Read Chapter 11: Legal Wrangling

The rover’s cabin smelled of recycled air and ozone, the same stale mix Caleb had breathed for the past six hours of transit. New Houston’s spires rose against the rust-colored horizon, catching the last bleed of daylight before the sky went black. He’d spent the drive replaying his father’s final diary entry, the words still jagged in his skull. *A clock without hands.* Mei Lin’s scarred face. His mother’s voice, faint but unmistakable, buried in that encrypted message.

None of it meant anything if Helix buried him in legal amber first.

He docked the rover at the northern perimeter of the corporate district, far from the main visitor lot. A calculated choice. Helix knew where he was — their earlier transmission had made that sickeningly clear — but he didn’t have to walk through their front door like a fool offering his wrists.

The Helix legal annex was a glass-and-steel slab wedged between a water reclamation plant and a dormant maglev line. Functional architecture, no warmth. Caleb checked his chronometer out of habit. The dial had gone dark again, as it had for most of the trip. He tapped the glass twice, and it flickered once — a single pulse, like a heartbeat answering his own — then died again.

He pocketed it and walked inside.

The receptionist barely looked up from her terminal. “Caleb Voss. Appointment with Legal Affairs.” He kept his voice level, neutral. She glanced at her screen, frowned at something, then nodded toward a corridor. “Room 214. They’ll see you now.”

Room 214 was a conference room built for intimidation. Long table, blank walls, a single window looking out onto an interior atrium filled with genetically modified ferns that had probably never known natural soil. Three chairs were occupied. Two were men in identical grey suits, both wearing the flat expressions of corporate enforcers who’d rehearsed this scene a hundred times.

The third chair held a woman who didn’t fit.

She was younger than the men — mid-twenties, maybe — with sharp features and dark hair pulled back so tightly it looked painful. Her suit was tailored, expensive, but her posture was different. Her hands rested on the table, fingers spread, like she was reading the wood grain for answers. When Caleb entered, she looked up first. Her eyes were quick, measuring, but not hostile.

“Mr. Voss,” the first grey suit said. “I’m Darrow, senior counsel for Helix Corporation. This is my colleague, Reyes. And this is Ava Chen, from our mergers team. She’s here to observe.”

Caleb pulled out a chair and sat without being invited. “You sent a transmission threatening legal action if I continued exploring my own father’s base. I’m here to find out what you think you own.”

Darrow smiled, a thin, practiced gesture that didn’t reach his eyes. “Your father, Elias Voss, entered into an agreement with Helix Corporation forty-one years ago. Under that agreement, all assets developed on the Acidalia Planitia site — including any underground structures, research materials, and data archives — revert to Helix upon his death, pending resolution of outstanding resource debts.”

“I’ve seen the ledger,” Caleb said. “My father owed you resources. That’s not the same as signing over the whole operation.”

“The agreement’s language is broad,” Reyes said, leaning forward. “We can walk you through it clause by clause, but the conclusion will be the same. You’re trespassing on Helix property. Any data you’ve recovered is Helix property. And if you’ve damaged anything —”

“I’ve damaged nothing.” Caleb kept his voice flat. “I found a base. I accessed files. My father’s files. Files that show discrepancies in your records.” He let that hang. The two men exchanged a brief glance. The younger woman — Ava Chen — hadn’t moved, but her eyes had narrowed slightly at his last words.

Darrow’s smile thinned further. “Discrepancies are a matter of interpretation. I’d advise you to think carefully about the words you use in any public forum. Defamation carries its own penalties.”

“Where’s my mother?” Caleb asked. Direct, blunt, deliberately crass from a legal standpoint. He wanted to see how they reacted.

The room went still. Darrow’s smile didn’t crack, but something tightened in his jaw. Reyes’s gaze flicked to the window. Ava Chen, though — she didn’t look away from Caleb. Her fingers tapped once, twice, on the table. A small, deliberate movement.

“Your mother’s death is a matter of public record,” Darrow said. “A mining accident, thirteen years ago. Officially investigated. Officially closed.”

“Official records,” Caleb repeated, letting the word drip with contempt. “I’ve seen official records that say the first colony ships arrived in 2138. I’ve also seen a manifest that says they arrived a decade earlier. Same ships. Same names. Same people.” He paused. “People who are very much alive in New Houston, with birth certificates that don’t match their actual ages.”

Darrow’s smile finally vanished. His mouth became a thin line. “I don’t know what you think you’ve found, Mr. Voss. But I can assure you, fabricating evidence against a corporation of Helix’s standing will end poorly for you. We have resources you cannot match.”

“I’m not asking you to match anything,” Caleb said. “I’m asking you to back off. Give me thirty days. I’ll go through the assets, catalogue what’s there, and submit a formal inventory to your team. Then we can negotiate like adults.”

He was bluffing. Thirty days wasn’t nearly enough time to extract everything from the base, let alone make sense of what it meant. But he needed room to breathe.

Darrow studied him for a long moment. Then he laughed — a short, dry sound. “Thirty days. Fine. We’ll grant you thirty days of non-interference, contingent on you remaining within Mars Territory and not transmitting any recovered data to off-world servers.” He stood. “Reyes will draw up the provisional agreement. Ms. Chen will escort you out.”

Caleb rose, keeping his face blank. He’d gotten more than he expected. The concession felt wrong, too easy. Helix didn’t grant time unless it was part of a longer game.

Ava Chen walked him through the corridors in silence until they reached the atrium, alone among the genetically engineered ferns. She checked a door behind them, then turned to face him. Her eyes were different now — no longer measuring. Urgent.

“Your father’s will,” she said, her voice low. “You’ve read it?”

“Yes.”

“Every clause?”

Caleb frowned. “The main body. I skimmed some of the addenda.”

“There’s a clause in the third addendum,” she said. “Section 402. It’s worded as a standard contingency, but it’s not. It references a ‘calibration unit’ in Storage Bay 7, Level 3, and designates it as a separate inheritable asset with priority over all other debts and obligations.” She paused. “If that asset exists, and if you can prove it exists independently of the base’s general infrastructure, Helix can’t touch it. Or anything you use it to access.”

Caleb’s pulse quickened. The chronometer calibration unit. The caption he’d found in the base’s files. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ava Chen glanced around again. When she looked back, her expression was carefully neutral, but something in her eyes flickered — recognition, maybe, or fear. “Because I wasn’t always mergers,” she said. “And because your father helped someone I care about, once. I’m not looking for justice. I’m looking for balance.”

She pressed a small data chip into his palm, then closed his fingers around it. “Loopholes. Recordings. Internal memos Helix would rather forget existed. If you use them right, they’ll have to back off.” She stepped away, back to professional distance. “But if you use them wrong, they’ll bury you so deep the dust won’t even remember your name.”

She walked back toward the corridor without another word.

Caleb stood in the atrium, the chip cold against his palm. He looked down. The chronometer had flickered to life in his pocket — one pulse, then another, then steady.

He didn’t know if that was a good sign or a warning.