The Fence Line

Posted on 04 Sep 2025 @ 2:54am by Tara & Gareth Rhys

2,949 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Fractured Accord
Location: Annex A, Deck 7
Timeline: SD: 242509.03

The room used to be nothing, a hollow hold, abandoned by purpose. Now it pretended to be something more. Something polite. Ceiling nodes exhaled soft white light that never quite found its edges. The floor purred faintly beneath the soles, a low, electrical breath. The walls didn’t bother pretending to be metal anymore. They carried a projection of endless flatland under lavender skies, open country no one had to explain. It was a view that calmed the pulse without drawing attention to itself. Perfect for work that didn't want to feel like work.

Holographic panes hovered within arm’s reach, offering maps, manifests, or a blank face if silence seemed brighter. At the center stood a low table, half steel, half projection. The steel was real enough to lean on. The rest could disappear with a gesture. It had the confident patience of a tool that knew it earned its place.

Tara stood by the table like she'd never been anywhere else. A short-cut halo of auburn hair framed her face. Black crew jacket. Steady eyes. The light tried to ghost around her shoulders, thought better of it, and stopped pretending. She was real. Real in the way ships recognized mass, motion, and memory.

She’d made the space hers, slowly and without apology. A simple rug softened the corner. A desk with a narrow lamp that casts honest shadows. And on a shelf above, a small, folded-metal bird, sharpened origami in burnished steel. Gareth had given it to her on the day she moved in. They never talked about the gift. They didn’t need to.

The door whispered open.

Gareth entered with a mug that wasn’t pretending to be better coffee. His eyes skimmed the room like a scanner, corners checked, exits logged, then he raised the mug in greeting and a nod.

“Captain wants a fence line,” he said. “Kaldari and Vethari chatter. Quiet. Clean.”

Tara's lips twitched, just short of a smile. “Hands in my pockets, then.”

An old joke between them. It meant: I won’t dig. I won’t push. I’ll just listen. He set the mug on the steel edge of the table, then made a slow turn of his wrist. The room breathed to life, the table lighting up with a tri-column board:

WHAT’S ODD | WHY IT MATTERS | WHAT WE WATCH NEXT

If a thought couldn’t fit inside that frame, it didn’t get a voice in the first hour. Gareth had learned that the hard way. Some thoughts just weren't ready for daylight.

“Tripwords,” he said.

“Five,” she replied. “Not six.”

“Yeahup,” he said, “Let’s not get greedy.”

They picked the words together, sharp and spare. One Kaldari phrase that meant hold the line without saying war. One Vethari claim code dressed up to look legal when it wasn’t. A courier alias that changed more often than it should. A vessel prefix haunting the lanes near Tavrik. And a family name that had money but no manners. Tara placed each one in the air, touching nothing, the room setting soft pins with a chime you felt more than heard.

“Rules?” Gareth asked.

“Public space. Open traffic,” she replied. “No private taps. No shadow mirrors. Ask before we widen.”

“I’ll mirror only,” she added, letting a translucent consent card hover in her palm: Consent. Scope. Sunset. It shimmered like an oath. “If Security taps, they see it first.”

Gareth nodded. People relaxed when you showed your hands before anyone asked what you were holding.
He exhaled quietly. Beneath them, Arawyn hummed steadily. You could always trust the sound of a ship’s bones. Big vessels might lie with their captains, but not with their temperatures. The hum didn’t lie. Today it said: Balanced. Calm. Honest.

He turned back to Tara. “Walk the fence.”

She moved like she’d done this a hundred times with her eyes closed, efficient, small steps, hands loose, posture tuned for patience. Six listening posts bloomed around the ghost-map of the corridor, a scatter of legal signals: convoy bulletins, science manifest chatter, starbase updates, commercial handshakes, and the slow, flickering spill of a Kaldari militia net whose doorframe creaked with age.

It was all legal, all wind.

Tara dialed the gain low. Words passed through like fish in shallow water, quick, unbothered: ship tags, cargo codes, route pings. The name Tavrik glided by with just a little more gravity each time. She didn’t frown. Her face didn’t need to teach the room what to care about. Gareth stayed by the table, hands flat, assembling patterns in real time. He jotted notes on a holographic display. Verbs first. Numbers later. The words were the wind. The numbers were the fenceposts that held.

The first tap hit Tara just below the neck.

Tripword Three. Vethari.

A cutter, loud and lazy with its aliases, told a rival it would deliver a first-rights packet to Tavrik, “front of the line, watch me do it.” A threat dressed like confidence. Tara marked it yellow and slid it into WHAT’S ODD with a timestamp and vector.

Second tap.

Tripword One. Kaldari.

A freighter dropped the militia word in a routine cargo ping, then switched back to corporate-neutral. Yellow again. That kind of slip usually meant I want to talk, not I want to fight. Still. A dot’s a dot.

“Ping?” Gareth asked.

“Three lines,” Tara said. “Vethari boast, first-rights claim, yellow. Kaldari freight, militia dip, then clean, yellow. Mood holds: build/prove, restore/claim, hold.”

He sent a memo to Ops and Tactical with two lines: Quiet monitor, per Captain. If flagged, you see it live. He looped in Security as a courtesy.

They didn’t need to say routine. They were already in it. Gareth set the pace, morning ping, mid-shift sweep, lights-down read. Tara nodded. A simple yes that carried the weight of promise.

He started pacing the room’s edge like he always did when thinking. She stayed in the center, composed, listening like a farmer might watch the horizon, knowing the wind didn’t lie, just whispered. He took another sip of the coffee. Still tasted like punishment. He didn’t complain. If he did, she’d remind him to be kinder to himself. And worse, he’d agree.

Another light tap.

Tripword Four. Faint. Courtesy ping to a downlane port. Soft words sent ahead like scouts. Tara logged it, dropped a yellow dot near Tavrik.

Not red. Just a dot. Dots were how the quiet stories got told.

“Tripword,” she murmured. “Low confidence. Dot placed. No action.”

“Copy,” Gareth said. Hands on steel. Eyes on the board.

She never flooded him with noise. That was what made her good. Information didn’t win by mass. It won by timing and restraint.

The Vethari house seal popped up in a public registry, an ornate insignia: gold coin, green enamel, galaxy spliced into something smug. Tara pinned it in the corner. Not as a lead. As a reminder. People followed symbols. Stories wore crests better than facts did.

The Kaldari registry blinked into view like a stubborn flag. Eight founding worlds. She counted them out of habit, but didn’t copy the list. Numbers held. Trust didn’t.

“Anyone jump?” Gareth asked.

“No,” she said. “Boast died off. Militia word didn’t echo. A junior port officer’s answering Vethari pings about half a second quicker than usual. Not enough to write. Enough to notice.”

He paused, fought the urge to say more.

The room held their work the way a body holds memory. Not loud. Just there. The rug caught the light. The lamp made shadows behave. The folded bird kept its balance. Gareth knocked twice on the table when a line worked. Tara collapsed overlays when his shoulders tightened. They never said the word friendship. They just kept proving it.

“You want me to take this up the chain?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Gareth replied. “This is wind. Not weather.”

She nodded once and returned to her watch. He stayed by the table and waited, for what, he wasn’t sure. But you knew when it changed. Always.

The courier near Tavrik shifted names again—this time quiet, almost ashamed of the change. Tara flagged it under WHAT’S ODD and tethered it with a thread to the Vethari boast. Two separate events. But if they were sliding toward the same horizon, the line was worth watching.

Gareth circled the table, touched his knuckles once to the steel. His eyes found the lavender sky on the walls, now deepening to a dusty violet. The false sky never moved fast. That was the point. It reminded them that time had passed, even when nothing seemed to.

He glanced at Tara and offered the room’s rare compliment. “Still flying.”

She looked to the bird on the shelf, then back to him. “Still flying.”

Ops acknowledged the mirror with a reply so terse it was a blessing: Received and mirrored to Tactical.
No red pens. No politics. Good.

He stepped closer, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Tara. The same height at the table, both eyes fixed on the translucent pane ahead. One real body. One solid-state. A single beam of focus.

The ship’s hum filled the silence, anchoring everything in its calm, mechanical heartbeat.

Tripword Two. Brushed the nape of her neck, Kaldari again. Same lane. A little louder.

“Tap. Same lane. Yellow,” Tara said.

“Good.” Gareth didn’t look up. His voice stayed slow. Measured. Like hands on water.

He felt that old reflex flare up, the urge to be first. He pressed it down. Not pride. Not today. Being early only mattered if you knew what to do when you got there.

Tara helped him be right, not just fast. That was probably why the Captain had given them the fence in the first place.

“Let’s hold the line,” he said.

Tara reduced the overlays to one, set the cadence clocks at the edge of the board, and returned to the center like she’d never left it.

“Fence is good,” she said. “For now.”

They stood like that a little longer. Two figures, one human, one photonic. One listening to the wind, the other counting fenceposts. Behind them, the Arawyn hummed on, steady as a sleeping god.

Then the ship shuddered.

Not a dramatic lurch. A deep, low-frequency shift, the kind that moved up your bones and told your spine to wake up.
Lights blinked, caught themselves, then bathed the seams in red. Metal complained somewhere past the bulkheads. Something big, something nearby.

The alarm followed. No crescendo. Just a hard, even pulse.

The coffee cup slid on the table. Hit the edge. Tipped and bled across the steel.

Tara was already braced. Shoulders squared. Feet set. Calm as breath.

The room held.

The desert sky didn’t vanish. The lamp still cast its shadows. The folded-metal bird stood where it always had, just behind her shoulder, calm geometry. Panes lit in the air with one sharp flick of her fingers.

“Report,” Gareth said.

“Buoy ahead detonated,” Tara answered. “Shockwave hit the line. Newton took it hardest, port side, near the nacelles. Arawyn’s shields held.”

He didn’t swear. Swearing would’ve been a waste.

One palm hit the table, like he meant to steady the ship by touch. Then he moved, two strides to the center, posture clean, ready.

“Treat it like a hit. Not an accident.”

“Yes.”

“Use your full scope. Mirror-only. No writes. One job at a time.”

“Understood,” she said. And something in her tone... stiffened. Like armor sliding into place. “First job?”

“Danger map. Then casualty lanes.”

The room obeyed.

A starfield bloomed across the table, a living map of the corridor. The buoy appeared as a broken ring, debris fanning outward in slow, quiet violence. Tara overlaid a grid and let the color do the talking.

Green: Safe.
Yellow: Think first.
Red: Don’t touch.

A handful of shards pulsed angry, residual heat and promise.

“Those,” Gareth said.

“Glass pieces,” Tara replied. “Tractor them---.”

“Mark them.”

She did, small icons, skull and bar.

“Read-only mirror to Tactical,” Gareth said. “Make it easy to kill if they don’t like it.”

Tara flicked two fingers. A mirror bloomed elsewhere on the ship. She tagged it with six words: Mirror only. Say ‘clear’ to remove. Then she built a second layer, three clean-beam corridors, mapped through the debris cone. Wide enough for transporters. Safe enough for the moment. Labeled them like a triage nurse might:

Green Now. Yellow in Thirty. Red, Hands Only.

“Medical and Ardent?” Gareth asked.

“Mirrored. Same rule. Your call if they push.”

The ship moved at impulse. Outside the walls, the stars no longer streaked. Stillness. Dangerous quiet.

Newton drifted on the map, listing, but holding. Like a wounded dog refusing to fall.

Gareth breathed once. In. Out. People first. Pattern second.

He pinged Ops and Tactical with two lines:
Overlay from Tara: Danger Map and Beam Lanes. Avoid all areas marked in red. Buoy debris is flagged. This information is for your awareness and discretion.

He stepped back. Watched the map. Let it turn panic into procedure.

“Now we look for why,” he said.

“Agreed,” Tara murmured. She was already chasing ghosts.

No overreach. No deep hooks. Just mirror feeds. She pulled the buoy’s final broadcasts, heartbeat, drift, pings. They looked normal.

Until they didn’t.

A freeze. Just before the end. Not long. Not mechanical. Not random.

“Someone touched it,” Gareth said.

“Yeah,” Tara confirmed. “Three paths.”

Her voice went lean. No tech-speak. No showboating. Just clean options:

“One: Buoy was rigged during maintenance. Timer or trigger.

Two: Someone hitched a charge and waited for us.

Three: Fake buoy upstream feeding false health to hide this one.”

“Give me scent on three.”

She checked the next two markers ahead. One pulsed with natural drift. The other, too clean. Almost rehearsed.
“This one breathes too perfect,” she said. “Could be a mask.”

“Mark it. Yellow. Call it Too Perfect.”

He pushed it to Ops and Tactical. Minimal drama.

The map adjusted. Debris drifted. Clock hands in a slow-motion break.

Tara scanned the maintenance logs. Found three names tied to the dead buoy. One stationed on Newton. Paper trail had a hole. Should’ve logged off. Didn’t.

She didn’t say got him. Didn’t say sabotage.

“One tech on Newton. Exit unlogged. Could be innocent. Could be a missing bolt.”

“Yellow,” Gareth said. “Pin it. Don’t send.”

He watched Newton. Watched the way Arawyn quietly nudged herself between Newton and the worst of the cone. No call. No flare. Just seamanship.

“Captain’s options?” Tara asked.

“Two,” he said. “Hold and cover, be the wall. Or search and screen, send eyes out, find the next bite before it finds us.”

“Which would you take?”

“Whichever keeps people breathing,” Gareth said. “Today, that’s hold and cover.”

He shaped the idea into a single, bone-clean sentence. One he’d say if asked. Not before.

The bridge came alive over the speaker. Ensign Delaney. Steady, barely. “Mr. Rhys to the bridge. Captain requests your presence.”

Gareth didn’t move.

“Anything else you need from me?” he asked Tara.

“Permission for one more pass,” she said. “Walk the buoy chain, three deep, both sides, just heartbeat comparison. No probes. If I catch another lie, Helm gets a whisper before they commit.”

“Do it. No noise.”

She nodded. Her solid-state shimmered slightly, like it had remembered to breathe. She listened.

First buoy ahead, normal.

Second, too perfect. Still wrong.

Third, messy again. Good.

Backline, clean.

She marked the liar. Drew a subtle dogleg path around it. Just wide enough to look like a coincidence.

“Helm will see it if they want it,” she said.

“Call it Dogleg Quiet,” Gareth said. “Pilots like names with teeth.”

“Dogleg Quiet,” she echoed, and stamped the label where it would land clean in a pilot’s view.

Gareth looked down at the ruined cup. He wanted another. Didn’t have time. Wiped the steel clean with his palm, not to erase the mess, but to keep it from looking like failure. He turned to Tara.

“I’ll be on the bridge. Keep the map alive. If the perfect breath changes, clean or dirty, give me two lines on the lift.”

“What changed; why it matters,” she said.

“That’s right.”

He headed for the door.

Outside, the corridor smelled faintly of heat and adrenaline. The crew moved like they had a job and no time to be wrong. Red lines chased each other along the ceiling, like blood reorganizing. He stepped into the lift. The doors started to close.
Tara’s voice came through the speaker, calm, efficient.

“One more thing.”

“Go.”

“Too-perfect buoy confirmed as only liar. Dogleg buys us silence. Yellow holds. No red.”

“Good work,” Gareth said. The doors sealed on the word.

He let himself take one honest breath. Not pride. Relief. A map that keeps someone alive, that’s the only kind that matters.
The lift climbed. Gareth stood still, hands empty, ready to deliver the Captain one clean paragraph and get out of the way. Behind him, Tara held the fence line. Map live. Beam lanes are stable. The doors opened to the bridge’s red glow.
Gareth stepped out, already speaking in the grammar of need.

“Captain,” he said. "We can hold the line while we clear the field. There's a quiet dogleg up ahead that keeps us out of harm's way."

He took his place where she could see him.

Ready.

End Log

Gareth Rhys
Intelligence Contractor
&
Specialist Tara
Intelligence Adjunct

 

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