Deep Claim

by Elsa Jade

  He shook his head again. “Protect you.”

  “Well, I don’t need that either.”

  “Can’t leave you alone,” he slurred. The Q was stripping away his earlier wordiness.

  She let out an impatient sigh. “I’m not alone,” she pointed out, “because you’re right here. And neither of us is going anywhere with that storm outside.”

  “Stay right here,” he mumbled.

  With an aggrieved mumble of her own, she held the beverage cube over his head. “At least drink this. It’ll take care of the headache.”

  He peered up at her lure. When he reached up to clutch at it she snuggled one hand under his armpit and levered him smoothly to his feet.

  He gasped. “Don’t drop me.”

  “More gentle than you were when you grabbed me,” she said through gritted teeth. “You bent my whistle.”

  “But I fixed it,” he countered. The soles of his boots swiveled on the deck, slick with dust.

  She’d known it was him, but hearing him say it sent a little surge of affection through her. “You have a deft hand for delicate work. For a merc.”

  “I was supposed to be a farmer.” His tone was a little wistful, a soft counterpoint to the slide of his steps. “Nu-soy didn’t care about murder or music.” When she swung his arm over her shoulder, his empty hand slapped over her breast when he gestured. “What are these hands for now?”

  She grunted. He was denser than he looked, and she anchored one fist in his utility belt to keep him upright as she maneuvered him down the tight hallway. “Do what you want,” she said a little brusquely. “You’re only a slave to your own deep-creeps.”

  “It’s not that easy,” he whispered. “You’ll see, now that you’re free.”

  “Didn’t say it was easy,” she rumbled. “But it is simple.”

  “Like you.”

  With a deeper growl, she flung him into the makeshift bunk. It was raised above the lower storage units, which required hefting him up by his belt buckle. He gave a strangled little yelp, and she let herself smirk.

  He rolled to his side on the bunk to face her. “Simple but devious.”

  “Wormy and heavy,” she countered. Despite her unkind assessment, she handed up the beverage cube. “Drink it all and sleep,” she commanded. “Your head and the skies will be clear when you wake up.”

  “You have poetry in your heart, citizen Jashanna.”

  “It’s the Q,” she told him. “It makes you see things that aren’t there.”

  “I’ve been wrong, so very wrong. But not in this.” He drained the cube in one deep draught. “Not in this.”

  Hand on her hip, she watched through narrowed eyes as he rolled onto his back. In profile, his features were like the Sultanas—a remote and dangerous beauty. She knew better than to go vaccing about there, despite the chance of reward. “Why does it even matter to you?”

  “If a miner sings like an angel on high, maybe a monster can find its way out of the dark.”

  She scowled at him. “I’m no angel. And we didn’t just wait for someone to lead us out of the dark. We bashed our way out with pickaxes.”

  If he thought that was poetry, he gave no indication beyond a soft snore.

  With a huff of indignation he couldn’t even appreciate, she flicked a thin blanket over him. Probably she should just be glad that the Q had made him merely talkative and not paranoid and murderous. She’d called him little man more than once, but now that she’d hefted him, she knew there was more muscle than what she’d guessed, which made sense for a merc. She gave herself a hard shake to shed the lingering sensation of his dense body leaning into hers.

  He’d stunted the part of his brain that felt pleasure? She couldn’t imagine. The life of an indentured miner was hard and hazardous, but it had its fleeting softer moments too. To deliberately cut those out for—what? Penance? Protection? No matter how badly she hurt, no matter how much she’d lost, she’d always known that the next day—whether the sun came up in the deeps or not—was another chance.

  For all his interstellar freedoms, Fenn had forgotten that.

  She filled another mug with water and took it back to the cockpit, settling herself in the seat and kicking her feet up on the comm panel as she reclined the backrest. She called up an external visual and watched the static of sand swirl around the runabout, the gray haze shot through with curling threads of silver and gold. She let out a slow breath. With the exception of feeling bad if she’d left him out there to die, she didn’t owe the merc anything.

  Just as well since, really, she’d had only one payday so far.

  And if there was a moment—fleeting as the wisps of precious metal in the sand—where she might’ve wished, curiously, to dig for his lost pleasure… Well, there wasn’t much in the universe harder, more dangerous, or more precarious than Q mining, but finding a merc’s heart might be one of them.

  Chapter 6

  He woke as empty as a grain silo at the end of the long, brutal winter. Swept clean, just a hint of dust in the seams.

  Blinking, Fenn rolled to his side. Oh wait, there was all the grit. In his joints. Between his digits. He blinked a few more times to moisten his dry eyes. Nothing to do about the grating dirt that had infiltrated even his high-end combat fatigues. The storms of Ydro-Down did not mess around.

  But he was alive.

  Because of her.

  With a groan, he rolled off the bunk—and crumpled to one knee as his legs failed to hold him. The metal deck vibrated under his palm.

  “Morning,” came a cheerful call from the front of the runabout. “There’s another beverage cube on the shelf under the bunk. Drink up. If your stomach doesn’t betray you, there is a nutrient bar too.”

  Without rising from his crouch, he fumbled for the cube. One corner was already breached, but at this point he didn’t care if she was trying to poison him. He gulped down the contents greedily. A vaguely citrusy tang told him she’d added an energy tab. Grateful for the boost, he chugged the rest of the cube before hauling himself gingerly upright.

  He swayed a bit on his way to the cockpit, but he blamed the motion of the runabout for that. Beyond the front screen spread a plateau not that different from what he’d run across yesterday, although the mountains seemed closer. “When…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat to try again. “Where?”

  Jashanna didn’t seem to have any problem deciphering his meaning. “Storm broke a few hours ago, and we’ve been underway ever since. Still not picking up a ping from the relay station though.” She stabbed one finger at the map displayed on the comm, showing where the station signal should be. “Might’ve been glitching before. Now I’m guessing the storm knocked it out total.”

  “How far?” Stringing together full sentences felt too hard.

  “You got time to clean up.” She slanted a glance at him. “I smell the Q still on you.”

  Alarm stirred sluggishly, and he recoiled, lifting his arms away from his body. But it wasn’t like he could get away from himself. “Wormy again?”

  “No more than usual.” When he glowered at her, she shrugged one shoulder. “After a lifetime, I’m mostly immune. Just get cleaned up and you’ll be fine.”

  Except he wasn’t fine. Even with the restorative drink, the hollowness inside him remained. As if yesterday he’d poured something out of himself, leaving nothing behind.

  “Everything I told you…” Now his stomach clenched around the churn of stimulant and calories.

  Jashanna gave him another one of those level looks, as if to remind him that nothing shocked her. “I was curious,” she said in her gruff voice. “And rude. I shouldn’t have let you go on when you weren’t in your right mind.” She let the apology hang for a moment, then she grinned at him, like the bright flashes in the dusty sand. “At least I wasn’t so rude as to bathe you while you were worming.”

  Groaning again, he crumpled the cube between his palm and the back of the chair where he leaned. “Thanks for sp
aring me more indignity.”

  She huffed out a laugh. “Sparing you?” She threw a fake punch at his belly, and he winced even though she didn’t connect. “Sanitation wipes were next to the drink. Make sure you get in the crevices good. You’d be surprised—and chafed—by where that sand can go.”

  Grumbling to himself, he retreated to the hold of the runabout. He found the decon kit, and though it had clearly been restocked many times, the wipes seemed fresh enough. Nazra had vastly superior med kits, as befitted an elite private military group, but he’d not refuse the quick sponge bath.

  Eager to wash away the memory of confessing his sordid past to Jashanna and even more keen to make sure it never happened again, he stripped off his fatigues. Carefully, he bundled the clothes up tight and sealed them into an empty cubby; he’d give them a good shake outside the runabout later. Then, ripping into the wipes, he swabbed everything he could reach until his skin tingled.

  Still damp, he padded to the back of the runabout where he’d hunkered down to hide. His go bag was tucked there, Jashanna being far too sensible to jettison supplies just because she’d kicked him out. He unpacked a second uniform, grateful that Kemet supplied all her team with tight, small, light, sturdy gear. Donning the backup fatigues, he hesitated over the sand-encrusted boots. He had only the one pair but he didn’t much like the idea of tracking more Q sand through the runabout.

  With a shrug, he made his way barefooted to the small pantry. The runabout was reasonably well supplied, but he hesitated over the nutrient bar. As a child on a prosperous ag planet, he’d never gone hungry, but he suffered the pangs more than once after leaving. He didn’t need to be comfortable all the time.

  He started to back away when Jashanna called from the cockpit, “I’ll take one too.”

  “One of what?”

  “Whatever you’re getting.”

  He grabbed two bars. They’d eat together—and go hungry together. Returning to the cockpit, he handed her the pouch before settling into the seat next to her.

  “Feeling better?”

  He gave one curt nod as he peeled back the wrapping on the bar.

  “Because you look better,” she went on.

  He frowned at her almost imperceptible sideways smirk. “Did you peek?”

  She waved her bar in a deflecting gesture. “You kinda were letting it all hang out there.”

  A flush of heat rippled through him, steaming off the lingering chill of his ablutions. “I got the sense you’ve seen it all.”

  “I have. I just got the sense you hid it all.”

  Since he couldn’t grit his teeth and tear into the chewy bar at the same time, he just sighed. “Figured since I laid bare all my childhood secrets, I might as well get the rest out of the way.”

  As he intended, she chuckled. “Oh, I think you still have hidden depths, little man.” She winked at him. “I’m a hardrock miner, so I know these things.”

  For the first time in a long time—maybe ever?—such flirting didn’t make him itch worse than sand between his butt cheeks.

  He’d been so careful growing up, not wanting to be trapped by the sober, grounded, too rich and fertile traditions of home. If he’d gotten pregnant, he never would’ve escaped the loving clutches of his expansive family. Probably wouldn’t have even dreamed of it.

  Once he stowed away, hiding what he’d been was vital, even more so after he joined the gang. Hiding had become a second nature—that was closer to his real self.

  Joining Nazra meant not hiding who he was anymore; Boss would’ve thrashed anyone—male, female, non-binary, or other—who caused that sort of trouble among the crew. But when Kemet had offered to advance him the credits for the surgeries that would align body and soul, he’d seized the chance for the procedure that left his uterus and ovaries in place and removed his heart instead.

  Metaphorically, of course. While his body had sometimes felt misaligned, it was his emotions that had nearly destroyed him. And the procedure had excised those as cleanly as a laser and some stem cell manipulations would’ve reshaped his genitals.

  What he’d been at his core had nothing to do with his gender. But he’d changed that too, and he wouldn’t inflict his old wounds on anyone else.

  As the runabout trundled onward, the mountains gradually filled the forward screen. Fenn kept one eye on the map, but the relay signal stayed even more serenely silent than Jashanna.

  Finally the stimulants and calories kicked in enough that he cleared his throat and asked, “Do you mind?”

  “Mind what? Mind that you sneaked on board when I said I can do this by myself? Mind that you made me come back to get you so you didn’t die on my watch?” She grunted. “Yeah, I mind.”

  He frowned back at her and swept one hand down his body. “Do you mind this?”

  “Why would I mind that? Got nothing to do with me.” When her gaze followed the arc of his gesture, his skin tingled again except warm this time instead of chilled. “Unless you wanted it to. But you already said you didn’t.”

  He shifted restlessly in the hard seat. “Matters to some.”

  “Matters, maybe, but don’t mind.” She gave a decisive nod, as if that made perfect sense.

  Fenn sat back again.

  Maybe it did.

  Instead of lapsing into another silence, Jashanna pulled out her pipe. For such a simple little instrument, its crystalline tones rang through the runabout. After a few tunes, she sang quietly. For all the raucousness of their first meeting, these songs were sweet, echoing the gentle flow of miles over the sand.

  “I went down in the deeps to pray

  Digging through forgotten ways

  I found Q for my starry crown

  Bright light will show me the way

  By and by we all go down

  All go down, all go down

  Down in the deeps to pray…”

  Mercenary missions didn’t ever leave much time for singing, but the tension in his back eased. At one point, they switched places, Fenn watching the autopilot while Jashanna caught a nap in the bunk.

  Though he offered to shake the sand out of the covers, she waved him off. “Told you, doesn’t affect me much anymore. The deep-creeps go after your forgotten fears and darkest secrets.” She gave him her usual one-shouldered shrug. “Got nothing to hide, so no squirmy wormy reveal.”

  That didn’t square with what he’d read of Q exposure, but he certainly wasn’t going to question someone who lived with it her whole life. “No skeletons buried in your rock-bottoms? I find that hard to believe in a miner.”

  “Just one skeleton: mine, buried in pure muscle.” She flexed. “I even told QueCorp’s guards I’d kill them if I thought I could get away with it. There’s a reason Gavyn didn’t tell me about the rebellion until punches were already being thrown.”

  He shook his head in wonderment. How had she survived one of the cruelest places on the Rim without burying herself?

  She scowled at him, obviously misinterpreting the head shake. “What? You think being bad at lying makes me bad at punching?”

  He coughed out a laugh. “Suppose not.”

  “Vaccing right. People have a bad habit of underestimating this.” She gestured across her body the same way he had.

  “Your quiet subtlety?” He lifted his eyebrows.

  “Exactly. They think I’m oblivious, even slow. But I see, and I understand. It’s their own fault if this”—she spread her arms wide, knocking his shoulder—“sneaks up on them with a suckerpunch.”

  He took the playful hit this time without wincing.

  He should’ve left it there. They’d shared a moment—as much of one as he could expect with the burnt-out char of his feelings—and at least she wasn’t trying to eject him anymore. That should be progress enough. But somehow…

  “Why didn’t it make you vicious, cruel?” he found himself asking. “No matter how oblivious you might’ve been, this life had to hurt.”

  “Punching,” she reminded him. “Lot
s of threatening to kill.”

  “But you didn’t actually kill, and you wouldn’t unless you had to. How did you stay…yourself?”

  She leaned back in her seat, seemingly at ease, but her hands flexed on the armrests. “Maybe because I never knew any better? I never had anything besides…this.”

  He shook his head, rejecting the easy answer. “You saw. You knew what QueCorp did was wrong. You understood there was more out there. But it didn’t change you.”

  “Made me bigger, stronger.” She held out one hand, as if to let him examine it. When she rotated her wrist, her upturned palm filled with the thin, hazy light of Ydro-Down.

  “But it didn’t make scars that twisted you up, didn’t warp you.”

  “It did that to some.” She closed her fingers strumming gesture with the rasp of calluses. “Not their fault.”

  “While you’re still…you.”

  “Maybe…” She pursed her lips, the delicate gesture the same as she used to blow across the little recorder. “Maybe I saw how the Q came out of the ground. This shining thing trapped in scrap rock. They refined it, purified it, but even without that, it was always just…what it was.”

  He considered. “I’ve never seen Q in its raw form, hard to believe when it keeps the Rim spinning.”

  “Well, you got to experience its effects in person.” She grinned at him. “Did you know, before the Oblivion Wars, some rich bloods in the core used to grind up Q, snort it like an aphrodisiac. They said it made them stronger, smarter, almost invincible, like godlings. Bet you never thought you’d be like them.”

  “Considering that sort of behavior led to the Oblivion Wars, I’d call them less godlings and more devils.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I can do without the chafing.”

  “If you’re interested, I’m sure Gavyn would show you the processing system and the refined ore. He’s poppa proud of what we’re making of Ydro-Down.”

  He stared out at the barren peaks looming ever larger. “My world was so proud of feeding itself. I was too young and stupid to realize how much that mattered. I wanted riches not rice, adventure not vegetables.” He shook his head in disgust at the careless youth he’d been, almost as bad in some ways as the criminal he’d become. He sighed. “I can’t tell them I’m alive, but I wish I could tell them I love them.”