Adventure of Nahuli 3

Nahuli follows Serafina through a side hatch into the workshop. The air changes at once, hot metal, machine oil, ozone. Salvaged hull plates lean in stacks along one wall, and diagnostic tools hum on a crowded bench under harsh white strips.

Serafina swings the heavy blast door shut behind them and seals it with a tired, practiced twist. The thud cuts off the cantina noise, leaving only fans, relay buzz, and the soft rattle of loose parts in their trays.

She sets the nav-computer beside the dead-dock packet on the bench. The verified salvage switchyard handshake record and hidden checksum line glow across the screen, clean and unmistakable now that they are off the public deck.

All three face the terminal, the workshop lights reflected in their eyes as the next move hangs on Nahuli’s hands.

Nahuli keys into the hidden checksum line. The terminal peels back a maintenance layer, not a lockout, and a second path blooms under the first, tagged to a station-side service loop.

The line resolves into a verification chain. It is not just valid, it is old, signed from inside a laborer-grade maintenance account that still answers to the dock network.

Ranuko leans closer over the bench, ears angled hard toward the screen. The checksum matches the dead-dock packet, but the handshake record points somewhere deeper than salvage storage.

A narrow authorization note flashes under the code, clipped and deliberate. It names a sealed service corridor and an active relay window that was refreshed recently.

The workshop goes very still around the screen. Serafina is relieved, but it thins into caution as the dead-dock link now looks less like scrap and more like someone’s hidden route.

Nahuli’s read lands cleanly. The maintenance chain is a decoy wrapper, but its routing logic points to a labor account used for authorized concealment, not theft.

The corridor note is the tell, it was refreshed from inside the station, and the hidden checksum line matches a repeat-access pattern, like someone expected to return.

Serafina’s posture hardens as the implication settles. This is not lost cargo. It is a protected path.

Ranuko straightens from the bench, eyes flicking from Nahuli to the sealed corridor reference on the screen. The room feels smaller with that knowledge in it.

From above, the workshop reads like a cramped diagram, bench, terminal, sealed door, three bodies arranged around the glow. The maintenance chain blooms larger on the screen, and with it comes the answer Nahuli actually needs, not station law, but station leverage.

If security traces this route, they do not just find a corridor. They find whoever touched an authorized concealment line, and that makes the engineer in the room a record, not a suspect by intent.

Serafina slides the terminal a fraction closer, exposing the maintenance-linked handshake record beside the hidden checksum line. The route stays open on the screen, but now it has a face in the station bureaucracy, and that face is looking back.

Nahuli types fast, routing the report through the workshop terminal’s maintenance headers. The hidden checksum line gets folded into the body like grease under a gasket, enough to explain the access without naming the source outright.

The file compiles cleanly, but the terminal spits a dry usage warning and chews a chunk out of the old station buffer. A status light flickers amber once, then steadies.

Station admin receives the packet. On-screen, the maintenance-linked handshake record remains visible beside the checksum, now tagged as reviewed and forwarded.

Serafina’s shoulders ease, but only a little. She taps the screen once, then leaves her hand hovering over the terminal, waiting for the first reply from outside the room.