Page 1 of Naughty List Delivery
1
Holiday Hostiles
Noomi
Myfingersdrifttomy throat, searching for a pendant that isn’t there—hasn’t been there for two years. The absence hits like vacuum exposure every damn time.
Professional courier, Nova. You deliver packages, not baggage.
The holographic snow drifting through Junction One’s main concourse is fake as hell, but combined with some ancient Earth song about silent nights and coming home for Christmas, it’s trying to murder me with nostalgia. Red and green lights spiral around the support beams like candy canes, and the scent of synthetic pine mingles with recycled air and desperation—Christmas on the Fringe, where even the holiday spirit looks held together with prayer and duct tape.
Two years. Two years of flying straight, delivering legitimate cargo to grateful families instead of weapons to warlords. Two years of sleeping without checking the locks twice, of not flinching when footsteps approach from behind.
And now Christmas music wants to drag me back to memories that taste like stolen champagne and promises we were too broken to keep.
The little girl at the message booth bounces on her toes, pigtails flying as she tries to reach the recording interface. Can’t be more than six, all gap-toothed grins and boundless faith that love travels faster than light. She’s wearing a paper crown she made herself, crooked and beautiful. Her mother lifts her up, and the kid’s face could power a small station.
“Hi, Daddy! I made you a picture of our house so you remember what home looks like! I hope Santa finds you at the mining station!”
The transmission tags for delivery to some godforsaken outpost where decent people go to disappear. But some OOPS courier will risk their neck getting that recording to a man who probably hasn’t slept in weeks, wondering if his little girl still remembers his voice.
Orion Outposts Postal Service—OOPS to everyone who matters—handles the deliveries nobody else wants. Too dangerous, too remote, too likely to get you shot by pirates or worse. But out here in the Fringe Systems, where the Orion galaxy government, the Stellar Togetherness Initiative, barely bothers to patrol, OOPS is the only thing connecting forgotten outposts to the rest of the galaxy. We deliver everything from love letters to weapons, no questions asked. Usually.
The old me would’ve called it a waste of fuel and good sense. The new me? I get it. Sometimes hope is the only cargo worth dying for.
I push through the crowd toward OOPS Dispatch, past families clutching packages like they contain actual pieces of their hearts. Maybe they do. The air reeks of fake Christmas—pine needles and cinnamon, hope and heartbreak distilled into atmosphere. Emergency mistletoe warnings are posted near the airlocks: “Caution: Terran Parasite Plant - Causes Temporary Romantic Compulsion.”
Mother's office squats behind reinforced glass, her silhouette hunched over displays that cast her weathered face in blues and reds. Madge Morrison has been dispatching couriers since before I learned to lie convincingly, and nothing surprises her anymore. Everyone calls her Mother—not because she's particularly nurturing, but because she's fiercely protective of her couriers and treats OOPS like her own dysfunctional family.
Except maybe me, two years ago, blood under my fingernails and terror in my voice, begging for clean work.
“Noomi.” She doesn’t look up. “You’re early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I drop into the chair across from her desk. The leather’s cracked and probably older than my ship, but it’s honest furniture. No hidden weapons, no secret compartments. Just a chair that does its job without trying to kill anyone.
I’m still getting used to things like that.
“Good. Because I’ve got something that’ll test whether you’re as reformed as you claim.” Mother’s fingers pause over her keyboard—a tell that means she’s nervous, and Mother doesn’t do nervous. “Christmas run. The one blasted holiday all of Orion adopted from humans. Three packages, outer rim destinations. Payment’s...” She slides a data pad across the desk. “See for yourself.”
The number makes me blink. Hard. Six months of regular runs, maybe more. Enough to finally fix the environmental systems so my ship doesn’t sound like it’s dying every time I breathe.
My internal alarm starts screaming. Jobs that pay too well usually end with someone floating in vacuum.
“What’s the catch?”
“Routes are rough. Kepler-7b terraforming station, Titan’s Drift settlement, Meridian Outpost.” She taps the manifest. “All territories where nice girls like you get turned into spare parts.”
I scan the destinations and feel ice crawl up my spine. I know those systems like I know the scars on my hands—every asteroid field, every pirate nest, every corporate patrol route. Ober and I used to—
Stop. That’s the old you talking, and she’s dead. Died in a transport explosion, remember?
“What’s in the packages?”
Mother’s expression goes soft, which is terrifying on a face that’s seen three decades of couriers get blown to atoms. “Christmas miracles. Legal ones,” she adds quickly. “Families separated by work, war, or worse luck. These packages are all some people have left to believe in.”
She leans forward, and for a second she’s not the hardass dispatcher who sends people into hell for a living. She’s tired and worried and trying to hold the universe together one delivery at a time.
“You know what it’s like to lose everything, Noomi. To wake up empty-handed in a universe that doesn’t give receipts for what it takes. These families? Their Christmas is in your cargo hold. Don’t let them down.”
