Something had spooked her, Arjay sensed. The tension in her was like a live wire. He didn’t think it was even really about Gavyn despite her explanation. And despite his own earlier concern that the rebel leader might decide the miners’ possession of Ydro-Down was more secure without her, as soon as Arjay had told her that Gavyn was more likely to do the right thing than the expedient thing, he’d realized the truth of his assessment. There’d been a time when he believed people did the right thing, but it wasn’t until he’d watched his friend dig through solid rock to become foreman—not for the meager added perks but for the mere chance at freedom for all the miners—that he knew what it actually looked like.
It didn’t come wrapped in plasilk or served on a platter with real fruit. It was sweat and blood and stone.
Slowly, he reached out for Tick’s hand. Her fingers were clenched into a fist so tight it was like holding a stone. He didn’t try to soothe her, only met her gaze squarely. “You’re one of us now,” he repeated with more force though he kept his grip gentle. “More than that, you are the first of us.” He let go of her hand and took an equally slow step back. “If you want no part of this, tell me so. I might not have the authority of system law behind me now—if I ever did—but Gavyn listens to me. If I tell him you don’t want this, he’ll let it go. Let you go.”
Her jaw tightened, working side to side like an extremely small whomper cutting through solid rock. “I know what I want.”
He stiffened. “You do? What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t give it to me.” Though the light on the station was unchanging, shadows turned her purple eyes to indigo.
“Your mothers…” He trailed off when she shook her head. “Then what?”
“Never mind. Take me to your leader.” Her tone was a mix of petulant child and imperious queen, both of which were probably fair.
With no other choice—what choice had either of them ever had?—he continued on to the ready room with her.
Before the mine overseer’s untimely demise, burned and drowned in the tunnels of Ydro-Down, the ready room had been a place to haggle with qubition buyers. As such, it was the nicest location on the station or the outpost. Wide, transparent plasteel panes segmented the view of the rocky planetoid below. With its tortured, broken façade as grim as an unlucky underworld criminal, Ydro-Down looked like a place that would burn someone up and then drown them and then eject them into space. All right, perhaps that last part wasn’t something a floating hunk of half-hollowed rock could do on its own, but Ydro-Down was special. And not just because of the treasure running through its stony veins.
Tick was standing well away from the windows, but Ahmya drew her forward inexorably, murmuring something quietly and pointing outward, until she was framed against the outlook like a triptych of rock, void, and beauty.
Beauty? Arjay blinked at the thought. Tick was his deep-creeps gremlin. Since when was that beautiful?
The reflected light from the rough surface bounced across her in a strange chroma fractured by the thick plasteel. As she turned to gaze at the moon that was her birthright, the glow caught on the ragged ends of her hair like splintered crystal
Like unexpected flashes of crystalline brilliance sometimes glittered from the moon’s shattered peaks, he caught glimpses in her of the woman she might’ve been if not for QueCorp.
Or maybe he was seeing who she would become.
When Gavyn cleared his throat, Arjay realized how long he’d let his stunned silence go on. He dragged his gaze off of Tick—his gremlin? Since when? He faced his friend. “I brought her,” he said unnecessarily, as it wasn’t obvious she was right there like a living embodiment of their moon—and their problem.
Gavyn gave him a look but nodded. “And does she agree with the plan?”
Arjay swallowed. “I—”
“I don’t know the plan,” Tick squared off to them, and Arjay was suddenly aware of how large he and Gavyn were compared to the women. He flushed at the note of accusation in her voice accompanied by Ahmya’s reproving glance.
Last night had left him confused, as if she’d robbed him of his words and his capacity for rational thinking. It wasn’t fair to blame her, but she was the cause.
When he continued to stand there, agonizingly mute, Gavyn sent him another questioning look before addressing Tick. “QueCorp is gearing up for a more direct assault, we believe. Ahmya broke into their signal and found an increase in chatter. We don’t have much time to stake our claim once and for all.”
Tick nodded. “Arjay told you about the stash of refined ore?”
He cleared his throat. “I told them.” He wasn’t sure about the note of defensiveness, as if he’d betrayed her. “I explained that it has all the makings for Q-bombs.”
Ahmya clasped her hands behind her back, a militaristic parade rest from her not-so-distant past as an undercover operative for the Order of the Last Candle. Arjay realized that like him, she’d never be completely free of her mistakes. Her wounds were as ugly and bitter as his own, yet she’d found a way to move on when he was still buried in regret.
Despite her training as a spy and saboteur, she was also strangely direct, so he was surprised when she looked away from them, staring out at the moon as she’d done with Tick. “There’s a problem with Q-bombs,” she mused.
With an incredulous snort, Arjay crossed his arms over his chest, then realized he was mirroring her stance in reverse and forced himself to straighten. “You mean besides being wildly unstable, colossally destructive, and outlawed throughout the galaxy?”
“Besides that. We can make the qubition a weapon, or it can take us the next step in creating the life we want. It’s either death…or our future. It can’t be both.” She finally turned away from the bleak view to face them, one eyebrow raised as if the issue was just an interesting thought experiment. “Which do we choose?”
“Hope,” Gavyn said without hesitation. “That’s always been our choice. Every time.”
Ahmya’s hard eyes softened when she gazed at him. But her voice was unflinching. “We’ve held off QueCorp this long only because Ming Waller fears losing everything if they strike too soon and blindly. But if he knows of that stash, or learns of it, the reward suddenly becomes much higher than the risk.” She glanced at Tick. “I’m sorry, but we can’t wait for you to believe in us.”
Tick bit at her lower lip. “Is believing necessary to kill Ming Waller?”
Ahmya blinked then slanted a glance at Arjay, who shrugged and said, “Tick is more interested in revenge than revenue.”
Her gaze on Tick was halfway between sympathetic and scolding. “Believe this if nothing else: revenge won’t change what happened and you’ll only risk what you’ve found.”
“Which is what exactly?” Tick lifted her chin. “An ongoing war I never wanted?”
That silenced Gavyn and Ahmya both. The two were so much alike—intense in their desire to remake the mining moon into the sort of mythical, half-remembered homes they’d lost. They’d been children when they’d lost those homes—Ahmya to forgotten Oblivion Wars ordnance, Gavyn to generational poverty that forced his people to sell him into indentured servitude—so they still dreamed of what could’ve been for them.
Arjay knew better. Anything they’d gained could be lost at any time, never mind their hopes, beliefs, and dreams. So he couldn’t quite hold back a chuckle at the stunned glances they exchanged. “Tick lands her hits even when she isn’t kicking.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore.” She paused. “Except Ming Waller. Since his great-grandfather is already dead.”
Gavyn blinked. “I’m not hurt or insulted. I know this fight doesn’t matter to most. All the Rim bought ore from QueCorp and never cared about the miners forced to dig. That won’t change just because we’re the overseers now.”
“The change is whose credit account benefits from the digging,” Ahmya said. “Tick, QueCorp will kill you if we don’t stop them. Or we might make you rich on their defeat. Which is the sweeter revenge?”
Arjay held back another snort. Such a practical assassin.
Tick paced along the window, her head turned away from the view as if she couldn’t quite bring heself to look out but not looking at them either. “I was buried,” she said softly. “Not killed by QueCorp like the rest of my colony, but buried all the same.”
Unable to stop himself, Arjay stepped into her restless path. Maybe she’d run him down, flatten herself against him… Instead she stopped a breath away and he had to squelch a twinge of disappointment. “You’re awake now,” he reminded her. “Your mothers would want you to live and be happy.”
“Happy…” She lifted her purple gaze to him—the eyes of a beautiful wish her mothers had conjured together, beloved before she even existed.
In those violet depths, he saw how he’d failed her with that kiss that couldn’t be more. He wanted to defend his withdrawal. But he couldn’t, not when he knew how she’d felt about being left behind.
He drew in a shaky breath. “There’s still a big galaxy, Tick. It’s out there, somewhere.”
She gazed at him another long moment, long enough that he might’ve counted his heartbeats except he couldn’t focus on anything except the delicate heat between them, a difference he hadn’t noticed before. On Ydro-Down, the swelter of gravity-induced tectonics and isotopic decay made everyone sweat until it didn’t mean anything. But in the station’s cool, filtered air, the awareness danced like an invisible mirage between them, a ghost of might’ve-beens.
She didn’t answer, and he wondered if she was counting the heartbeats he was missing. After that simmering silence, she followed him to the ready room table and they all took seats around the built-in display.
Ahmya pulled up a visual on the in-system/out-system signals. “Here. You can see when the station was cut off from transgalactic comms after we took control. QueCorp is blocking traffic, subverting any secure wormhole formation. A determined pilot could work around them, but no one is going to take the chance of their ship disappearing into a hole with no outlet. Especially when they can’t make contact with us to find out if there’s anything worth having here.”
Tick leaned forward, studying the display, those pretty purple eyes skimming sharply across the diagrams. She might’ve stayed lurking in the deeps with only scavenged tech and signal for her amusement, but Arjay knew she was smart and capable.
“Can’t you boost our comms past the blockade?” She traced a fingertip through the projected 3D image of space and signal. “We might not have enough water or food or air, but with the Q from the stash, from here on the station you could punch a microhole, enough to get a message out.”
Arjay grunted. “You know how to do that but you couldn’t just come upstairs to talk to us before now?”
She gave him an arch look. “I didn’t want to talk to you then.”
“We could do that,” Ahmya said. “But to avoid damaging the station when we open the hole, we’d have to take the transport—our only ship—out a safe distance. We know QueCorp is lurking with at least two ships in system, likely more in relatively close range. And we can be fairly sure there are other opportunists watching and waiting to see how it plays out.”
“Plays out,” Gavyn growled under his breath. “As if this is a game to them.”
“The only game.” She laid her hand over his, clenched on the edge of the table. “Betting on the roulette wheel of survival on the Rim.”
“They all need qubition to keep spinning,” Arjay said. “So they’ll play with us if we can convince them we hold the cards.”
“Roulette and cards are different games,” Tick said repressively.
He gave her another smile. “He who has the Q makes the rules.”
“She. She who has the Q. She meaning me.”
When Arjay pursed his lips, Ahmya laughed. “Tick, I think you are ready to conquer the Rim.” She summoned up another display. “QueCorp has the advantage. They have more ships, more resources, more time. The longer this goes on, they are losing money, but we are slowly losing our chance and our lives. Ydro-Down has never been self-sustaining because QueCorp wouldn’t allow for on-world development. So every day, we’re running lower on water, food, medical supplies, any components that are too specialized or delicate to produce on our 3D printers.”
“I know where you can find a few extra diodes,” Arjay murmured.
Tick shot him a wry glance. “Might be able to dig up a spare crawler too.”
“We need more than that,” Ahmya said. “We need weapons, defensive ones, not Q-bombs. And we need fighters to use them. We need to show QueCorp, the Order, and anyone else who thinks we’re weak that we’ll fight for what’s ours, now and forever. We have one ship, one load of qubition, one chance to make the galaxy believe that we mean what we say.”
There was no crowd of simple miners here as there’d been when Gavyn launched their rebellion to cheer such an impassioned speech. The three of them had always known that sermons wouldn’t be enough to save Ydro-Down, and Tick had obviously never been impressed by mere words. Still, Ahmya’s conviction rang against something inside him like a chime, a mineral forged out of adversity and hammered pure. Her ability to commit to their cause—no, not just the cause, to Gavyn—when her loyalty had been so badly abused made Arjay squirm. She’d sacrificed everything, even her identity, believing in the people who’d brainwashed her. He’d let himself be misled, willfully blind to corruption he should have seen, because the perpetrators had been too elegant, accomplished, and kind to be criminal, not when they offered him a place at their table of plenty.
Shame made his voice sharp when he broke the echoing silence. “One shot is all you need to put yourself down. But you usually need more against enemies as numerous and overpowering as ours.”
Gavyn made another low noise in the back of his throat, a warning that Arjay was overstepping some boundaries, but Ahmya gave him a look that struck him harder than Tick’s boot heel—it was pity. “Sometimes,” she said, “all you need is one person to believe.”
“You’ll have one queen anyway,” Tick said. “Me.”
When Ahmya’s eyebrows went up again, Arjay cringed. If she laughed at Tick’s conceit… But she only nodded. “We need to prove to the Rim that we’re open and ready for business. We also need to actually stay open, which means holding QueCorp at bay with those weapons and fighters I mentioned.”
Arjay held back another grimace. “Are we going to end up worse than our overseers?”
Gavyn stiffened, his wide shoulders expanding with the angry breath he sucked in. “No.” There was more bite than growl to his voice this time. “Fighting off our oppressors is not the same as becoming oppressors ourselves.” He stared at Arjay hard. His protective lenses were pushed to the top of his head, exposing his steely silver-blue eyes. But after a moment, he relented. “I know you always thought the galaxy should be a better place—could be, if humanity weren’t so…human.” A flicker of amusement softened the ice in his gaze. “Those high expectations of yours helped lift our spirits when this rebellion seemed doomed. Ydro-Down could be that better place. But only if we actually survive.” The ice glazed over again. “Don’t let ideals bury you.”
No, that had been Tick, colored in with love and then nearly erased by it. His own ruin wasn’t so honorable, but he’d never revealed the depths of it to Gavyn. The rebel leader had his own rough justice, and Arjay’s already compromised morals were no better.
He’d fought, stolen, and killed, but he’d never broken a promise. Not even the one he’d made to his spouses to always cherish and support them, which he’d done by giving himself up. He’d pledged himself to the rebellion and he wasn’t going to walk away now.
After all, they only had one ship.