Deep Claim

by Elsa Jade

  She made a rude gesture at his back before turning to help the miners who were struggling with the bulk of the broken table. “I broke it, I’ll haul it.”

  With her added muscle, they hauled the scrap into the corridor and stacked the pieces with the legs turned inward toward each other to make a new tabletop, if only half as wide.

  Lalabey, who’d been holding Jashanna’s drink, whistled under their breath. “Cracked like an eggshell.”

  Jashanna hummed as she settled her ass on the new seat. “It was old, brittle. Also, sometimes I crack things when I’m having fun.”

  Laly ran one fingertip over the air-pocketed interior, exposed by the break. “Printed at half density to save on resources because we didn’t have any other choice.” Frowning, they rubbed both hands over the engineered shock absorbers where their legs should’ve been. On the ragged edge of the Obsidian Rim, Ydro-Down was far from what remained of the civilized galaxy, and the outpost had to supplement its supplies with homemade, 3D-printed materials, but relentless, merciless demands by QueCorp’s overseers meant sacrificing safety to survive. Not everyone had—and not everyone survived intact. “How much of this moon is one table dance away from shattering?”

  The tension in Laly’s voice was wound tight enough to sever fingers at least. Who would’ve guessed that in some ways freedom was harder than hopelessness? Now they had no one to blame for their troubles but themselves.

  Jashanna laid her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I’ll stay on the ground.”

  Hearing the inadvertent echo of the merc’s words in her promise, she glanced through the mess hall doorway. He was sitting at a table, alone. Shuh, of course he was. Even the other mercs wouldn’t sit with him, not with his attitude.

  Still… He had prevented her nasty fall. If he’d been anyone else—anything else—she would’ve gone in to keep him company, to introduce him to others. Life in the deeps was too hard, too dangerous to be alone.

  Apparently, though, mercenaries had a different philosophy.

  She returned her focus to her friend, where it belonged. “So I take it the safety review isn’t going well?”

  Laly snorted. “Not like we didn’t know how vacced this place is, but to make a list of all the ways we could die…” They shook their head. “Gets a little crushing.” Their lips twisted grimly. “Like bio bits between boulders.”

  Industrial accidents and natural perils were common enough in mining; add in the economic cruelties of indentured servitude, where replacing people was cheaper than preserving them and the system was unforgivably evil.

  Hence the rebellion.

  “I’m glad you’re in charge of those surveys,” Jashanna said.

  Another snort. “Because I can’t afford to lose any more parts?”

  Jashanna canted sideways to bump her shoulder into her friend. “Because nobody has a better eye for weak spots that need fixing. You wouldn’t have broke the table.”

  “True. And even with no legs I’m a better dancer than you.” Laly bumped her shoulder back. “You can’t clodhop your way over every obstacle, Jash. You might try a bit of finesse sometimes.”

  Pretending to wince at the teasing body blow, Jashanna rubbed her shoulder. But actually, the spot where the merc had grabbed her was a little sore, as if reminding her that he wasn’t someone to mess with. He was a mercenary, after all.

  “Ah, vac it.” She dug her fingers into the upper pocket of her sleeve. The typical miner work uniform had plenty of storage spots for assayer tools, energy tablets, emergency air filters, and more. She pulled out her recorder.

  She’d tucked the small, simple instrument away in the upper pocket while she sang. The thin metal was dented, the tube curved into a quarter-circle, the little round holes squished into ovals. The merc had held too tight and pulled too hard to keep her from falling since she was quite a bit bigger than him.

  Annoyed again, she tossed the whistle on the broken table behind her. If he laid hands on her again, she’d be clodhopping all over his ass.

  While many of the miners were still crammed into the mess hall, which was one of the few semi-comfortable open gathering spots in the complex, others were spilling out through the corridors, talking and drinking, and their voices—getting precipitously louder—rang joyously against the hewn stone. At the closest intersection to the mess hall, someone had brought out dice, and someone else was cursing.

  Cuz nothing celebrated payday like gambling it all away. Jashanna shook her head but had to smile at the camaraderie, so rarely seen. Not because the miners didn’t care for one another, but QueCorp had strongly discouraged gatherings since gatherings led to talk, and talk led to complaints, and complaints led to…armed uprisings, apparently.

  Turned out, QueCorp wasn’t all wrong.

  Too late for those wormy vaccers now, though. Ydro-Down was finally free. And if they still needed the borrowed guns of some unwanted mercs to keep them alive… Well, someday they’d be strong enough to stand on their own feet, however many they might have.

  Restless, she slid off the restacked table. “Better grab another sunshine while it lasts. You want one?”

  Laly eyed the dice game. “Nah. I’m seeing a weakness of my own right now. Might have to finesse that.”

  Jashanna rolled her eyes and left her friend strolling toward the gamblers like luck greased the springs in their artificial legs. She grabbed another mug and spent the rest of the night dancing—not on tables—with her friends.

  Ydro-Down had plenty of precious minerals besides qubition that would keep its miners alive and thriving for many paydays to come.

  But silver was not one of them.

  Chapter 2

  Right before sunrise—not that it mattered in the tunnels of Ydro-Down—Fenn Alexos walked the empty corridors of the outpost. The last carousing miners had stumbled off to whatever narrow cots they called beds, leaving him to his watch alone.

  Just the way he liked it.

  He finished another round and pinged his comm to record the uneventful patrol. The automatic reply noted all was peaceful elsewhere with Nazra Company.

  That was…not necessarily what he liked.

  He forced the thought down, deep down. Deeper than anyplace on this benighted moon.

  Where the Q burns hot and sweet

  And the sunshine chases the black away…

  The warbled lyrics seemed to echo in his head, even harder to excavate than his antisocial mercenary tendencies. He’d just gone down—up—to the mess hall to eat before his shift when that miner’s singing had roused something in him deeper and darker yet. Without conscious decision, he’d found himself sidling up next to her…just as she fell.

  Catching her had wrenched something in him. Not physically. Though she was built like…like a miner, Nazra Company contractors kept themselves in peak shape. But something inside him felt strained, torn.

  Which was impossible. He’d had all that inner weakness excised long ago. The only thing left inside him was viscera. And even when he bled, he didn’t feel it.

  But her singing…

  That voice didn’t fit in the body. As substantial as the body was—all wide curves over blunt muscle over big bones—her voice was even more lush. The ugly, indestructible canvas coveralls couldn’t disguise it. Even the hollowed stone of the outpost couldn’t contain it. Probably why the table cracked.

  He knew some qubition miners had been enhanced, even genetically engineered, for the hazardous work, and maybe she was one since she seemed physically perfected to brave the deeps. But artistic gifts wouldn’t have been deliberately selected since singing had no more survival value than her brown hair, cropped shorter than his, or the sable-brown of her eyes.

  Except… Her singing invited all the listeners to lean in, to join in, to enjoy no matter what else was going on around them. It reminded him…of home.

  When he cursed softly under his breath, his comm pinged an urgent query at his status. Though he pressed the all-clear, th
e device insisted on his passcode. On too many patrols, the last recorded post was an expletive, so Nazra Company’s founder Caira Kemet instituted passive listening on watches to back up her crew. There was a reason she was known for running one of the best merc companies in the Salty Way.

  After all, she’d captured Fenn.

  When he tapped in his passcode, the comm accepted his all-clear and reset for his next round.

  “Black holes suck and so should we

  Cuz I’ve got DICs and a cruiser for three…”

  While the miner’s wholehearted singing had stirred up deliberately forgotten memories of home, that verse was not part of his childhood. Also, the words were getting louder.

  Altering his course, he zeroed in on the echoes.

  She was heading into restricted space again, that huge flask slung over her shoulder. As he watched, she craned her head to set her lips below the spout. She paused, swaying, to tip the flask toward her mouth. Oddly, his own breath caught as he imagined her dousing herself in alky…

  Nothing came out.

  A faint, involuntary sigh of thwarted anticipation escaped him, though not nearly as loud as hers. She gave the flask a jiggle that reverberated down her body, from breasts to backside. Still nothing.

  With a disappointed snort, she let the flask sag to her side. She hadn’t seen him. Presumably she was on her way to return the flask to the fuel depot/so-called distillery. But Nazra had proprietary secrets and he wasn’t going to let her just wander their borrowed halls while everyone else was asleep. He checked his comm, confirmed the next watch was coming on soon, and noted he was going off his beat to usher an inebriated miner out of their territory.

  Then he followed her. Just as he had before.

  Sure enough, she weaved her way—though the corridor was perfectly straight—to the still room. He didn’t praise himself for his keen analytical acumen. He would only be impressed if she turned out to not be exactly what she seemed to be: a big, drunken miner.

  If she wasn’t…he might be in trouble. She was definitely drunk and very big, and while he could handle both, he’d have to do so in a way that didn’t damage her since ostensibly Nazra was here to protect the miners.

  And just like theft, tenderness wasn’t in his skill set.

  He shadowed her steps easily. Not only was she big and drunk and oblivious, but she was still singing to herself, softly and off key. It wasn’t the rollicking revelry of the friends in space that had caught his attention. This time, she crooned some ballad.

  “Once he called the stars from the skies

  Strung like beads of red and gold and white

  And at the locus black as night

  He pierced his heart but never dies

  In that hollow her echo cries

  While he waits for love to rise…”

  The mournful tune cut into him sharper than a laser, burning as it went as if the edges would never heal together again. Gritting his teeth against the pang, he fell back a step. It wasn’t possible, not when he’d paid good credits, and a lot of them, to make sure he never felt anything again.

  He needed to follow her now, to understand why she roused these impossible feelings.

  He’d undergone the limbic dulling procedure to make himself a more valuable member of the Nazra crew. And to live with who he’d been. If the effects of the procedure were faltering, he needed to tell Kemet. She’d put him down before he reverted.

  But first, he needed to be sure the singing miner wasn’t more trouble than she already seemed.

  She let herself into the distillery room. He’d confirmed on one of his rounds that the door lock was disabled. Anyone could come drink the ethanol she was distilling from the otherwise innocuous nutrient slurry. Although why they would want to drink it was another question. This so-called sunshine was worse than anything the Nazra crew suffered on their long-haul outings. How could the mine leaders allow such a potentially problematic substance to be freely available? Fenn had been a merc long enough to know the Rim didn’t spin like that.

  The singing miner had mellowed to a low hum as she puttered around the still while he watched unnoticed in the doorway. For all her imposing strength, she was so trusting, innocent even…

  A jolt of disbelief straightened his spine. How could someone who’d been trapped in the dark of a dead moon still be innocent?

  Maybe she wasn’t as pure as she seemed.

  “If you’re just gonna stand there, the least you could do is hold this pipe.”

  He jolted again, wondering when she’d noticed him. “I’m not paid to hold pipe.”

  She snickered. “Yeeeah, that’s a different kind of muscle for hire.”

  An unexpected flush of heat melted his indignant stance, and he slouched against the doorway. “I am not just muscle for Nazra either.”

  “I can tell, little man.” She huffed out a breath. “Quit whinging and just hold this. I’ll do the heavy lifting.”

  For reasons he couldn’t name, he ambled forward. Wedging his hand where she indicated, he studied her. “Is this the best time to do this, middle of the night and drunk as a…” He hesitated. The limbic procedure was supposed to be permanent, so why was he needling her.

  “As a miner on payday?” She blew out another breath, incendiary as a mythical dragon. “Ain’t that drunk. Not enough sunshine to go around. Next time, maybe, now that we don’t have to hide it.”

  “You should lock it up at least,” he informed her. “Boss Kemet says alky turns dogs into rabid wolves.”

  She switched out the pipe for a wider bore. “Boss Kemet?”

  “Caira Kemet, founder of Nazra Company. My boss.” His jailer. His savior.

  “Huh. Your boss has a ship to take you to the stars. We’re stuck in the rock with just sunshine.” She tightened down the array. “Anyway, Ydro-Down doesn’t have dogs. We have a few mutated amoebas that hitchhiked along on the first digs, but they’re sober little creepers.” She slanted a sly grin at him. “Kinda like you.”

  He clenched his jaw. “I’m not…little.”

  Her laugh washed around him, fiercer than the bite of spirits. “You are to me.”

  Letting go of the pipe, he took a calculated step into her space, unwilling to let the insult stand. “Not where it matters.”

  Since she topped him by a head, he had to angle his face up to hers. The breadth of her shoulders were half again as wide as his. As strong as she was, she got that way battling rocks, not the most challenging of opponents. Although he had to admit, her biceps were…impressively hewn. And he had a good view since the thin tunic that all the miners wore under their canvas work coats was nearly translucent with age, even finer than plasilk.

  If he angled his gaze the same arc downward, he’d be staring at her breasts, unbound beneath the tunic…

  “Ahh.” Her sunshine breath ruffled his hair. “That’s how it is? You want to wrestle me.”

  “I’ve mastered more fighting forms than—”

  “Mm-hmm.” She dipped her head down and slanted her lips across his.

  The stroke silenced him more effectively than a punch to the mouth. Hot as blood, the mineral tang of sunshine washed through his head. Then the tip of her tongue teased a circle, hotter yet, around the inner rim of his lips, and the kiss was a blow that blasted down every nerve, right into his pants.

  He gasped, and the parting of his lips let her in. So far in… Even his knees were tingling, weakening, as if with a solitary touch of her mouth and her breath she was unearthing his deepest secrets…

  Probably she was a very good miner.

  And she was definitely not as innocent as he’d believed.

  Except she was also dangerously undermining the blockade that kept him from reverting. Sucking down another helpless breath, he inadvertently took her tongue even deeper into his mouth. His gasp became a groan as the fire of sensation burned through his resistance.

  But he couldn’t let the desire rage any further or they’d both be trappe
d in the ashes.

  With every muscle in his aching body—and despite his mastery of various fighting forms, he still needed to brace his flattened palms against her biceps to find the strength—he forced them apart.

  Which meant he took a long step back because she was an unmovable rock.

  “But you hate mercs,” he blurted.

  “So? I hate alky headaches too. What’s the point of liberation if we don’t drink it to the dregs?” She blinked at him with a languid sweep of her long, dark lashes. “Why? You don’t want to fuck?”

  “You said wrestle.” The reply burst out of him in a more accusatory tone than he’d intended. But she had said wrestle, and though she spoke with the informal dialectical inflection that he’d heard elsewhere on Ydro-Down, their shared vocabulary wasn’t that different. Under his breath, he mumbled, “I didn’t know you meant…”

  She waited, but when he didn’t finish, she shrugged one big shoulder. “You followed me again, said it was late and I was drunk. I figured you wanted to fuck.”

  Affronted, he reared back another step. “I wouldn’t take advantage like that.”

  “You’re a merc.”

  “Nazra Company has standards.” And he’d done everything necessary to meet them, even more than Kemet had required.

  “Standards, huh.” When the miner crossed her arms over her chest—blocking any chance of an accidental glimpse—the muscles in her forearms bunched. “But you kissed me anyway?”

  Sensing dangerous undercurrents in her question, he spluttered, “You kissed me.”

  “A slip of the tongue.”

  Black holes suck and so should we…

  He blanked out the thought, which could lead nowhere, just like a black hole. “This wasn’t what we were talking about. My point before—”

  “You had a point? I didn’t feel it. Maybe those fatigues are too heavy. Maybe you’re wearing protection?” She nodded once. “Probably that. Can’t point past bulletproof pants.”

  “I’m not…” He had to swallow back the rest of that irrelevant denial, but mostly he tasted secondhand sunshine. “My previous point of conversation, Citizen Riz—”