From behind me, there’s a low warning growl.
Mathiras immediately steps away and removes his hand. Sleipnir wedges himself between us, his tail flicking angrily as he glares in the corsair’s direction.
“How long will you guys be gone?” I ask, putting a calming hand on Sleipnir’s big head. I keep a smile on my face, because if I seem happy, the carinoux calms down. Sure enough, the big creature sits on his haunches, leans forward, and promptly begins to maul the control panel below the window.
“Not sure. A week? Three weeks? A few months? Just depends on how easy it is to find the wreckage.” He gestures at Sleipnir as the cat’s teeth grind down on the metal. “Can you…”
“Come on, boy,” I tell the carinoux and pry his jaws off the panel. “Let’s go find a nice discarded pipe for you to chew on.” I’m trying not to be upset over Mathiras’s words but…months? I’m going to live on an asteroid with a stranger for months? I don’t know the man. I don’t know what kind of alien he is (it seems impolite to ask) or if he’s nice or if there’s someplace for me to sleep.
Worst of all, this guy doesn’t even know I’m coming. He might not be happy.
I turn and look at Mathiras. “This un’Rok guy—he’s a friend of yours, right?”
Mathiras’s smile is wry. “I’m not sure he has friends.”
Well isn’t that great.
A short time later, Sleipnir’s gnawing on an arm-sized metal wrench in my quarters when Adiron gets over the comm. “Destination in sight. I’m sending Jerrok a coded message, letting him know it’s us.”
I put down the bag I’m packing and rush back out to the bridge, curious—and dreading—to see the place I’m going to be spending the next few weeks. I stare out the windows as it comes into view. My new home is on an asteroid all right. I’m not surprised at the sea of rusty and worn-down looking metal buildings, but what I am surprised at is the sheer size of the thing. The asteroid un’Rok’s base is on is bigger than several city blocks, and the cluster of buildings look as if they cover all of it. There’s a collapsed tower, a dirty-looking bio-dome of some kind, and lots and lots of closely packed buildings, all crowded together on the gray, rocky surface of the asteroid floating amidst all its brothers and sisters. A dead ship floats past, nothing but a hollowed-out hull, and then I see more dead ships floating in the distance. In fact, as we come closer, I see that the far end of the asteroid is covered in destroyed wrecks of ships of all sizes. Creepy.
“This is where he lives?” I ask, surprised. “It looks…”
“Uninhabitable?” Mathiras comments. “That’s the point. It’s an old abandoned base from the Threshian Wars. Jerrok claimed it for himself and fixed up a corner of the base to live in so no one can bother him. As far as I know, no one comes by here except the occasional scrapper with a ship to offload.”
Great. A hermit as well as a junker. Well this just sounds better and better. I’m sure he’s going to be thrilled to have me join him. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Not entirely, but it’s safer for you than bringing you with us.”
So he says.
The Little Sister settles down in the landing bay. Here, it looks less scrap-laden than the rest of the asteroid, but there are still far too many loose cables and peeling metal sheets along the walls to make me feel safe. I don’t know how a place like this is supposed to keep out the vacuum of space—it barely looks like it can hold itself together.
As the airlock seals itself behind the Sister, Adiron leaps up from his seat. Kaspar extends the ramp with the touch of a button, and then puts on his blaster belt. “Just in case.”
Mathiras rolls his eyes. At my worried look, he shakes his head. “He’s a friend.”
“A friend that lives alone on the edge of the universe,” Kaspar says dismissively, checking his gun’s cartridge. “It can turn anyone’s mind to noodles.”
My throat goes dry as Adiron bounds down the ramp and a lone figure limps forward.
Please don’t leave me here, I want to turn and beg Mathiras. Please take me with you. But they’ve made it clear that I don’t belong, and I learned long ago that begging helps nothing. It just takes away your dignity. So I won’t beg.
I’ll accept this, just like I do with everything else, and keep on surviving.
“What do you want?” the man calls out as Adiron heads toward him. His voice sounds distinctly unfriendly and his body language screams irritation. As he moves closer, it’s hard for me to make out his features. The upper half of his face is covered by an electronic mask of some kind, the circular eye-lenses whirling and flashing red as they focus on us. His head is swathed in dark fabric smeared with grease, and a pair of dented, dull metal horns stick out from the material. Judging from that and the fact that Adiron looks to be about the same size as him, I’d say he’s mesakkah. The lower half of his face that’s exposed, though, is grayish black, and the clothes he wears are dark, filthy, and cover every inch of his body with layers. It’s impossible to tell if he’s old or young.
There’s no hiding the scowl on his face, though.
Adiron ignores that scowl and wraps his arms around the man in a brutal bear hug. “Jerrok! Aren’t you glad to see us?”
“No.”
“We need a favor,” Mathiras adds, bounding down the ramp.
“No again,” says the stranger called Jerrok. “Get the kef out of here unless you’ve got some scrap to sell me.”
5
JERROK
It’s been a few weeks since anyone’s swung by with salvage. Weeks of utter quiet, weeks of not hearing a single voice other than my own. Weeks of no ships in the hangar, no one breathing my air, no one on this old abandoned asteroid but me.
It’s been keffing bliss.
Now, of course, all that bliss is ruined. Adiron va Sithai grins at me as if he’s shown up with presents, ready to hug me as if that will somehow improve my mood. I shove him away, irritated, and look around for the junk they’ve surely hauled in my direction. That’s why they’ve come out here, right? “Where’s your salvage? Dump it and leave.”
“I told you,” the oldest va Sithai brother says—the one with the stiff form (and likely a stick up his ass). “We need a favor.”
“And I said no. Show me your scrap, let’s make a damn deal, and you can stop hogging all my recycled air.” I cross my arms over my chest, irked. “Didn’t even have the decency to comm ahead of time?”
“Like you would have answered,” Adiron scoffs, and then wraps his arms around me in a bear hug. It makes my defective cybernetic arm ache against the bone its grafted to, and I clench my jaw. He doesn’t know that he’s shooting red-hot agony up my shoulder, so I just elbow him away. We were friends a long time ago. Served together in the Threshian Wars. Adiron somehow thinks that makes us best buddies for life. I believe differently.
I don’t have buddies. I don’t have friends.
I like my solitude. Prefer it that way.