by K. T. Flores
“I’m sorry, I think you’re lost. The overworld is above us.” She pointed upwards with her tool, but his eyes stayed trained on her face.
“I know where I am,” he said, cocking his head.
His voice seemed to rumble throughout the shop, its dark tenor raising her hackles. He was dangerous. Of that, she had no doubt.
“Actually, I don’t think you do,” she said. “Are you looking for a brothel? There’s one a few buildings down. Luetta’s pretty nice, but if you’re looking for something rougher, I’d say to ask for Eilane.”
He didn’t say anything, continuing to stare.
“Oh, of course,” she continued sarcastically. Uncertainty fluttered in her chest, but she tried to sound aloof. “Sorry, I didn’t peg you as the candy type. But if you’re looking for drugs, you’ll want to ask for Barco at the bakery next door.”
She frowned at him, wondering if he had anything to do with the woman from last night. Two overworlder Dagrians was one too many to be a coincidence.
“No, no. I’m looking for a mechanic.” He gestured to her, the band on his thumb catching the sunlight. She turned her gaze away, flustered. Her mouth went dry, and she yanked her water bottle off her belt. It was cooling, but she couldn’t drink away the tightness forming in her throat.
Taminite.
The most expensive metal in the galaxy. That ring alone was worth more than her existence, even with all the units and the triterrain racer she now possessed. She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck, glad the work gloves helped wick up sweat.
The racer door jangled loudly as she fiddled with the handle, checking the pressure valves and g-force liquid compartments. She welcomed the distraction but felt uneasy keeping her eyes off him.
“You’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t fix overworlder crafts,” she called out. She winced and hoped he would overlook the vehicle she was leaning into.
“No, I imagine you wouldn’t.” Amusement colored his voice, and she knew he didn’t believe her.
Damn.
They said nothing while she found invisible things to nitpick in the hovercraft. He stood somewhere near the doors, boots barely making noise. But his steps were still louder than the shouting and music from outside.
Was he doing it on purpose?
Her shoulders stiffened.
“Whatever you want, I can’t help you,” she said loudly. Her nails clacked against the glass of the gravity gauge.
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
His voice came from directly behind her. She impulsively spun and wound her arm back. The wrench flew out of her hand at the stranger, but he plucked it from the air before it smashed into his face. He raised a brow, then tossed the book he was holding down at her feet.
Heat flared across Tauri’s cheeks as she recognized the messy ledger. When had he grabbed it? And where had she left it for him to find so easily?
Scribbled notes crossed into the margins and made the opened page appear senseless. But she understood her handwriting and what each random scratch meant. There was a neater, electronic rendition of her book packed away in her bedroom drawer in a holobook, but she liked her physical copy more.
She snatched the ledger, pulling the dirtied forest green cover to her chest. “You overworlders think you own everything,” she snarled, “but down here? You guys get eaten alive, bones and all. Then we drown the wretched flavor in alcohol. And none of us are sorry for it.”
“It would be troublesome if that book got into the wrong hands.” He tapped the hood of the triterrain, ignoring her. “Maybe you shouldn’t leave something that important out in the open,” the Dagrian suggested, inspecting her wrench with interest.
“Or mind your manners and don’t go snooping. Get out!” she ordered, taking a step towards him. Any fear had evaporated. Instead, anger pulsed through her veins.
“None of these people have paid you,” he said, eyes alight with interest. “They bring you junk and food instead of units. And you take off more from their debt than you should.” He twirled the wrench in his hand and offered it to her. “That’s how businesses fail. You’re not making enough to live. I don’t know why you’d let them kill you like this. Because that’s what this will lead to. Your death.”
She wanted to shake him, yell obscenities. No one in the underworld was making enough to live. And they relied on her to fix things to help them and their children. How could she say no? How could she let her own people die because they couldn’t afford thousands of units to fix something as simple as the magnetic fluids beneath their hovercraft?
He had no right to make assumptions about how she decided to live.
“Get. Out,” she hissed, seizing the offered wrench and tossing it into the triterrain’s driver seat. “Your kind are not welcome here.”
“I’m not an overworlder,” he began. She scoffed and rolled her eyes, but he continued to speak. “Pythagora is my home planet.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Tauri said lowly, “an offworlder is just as bad as the ones that live above us.” She pointed her raypistol at him, flicking off the safety. “Leave.”
He stepped forward, tip of the gun pushing into his chest. She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, unwavering. She was thankful her hand didn’t tremble the way her insides did. He slid a card into the front pocket of her overalls as the edge of his other thumb wiped her cheek.
“You had some oil there,” he said softly, eyes scanning her face.
She froze, finger resting uncertainly on the trigger. She’d never used it to kill anyone. Usually, troublemakers would slink off as soon as they saw the weapon. But he wasn’t like that. He was so far beyond her that it was impossible to imagine her winning in a fight—even with a gun.
The skin he touched burned, and she could swear he heard the pounding of her heart as his small smirk unfurled.
There was that damned dimple again.
Would he be mad if she aimed for it with her fist?
“Now, I have no idea what an underworlder would be doing with three million of my sister’s units and her racer, but it can’t be good.” He narrowed his eyes and patted his chest where her front pocket would be. “If you decide you want to live, feel free to call me. I’ll be waiting, Tauri.”
How did he know her name?
“You have your nametag on.” He turned away, tossing his arm up and waving.
She was startled for a moment, scared she had asked the question aloud. But no. He must’ve seen the confusion and horror across her face. Then, she registered the rest of his words.
“Did you just threaten me?” she yelled after him, still not dropping her gun. Though, her hand trembled.
He stopped in his tracks but didn’t turn around. “No,” he said. “I’m trying to protect you.”
And then he was gone from her shop.
Tauri rushed outside, spinning in a circle. Frantically, she searched for his head bobbing through the crowd, the broad shoulders encouraging people to step out of his way. Not a trace of him remained.
She kicked angrily into the street as Rhea and Talar reappeared.
“We’re almost done with your doors, Miss Tauri!” Rhea said, tugging on her hand. “No peeking!”
“Did you see a man come out of here? Where did he go?” Tauri asked hurriedly.
The children shook their heads.
“Sorry, but we didn’t see anyone,” Talar said thoughtfully. “We went home to pick up more paints. Now go inside! We’ll call you in a second.”
Tauri checked both alleys of her shop just in case. There was no sign of the male Dagrian. Her heart pounded as she ran to the security cameras, hoping to catch which direction he had fled, but he simply appeared and disappeared from her shop doors in the recording.
“Shit,” she cursed, slamming her palm against her kitchen table. She’d forgotten Dagrians could teleport short, visible distances.
She pulled the card from her front pocket. A lone string of numbers
was scribbled on it in graceful handwriting. She rolled her eyes and made a mental note to incinerate it later.
She would enjoy watching it burn.
Chapter Three
A week had passed since seeing the Dagrians. Fortunately, all had been quiet.
Tauri looked at the fuel gauge one final time. She flipped through her notebook. Equations littered the pages, some faded and nearly illegible. When her parents had left, she’d started calculating fuel and pricing for different types of crafts. Even after she scraped enough units together to buy her holopad with a navigational system, she preferred to do the math herself. Machines could be wrong, and it was not a risk she was willing to take.
The light meters changed into light hops when traveling through space, and the number was daunting. She’d barely traveled out of her sector.
And now, she was leaving. She could see her parents at last and travel wherever she wanted.
She glanced up at the sky. As she tilted her head back and forth, the blue disappeared into the upper crust of the overworld.
Who would take care of the customers that she was leaving? There weren’t many people who could share leftovers, fix vehicles at reduced rates, or even offer families temporary housing. She had grown up dependent on the kindness of underworlders, and she did her best to pay it forward.
She eyed her ledger, a record of the things she’d given away and missed opportunities. A strange feeling bubbled in her chest. Maybe one day, she would return to help those she left behind.
She shifted from foot to foot, tapping her holocomm on.
She was slightly worried that if she waited any longer, the three million units in her account would disappear. She’d thought about giving as much of it away as she could. However, if the units came back to haunt her, she didn’t want to involve anyone else.
She pulled up the galactic map from her holocomm, tracing different courses she could take after stopping by the R’nal outpost to refuel. Her finger hovered for a moment on Pythagora, thinking of the two mysterious Dagrians.
Dagrians had colonized Pythagora long ago, and they’d changed the empty rock into a world of jewels. She’d heard of the triangular architecture, the metals and gems that reflected the sun so brightly most creatures had to wear special visors.
Before, she wouldn’t have even been able to afford the glasses. Now, she could buy several houses on Pythagora, glittering and ostentatious.
A part of her yearned to visit and see the wonders for herself. Any chance of that had been lost. She would stay as far away from the planet as possible.
She laughed, rubbing her forehead. She was a millionaire now. She would just have to figure out a way to keep making money. Maybe she would learn how to repair expensive, massive ships. Luxury, military, specialized. The more the ship cost, the more the repairs cost.
Or she could try and create new technological feats. She was as much an engineer as a mechanic, but it had been a while since she’d had any free time to create anything. She glanced at the tiny clockwork lizard she had made after studying the work of the Ethryl planet.
One of her regulars had lived on Ethryl. They’d often bring her trinkets, such as Eth puzzle lockboxes, as payment for repairs. She loved taking them apart and rebuilding to learn more about the clockwork mechanisms. No other planet used that type of technology. Most people said it was outdated, but Tauri thought it was just different.
The blowtorch on the driver's seat was the only thing left to put away. She couldn’t have things flying around when she was steering the triterrain racer. She considered the torch’s weight, wondering if she should take it with her in case of an emergency. There was enough fuel in it to patch holes if rocks or stray ray shots tore the ship.
She jumped as four curt knocks reverberated throughout the garage, and she turned to see three men surveying her shop and blocking her exit.
Uh-oh, she thought, shoulders tensing.
They didn’t seem like underworlders, but they were dressed plainly, meant to be inconspicuous. Just a small group of humans, trekking through the streets in search of a good time.
There were no good times to be had in a repair shop.
Unless they wanted to decorate her doors.
One spat off to the side, and she furrowed her brow in disgust. They didn’t look like the painting type.
“May I help you?” she asked carefully. But she already knew they’d come with questions she couldn’t answer.
“Yeah,” the tallest one said, stepping forward. “Seen any Dagrians lately?”
Oh, shit, she thought, tightening her grip on the torch.
“I can’t say that I have,” she said, proud at the steadiness of her voice and the convincing amount of confusion she used.
She couldn’t see their eyes through their dark visors, though she tried to gauge where their stares had gone. They wore all black, from their running shoes to their jackets. The only notieable difference between them was their varying length of blonde hair.
The man in the middle moved closer again, licking his chapped lips. “Are you sure about that?” he asked, hand shifting back to his hip. He deliberately traced a thumb over his raypistol and the badge clipped onto his belt.
She narrowed her eyes, index finger moving to rest on the blowtorch’s activation button.
Tauri wanted to be left alone. She was done with strangers coming into her space to cause trouble and ask questions. And the fact that he was a Navarian guardian made her less inclined to answer. She had no respect for the shiny insignia and the smiling face that went with it. She hated all it symbolized: Navar’s division. The guardians were supposed to work for both sections of the planet, but they were useless in the underworld. They liked causing trouble more than fixing it.
In response, the underworld had created its own unofficial guardian force. She had tried her best to help organize patrols in her sector, but it was like herding cats.
She placed a hand against her hip and nodded. “Oh, I’m sure, Guardian.” Her words were clipped. Cold. She jerked her head towards the front doors. “You might want to ask someone else.”
He ignored her and laughed. “I saw this place for sale. Are you leaving?”
“No, but I’m pretty sure you are.”
He yanked the blowtorch from her hands before she had a chance to react. “You don’t seem happy to see us,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not sure why. A murderer stopped here last Saturday, and we’re just trying to protect you.”
That was exactly what the Dagrian had said last week. Fury bubbled in her veins. She hadn’t been worth protecting in her whole life, so what had changed?
She didn’t care enough to ask.
“No one came to my shop after I closed that night.” She set her jaw. “And I can’t imagine you’ve ever had an underworlder happy to see you. Why is this time any different?”
He inspected the blowtorch with mild interest. “We’re here to protect and serve. You wouldn’t want to be charged with obstruction of justice, would you? Or maybe we can just say you’re the murderer. The courts would love that. I doubt they’d even give you a trial. An underworlder murdering the head of Vice… They’d probably execute you.”
The Dagrian had killed the head of Vice? The planetary department handled anything candy related, and drug crimes only seemed to be getting worse.
“You’re lying,” she said through gritted teeth, trying not to let panic cloud her mind. She needed to stay sharp if she wanted them to leave peacefully.
“Helden was a good man. He’ll get his justice.”
From what she heard on the news, the Vice head, Barry Helden, wasn’t a good man. He cared more about conviction numbers than catching actual culprits.
Maybe he deserved what he got. She bit her lip, wincing at the stray thought. Then the officer leaned close into her face, breath stinking of yuniper berries, a luxury only overworlders could enjoy. She bet Helden could have had yuniper whenever he wanted.
“Yo
u'd help hide his murderer, Miss Solne?”
It was then she noticed the V1C3 tattoo on his neck. He wasn't just any guardian. He was from Vice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It was mostly true.
His smile was a snarl. “The boys and I love when you underworlders play innocent. Roughing you up will be the highlight of my week.”
Maybe this guardian would get what he deserved, too.
“You don’t scare me,” she hissed. She didn’t owe these guardians or the Dagrians anything.
“Not yet I don’t,” he said, holding her upper arm in a crushing grip. “But I will.”
She considered spitting in his face. We’re also people, she thought at him. We may live below you, but we’re not worthless.
If the Dagrian had truly murdered Helden, then good riddance. Perhaps she’d done Navar a favor.
“You’re hurting me,” Tauri said flatly, pointedly looking at his fingers.
“You have no idea what pain is. But I’ll show you.” He turned and began to walk with her in tow.
She forced her heels into the ground, jerking her arm away from him with all her strength. He wasn’t expecting the resistance, and his hand fell away more easily than she anticipated When she was free, she wound her arm back as far as she could.
“Threaten me again,” she growled as she slugged his cheek, grunting on impact. He stumbled into one of the other guards, and she scrambled away from them. He pushed his partners aside as he regained his footing.
“You bitch,” he sneered. “You just assaulted a guardian!”
“Tauri, is everything okay?”
Barco?
She snapped her head towards her side entrance, calling out frantically, “Everything is okay! Go back to the bakery!” She waved her friend frantically away. “Seriously, Barco, go.”
But a raypistol went off, and Barco fell back against her wall. His body slid down, a trail of blood marring her pinned blueprints. In her mind’s eye, another body slumped over, but she pushed the unwanted memories away.