Old Names

Posted on Fri Jun 5th, 2026 @ 1:31pm by Taryn Rook
Edited on on Fri Jun 5th, 2026 @ 1:35pm

3,797 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Between The Orders
Location: Red Thread Station - Lower Docking Ring
Timeline: A few hours after “Dead Men Don’t Ping”

Red Thread Station looked better from a distance.

Most places did. Distance was kind like that.

It softened the scorch marks under the URC paint, blurred the awkward welds along the docking arms, and made the whole crooked stack of cargo spines and transfer rings look almost planned. From the approach vector, it had passed for a relief station. A safe harbour. One of those places people described with careful words because the truth had too many sharp edges.

Up close, from inside Docking Bay Twelve, it smelled like warm coolant, old deck plating and too many people pretending they were not tired.

Taryn stood just inside Foxglove’s open hatch with one hand braced against the frame, looking down the short boarding ramp at the bay beyond. She did not step out immediately. That would have been amateur work. First came the look. The exits. The cargo lift to the left. The maintenance hatch half-hidden behind a stack of battered relief crates. The security post with one bored officer and one officer pretending not to watch her ship. The old camera dome above the docking control panel, angled badly enough to either be broken or bait.

Could be either. People liked variety.

Behind her, Foxglove ticked and settled after the run in, hull still warm, engines cycling down with the offended little whine they always gave when asked to behave in public. The cockpit lights were dimmed behind the open bulkhead, leaving the ship in a soft amber gloom that made the scuffed panels and patched conduits look almost cosy if you had very low standards and unresolved attachment issues.

Taryn had both, apparently.

She glanced at the battered watch unit on her wrist and tapped the side of the casing twice. It looked like an old civilian chrono to anyone who did not know better. Scratched face, loose clasp, nothing worth stealing unless you were desperate or had terrible taste. Which meant, around here, half the docking bay.

“Right,” she murmured, more to the ship than herself. “Lock up.”

A soft click sounded in the earpiece hidden beneath her hair.

“Standard security?”

Taryn gave the bay another slow look. “Don’t insult me.”

“Enhanced security?”

“Still feeling insulted.”

There was the smallest pause. Barely there, but Taryn knew Foxy well enough to hear judgement in silence.

“Security state: meaner.”

Taryn’s mouth twitched. “See? Growth. We’re growing.”

“You threatened to remove my secondary buffer if I allowed dockside diagnostics.”

“Motivation is personal. Results are what matter.”

She keyed in the last sequence manually, because trusting any station’s automatic docking handshake was how people ended up with missing cargo, missing fuel, or a very polite message explaining that their ship had been impounded due to a clerical error. The ramp lights blinked from white to amber to a low, unfriendly red. Inside the hatch, three hidden locks slid into place with soft mechanical clicks.

Taryn checked each one by ear.

The third was half a beat slow.

Her eyes narrowed. “Foxy.”

“Aft latch three engaged within acceptable delay.”

“Acceptable to who?”

“Most manufacturers.”

“Most manufacturers aren’t leaving their whole life in a docking bay with a camera dome that’s lying about where it’s pointing.”

Another pause.

The third latch cycled again. This time the click came clean.

“Latch three re-seated.”

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome.”

“Don’t get weird.”

Taryn pulled her jacket cuff down over the pale old mark on her left forearm, then adjusted the strap of the courier bag across her chest. The bag was light, which somehow made it worse. Heavy cargo gave people something simple to understand. Light cargo made them curious, and curiosity in places like Red Thread Station usually had either a price tag or a blade.

She looked back once into Foxglove. Not for sentimental reasons. Obviously. Sentiment was for people with guest rooms and framed pictures.

The ship hummed low around her, familiar as a pulse.

“Keep your ears open,” she said.

“I do not have ears.”

“You have seven passive receivers and the personality of a disappointed librarian. Use context.”

“Monitoring local comm traffic.”

“Quietly.”

“Unlike you.”

Taryn stopped halfway down the ramp and looked back toward the nearest speaker grille inside the hatch. “Careful. I know where you live.”

The earpiece clicked once, almost prim.

“So do I.”

That got a real smile out of her, small and unwilling and gone before it could become evidence.

Then she stepped onto Red Thread Station.

The deck gave a dull, hollow sound beneath her boots. Around the bay, life kept moving: cargo skids humming past, loaders shouting over manifests, a child crying somewhere near the transit queue, someone laughing too loudly by the fuel office. Taryn let it all wash over her without looking like she was listening to every bit of it.

She was only here to check a signal bounce.

That was all.

In, out, no drama.

She glanced once at the sealed hatch behind her, at the painted foxglove flower near the ship’s name, and then turned toward the docking bay proper with her hands loose, her chin up, and every exit already counted.

“Try not to miss me,” she murmured.

“I will begin immediately.”

Taryn rolled her eyes, but she was still almost smiling when she walked away from the ramp.

Taryn kept to the edge of the docking concourse, moving with the flow without ever quite joining it. Red Thread Station had the usual relief-route noise: cargo sleds whining over tired deck plating, children crying near transit queues, URC staff speaking gently to people who had clearly run out of gentle hours ago. It all looked temporary, even the things bolted down.

She bought coffee from a vendor cart because standing near a terminal with a cup made people less curious. The first sip tasted like burnt plastic and poor choices, so at least it was honest.

Her wrist unit warmed faintly against her skin.

“Relay trace is buried under cargo-routing permissions.”

“Of course it is,” Taryn muttered. “No one ever hides anything somewhere fun.”

She leaned beside the public freight terminal, one shoulder against the wall, thumb moving lazily across her watch face as if she were checking messages. The station interface flickered through shipping notices, bay assignments, delayed medical cargo and a polite warning about unattended luggage. Underneath that, Foxy pulled at the ugly little thread.

A minute passed.

Then another.

Taryn’s gaze stayed on the concourse, bored enough to be invisible.

“Bounce confirmed. Source proximity: Docking Bay Twelve traffic shadow.”

Her thumb stopped.

Bay Twelve.

Her bay.

For a second, the station noise thinned around her, all those voices and boots and tired machines sliding somewhere distant. Then Taryn took another sip of the awful coffee because her hand needed something ordinary to do.

Across the concourse, someone near the cargo lift turned his head toward the direction of Foxglove.

Grey coat. Still posture. Not station security. Not URC.

Taryn lowered the cup.

“Foxy,” she said softly.

“Looking.”

The man in the grey coat moved before Foxy could finish whatever quiet miracle it was doing through the station net.

Not fast. That would have been honest.

He came through the concourse at an easy pace, letting traffic split around him, one hand tucked into his coat pocket and the other loose at his side. Older than the shape Taryn remembered. Better dressed. Softer at the edges in the way men got when they had spent years making other people do the dangerous work.

His smile had not changed.

“Taryn Rook,” he said, like her name was something he had found in a drawer.

Taryn kept the coffee cup in her hand. It gave her something ordinary to hold, and ordinary was useful when every nerve in her body had started sharpening itself.

“Usually people buy me dinner before they get disappointing.”

His smile widened. “Still mouthy.”

“Still standing. We’re both learning things.”

He glanced past her, toward the docking bay corridor. Toward Foxglove.

“Nice little ship you’ve got there. I was hoping you’d open the message aboard. Would’ve made things cleaner.”

There it was.

Not a confession exactly. Men like him preferred to stand near the truth without getting fingerprints on it.

Taryn took a slow sip of coffee and somehow managed not to wince at the taste. “You sent it.”

“I sent a doorbell.” He tilted his head, eyes resting on her with that old, appraising patience. “You answered.”

“Did I?”

“You came back to Red Thread.”

“Maybe I missed the coffee.”

He laughed softly. “No one misses this coffee.”

“Two station security officers entering the concourse from aft access.”

Taryn did not look away from him.

Grey Coat noticed the stillness anyway. Of course he did. Men like that survived by reading the half-second before people ran.

“I had hoped,” he said, almost regretful, “you’d be curious enough to play the file. Easier to tag the ship from inside her own systems. Much harder when your little flower bites.”

Taryn’s fingers tightened once around the cup.

Not much.

Enough.

“You tried to take Foxy?”

His eyes flicked, just barely.

Wrong word. He had heard the wrong word.

Taryn smiled then, small and sharp and deeply unpleasant. “That was stupid.”

“Careful, little rook.”

The old name landed between them.

Taryn felt it. Let herself feel it for exactly one breath.

Then she threw the coffee in his face.

Or tried to.

The liquid hit something half a handspan from him and scattered in a thin amber sheet, steaming briefly against the faint shimmer of a personal shield before dripping uselessly onto the deck. The empty cup bounced once between them and rolled under a bench.

The man in the grey coat looked down at it, then back at her.

For a second, he simply smiled.

“Oh, I did miss that,” he said.

Taryn’s fingers curled once, empty now, uselessly wanting something heavier than air. She kept her face still, because giving him the flinch would have felt like handing him her throat.

“Personal shield,” she said. “That’s embarrassing. You expecting trouble, Davor?”

His eyes warmed at the sound of his name. Not pleased. Worse than pleased. Amused.

“I expected you.”

“Shield frequency rotating. Civilian black-market pattern. Poorly maintained.”

Taryn barely moved. “That tracks.”

Davor’s smile deepened. He had aged in all the wrong ways. Softer at the jaw, cleaner at the cuffs, a little silver threaded near one temple. Nothing in him looked rough enough for the things he had once stood beside. That was the trick of men like him. They survived long enough to wash the rooms off their skin.

“You always did look for the exit before the conversation started,” he said.

Taryn glanced past him, not because she needed to find the exits, but because she wanted him to see her not care that he knew. Cargo lift. Maintenance hatch. Transit queue. Two security officers too far away and too bored. One camera dome pretending to be dead.

“Maybe you’re just boring.”

“No.” Davor stepped a little closer, not enough to crowd her, enough to remind her he could. “You’re deciding whether to run left or right. Left gives you the lift, but I’ve got someone near it. Right gives you the maintenance hatch, but you’d have to cross open deck. You could go back to your ship, of course, but I imagine she’s locked down tight enough to make that irritating.”

Taryn let her mouth tilt. “You rehearsed that, didn’t you?”

“I remembered.”

The word did what he wanted. It slid under the skin, quiet and dirty.

Davor watched her absorb it.

Then he said, softer, “Mallow used to say you did that. Eyes first. Feet second. Mouth last, usually too late.”

For one breath, everything in the station sharpened too much.

Mallow.

Not a name anyone should have had. Not here. Not now. It belonged to a thin woman with cracked knuckles and a laugh like she’d stolen it, one of the few people in those years who had ever slipped Taryn extra food without making her pay for it in fear. Not family. Not safe. Nothing had been safe. But not cruel either, and sometimes that had been close enough to matter.

Mallow had died badly.

Taryn had never said her name out loud after.

Davor knew exactly what he had touched.

Taryn smiled.

It came out bright and wrong.

“Wow,” she said. “You brought up a dead woman to make yourself sound interesting. That’s honestly sadder than the shield.”

Something flickered behind his eyes, but only briefly. Then the amusement returned, settling over him like a clean coat.

“There she is.”

“No, really. Did you practise this in a mirror? Grey coat, mysterious smile, creepy little memory trick. Very polished. Very ‘man banned from three docking bars for explaining his own cleverness.’”

“Maintenance hatch is accessible. Distance: eleven metres.”

Taryn did not look at it.

Davor did.

Just a flick of his eyes, but enough.

He knew.

Of course he knew.

“You’re still listening to something,” he said. “Not station traffic. Not a standard comm. Clever girl.”

The words landed badly. Not hard. Slick. A hand on the chin, a tilted face, somebody deciding what clever was worth.

Taryn’s expression cooled.

“Don’t call me that.”

Davor’s smile thinned with interest. “Still a nerve.”

“Keep pressing it and find out what it’s attached to.”

He laughed under his breath. “You were always wasted on them. That was the sad part. All that fire and they only ever saw a price.”

“And you saw what, exactly? Potential?”

“I saw survival.” He said it like a compliment. Like he had any right to the word. “I still do.”

Taryn shifted the courier bag on her shoulder, one thumb brushing the edge of her watch face. Not enough to trigger anything obvious. Enough to wake the routine she’d left sleeping under the outer shell.

“Funny,” she said. “I look at you and just see someone who should’ve stayed a bad memory.”

Davor’s gaze dropped to her wrist for half a second.

Too sharp.

“Taryn.”

The name sounded wrong from him. Too familiar. Too clean.

“You can keep moving,” he said. “You’ve made a whole personality out of it. But sooner or later someone finds the route. Someone always does.”

Taryn leaned in slightly, like she was sharing a secret.

“Then they should learn to run faster.”

Her watch pulsed once against her skin.

Not visible. Not loud.

Just enough.

Foxy’s voice slid into her ear, pale and calm.

“Diversion armed.”

Taryn’s smile stayed exactly where it was.

“Good,” she murmured.

Davor’s eyes narrowed. “What was that?”

Taryn looked past him toward the maintenance hatch.

This time, she let him see it.

“The part where you realise I wasn’t picking an exit,” she said. “I was picking yours.”

Davor’s eyes narrowed.

For half a second, nothing happened.

Then the station lights over the cargo lift snapped from white to red, and every alarm in Bay Twelve started screaming.

Not the proper evacuation alarm. Not the polite URC one with calm instructions and multilingual reassurance. This was uglier. Older. Cardassian underlayer ugly. A hard metallic shriek that made half the concourse flinch and the other half immediately pretend they had not.

The cargo lift doors slammed open behind Davor.

Inside, a grav-sled lurched sideways as its safety locks cycled from standby to emergency release. Three unsecured cargo crates shifted with a heavy scrape, then slid across the lift platform and crashed into the open threshold with enough force to send two nearby dockworkers swearing back from it.

Davor turned despite himself.

Taryn moved.

Not toward the maintenance hatch. Not toward the lift. Not where she had let him look.

She ducked under the arm of a passing loader, shoved herself through the sudden knot of bodies, and cut hard left behind the coffee cart. The vendor shouted something at her back. She didn’t catch it. Didn’t care. Her boots hit the deck fast, light, familiar. The station bucked around her in noise and flashing red, but she was already counting through it.

Transit queue, no.

Main concourse, too open.

Fuel office, blocked.

Bay Twelve service lane.

There.

“Davor is pursuing.”

“Shocker.”

“Two associates moving from cargo exchange.”

“Less commentary, more doors.”

The service lane access ahead hissed halfway open, then stuck.

Taryn did not slow. She turned her shoulder, slipped through the gap, and dragged her courier bag after her with a scrape of fabric and a curse that would have disappointed several dead relatives and impressed at least one living dockhand.

Behind her, Davor’s voice cut through the alarm.

“Taryn!”

Hearing her name in his mouth made something in her want to turn around and put him on the deck properly.

She kept running.

The service lane was narrower, quieter, full of pipework, warning labels, stacked cleaning bots and the sour smell of recycled air that had lost an argument. Taryn’s wrist unit pulsed twice.

“Route to Docking Bay Twelve clear for thirty-four metres. After that, station security obstruction likely.”

“Likely as in maybe?”

“Likely as in regrettably real.”

“Love that for us.”

She skidded around a corner and nearly collided with a junior URC worker carrying a crate of medical injectors. He yelped. Taryn caught the side of the crate before it tipped, shoved it back against his chest, and kept moving.

“Sorry. Sort of.”

She hit the next junction and saw the problem immediately. Two station security officers were moving into the corridor from the far end, not running yet, but interested. Behind her, footsteps echoed. More than one set.

Davor had people.

Of course he had people.

Taryn’s gaze snapped up. Ceiling crawl access. Manual hatch. Old screws. Bad angle.

“Foxy.”

“Already opening.”

The ceiling hatch clicked.

Taryn jumped, caught the lip with both hands, and hauled herself up with an ugly little grunt that she would deny ever making. Her boot scraped the wall. Her shoulder barked pain where it clipped the hatch frame. She wriggled into the maintenance crawlspace just as one of Davor’s men rounded the corner below.

“Where’d she go?”

Taryn froze above them, cheek pressed against cold plating, breath held so tight it hurt.

Below, boots stopped.

Davor’s voice came softer than the others. Closer.

“She likes vents.”

Taryn closed her eyes.

Bastard remembered.

His shoes moved beneath her, slow and patient. Not directly below the hatch, not quite. He was enjoying this. That was the thing that made her hands want to shake, so she curled them into fists until they didn’t.

“Come on, little rook,” he called, almost fond. “You know how this ends.”

Taryn opened her eyes.

Her expression went flat.

No. He really didn’t.

She slid backwards through the crawlspace, silent over the first metre, less silent over the second when her elbow found a bolt some genius had installed point-up. Pain flashed white-hot and immediate. She bit it down, crawled faster, then dropped through the next access hatch into a side alcove two corridors over.

She landed badly, one knee hitting the deck, one hand catching the wall.

No time.

She ran again.

The main bay opened ahead, Docking Bay Twelve now a storm of red lights, confused workers and half-deployed safety barriers. Foxglove sat beyond it all, small and pale and locked down tight, her painted flower half-lit by warning strobes. Home, if home was armed, sulking, and possibly illegal in four jurisdictions.

Taryn shoved through two arguing loaders and vaulted over a low cargo restraint.

Someone grabbed for her jacket.

She twisted out of it, letting the sleeve slide halfway down her arm before yanking free. Fingers brushed the old pale mark beneath.

Her whole body went cold.

Then hot.

She spun, drove the heel of her hand hard into the man’s wrist, and he let go with a bark of pain. Not a clean fight. Not fancy. Just enough.

“Don’t touch me.”

The words came out low.

He backed up.

Good.

The ramp on Foxglove dropped before she reached it, descending with a hydraulic whine that sounded almost smug.

“Security state temporarily reduced from meaner to extremely annoyed.”

“Not now.”

Taryn sprinted up the ramp. The moment her boots hit familiar plating, something inside her unclenched just enough to remind her she had been clenched at all.

“Close it.”

The ramp rose behind her.

Through the narrowing gap, she saw Davor at the edge of the bay, one hand in his coat pocket, alarms painting him red then black then red again. He didn’t look angry.

That was worse.

He lifted two fingers in a lazy little farewell.

Taryn stared back until the ramp sealed shut between them.

For half a second, she stood there in the entryway, breathing hard, jacket half-torn, elbow stinging, coffee drying sticky between her fingers.

Then she slapped the bulkhead.

“Foxy, get us out.”

“Undocking request denied by station control.”

Taryn was already moving for the cockpit. “That’s adorable.”

“They have also flagged us for safety inspection.”

“Even cuter.”

She dropped into the pilot’s chair, hands flying over the controls. Foxglove shuddered as engines spun up beneath her, warm and angry and ready. Taryn looked at the denied clearance flashing on the board, then at the docking clamps still locked around her ship.

Her smile was all teeth.

“Foxy?”

“Yes.”

“Meaner.”

 

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