through. She ran as fast as she'd ever run in her life, even though her shoulder still burned, and her thigh was burning too. At first she ran back toward her ship, retracing the path they'd escorted her along, but a flicker of movement as a door opened ahead of her sent her darting down an unfamiliar corridor instead.