IRON DISTANCE

Deep beneath a forgotten station, a weathered spacer gets word his ship has been impounded. He finds the reason waiting on a scaffold: an android the station wants returned — and that the Operative has been sent to collect. What follows is six minutes of corridor grime and blaster smoke — a brawlthrough a cave dockyard, a killing blow through a robot's chest core, and a standoff at the bay door that ends with two fugitives in a cockpit neither expected to share. She'd never flown one before. She has now.