Deep Claim

by Elsa Jade

  After Overseer Scraff and his underlings were defeated in the rebellion and driven off Ydro-Down, Laly cynically noted how clever Gavyn had been to use the gardens as a means of testing and cementing loyalty among the miners, binding them into keeping secrets from their overlord until it was time to rise up.

  Jashanna had always admired Gavyn. He’d been sold into servitude as a child while she’d been born to the mines, but he’d never once used that difference against her. He’d never claimed either greater advantage or greater suffering when they’d been sent into the deeps together, their small stature exploited in the tightest confines of the tunnels. When a growth spurt had briefly left her taller and heavier than him, he’d shared his nutrient slurry with her, stoutly claiming he knew she’d do the same when it was his turn.

  And she had. And she hadn’t been shocked when he eventually told her of the coming rebellion. But she had been just a little hurt to learn that the groundwork was well underway and she wasn’t part of his inner circle.

  “I needed someone more in touch with the others,” he’d explained afterward, when they’d survived, “not sullied by all the subterfuge.”

  She’d snorted. “You just didn’t trust me.”

  “I didn’t trust anyone,” he corrected. “But I always knew everyone else trusted you.”

  His sincerity had mollified her, but in some ways, the old closeness of their shared troubles was gone, even though they had just as many troubles these days. Of course, he had Ahmya at his side instead. The one-time saboteur had been sent to take control of Ydro-Down but had chosen to join their rebellion. Now she and Gavyn were a force even QueCorp couldn’t rule.

  Not that others wouldn’t try.

  As Jashanna made her way through the work party assigned to the cavern, nodding to her friends, unease dripped down her spine like the ceaseless droplets that fed the stalactite columns of greenery. After coming of age in hard rock and intermittently toxic air, somehow the soft flow of life here felt…wrong.

  She’d done one rotation through the garden, barely able to discern the delicate plants through her thick calluses, her skin turning spongy in the dampness. One night she’d dreamed that a single falling pebble had gone right through her green bones—deceased miners were routinely cremated and added as soil builder in the cavern—and after that she traded her hydroponics shifts to anyone who wanted them. Luckily, the garden was a desirable posting, and she never had to go back. Bashing at rock or tinkering with the massive machines that also bashed at rock was a good place for her.

  But as uncomfortable as she was in the garden, her real worry was Gavyn summoning her on her day off. He’d been so adamant about making “a real life” on Ydro-Down, to disavow and distance themselves from the servitude under Scraff or even the dangerous deceptions of their mutiny. If he needed her, it couldn’t be for anything good.

  He and a few others, including his second in command Rio, were replacing one of the filtration units with a larger pipe. It reminded her of expanding the still. This once dead, enslaved moon was trying to live and thrive.

  Lending her height and weight while she waited to hear her next task, she steadied the bigger unit while the others secured the connectors. Rio hustled to check the flow. Before he’d been imprisoned on Ydro-Down from crimes he didn’t commit, he had been the head of global security for an entire system. Now, he was making sure moss stayed wet.

  Jashanna blew a dribble of water off the tip of her nose. No doubt there were other people elsewhere on the Rim doing equally desperate and ridiculous things to stay alive. Settlers and ships captains, biologists and bots, princesses and pirates, cats and mercs…

  Over the top of the filtration unit, she found herself staring into tarnished silver eyes.

  She couldn’t retreat without dropping the unit on her friends. And anyway, she wasn’t the retreating sort. At least not when she wasn’t hung over.

  She hadn’t had a drink since payday, due to the lingering sting of a certain acerbic comment about self-control, so she just glared at Fenn Alexos.

  Yeeeah, so she had found out his name. Hadn’t been easy. The mercs didn’t mingle, and many of the miners felt as she did about the occupying force: at best a necessary evil, at worst a potential new peril. And though everyone agreed that the company founder had a reputation as a reliable, principled paramilitary contractor, still Caira Kemet was a fighter for hire, along with all her crew. What happened to Ydro-Down if the Q and the credits ran out?

  And Fenn Alexos was the stalking, brooding, shadow-hued personification of necessary evil/potential peril.

  Of course Laly had been the one to finally track down the Nazra crew manifest and put faces to names. Jashanna had claimed—not a lie—that one of the mercs had hassled her about the still in the guard billet. Whipping into a righteous snit, Laly, in their role as the outpost’s security review officer, had requested the manifest from Martika. Not only did Tika have seniority—she’d lived on Ydro-Down for five hundred turns, even though most of that had been in stasis—but she was also the legal inheritor of the planetoid, having survived QueCorp’s assault on the original colonists by hiding in the deepest deeps. At first, Jashanna had thought she was a wormy little scrapnapper, but Tika had fought as fiercely as Gavyn for the miners’ rights and lives. And when she asked Kemet for more on the company’s idents and credentials, she’d gotten exactly what she asked for. Even if she was short and scrawny.

  She’d passed the info to Laly with the demand that they come back to her if anything was amiss.

  “The galaxy thinks this place is just a hole full of Q,” she’d said. “But it’s our home. And we’ll keep fighting for it.”

  But Jashanna wondered… How long could a fight last?

  At least she had his name so she could curse him properly under her breath. Not so loud that Gavyn might hear it, though it was only his eyes not his ears that were enhanced. She didn’t want to explain that her dislike of the merc was half unfounded fear and half unwanted lust.

  As bad a combo as combustible rock dust and an open flame.

  From the other side of the pipe, that silver stare bored into her, and every nerve in her body screwed tighter. Was this how a mineral vein felt as she drilled deep and tamped a charge? She certainly felt ready to blow.

  But she held fast to the pipe—not his pointer; his loss that he’d already rejected that possibility—while the work team completed their task. When everything was locked down, she backed away hastily.

  Not retreating. Just making space.

  Gavyn thanked his people before waving her over to the retention pool. He sat on the edge and patted the makeshift seat next to him. “Sorry I called for you on your day off.”

  Settling gingerly next to him—the tank was meant to hold fragile seaweeds, not her ass—she shook her head. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  He chuckled. “That’s the point of days off.”

  “So I’ve heard.” She carefully avoided looking at Alexos, who seemed to be skulking just outside her line of sight. “What do you need?”

  “What don’t I need?” Gavyn rubbed one hand across his brow, jostling the protective goggles perched atop his head. His vision had been altered to help him identify faults in the rock faces they worked, but sometimes she imagined he saw the same sorts of flaws in people.

  “I got a few credits, a half-filled still of sunshine, three sets of coveralls, although one needs patching. Found a pretty pink quartz cluster your girl might like…”

  His chuckle this time sounded less forced. “Ahmya prefers obsidian to match her heart.”

  How sweet. Jashanna managed not to grimace, although she swore she heard a muffled cough from the lurking merc. “Then what?”

  “Do you remember that relay station on the edge of Sultana Reach? We were sent out there—vac, how many turns ago?—to prep for an exploratory dig.”

  She thought a moment then nodded. “Dig never happened, right? The assay came back negative for outlay.�
��

  “The relay was turned into a point on the security sensor grid. Rio noticed a glitch. Probably a power interrupt somewhere. I need him here on the mains, but I need someone out there too. You’re good with fixing.”

  “If I take a runabout, I can be out there in a day, back in two or three, depending on the problem.”

  “Got the ground transpo already loaded with everything Rio thinks you might need.” He sighed. “Well, with whatever we have on hand that Rio thinks you might need.”

  “Not quite the same thing,” she muttered.

  With a grimace, Gavyn gestured past her. “At least I can send an extra pair of hands.”

  She didn’t need to glance back to guess who stood behind her.

  Chapter 4

  Fenn didn’t speak while the rebel leader laid out the mission. Boss Kemet had told him to follow whatever orders he was given, and so he would.

  But even as his training made note of the requirements, all his senses were focused on Jashanna.

  She hadn’t acknowledged him since she strode into the cavern, not even as she held up more than her end of the heavy pipe. But her glower said she was as aware of him as he was of her.

  Why was he so drawn to her?

  In the days since he’d chased her away to stop from kissing her, he’d tested the limits of his procedure. And the promised results had held.

  But even in the sensory overwhelm of the hydroponics cavern with the echoes of falling water, the gleam of wet stone, the thick fragrance of growing things, and the inescapable existential knowledge of being buried underground, she crowded into his awareness. Whatever was happening to him…was her fault.

  This assignment would let him fix the problem—the power glitch and his glitching procedure.

  Nazra Company wasn’t large, so Kemet asked all her crew to cross train on advanced physical and technical skills. But even though he’d dutifully sat through adv-ed modules on engineering and the like, he didn’t have the aptitude for much. Listening to Jashanna and Grey discuss the possible remedies for the malfunctioning relay only reminded him why he stayed with Nazra with his very specific and limited skills.

  “I’ll leave as soon as I pack up my personal gear,” Jashanna was saying.

  Grey glanced over. “I assume you’re ready to go?”

  Fenn nodded.

  As he expected, Jashanna balked. “Don’t need him.”

  “Hopefully not.” With a warning shake of his head when Fenn took a breath, Grey added, “Would you go into the deeps by yourself? No. I’m not sending anyone off by themselves, not when we just claimed Ydro-Down as our own.”

  Her jaw jutted. “The merc ship is patrolling in close orbit. If I need anything, I’ll ping them.”

  “The mountains around the reach are striated with magnetic rare-earth lanthanides, one reason for the sample dig. Those veins will interfere with any communications.”

  She slapped her open palm against the rim of the tank. “This is our home now, Gavyn, and I don’t need an escort, not in the deeps, not on the plains. Nothing is going to happen.”

  “Not if I’m there,” Fenn said, pulling her attention from the rebel leader.

  When she twisted toward him, a combative glint changed her brown eyes from earthen warm to edged bronze, like the ancient weapons of Old Earth pictured in Kemet’s edu vids. “But you won’t be,” she grumbled. “No one—definitely no merc for the money—is going to stand over me while I work, not anymore.”

  “Jash.” The single word from Grey made her turn her face away. “One of the promises Ahmya and I made to each other—and the rebellion—was that we were in this together, whatever the work or risks, and no one would bear the weight alone.”

  If anything, her jaw cranked out another degree. “I can bear whatever needs bearing. Always have.” She turned that angry stare on Grey. “That at least hasn’t changed.”

  Listening to her challenging her leader made Fenn shift from one boot to the other. Kemet was a fair boss…who would absolutely annihilate any of her crew who questioned her without cause as Jashanna was doing so boldly, wanting to go her own way.

  He’d made that mistake once, a long time ago.

  “Jash,” he said. Unlike Grey, he said it softly, but the familiarity immediately drew her irate glare, as he’d intended. Although her displeasure seemed unreasonable considering she’d wanted to wrestle him. Until the alky wore off, anyway. “I can take commands, and I’ll stay out of your way unless you need me. An extra set of hands might be useful, yeah?”

  “I’ll bring a bot.”

  He spread his hands. “I’m practically that.”

  Grey huffed a laugh under his breath. “Take him, Jash. That’s an order.”

  “I don’t take orders from anyone, not anymore,” she exploded. “That is why we rebelled. Or do you not trust me to do the work?”

  Leaning back almost too far over the open vat of water, the miner blanched. “I didn’t mean… Jashanna, I’m sorry. You’re right.” He scrubbed both hands over his shorn head. “It’s just that I feel responsible for what I started—and whatever happens next. I don’t want to lose anyone.”

  After a moment, she sighed. “You might’ve started this, but we joined in because we believed too.” She leaned toward Grey, laying her hand on his knee as she gave him a solemn look. “What we do is still dangerous, even if we do it for ourselves. Someone will get hurt—even die—in the deeps. It’s inevitable, no matter how many kilos of crossbracing and how many layers of redundant security you and Rio and Laly wrap around us. What you do then is what kind of leader you will be.” Squeezing his knee hard enough to make the big man wince, she added, “Don’t restrict us for protection the way QueCorp did for profit.”

  To Fenn’s critical eye, the former foreman looked shocky, traumatized by her assessment. Or maybe by her grip. Grey nodded. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t be a benevolent dictator.”

  She patted him before pushing to her feet. “Probably you can’t help yourself. So I just won’t listen to you.”

  Without a backward glance, she called a goodbye to the rest of the crew and sauntered out.

  Fenn tilted his head, watching the subtle harmonic motion of her hips. Not really a side-to-side sway, he decided, since she had too much forward momentum. But there was definitely a twitch there. Probably rage. “I’ll just follow her then?” he murmured.

  “Please,” Grey said. “And don’t get caught until even she would feel bad about abandoning you on the surface.”

  Fenn restrained a grimace at the conflicting orders. Kemet had told him to obey Grey, and Grey had told him to follow directions from Jashanna. Who had told him to get lost.

  Following orders had gotten him in trouble before, but not obeying had sometimes been worse.

  So maybe he’d just do for himself this time.

  He refused to think how that had gone last time.

  It was easy enough to tuck himself into the hold of the runabout. The big, six-wheeled hauler was built to haul heavy mining equipment across rough terrain, so he found a corner in its dusty guts to wait for Jashanna. Since Grey had told her he’d already provisioned the vehicle, she made only a cursory inspection before she settled at the wheel.

  After a moment of caution when she poked through the electronics that were right near his hiding spot, Fenn settled too. He only let out an inaudible breath when she started up the engine. Hadn’t he warned her already that the Rim was a treacherous place? He’d have to teach her not to assume anything, even when she thought she was among friends.

  Hurry up and wait was a merc motto older than spaceships, so he hunkered down, half closed his eyes, and did the isometric exercises that the Nazra medic taught the crew. When it was time to go, he’d be ready.

  He woke abruptly with a powerful hand at his nape and another fisted in the seat of his trousers.

  Flailing to get his boots back on the floor, he almost had leverage, and then—

  And then he was
flying through the air.

  Despite the relatively agreeable gravity, he landed badly and rolled hard, limbs akimbo. Belatedly, he tucked into the motion, covering the back of his head and neck. Still, he got a mouthful of pebbles for his smug complacency.

  When he sprawled to a stop, the runabout was trundling away.

  She hadn’t even stopped long enough to toss him out.

  The heavy vehicle wasn’t designed for speed, but it was going just a little faster than a man could run.

  As he chased after it across the dusty plain, he suspected Jashanna had chosen that autopilot pace deliberately.

  She was slung halfway out of the open hatch, one hand gripping the pneumatic piston that controlled the gangway, her other hand waving a vulgar gesture his way.

  How rude. How heartless. How…

  Magnificent. She hung poised like a pirate queen from her purloined vessel, mocking the hapless fools of the Salty Way as she escaped their petty quarrels on her way to grand adventure.

  Anyway, that had been the oft repeated plot of the entertainment vids that enthralled him as a child.

  Too many turns on the Rim had shown him what real pirates were like. Adventure was too often the precursor to a grisly, dismal death. And the most foolish was anyone who still believed they could escape their fate.

  After a few kilometers with the runabout just out of reach ahead of him, he stopped running, leaning over to pant helplessly with his hands braced on his knees as he watched it go.

  Jashanna had gone back inside after one last wave to him. Was it his imagination or did the diminishing backside of the runabout seem to sway side to side with a bold impertinence?

  Since he was resting, he had the chance to appreciate the stark, subtle grandeur of the mining moon. From reading the mission specs after Kemet had taken the job, he knew the planetoid had accreted in an element-rich gaseous cloud, with layers of ore minerals and waste rock swirled and banded and smashed together into a rough sphere of rugged ranges and smooth, dusty plains like the Sultana Reach.