“I don’t trust it,” Sera said again.
She said it to the display, to Caldris’s face above the written clause. Then she said it to Mara, turning in the pilot’s seat.
“This station’s a cheap lock with a polite voice,” she said. “You heard the dock. Witness credential required. Then a clerk’s silence. Then accepted. It let us in because somebody wanted us in. Then it locked the doors behind us because somebody wanted us locked in. And now somebody’s offering to unlock them, for a price.” She shook her head. “That’s worse than a lock with no voice at all. A lock with no voice, you know where you stand. You cut it or you don’t. A lock that talks is a lock that’s bargaining.”
She turned back to the console. She put her palm flat on it, beside the fuel gauge with its small red light, and read the fuel feed aloud. The line pressure. The valve’s status. Closed, external. The tanks’ reserve.
“The station’s pulse closed the Tern’s fuel line,” she said. “From the coupling. The coupling’s in the docking arm. The arm’s the station’s.” She tapped the red light. “We don’t have fuel to the engines until that valve opens. We don’t release the clamps without engines.”
