This Isn’t the Vargr You’re Looking For

Docking clamps hissed. The airlock clunked. The Morrigan sighed as if it already regretted stopping here.

Caitlin glanced at the fuel readout. “Two hours to refill. I want no crimes, no fires, no sudden debts. Look, I even wrote a list.”

Quinn peered at the scrap of paper taped to the airlock. “No crimes (even petty), no purchasing ‘just a monkey’, no sword duels, no overlords...”

“Hoverboards!” snapped Caitlin.

He tilted his head. “No snoit... no snoity car...? This is indecipherable.”

“Look! It is perfectly simple. No sword duels, no hoverboards...”

She paused, squinting to decipher her own writing. “…none of that! Or that. Or any of the others!”

Quinn nodded. Maltz was already halfway through the hatch.

“I said no…”

“I heard you!” Maltz called cheerfully. “I’m obeying the spirit of the rule!”

Caitlin scowled at his retreating tail. “I hate it when he starts talking like Cathbad.”

The air inside the station was suspiciously lemon-scented. Panels flickered like they couldn’t decide who to advertise to. The corridors were cramped, the gravity inconsistent, and the noodle carts smelt faintly weaponised.

Maltz loved it instantly.

He adjusted his goggles, sniffed the air, and grinned. Faint ozone, recycled sweat, and the unmistakable tang of fried noodles. Perfect.

He hadn’t made it ten steps before a vendor behind a steaming cart stiffened, eyes going wide.

“You... you came back.”

Maltz blinked. “Pardon?”

The man leaned closer, lowering his voice. “We heard rumours. Didn’t believe them. But it is you.”

“Right,” said Maltz cautiously.

A second vendor peeked from a nearby stall. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“No doubt about it,” said the first. “Same stance. Same ears. Same... aura.”

Maltz straightened. “I do have quite an aura.”

The first vendor shoved a drink into his paws. Spicy. Carbonated. Smoking slightly.

“On the house. For everything you did.”

Maltz hesitated. “Just to clarify, what exactly do you think I…”

“Your secret is safe,” said the vendor, eyes gleaming. “We don’t talk about it. Not here. Not after what happened at the gas rings.”

Someone behind Maltz gasped audibly. A third voice muttered, “His tail’s longer in person.”

He sipped the drink. It tasted like citrus and minor war crimes.

Behind him, the murmurs were spreading. People watching. Whispering. A few nodding respectfully. A child held up a toy blaster in a solemn salute.

Maltz turned slightly, adjusting his goggles.

He didn’t know who they thought he was.

But he liked him already.

---

Quinn was seated on a public bench one level above, legs precisely crossed, scanning a datasheet titled “Hydraulic Failures in Enclosed Environments”. His left eye twitched once.

He turned his head slightly.

On the concourse below, a pattern was forming. Whispered conversations. Glances passed like contraband. Several bystanders were pretending very hard not to look in the same direction. One even bowed to a vending machine in confusion.

Quinn blinked a soft diagnostic pattern. Subtle social heatmap. Cluster at grid 4B, spreading. Emotional register: reverent confusion, spiked by panic. Possible threat? Possible... celebrity?

He tapped his comm once. “Captain.”

“If this is about station docking fees again, I swear on my mother’s sainted bones…”

“It’s not. Maltz is attracting attention.”

A pause. “What kind of attention?”

Quinn glanced at the growing crowd, where a noodle vendor had just burned his own sleeve in excitement.

“The kind where everyone knows who he is… except him.”

---

Maltz was halfway through a complimentary curry bun when someone sidled up beside him.

“You shouldn’t be walking around unguarded.”

He turned. The speaker was a young woman, wearing mirrorshades and a pilot’s jacket three sizes too big. Her tone was reverent, but her hand never left the grip of her holstered pistol.

“Just taking a stroll?” Maltz offered.

She gave a tight nod. “Of course. Just didn’t expect you to be so bold. Not after the bounty.”

That gave him pause. “What bounty?”

The woman smiled thinly, as if he’d said something clever.

From the corner of his eye, Maltz saw a trio of figures peel off from the far wall. All armed. One with a metal case slung under his arm like it contained trouble and backstory.

The woman gently touched his shoulder. “You might want to get off-station. Sooner rather than later. Not everyone here remembers who you saved.”

She melted into the crowd before he could ask what she meant.

He looked down at his half-eaten bun. It suddenly seemed less celebratory.

Maltz turned in a slow circle, trying not to look hunted. The adoring looks had shifted. Still respectful, but... measured. Like people taking bets on how long he had left.

A shadow fell across his boots.

“There you are,” said Caitlin.

He looked up. She stood with arms folded, head tilted at an angle that implied concern, expertly disguised as menace.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she said. “The thing where people notice you and we have to leave.”

Maltz lifted his hands. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You never do. That’s the problem.”

She looked around, taking in the crowd. One man was discreetly filming. Another was slowly unsnapping a holster. Her smile narrowed.

“Alright, Mr. Famous. Time to go.”

“They think I’m someone else,” Maltz said quietly.

“Oh, I know.”

They walked quickly. Behind them, the buzz grew louder.

---

They rounded the corner into the hangar passage just in time to see the lights flicker red. A low klaxon moaned once, then gave up.

Three figures blocked the corridor ahead. Not station security. Wrong posture, wrong smiles. These were the kind of professionals who wore body armour under fashion and didn’t bother hiding the rifles.

The tallest, a woman with half her face replaced by industrial chrome, stepped forward. Her gaze locked on Maltz.

“Well now,” she said. “You’ve aged better than I expected.”

Caitlin stepped in front of him. “He’s not the one you’re looking for.”

The cyborg tilted her head. “He’s got a two-million-credit bounty. I don’t care what name he’s using today.”

“He’s got a milk moustache and three breath mints in his pocket,” Caitlin replied. “Try again.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said another, shouldering a net launcher. “Dead or alive. We’re flexible.”

Caitlin’s hand dropped instinctively to her thigh. The Redbird was there, ready and waiting. The kind of gun that cleared rooms just by existing.

Her fingers brushed the grip. A warning that Caitlin, the real one, was about to act.

Maltz didn’t breathe.

But she held still.

The last time she’d drawn too fast, Maltz had lost an arm and nearly bled out. She remembered the blood, mostly. And how quiet he’d gone.

She exhaled, slowly. Let the moment pass.

Maltz leaned in. “Are we still pretending I’m not whoever they think I am?”

“No. Now we’re improvising.”

Maltz nodded and flexed Matilda, his new cyberarm. It made a sound like a smug wrench clearing its throat.

The cyborg took a step forward.

Maltz grabbed the nearest wall panel and ripped it open like a wet paper tissue.

“What are you…” Caitlin started.

“Creating inter-system ventilation shortcuts.”

He yanked a cable cluster, jammed two nodes together, and ducked.

The corridor lights strobed, flickered, and exploded in a rain of blue sparks. The bounty hunters shouted, momentarily blinded.

Behind them, a storage hatch slammed open. A maintenance bot rolled out, shrieked in binary, and discharged foam everywhere.

“Run!” Caitlin shouted, dragging Maltz by the collar.

They bolted, ducking sparks and angry robots.

Mathilda, apparently delighted, jabbed a control panel with something that definitely wasn’t a standard interface tool. A nearby blast door stuttered, groaned, and slid open just enough for them to slip through before sliding shut again.

Quinn met them at the docking ramp, completely unfazed.

“I see diplomacy failed.”

Caitlin shoved past him. “Cathbad. We’re leaving. Now!”

The voice of the ships’ intellect drifted from the overhead speakers, maddeningly calm. “Where to, Captain?”

“Anywhere that doesn’t think Maltz is charming and worth two million.”

The Morrigan roared free of the dock, vanishing into the crowded dark of high orbit.

---

Back on the platform, a dark-suited figure stood near the dock’s edge, one hand resting on the sleek case of a Jump Analyser. The display flickered, tracing drive signatures across a spinning starfield.

White-blond hair caught the light as she leaned in, pale against the matte black of her coat. Embroidery in the sleeve hem hinted at old Sword Worlder runes. Ancestry worn like armour.

She tapped a key. The analyser blinked, then chirped: “Jump vector acquired.”

The display shifted to a narrow cone of possible destinations, each marked with probability weights and matched against a database of ship classes and known drive profiles.

She studied it in silence. Not confirmation. But a trail.

The analyser pinged softly, almost smug.

She holstered it, gaze still fixed on the dark where the Morrigan had vanished.

Then she turned and made for her ship, already calculating her next move.