by Elsa Jade
She shook her head. Too short to curl, every strand of her brown hair was a wayward cowlick catching the meager light in chaotic waves. “I’m not.”
He paused. “Not…Jashanna Riz?” In preparation for the mission, he’d memorized every individual on Ydro-Down. If he’d gotten even one wrong, maybe there was more decay from the procedure than he’d worried.
“Not citizen,” she corrected before his thoughts got too wormy.
“Everyone is a citizen of the Salty Way.”
Her jaw jutted mutinously. “What has the Salty Way ever done for me? The Obsidian Rim spins only to crush people like me.” Her glower aimed at him. “And it uses people like you to do it.”
Shards of ice spiked through him, except for an acid rush in his mouth as he yearned to protest. But he couldn’t. Because she was right.
Like her, he’d learned early that the Rim was a place where only the strong thrived, and the weak were fodder. And he’d chosen his side. The things he’d done to stay on the right side of that equations had led to him being on the wrong side of law and morality even while people like him were the only ones enforcing the precarious balance of life on the Rim.
Kemet had her own code, and since joining her, he’d had the chance to claw his way over to the right side, making amends for some of the wrongs he’d perpetuated. Not that he could ever go back, but he’d never make that mistake again, not to stay strong, not to stay alive.
But why should Jashanna believe him? She’s suffered under the worst that people like him inflicted on people like her. And though Nazra had been hired to tip the balance in the miners’ favor, they hadn’t yet had a chance to prove their worth. And as she said, the Rim turned and when it did, anyone who couldn’t get out of the way was crushed in the path.
“You can hate us,” he said stiffly. “But right now, we’re the only thing keeping pirates, scavengers, and QueCorp off your necks.”
“And mostly you’ll be fighting yourself,” she snapped, “others just like you.”
Her voice dropped into a lower register, and in her words he could see the mirror she held up to him. She couldn’t know it was his very own face, minus a few turns, in that mirror. Younger maybe, but even harder. It shamed him, and no procedure short of death could eliminate that emotion.
Someone like her, who’d never had any choices, could never understand the choices he’d made…and regretted.
“I know what I’ve done,” he said, “and the price I’ll pay. What have you done to win your freedom? What would you do to keep it?” When she didn’t respond, he gave a sharp nod. “When you answer that, you can judge me.”
Straightening to her full, impressive height, she looked down her slightly off-kilter nose at him. “I am free,” she said with great dignity, “to judge you now, little man. And I find you…wanting. And”—she gestured broadly past him toward a cluttered counter—“you broke my pipe.”
With that pronouncement made all the more grand by her powerful voice, she spun on her boot heel to make her dramatic exit.
Unfortunately, her aim was off. She blundered into the doorway, and the plasteel jamb clipped her shoulder, spinning her around. Under other, less inebriated circumstances, he had no doubt she would’ve caught herself. But the whirl plus the alky caught up with her, and she went over backward into his arms again.
Chapter 3
Jashanna groaned. The sound was louder than a badly tuned whomper chewing into her head, throbbing with punishing undertones, so she groaned again, but quieter this time.
She hadn’t hurt this bad since she’d first inherited the alky still and mistakenly believed she could strongarm the delicate process. This morning was just excruciating regret. Shouldn’t have drained the last of the flask. But the celebration of payday had given way to an unavoidable acknowledgment of all that had been lost. Not just friends like family gone to the deeps over the turns, but others more recently, who had chosen to leave after the rebellion. They hadn’t believed in a future on Ydro-Down.
She’d never questioned her decision to stay. Until last night. The wandering moon was the only place she’d ever lived, mining the only life she’d ever known. Now she had the credits to change that. If she wanted to.
What have you done to win your freedom? What would you do to keep it?
The questions bubbled up from somewhere, she didn’t know where…
Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright, her eyeballs seeming to lurch up a moment after the rest of her.
In a bunk not her own. Where the vac…?
Oh, it looked almost like her own—nearly every berth on Ydro-Down looked the same—but the layout of this one was reversed from her own, like a strange, half-familiar dream.
Or nightmare, maybe, considering the merc angled awkwardly in the corner opposite her.
He’d been asleep, or resting anyway, but those tarnished silver eyes focused on her the moment she jerked awake.
“What am I doing here?” Her mouth was dry, her throat raspy. “In your bunk?”
Rubbing a hand over his head, ruffling the short plush of his dark hair, he sat up. “You wanted to…wrestle. When I didn’t indulge you, you took on the doorway instead. And lost. I didn’t know where else to take you to sleep it off.” When she sputtered, he added, “Don’t blame me. It was the alky.”
The sour pang of repentance in her belly confirmed his assessment, but she wasn’t ready to hear it. “Why not both?”
He shrugged one shoulder, his expression shuttered, his honed features going absolutely blank.
A defense, she decided. Every time he started to get riled, he shut down.
She knew how that worked. She’d had to do the same whenever the old guards had paraded through the outpost, blasters out and tensions high. To know that a merc couldn’t cut loose…
What did he have to fear?
She wasn’t in a position to find out, not when that position was in his bed. She pushed back the meager cover he must’ve laid over her—and stared down at her bare legs.
Ah. That was what he feared.
Lifting her furious glare to him, she hissed out a breath.
He raised both hands. “I already told you, we didn’t…wrestle. But I wasn’t putting you in my bunk with those filthy trousers.” Directing one finger toward the floor next to the bed, he indicated her discarded pants.
“Not filthy,” she growled as she leaned out to grab the worn canvas. “Just old.”
At the abrupt change in altitude, her stomach burbled like fermenting mash, and she pushed herself upright again with a whimper, clutching her pants.
When she opened her eyes again, the merc was at her side. “Don’t vomit in my bunk either,” he warned ominously. But he was holding out a small beverage cube. “I got this from the dispensary while you were sleeping.” She didn’t reach for it right away, and he waggled the cube impatiently. “I doubt there are any overindulgence remedies left on Ydro-Down this morning. If you don’t want it, I can probably trade it for a quarter-stake in the next dig—”
She plucked the cube from his hand. Since her digging was basically paying his wage, he should fetch her drinks. Just not sunshine…
Well, he wasn’t sunshiny at all. In fact, he was still done up in those charcoal-gray fatigues, although he’d unbent enough to unseal the neckline, revealing a symmetrical triangle of cool-toned, dusky skin. That more than anything reassured her he was telling the truth and indeed they hadn’t…wrestled.
Their awkward interaction last night was coming back to her in random pieces. Him in the distillery doorway. Him helping hold the sweetened mash. Him arguing that mercs weren’t all bad.
Her kissing him like she believed him.
Oop.
She gulped from the beverage cube, savoring the salty-sweet cool of rejuvenating electrolytes, to delay the inevitable apology she owed him. With the alky behind her now, she suspected he’d just been shadowing her last night, not seducing her. She, who never touched a rock face
without testing it for flaws, how had she made such an error?
When you answer that, you can judge me.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, letting the cleansing wash of the drink infuse her contrition. “I should not have forced that kiss.”
His mouth—which she’d kissed, enthusiastically, with lots of tongue—was a flat, hard line. Except for that tempting upper lip, vac it. “No one forces me. You startled me that was all.”
She curled her own lips inward to stop herself from scoffing at his disgruntled tone. “I would’ve thought a merc who’d mastered the fighting forms would have to be ready for anything, especially drunken miners.”
“Just because I fight doesn’t mean…”
“What, you don’t fuck?” she prodded, with a touch of sarcasm.
He bit his own lip, hard enough to bring a rush of blood to the smooth, firm flesh, and she swore she felt a matching tingle in her mouth. That kiss must’ve gotten deeper into her than her tongue had into him… Then she realized belatedly what he was saying.
“You don’t fuck at all?” she blurted. “Oh, I’m doubly sorry.”
“Not everyone does,” he said stiffly as he sealed up the front of his jacket all the way to his chin.
“I know that, and I honor your choice. But the way you looked at my tits, I thought…” She shrugged, making said tits bounce.
And once again, he looked, long enough that her tingle of surprise morphed into something deeper and more pleasurable.
“Just because I look,” he drawled, “doesn’t mean I take.”
She laughed. “Then what kind of mercenary are you?”
“The kind with courtesy and self-control.” He lifted one dark eyebrow. “You should try it sometime.”
“Being a merc?” She drained the last of the beverage cube and tilted her head thoughtfully. “I guess I could make a career change, if I wanted, now that we’re free. And I did lead a few headbashers during the mutiny.” She gave him a pointed look. “We bashed guard heads and then locked them up in these very quarters.”
He grunted. “I meant you could try control.”
She shrugged again, wickedly relishing the reflected heat that added a glint to his tarnished silver eyes. “QueCorp never gave us much to make our lives better, but we did have the freedom to fuck. And so we did.”
“There’s more to freedom than fucking,” he said, this time with a pious note that made her bristle.
She glowered at him. “Well, I finally get the chance to judge freedom like you’ve judged fucking.”
He didn’t respond, but the flush that had brightened his eyes cascaded over the high edges of his cheekbones in a bright blush.
She huffed out a disbelieving breath. “You’ve never fucked, ever? But you’re telling me all about freedom and control?”
“Just because I’ve never—” His glare was incendiary. “I’ve never died but I know I don’t want that either.”
She shook her head in wonderment. “Those aren’t at all the same. Or…maybe a little the same.” Grabbing her work pants, she shoved her feet into the holes. “Please, tell me more about withholding judgment.”
When she stood to tug the waistband over her thighs, he pivoted away, locking his gaze on the doorway as if to give her privacy—or because he was thinking of fleeing. But to her surprise, he kept talking. “I…had a procedure.”
“Oh. You don’t have your pointer anymore?” She smoothed the canvas over her ass. “Still, there are other ways to fuck.”
In profile, the furious writhing of his clenched jaw muscles could’ve ground through rock. “It’s not about a…pointer. The procedure was in my brain.”
“Why—?”
He swiveled back to face her. “The only reason I’m telling you this is because you can’t possibly grasp the threats out there.”
She crossed her arms, glaring down at him. “Wrong. I’ve fought—”
“Nothing, not compared to what waits to take you down and pick your bones.”
At the menace in his voice, she tightened her grip on her ribs, hugging herself furtively. He wasn’t just judging her and Ydro-Down for their vulnerability, she realized; those flat gray eyes were aimed at her but seeing something else. Some other time, some other victims maybe…
His? Despite her defensive posture and thick pants, a chill wormed through her. He might be defending her world now, but she knew the Rim was bigger and meaner than her, and she wasn’t so oblivious as he seemed to think.
“Jashanna,” he said, and somehow the softness of his voice was more threatening. “Your leaders brought Nazra here to do something much dirtier than digging. Stay safe in those tunnels of yours, out of our way, and you’ll sing about many more of these paydays.”
She raised her chin, as if she could lift her whole self out of the flush of shame and rage at the way he minimized her. “Safe? In the deeps?” A harsh laugh broke from her chest. “Little man, you have no idea what I do to earn that pay.”
“Maybe not. But merc or miner, we’re both stuck in the dark.”
She shoved past him, out the doorway. Though her vision was half obscured by anger, she knew every tunnel like her own limbs. With stiff, furious strides, she left the guard billet behind her and descended. On this day set aside for remembrance, the tunnels were as empty as they’d been on the day of the rebellion.
They’d spent most of their lives digging Q for their cruel overseer. Now they were doing it for themselves. And yet… Was it so different? They were still in danger, still half starving. Their light at the end of the tunnel might only be a burning keg of sunshine.
The fatalism poked at her uncomfortably. She struggled to ignore it, and she was back in her own quarters before she realized something in her pocket was actually poking her.
Out of a back pocket of her trousers, she pulled the recorder. The bent metal had been straightened, the sadly crumpled fingerholes smoothed into perfect little circles again.
She spun the instrument lightly between her fingers.
He’d brought her to his room instead of leaving her passed out in the distillery, and then he’d fetched her recorder and a refreshing beverage.
And then he’d practically shoved her out the door.
What a strange little man. And she still didn’t even know his name.
Half engulfed in the mechanical guts of a whomper, Jashanna didn’t hear the summons until someone banged on the excavation machine’s heavy exterior. She jerked out with a scowl, her ears ringing.
“Laly,” she scolded. “Too loud.”
Her friend poked up over the plasteel hull. “Since when?”
“Since…” Since a certain merc had made her feel small and stupid for thinking they could ever be truly free in a hollowed galaxy spinning around a core of doom. Well, she wasn’t saying that aloud. “Never mind. Why’d you come knocking?”
“Gavyn couldn’t reach you so he sent me.” Laly craned their neck to peer into the whomper. “Why is the comm down?”
“Was trying to boost the range on the whomper.” With a sigh, Jashanna set her tools aside and clambered out of the whomper. “No luck. I always blamed Scraff for refusing to give us newer sensors.” QueCorp’s overseer on Ydro-Down had been a thief of the worst sort, skimming profits off the miners even when they had almost nothing. “But seems like our rock is denser than I expected.”
Laly snorted. “Rock is hard? In other Jash reports, water is wet. Not that we have free liquid water on this rock.”
“And sunshine burns.” Not that she’d had any since that night with the merc… She closed up the access hatch on the digging machine. “But I suppose I don’t need to tell Gavyn that.” Although maybe she should bring the rebellion leader a secret flask of alky. Couldn’t be easy leading the mining moon out of its dark days.
“He has another project of some sort, asked for you.” Laly tapped the whomper idly. “I reminded him it’s supposed to be your day off.”
Jashanna blinked. “I forgot
about those.” Among the other changes like paydays, Gavyn, Rio, and the other thinkers of the mutiny against QueCorp had instituted equitable sharing of all the resources once hoarded by management, including food, medical treatments, climate control, and more. Which was all wonderful.
But days off seemed suspicious to Jashanna. It wasn’t as if one stopped living on days off. Some people watched entertainment vids when they weren’t fulfilling hours on their assigned teams, but most of the series had too much danger or intrigue or conflict for Jashanna’s tastes. If she wanted any of that, she could just take another shift in the deeps.
No, better to spend her quiet hours seeing to one of the endless tasks that spread through the outpost like toxic damps of poison gas. If left unchecked, even a minor seep could overcome the strongest miner. And she might not have the liking for management but she’d always been good at fixing little problems. Plenty of those to go around.
Closing up the whomper (the merc’s distrustful comments about disappearing alky had made her paranoid) she headed down through the tunnels to the hydroponics bay where Laly had said Gavyn was working.
It had been just a few of Ydro-Down’s short months ago that Gavyn had flooded some of the tunnels during the mutiny, damaging the hydro system. It had been a necessary ploy (no doubt the merc would raise one eyebrow in that sarcastic “see, the Salty Way is terrible” way of his if she tried to justify the reasons) but it meant they’d fallen behind in their efforts toward food self-sufficiency. Having spent part of those months facing the tense truth that QueCorp’s blockade might starve them out, they’d prioritized repairing and improving the cavern systems. So far, the harvests of edible algae, seaweed, and moss were sufficient only for supplementing the bulk nutrient and vitamin stores, but maybe someday they’d have the light and soil and atmosphere to support a real garden on the surface.
But until then, they had the cavern. To keep it secret from QueCorp, for turns, most of the miners hadn’t even known the cavern existed until Gavyn—at that point only recently made mine foreman—began quietly sharing its existence. He encouraged people to visit clandestinely, to take solace and find peace in the lush oasis in the heart of the rock.