The Miner ate her breakfast, and it tasted better for having paid for it. It wasn’t rice exactly, and it wasn’t coffee exactly, but the delicately salted leftover tilapia from the belowdecks aquaculture tasted at that moment like the best thing she’d ever had.
Takata stared at his little video screen for a while after breakfast, sitting behind the bar and not bothering to make conversation. The Miner, with his grunted permission, went to borrow another of his dozen ratty paperbacks, and noted with amusement that The Count of Monte Cristo had disappeared. From the remainder, she finally selected The Moonstone and settled into a booth to read it while Takata, his video ended, shuffled back to bed for a nap.
The Miner read in the quiet of the dark restaurant through the morning, sitting in a booth with one foot propped up on the seat. She could hear Takata’s gentle snoring through the curtain. It had been long enough to put the sides on edge, she decided; it was time to make her move and get Mr Shine to step up. She put down the book and contacted her ship.
“Hi boss!”
“Report status.”
The ship rattled through a long list of numbers: fuel level, gas mixtures, power generation, battery levels, water purity, and on and on. Everything sounded good. Incident report showed eighteen intrusion attempts, no successful logins. McMasters, she figured. If he really wanted to get in and was willing to have it officially traced to his office, then she couldn’t stop him, but he seemed to want to keep it quiet. Could be he realized she’d be an unfortunate enemy. Could be he just didn’t see the profit in it yet. Could be he didn’t know how. She pulled up video from the plant room, and felt herself relax when it came up, as muscles she didn’t know were clenched untensed. The Phalaenopsis was starting to droop, but it would be all right for a few more days. The bonsai were in good shape; only a few dropped leaves that she ached to sweep away. She gazed at it awhile in soft focus, until she felt she could almost smell the earthy aroma of the small room.
“I should go,” she murmured. To hell with Feeney and Angelica and McMasters. To hell with Shine. Maybe Takata was right, maybe it would be better for one of them to just win. Let the lures of peace and prosperity tame them. Maybe justice would come in time, maybe not. The moral arc of the universe was a sine wave, wasn’t it?
She woke from her reverie to banging from the kitchen. Takata, with her help, had figured out how Angelica had overridden the lock, and fixed it so that wouldn’t work. Definitely a fist on metal. She considered going to open it, and decided not to. Wasn’t in her plan, maybe, or just not up for it yet.
Takata came out of his bedroom looking rumpled and grumpy. “It’s for you,” he said sourly.
“I’m not at home.”
He leveled a dull glare at her, then reached over and punched the button to raise the shutters.
“Well I am,” he said as they rattled and squealed open. “So figure out for yourself what you’re doing.”
The shutters lifted to show someone’s crossed black-clad legs in a chair out front. A pair of hands had just finished putting something away, and the body rose to its feet. Folded arms reappeared over a black jacket, but not a security uniform. A smirking handsome face with deftly-done iridescent scales at the temples of a hairless scalp. The Miner had seen that face before, and abruptly had the familiar thought that he looked too cheerful to be a local.
The Miner stiffened as the shutters opened all the way to show atop the man’s bald head a familiar white fez with a golden tassel, specked with red that hadn’t been there when she’d first seen the man, talking to the previous owner of the hat. She glanced at Takata, and the crumpled, miserable look on his face confirmed that he recognized it too.
“Angelica’s brother,” Takata muttered. His fingers clawed at the bar. “God damn it,” he muttered, his voice choked. “I told them to keep their mouths shut.”
The new owner of the fez bowed elaborately, though not so low that it fell off. Two thugs the Miner recognized as Feeney’s goons rushed up, but four more appeared from the sides to intercept them. The young man paid them no mind.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. “I get back from a business trip, and all I hear is about this crazy talented fighter who came to town.”
The Miner nodded.
“My name is Raj del Rio.”
“That so?”
He waited, then just smiled. “My sister made you an offer yesterday. I was hoping I could persuade you to take it.”
She raised an eyebrow. “She offered me less than Feeney did. Why would I take it?”
The smile widened to a grin, accompanied by a knowing wink. “She just expected to have to bargain, you understand these things. If she hadn’t been so rudely interrupted, she might have gone up to, who knows? Twelve thousand credits?”
“Might have. Maybe higher.”
He looked delighted, and she saw that his canine teeth were artificially lengthened. Implants or gene mods, she wondered, and decided she didn’t know enough about dentistry.
“Fourteen? Ah no, obviously sixteen thousand.”
“She’d go that high, would she?”
“I’m confident.”
“She must be crazy. Or desperate.”
His expression froze very briefly, and he seemed to decide that it was a joke. “Could be, I hear craziness is genetic. Wouldn’t you work for a crazy woman for sixteen thousand credits, though?”
She scratched her neck under the collar of her jumpsuit and gave him a searching look. “Might have done, yesterday,” she admitted. “But you shouldn’t have worn that hat, Raj del Rio.”
The grin became brittle, and behind her Takata made a small noise of triumph. “Why not? I think it’s pretty cunning, don’t you?”
“It looks good on you. Striking.”
“Well, then!” He showed more of his teeth and got a sly look. “Maybe you want more than money? I’m a good looking son of a bitch, I know, but let’s stick to business, hey?”
“The trouble is, Raj, I know where you got that hat.”
The grin went away entirely. “You think you do.”
“I know where you got it. And I know it means you just came into a lot of money. I aim to have some of that money. Let’s say, twenty-five thousand credits of it.”
Raj threw back his head and laughed raucously, his clapping drowning out the noises of betrayal behind her. She stepped away from the bar before Takata could find the shotgun secreted there. “I’m glad we understand each other,” she said, and left The Moonstone where it lay.