Deep Claim

by Elsa Jade

  “At least I’ll sleep at night,” he’d told her.

  But she raged over him. “That makes you little better than a dumb weapon I can’t trust to know the difference between targets, like a pulse rifle with no sights or safety.”

  Pulse rifles slept fine too, but he didn’t say that aloud.

  Eventually, Kemet forgave him, said she understood, promised to wield him like the dumb weapon he’d become, critically and only as necessary.

  But Jashanna… She incited the old parts of him, the parts he thought finally contained. Her love for her sprawling family of miners, her compassion for these six strangers—it was the bright side of the emotions he’d given up to make amends for the crimes he committed. But…bright sides burned too. She needed to understand, now that she was free, now that she had choices, she had to control herself and make the right ones.

  When she strode over to the nearest drawer, he slipped around in front of her, blocking her path. “You and your almighty Grey and your little army of spanner-wielding miners have had your independence for—what? Less than a single turn of this little moon? And now you are saving everyone on the Rim?” His tone was too blunt and ragged, like a poorly laid thread of det cord.

  And from the way her eyes narrowed, he knew the misaimed blast would backfire all over him. “Just because you did the wrong thing with your freedom doesn’t mean we will,” she snarled. “We might not be as powerful as QueCorp, or even some self-sustaining ag planet, but we’re not afraid to fight for others.” She lifted her chin, angling herself high above him. “I’ll carry them out of here, one at a time. I swear it.”

  “Even those wide shoulders and big thighs of yours couldn’t manage that feat.”

  “Oh, you think not?”

  “Don’t be a braggart,” he snapped. “Would you dig a mine all by yourself?”

  “Whatever I have to do,” she growled. But even her heart, as big as it was, couldn’t overcome the cold, hard truth that the runabout couldn’t carry so many stasis units no matter who carried them out.

  “A few more hands and the Nazra shuttle can do it faster and safer,” he urged. When she glanced back over his shoulder in agony, her dark eyes shining with the slow pulse of life support lights, he reminded her, “I’ve followed my worst impulses, much to my regret. Don’t be me.”

  Jaw set hard, she shoved the tablet with all the information they’d gathered in her pocket and stalked toward him, drawing herself taller with each step until she towered over him as her boots went toe to toe with his.

  She looked down at him. “Maybe you aren’t as bad as you think you are.”

  With one hand on his shoulder, she thrust him out of the way.

  Cursing, he stumbled back. He cursed again as she wrenched open the first drawer and slid out the cryo unit. It was one of the smaller ones, holding a child, but it was still almost a hundred kilos of hostage and tech.

  “Jash, it’s impossible—”

  “I’ve heard that before.” She lifted one end of the unit and dragged it toward the edge of the drawer where it hovered, about to drop. “You showed me the marks in the dust. Someone interfered with the relay power. They are here, somewhere, ready to take these people away. I won’t let them.”

  She tugged the unit closer to the edge, glaring at him.

  He glared back. “It’s just not—”

  Wrinkling her nose, she tweaked the heavy casket right off the slab.

  With one last curse, he jumped forward to grab the other end before it crashed down. The weight wrenched at his shoulders. “Vac it, Jash!”

  “I knew you’d make the right choice.”

  No more breath to yell at her. Steps aligning, they hustled back up the tunnel, and she rushed them so fast that the automatic lights almost couldn’t keep up with them. By the time they got to the runabout, he didn’t have breath left for anything. While she cleared out a section of the hold, he checked the energy pack on the unit.

  “We could kill them all if the backups fail,” he warned her when she returned with a crawler-cart tucked under her arm, the eight legs folded tight under the flat support surface. When she took a faltering step, he pressed harder. “You’re playing with their lives for your own feelings.”

  She straightened. “I know. And I’m not afraid of my feelings.”

  He’d put so many people at risk for his own selfish reasons. Was she right to do it for potentially self-sacrificing ones?

  Would it matter to the hostages if they died?

  At least they wouldn’t know. Grimly, he followed her back into the dismal cavern.

  The crawler-cart was designed to carry heavy loads for the miners over rough terrain, but despite its many legs, it wasn’t fast. By the time they hauled out all six caskets, the daylight was at its dull peak.

  Jashanna gutted the runabout to make room for the cryo units, leaving supplies and interior panels scattered in the dust. He didn’t bother checking to see what she was leaving behind. Hopefully she knew what mattered most. They needed to get a rescue signal to the Nazra before anyone returned for the caskets or they’d all die, regardless of the number of remaining cleaning wipes or beverage cubes.

  When the last cryo-unit was tied down, the daylight was already failing as the speedy rotation of the planetoid spun toward night again. They’d planned to check in with base as soon as they got the site operational, although Jashanna hadn’t offered an exact timeline since she hadn’t known the extent of the damage. Now they were prioritizing the people over the power of the connected relay. But once they got the message out, they could come back, install the newly printed relay piece, and reinitiate the signal, hopefully while the Nazra crew was figuring out who these sleepers were.

  Jashanna flung herself through the hatch hard enough to rock the sturdy runabout and strode to the cockpit. “Let’s go. As soon as we get clear of local interference, call it in. I’ll look for an extraction point. And then we’re getting out of here. All of us.”

  With an angry rumble in her chest that he thought would erupt into a roar, she instead ignited the engine. He glanced back at the caskets. Her show of temper reminded him of the fits he’d thrown at his parents and teachers when they insisted on yet another rote recitation of the most advantageous first gen crosspairings of nu-soy varietals. He used to wail that any secondhand bot could cough up such simple genetics, and they’d countered with what-ifs about the recurrence of the Oblivion Wars.

  And honestly, at the time, that had sounded to him like a more exciting proposition.

  Now, he only wanted to keep Jashanna safe from her own idealism. Because that was the service the miners had paid Nazra for, of course. But…maybe the Rim needed more lights like Jashanna, no matter how fierce and uncontrolled her shine.

  He was still buckling in when she threw the runabout into reverse and backed them out of the steep slot beside the relay station. He fell into his seat with a grunt. “Won’t help anyone if you crash us,” he muttered.

  “At least I’m trying,” she shot back. “If someone had wanted to help us, maybe…” She jabbed at the controls with a fury, as if they needed all her attention and leverage.

  But what she had stopped herself from saying echoed over the low thunder of the runabout tracks. If someone had intervened on behalf of the subjugated miners, maybe some of her dead family would still be alive, maybe she’d have more to show from her years of delving for Ydro-Down’s dangerous treasures than calluses and artificially dense flesh that nevertheless had left her with the tenderest heart ever encountered.

  “Nazra is helping,” he assured her. “Let me help too.”

  “Only because we paid you,” she said bitterly. “And we paid in blood.”

  Since that was true, he shut his mouth and concentrated on the scanners. The height of the ridge and the complex mineral structure baffled the runabout’s sensors almost as thoroughly as Jashanna confused him. But as soon as they were clear of the interference, he’d call for pickup. He’d confess to Kem
et that his procedure felt unstable, and that someone else needed to accompany Jashanna back to the station to repair the burned-out relay. He’d return to the routine patrols and occasional righteous plundering as directed by his boss, forgetting the precarious question of who in all the Rim could—or should—be saved.

  The 3D printer, which had been agreeably doing its job this whole time, suddenly beeped a warning that its operational parameters had been exceeded and it would pause its creation until more opportune conditions presented.

  If only they all had that option.

  He frowned at the comm panel in front of him. “Jash—”

  “Don’t talk to me, merc,” she snapped. “I’m angry and I’m driving.”

  Straining forward against the straps of his safety harness, he touched one fingertip to the display. “The sensors aren’t picking up any signals.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t have a chance to reinitiate the relay, remember? Because we found a bunch of freezing hostages?”

  “No. I mean there’s nothing out there.”

  “We’re not clear of the mountains’ shadow.”

  “So we should at least see the mountain.” He reached across the space between them to clamp his hand around her forearm, forcing her to look at him.

  With great reluctance, she craned her neck toward the display in front of him. She frowned. “Something’s jamming us, and it’s not just rock. From this angle, the block must be coming—”

  A sizzling whine cut her off, and blinding white light flared across the front view an instant before the mountainside ahead of them erupted.

  The runabout rocked hard as Jashanna wrestled the controls. The clatter of flying rock on the composite hull was almost as deafening as the blast outside. The printer beeped again, sounding outraged by this new interruption of its work, but the electronic complaint was drowned out by Jashanna’s barked, “What the vac was that?”

  “Laser cannon,” Fenn said grimly. “Good thing there was still dust in the air from the storm. Scattered some of the radiation.”

  “Still made a big damn hole in the mountain.”

  “But not in us.”

  “Yet.” She swerved hard—up the hill, instead of down toward the plain they’d come across.

  He gripped the armrests. “Where are we going?”

  “Out of reach.” She swept one hand across the controls, squeezing a few more ergs of momentum out of the straining engine. “No way can we lose them on the flats. Best chance is to disappear in the peaks and crevices. The rock will hide us.”

  He spared one dubious glance at the ragged stone out the portal then unhitched his harness and boosted out of the seat.

  She twisted around. “Hey, where are you going?”

  “Keeping us out of reach.”

  “Fenn—”

  Ignoring her cry of alarm, he headed into the hold. Though the runabout was well designed for rough travel, the steep pitch left him staggering, and the six bulky caskets left little room for maneuvering. He found his bag, wedged his knee against the bulkhead to keep himself upright through the jolting, and quickly assembled what he needed.

  “Opening the hatch,” he yelled up to the cockpit.

  She bellowed back, “What?! Why? Are you running away, merc? I let you share my bunk!”

  To his shock, he laughed. The procedure was definitely failing. Except… It wasn’t the peril spicing his blood this time.

  It was her.

  The way she powered the runabout up the peak, as if she was yanking it there by hand. The volume of her shouts—half curses, half lyrics from some song he didn’t know—as he released the hatch and let the cold mountain wind pour in. The richness of her dark brown eyes as she glared back at him down the hallway.

  “What are you—?” Her laugh was almost as shocked as his. “You were yelling at me for carrying det cord while you had that in your pants pocket?”

  “Not in my pocket,” he hollered back over another sizzle of amplified light shrieking through the sky above them. “You’ve already seen what’s in my pants.”

  Her answer was lost in the boom of exploding rock. She swerved again, and luckily he had an arm slung through the hatch strut or he would’ve been ejected from the runabout. They needed to discuss her propensity for tossing him out…

  Leaning out at a rash angle, he peered up through the dust riled by their speedy passage, the explosions, and the lingering evidence of the storm. Sparkles of mica, diamond, and whatever else dazzled his eyes, but he focused past the reflections to the matte black bulk of a shuttle.

  It wasn’t that different from the Nazra’s shuttle—a sleek, speedy craft of the Corvit class intended for nefarious purposes. In a blink, he memorized its particulars even as he raised the grenade launcher to his shoulder. The launcher wasn’t suitable as a personal protection device—he’d brought the pistol for that—and it wasn’t much for an aerial assault. But he just needed to gain them time while Jash did the rest.

  The attacking shuttle swooped lower. Jash had reduced their speed just a bit, maybe worried for him, maybe anticipating his needs. She might be brash and stubborn to the point of scaring him, but her intuition was strong…

  All right, he really had to focus on the threat, not his infatuation.

  Compensating for the speed of the runabout and the hungry dive of the Corvit, he lined up his shot—and fired.

  The fist-sized metallic orb streaked through the air, its flight barely arcing in the thin atmosphere of these heights on the barely developed moon. With a clang, the grenade stuck to the hull of the Corvit, just fore of the engine intake. The ship seemed to flinch in the air. It was jamming the runabout sensors, but the attackers must well know that they’d been hit. The hull shivered again as a demagnetizing pulse rippled across its surface.

  The grenade slipped free in the same moment it detonated. Pieces of the grenade spattered everywhere, but only a small chunk of hull lightened with the powder of the burn.

  Just as Jashanna had done with the runabout, the shuttle pilot partly shielded the engine to prevent intake damage and instinctively angled that minor vulnerability away from more incoming hits—

  And Fenn launched the second grenade at the Corvit’s now exposed underpanel.

  Nothing important there, no power systems, just a lesser sensor…

  Even before he’d left home and joined the marauding gang, he’d seen how the weakest chink in the finest armor had to be most protected—often to no avail since the cruelest blows always came when and where least expected.

  The specialized grenade stuck just long enough to inject its nanites into the damaged sensor conduit. The viral load would flash through the scanners… Ah, yes. The pilot just realized the instrument panel was lying to them. And the jagged mountain peaks were right there somewhere—

  With a roar of engines, the Corvit banked away from the slope, retreating for the security of the open skies. The strongest, fastest ship with the finest weaponry still needed to know which way it was going.

  “Ship is disengaging,” Jash called. “Nice shooting!”

  He hauled himself back inside the hold. “They’re blinded. But only temporarily. We need to get out of visual range, hide in the interference.”

  “Hold on then.”

  Considering her driving up until now hadn’t included a warning, he gritted his teeth and grabbed tight to the nearest bulkhead bar as he finished securing the hatch. Just in time. The runabout tipped hard, spinning him into the wall.

  If the hatch had been still open…

  Another lurch sent him jolting the other way, cracking his hip hard against the corner of one casket. Good thing the sleepers were packed tight. “Are they still shooting?”

  “Nah. That’s just me.” Her voice was almost singsong. “No roads down here, ya know, not like on some pretty little ag worlds.”

  “Down? We’re going up.”

  “We were…”

  His stomach flipped into his throat as the big track
s of the runabout lost traction and they fell.

  Chapter 9

  They didn’t fall far.

  Or at least she didn’t think they did. Hard to tell as the runabout thumped end over end. She had half a nanosecond to hope that Fenn was holding on tight, like she told him, then her forehead smacked into the comm as their fall stopped, and she blacked out.

  Not for long.

  Or at least she didn’t think…

  She groaned, her head aching and confused. Hadn’t she just been thinking…

  “Easy.” A cool hand on her sore forehead centered her whirling brain.

  “Did they get us?”

  “Nah. That was just you.”

  She rolled her head slowly to cut him a look.

  His smile was gentle, but his tarnished silver eyes were a little wild. “I thought you smashed your brains out.”

  “Have to hit harder than that.” Despite her bravado, she groaned again as she rotated her head back to center. “Sorry. I thought the gravity would be kinder.”

  “Kinder than a laser blast up the ass.”

  She let out a little laugh and whimpered as it rattled her aching skull. “We lost them?”

  “No scanners because of the interference, but if I had to guess, I’d say yes considering we’re still here and not a smoking pile of rubble.”

  “Despite my best efforts.” She started to lever herself out of her seat, but he pressed her down with one of those stronger than she expected hands.

  “No, you lost them.”

  “By losing us.”

  He chuckled. “We know exactly where we are. At the bottom of this canyon.”

  Rather than move her whole head again, she just rolled her eyes at him this time. “If you’re trying to make me feel better…”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He hunkered down in the seat beside her. “I’m calling it a win that we came to rest right side up.”

  Her gaze drifted to the bloody rag clutched in his hand. “Did you get hurt? You must’ve bounced around back there.” She bit her lip. “Did I… Did a cryo unit break?”