As a couple of the other officers murmur, the one in charge looks directly at me. Such attention, from a woman in such an unfortunately familiar uniform, makes me break out in a cold sweat. As an illegal off-worlder child, I learned early to fear Gaian law-enforcers. But I force a smile through the terror and flicker the fingers of one hand in a wave.

The woman’s expression is almost pitying. It seems even a Gaian can find sympathy for someone like me, without a legal home anywhere in the whole system. My siblings’ birth-planets were a calculated move by Momma, exploiting a legal loophole to grant her access through closed borders, but a calculated home is a home nonetheless. At least it gives them an option. They have somewhere to go if they decide life on a smuggler vessel isn’t for them. They could make the same choice as Corvus if they wanted.

And then there’s me: the screwup, born early on a ship waylaid by pirates. We were only one day out from Deva. If I had waited one day to join the world, I would’ve been born on the surface and declared a citizen. Momma wouldn’t have been turned away at the border and forced back to Gaia with a failed shipment, and we wouldn’t have ended up broke and stranded here for seven years.

I grit my teeth and push the thought away, aching for a drink despite the rumbling in my guts.

“Hm,” the officer in charge murmurs, turning back to my mother. “Thank you.” She touches her earpiece and goes silent.

My head is starting to spin. It likely has something to do with the fact that I’m quickly transitioning from “drunk” to “hungover,” but the situation isn’t helping matters. Between the crash and Momma’s announcement, I thought today couldn’t get any more screwed up, but here we are.

I drop my head to obscure my expression from the officers and mentally run through a list of reasons Gaia’s government might flag a ship. Most of it, unfortunately, is something we’ve been guilty of at one point or another. We’re certainly not innocent of importing contraband right now. Is it possible one of Momma’s contacts ratted us out, or that a previous shipment was tracked back to us? If we get caught, my mother might get jail time if she’s lucky, but the rest of us will likely die right here in the landing zone.

Each of the planets is wary of outside tech and life-forms, but Gaians have the strictest policies of all. I was able to weather the hatred as a child, but Corvus could never understand why the locals hated us so much. He was always so desperate for everyone to like him. So Momma, who grew up on Gaia, sat us down and tried to explain it.