by Ruby Dixon
Mathiras immediately steps away and removes his hand. Sleipnir wedges himself between us, his tail flicking angrily as he glares in the corsair’s direction.
“How long will you guys be gone?” I ask, putting a calming hand on Sleipnir’s big head. I keep a smile on my face, because if I seem happy, the carinoux calms down. Sure enough, the big creature sits on his haunches, leans forward, and promptly begins to maul the control panel below the window.
“Not sure. A week? Three weeks? A few months? Just depends on how easy it is to find the wreckage.” He gestures at Sleipnir as the cat’s teeth grind down on the metal. “Can you…”
“Come on, boy,” I tell the carinoux and pry his jaws off the panel. “Let’s go find a nice discarded pipe for you to chew on.” I’m trying not to be upset over Mathiras’s words but…months? I’m going to live on an asteroid with a stranger for months? I don’t know the man. I don’t know what kind of alien he is (it seems impolite to ask) or if he’s nice or if there’s someplace for me to sleep.
Worst of all, this guy doesn’t even know I’m coming. He might not be happy.
I turn and look at Mathiras. “This un’Rok guy—he’s a friend of yours, right?”
Mathiras’s smile is wry. “I’m not sure he has friends.”
Well isn’t that great.
A short time later, Sleipnir’s gnawing on an arm-sized metal wrench in my quarters when Adiron gets over the comm. “Destination in sight. I’m sending Jerrok a coded message, letting him know it’s us.”
I put down the bag I’m packing and rush back out to the bridge, curious—and dreading—to see the place I’m going to be spending the next few weeks. I stare out the windows as it comes into view. My new home is on an asteroid all right. I’m not surprised at the sea of rusty and worn-down looking metal buildings, but what I am surprised at is the sheer size of the thing. The asteroid un’Rok’s base is on is bigger than several city blocks, and the cluster of buildings look as if they cover all of it. There’s a collapsed tower, a dirty-looking bio-dome of some kind, and lots and lots of closely packed buildings, all crowded together on the gray, rocky surface of the asteroid floating amidst all its brothers and sisters. A dead ship floats past, nothing but a hollowed-out hull, and then I see more dead ships floating in the distance. In fact, as we come closer, I see that the far end of the asteroid is covered in destroyed wrecks of ships of all sizes. Creepy.
“This is where he lives?” I ask, surprised. “It looks…”
“Uninhabitable?” Mathiras comments. “That’s the point. It’s an old abandoned base from the Threshian Wars. Jerrok claimed it for himself and fixed up a corner of the base to live in so no one can bother him. As far as I know, no one comes by here except the occasional scrapper with a ship to offload.”
Great. A hermit as well as a junker. Well this just sounds better and better. I’m sure he’s going to be thrilled to have me join him. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Not entirely, but it’s safer for you than bringing you with us.”
So he says.
The Little Sister settles down in the landing bay. Here, it looks less scrap-laden than the rest of the asteroid, but there are still far too many loose cables and peeling metal sheets along the walls to make me feel safe. I don’t know how a place like this is supposed to keep out the vacuum of space—it barely looks like it can hold itself together.
As the airlock seals itself behind the Sister, Adiron leaps up from his seat. Kaspar extends the ramp with the touch of a button, and then puts on his blaster belt. “Just in case.”
Mathiras rolls his eyes. At my worried look, he shakes his head. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend that lives alone on the edge of the universe,” Kaspar says dismissively, checking his gun’s cartridge. “It can turn anyone’s mind to noodles.”
My throat goes dry as Adiron bounds down the ramp and a lone figure limps forward.
Please don’t leave me here, I want to turn and beg Mathiras. Please take me with you. But they’ve made it clear that I don’t belong, and I learned long ago that begging helps nothing. It just takes away your dignity. So I won’t beg.
I’ll accept this, just like I do with everything else, and keep on surviving.
“What do you want?” the man calls out as Adiron heads toward him. His voice sounds distinctly unfriendly and his body language screams irritation. As he moves closer, it’s hard for me to make out his features. The upper half of his face is covered by an electronic mask of some kind, the circular eye-lenses whirling and flashing red as they focus on us. His head is swathed in dark fabric smeared with grease, and a pair of dented, dull metal horns stick out from the material. Judging from that and the fact that Adiron looks to be about the same size as him, I’d say he’s mesakkah. The lower half of his face that’s exposed, though, is grayish black, and the clothes he wears are dark, filthy, and cover every inch of his body with layers. It’s impossible to tell if he’s old or young.
There’s no hiding the scowl on his face, though.
Adiron ignores that scowl and wraps his arms around the man in a brutal bear hug. “Jerrok! Aren’t you glad to see us?”
“No.”
“We need a favor,” Mathiras adds, bounding down the ramp.
“No again,” says the stranger called Jerrok. “Get the kef out of here unless you’ve got some scrap to sell me.”
5
JERROK
It’s been a few weeks since anyone’s swung by with salvage. Weeks of utter quiet, weeks of not hearing a single voice other than my own. Weeks of no ships in the hangar, no one breathing my air, no one on this old abandoned asteroid but me.
It’s been keffing bliss.
Now, of course, all that bliss is ruined. Adiron va Sithai grins at me as if he’s shown up with presents, ready to hug me as if that will somehow improve my mood. I shove him away, irritated, and look around for the junk they’ve surely hauled in my direction. That’s why they’ve come out here, right? “Where’s your salvage? Dump it and leave.”
“I told you,” the oldest va Sithai brother says—the one with the stiff form (and likely a stick up his ass). “We need a favor.”
“And I said no. Show me your scrap, let’s make a damn deal, and you can stop hogging all my recycled air.” I cross my arms over my chest, irked. “Didn’t even have the decency to comm ahead of time?”
“Like you would have answered,” Adiron scoffs, and then wraps his arms around me in a bear hug. It makes my defective cybernetic arm ache against the bone its grafted to, and I clench my jaw. He doesn’t know that he’s shooting red-hot agony up my shoulder, so I just elbow him away. We were friends a long time ago. Served together in the Threshian Wars. Adiron somehow thinks that makes us best buddies for life. I believe differently.
I don’t have buddies. I don’t have friends.
I like my solitude. Prefer it that way.
It’s safest. Easiest.
No matter how irritating the va Sithai are, though, the brothers do tend to bring in good scrap…and they don’t show up often enough to make nuisances of themselves.
So I peel myself free of Adiron’s clinging grasp and decide not to kill him. “Why are you here? Kinda out of the way for a ‘favor,’ which means I’m not going to like it.” I give them a polite smile. “So my answer is no. Whatever it is, no.”
“We haven’t even asked,” Kaspar says, frowning at me as he storms down the ramp.
I sigh as all three brothers enter the docking bay, flinging my hands up. “Please. Make yourselves comfortable. You know just how much I love hosting a party out here on a deserted asteroid.” I let sarcasm bleed through my voice.
“We won’t stay long,” Mathiras says, waddling forward in that stiff-hipped way of his. Definitely a stick up his keffing ass.
“Good.” I was looking forward to more peace and quiet. My next regular client isn’t scheduled to bring by a load of scrap until next week. “Speak your business so I can repeat my answer—no—
and get you out of here.”
Adiron just grins at me. “You look like shit, my friend. What’s with these rags?” He grabs my sleeve and snorts with amusement when the plas-film, worn clear through, tears a hole.
“Excuse me if there’s not a lot of shopping on this end of the system,” I retort. “Did you come here to critique my fashion, or did you need something?”
“Missed you too, my friend,” Adiron says, ignoring my sour attitude. “How’s the arm?”
“Hurts. Like always.”
“And the leg?”
“Hurts.”
“Like always.” Adiron grins at me. It’s always like this with us—I rebuff him and let him know how completely irritated I am with him, and he ignores my scowls and acts as if we’re soldered at the hip like two transistor chips.
I only tolerate it because we served together. It’s not that I enjoy it.
Mathiras takes a deep breath. “We’re about to go on a very dangerous salvage run.”
“And?” They’re speaking my language, at least.
“And we’re chasing down the Buoyant Star.”
I snort at that. “Good luck.”
“We have a map,” Kaspar says, his eyes glittering with the insane enthusiasm of one with a charmed life. He’s never had his blaster shot out of his hand or a limb blown off, and it shows. If he had, he wouldn’t look so keffing eager to meet danger head-on.
These brothers. Idiots, all three of them.
“So you have a map. Want me to clap for you?”
“We have a map, but it’s leading us to a dangerous end of the Slatra system. And we have some cargo we need you to keep watch over for us while we go.”
I rub my jaw. My goggles whirr with the readings of the old base, letting me know temperatures and oxygen levels of all the different established living areas. It’s a routine feed—white noise—but I like it. I like routine. After serving in the war, I crave routine, and silence, and solitude…unlike Adiron. “So let me get this straight. You hauled ass through my asteroid belt just to come drop off some cargo while you go treasure hunting?” I squint, an old habit, and it activates the magnification module in my cybernetic eye. Irritating, but it quickly flicks back to normal after giving me a too-close-up view of Mathiras’s tunic. “How illegal is this cargo? And what’s my cut?”
Adiron laughs, clapping me on the back. “Knew he’d say yes.”
“I said no. I’m just curious.” Even a solitary bastard like myself gets curious. “Guns? Chemicals? Military equipment?” When they look uneasy, a new thought occurs to me—an unpleasant one. “Does it shit?”
They’re silent.
Kef me. “It shits, doesn’t it? That’s why you can’t have it with you. It’s alive.” I shoot an accusing look over at Adiron, who grimaces. “You can go kef yourselves, I’m not watching any pet you have.”
“It’s not a pet,” Mathiras says, and if anything, the stick in his ass grows larger. “It’s a friend. And we want you to take good care of her.”
“Her?” I practically spit the word.
“Me.”
The voice is small, the language unusual, but my translator picks it up anyhow. I look over at the ramp at the creature standing there, slight and uncertain. It’s a female, all right. It’s an alien species I’ve never seen before, but one I’ve absolutely heard stories of—a human. She takes a few steps forward, and I’m struck at how utterly fragile she is. Her limbs are slender and pale, her eyes large and sad, her hair dark and falling around her face in soft tendrils that sweep her shoulders. She moves gracefully as she goes to stand near the va Sithai brothers, and next to them she looks small and lost and utterly alone.
Of course she does. Humans are grabbed because they’re good to look at and better to mate. Of course she tugs at the heartstrings. I ignore the shy smile she sends in my direction, hardening my heart to her delicate face. I shake my head. “No. No humans.”
6
SOPHIE
The situation is getting worse by the minute.
I’m not sure what I expected when we landed. Part of me had hoped that their friend, the hermit, would be some old, wizened Yoda-type with a heart of gold. That we could hang out, share stories, and get through the next few weeks (or months) easily enough. So much for that.
I don’t want to stay here with this guy.
He gives me a dismissive look, obvious despite the goggles covering the top half of his face. “Humans are trouble. I don’t want one here.”
Adiron claps him on the back again, a movement that seems to irritate the guy even more. “This one’s no trouble, trust me.”
“I’m not interested in hiding your sex toys for you,” the junker says flatly.
I gasp at the insult, though I should have expected it. In a lot of alien eyes, that’s all I’ll ever be.
The junker glances over at me, then looks away again.
“Watch your mouth,” Kaspar says.
“Or what? You’ll turn around and leave?” The junker waves his hands at us and walks away. “Go.”
Adiron shoots a desperate look in my direction. “Come on, Jerrok,” he says, tone cajoling as he chases after the rag-covered male. “Sophie won’t be a problem. And you owe me a favor—”
“Kef off,” Jerrok says crankily.
I watch them go, my stomach churning with distress. If the cranky, dirty-looking jerk is so against me, what’s he going to do when he finds out I have a big attack cat with me? A very expensive one that also likes to take a shit in inconvenient locations? Because the carinoux is fastidious enough, but not even the Little Sister has a litter box big enough to handle him. “Can’t I just come with you?” I ask Mathiras. “I promise I won’t be in the way.”
“If we fail, we’re going to need the funds that the carinoux brings in,” Mathiras tells me. “He’ll come around. He’s always like this when we show up.”
“And we’re not going to fail,” Kaspar adds, following after Adiron and Jerrok.
I swallow hard, crossing my arms over my chest and glancing around. Every inch of this place is covered in dust, broken metal parts—or both. The lights here in the bay flicker as if they’re about to go out, and it’s so shadowy that I suspect most of the lights are ALREADY out and we’re one unlucky break away from total darkness. In outer space.
With an asshole.
Yeah, I really don’t want to stay here. I think about Sleipnir, dozing on my bed, and fight back the worry I feel. I don’t want to abandon the carinoux either, and I worry that if I push too hard, they’ll consent to let me go with them, but Sleipnir will have to stay behind.
And that won’t be possible because he hates men.
Shit. Maybe I need to try and talk to this junker—this Jerrok—myself, and see if I can reassure him I’ll stay out of his way. Me and Sleipnir both. I follow the path Adiron took, noting the unwelcoming vibe of this place. The walls are sheer metal, some of it different shades, as if it’s been repieced together. The lights flicker here, too, and it reminds me a bit of a haunted, broken-down space station from a horror movie. This is absolutely not where I want to spend the next few months.
The doorways and halls seem like a maze, but I hear voices distantly and follow the sounds.
“She’s nice,” I hear Adiron protesting. “Soph isn’t the type to give anyone any trouble. You’ll like her.” There’s a pause. “Even if you don’t, it’s not for all that long.”
“I moved out here because I wanted quiet, va Sithai,” the junker says in a harsh voice. “Not to be saddled with bored playthings. It may be no big deal to you but it’s a huge pain in the keffing ass-cheeks to me.”
“You know we’ll make it worth your while. And think of the salvage you’ll get if we actually find the Buoyant Star.” Adiron’s tone is sly. “It’ll be enough to keep you in luxury for decades.”
“Yes. Luxury. Clearly one of my top priorities,” Jerrok retorts sarcastically, and I picture him gesturing at his surroundings.
&nb
sp; “All right, then. It’ll be enough for you to get new cybernetic limbs. Ones that don’t malfunction.”
I peek around the corner, just in time to hear Jerrok give a reluctant grunt.
They both look over as I arrive.
“Hi.” I take a few steps forward, ignoring the unpleasant glare that Jerrok is sending in my direction. “I thought I’d introduce myself.”
“Why? Do I look like I’m interested in human cunt? Spreading your legs isn’t going to convince me one way or another.”
I recoil, shocked at his abrasiveness. “Jesus Christ, I just came to say hello. Do you have to be such an asshole?”
“How’s being nice working out for you, human?” he sneers.
“Guys.” Adiron shoots us both looks. “It’s just for a little while, okay? You can hang out at separate ends of the station and never run into each other. I know it’s a pain in the ass and inconvenient.” He steps in front of me as if to shield me from Jerrok’s scowl. “But we need Sophie and our cargo safe. She’s not whoring for anyone. She’s not a slave. She’s like our sister.”
Jerrok grunts, picking up a wrench and turning to the wall. He tightens at rusty-looking bolts, and I suspect it’s so he won’t have to look at us. “Where is that sister of yours? The one that never comes off the ship?”
“She mated a friend. Sentorr of the Jabberwock. You know him.”
“They’re calling it the Jabberwock now?” When Adiron nods, Jerrok continues. “She was a good kid.”
“You know she was human, right? That’s why she never liked to show her face.”
Jerrok turns and stares at Adiron, goggles whirling as if trying to focus on the big space pirate’s face. “You keffing with me?”
“I’m not.” Adiron puts a big hand on my shoulder. “And Sophie is like a sister to me, too. That’s why I wanted to bring her here. If we leave her with anyone else, they’ll toss her back into chains again. You and I know how important freedom is.”