Page 2 of Pocket Wife

Near midnight, the light changes. The red glow on the western ridge dims, as if a cloud has crossed it, though the nights here run clear as glass. I look up out of plain habit.

Something hangs between us and the stars.

Too big and too smooth and too slow to belong in that sky—and then a second shape slides in beside it, and a third behind that, vast and gray and silent, descending through the high air and blotting out the constellations one by one. No running lights. No sound, which is somehow worse than thunder.

A child somewhere asks her mother what it is.

Her mother doesn’t answer.

I stand in the middle of the meadow with a cup of cider going warm in my hand and my whole valley gone quiet around me, and watch the company arrive.

CHAPTER 2

RETHAN

Iexpected the matter to require three days.

One day to confirm the acquisition chain. One day to inspect the settlement records. One day to issue a formal preservation ruling, if any historical protection applies. If none does, relocation will proceed under frontier resource law, and my name will appear at the bottom of another completed review.

That’s what the briefing suggests.

The file hovers above the desk in my transit cabin, lines of legal script arranged in columns. Helix Extraction Consortium has purchased mineral access rights from a licensed intermediary, filed excavation intent, and submitted compensation packages for affected settlements. Every document carries the proper seals. Every transfer appears dated, witnessed, and archived.

On paper, it’s clean.

I learned centuries ago to distrust anything that looks too clean.

I enlarge the oldest land grant and study the settlement designation again. Solaris Valley Agricultural Cooperative. Jwoon III. Protected cultural interest pending review. The phrase is common enough in frontier cases. Early settlements often apply for protections they never complete. Families plant fields, build shrines, bury grandparents, then forget to finish paperwork once survival becomes more urgent than documentation.

History is full of people who assumed love could protect what law did not.

A chime sounds from the wall panel.

“Specialist Veyr,” says the pilot, “approach begins in twenty minutes. Helix vessels are in descent pattern.”

“Hold this craft outside their formation,” I reply.

A pause answers me. “They were told we’d accompany them.”

“They were told I would observe. Not endorse.”

“Yes, Specialist.”

The line closes.

I return to the file, though I’ve memorized the relevant sections. Helix’s petition requests immediate relocation authority for three valley settlements, with “minimal cultural disruption” projected in the supporting statement. Disruption is not minimal simply because the displaced lack the power to object.

Still, my task is not sympathy. My task is verification.

If Helix’s claim proves valid, I’ll recommend controlled preservation before relocation. If irregularities appear, I’ll suspend development pending inquiry. If the settlers have standing, the case could expand beyond me.

I do not expect the third possibility.

Jwoon III fills the viewport.

The planet turns slowly beneath the craft, green and gold beneath bands of weather, its cultivated valleys bright against wide stretches of forest and open land. Not a rich world, by galactic standards. No great orbital traffic. No visible defensive grid.

That explains Helix’s confidence.