Chapter 4

  Tusks

  As the breath tore through her chest, it was easiest to look at the stars.

  BR125 was always thick, humid, heavy, close. But somewhere out there were planets, real, monstrous planets, and it gave her relief just knowing that they existed.

  Tegan didn’t think of the rocks like Cela Vega, with basix slab and plastiel stuffed into every crevice. She thought of planets that had mountains taller than buildings, taller than their own atmosphere.

  She thought of planets with only trees and sky. Worlds with sand or endless water.

  Places with nothing but space to move, to breathe.

  The darkness that tunneled her vision started to fade, and her breathing slowed. Her shoulders were tight, so she lowered her head to run a hand behind her neck. As her vision fell from the stars, she met Lumi’s eyes in the dark.

  The hopper was leaning against the jenny shed, quietly watching Tegan.

  They stared at each other for a moment, and then Lumi spoke, “They’re bright tonight, aren’t they?” She paused, waiting for a response, and then raised her eyebrows. “The stars. The planets.”

  Tegan’s face was set in a scowl that she couldn’t get rid of. “They’re the same amount of bright every night. The dome transparency is always the same.” Her voice caught on the word night. It wasn’t real, not here. Just a setting on the dome projector. BR125 was a renovated asteroid, and there were no real day cycles, after all.

  “I don’t know. They look brighter to me,” Lumi replied, leaning her head to the side and looking up. Her white hair fell over her chest and shoulders as she did, framing her face.

  Tegan watched her for a moment before she spoke. “Why are you here?”

  Lumi looked back at Tegan, her eyes sharp. “You seemed like you could use a friend.”

  Tegan’s scowl deepened. “No. Why are you still on this mat farm?”

  “Same reason.”

  Tegan breathed out a laugh. “You’ve got nothing better to do with your time than watch me pull bog mat all day?”

  Lumi pushed off the wall and stepped further into the light glow of the plexi windows. “I like watching you pull bog mat, but you’re right, it’s a two birds, one stone kind of situation.”

  Then, she lifted herself up on a crate and pulled a fold of papers and a few packs of dried organics. Tegan could make out at least one to be taza, but the others could be anything from nicotine to skall bark for all she knew.

  After Lumi had situated everything as she liked it, she pulled off a fresh paper, flattened it, and began adding the different colored mats in a line. Once she was satisfied that they were packed neither too tightly nor too loosely, she began deftly rolling the paper around her creation.

  Tegan felt some of the tension ease from her chest, and she walked over to lean back against the crate Lumi was perched on. When she got closer, she noticed a distinctly floral smell, and couldn’t tell if it came from the hopper or her dried mats.

  Lumi pulled an old lighter from the waistband of her traveling pants and lit the fresh handroll. After a long drag, she said, “Where will you sleep tonight? With her?”

  For some reason, the question didn’t bother Tegan. What did she have to hide from the hopper? She had been there for the worst of it. “I’m going to sleep in the barn. There’s a stall free now.” Tegan tried not to sound bitter, but failed.

  Tegan could see Lumi looking at her in her peripheral vision, a wisp of smoke twisting around her face. “Hmm.” was all she replied.

  She offered Tegan the taza, and for the first time, she accepted it from the hopper. She slid it between her fingers and took a long drag.

  It wasn’t as strong as she had thought it would be, in taste or effect. The stuff she smoked when she was a kid was an embarrassment compared to what Lumi was sharing with her. The floral scent filled her nose and throat, and her mind calmed.

  After a moment, she spoke. “I thought she would take me with her.. To Cela Vega.”

  There it was. Tegan felt the realization click into place like a puzzle piece. It hurt. She was glad the stack of crates was holding her up.

  “I know,” Lumi said.

  ***

  A week had passed since Lee and Helix had taken the transport shuttle and left BR125 and the mat belt behind. Tegan worked because she had to. She saw Lumi when she normally did, but they hadn’t talked about that evening’s events since. She thought again about when the hopper would leave, and with the empty mat farm around her, it filled her with something akin to panic.

  What could she do? Lumi would leave when she wanted, and Lee would return when she could.

  Today, Tegan was in the jenny shed again, carving the mysterious substance off a fuse cylinder. Lee had managed to purchase a spare fuse when the traders last visited, so instead of needing to shut the machine down, the generator hummed softly behind her.

  She had gotten into a rhythm with the stuff. If she cleaned one fuse a day, she kept ahead of its growth enough that the voltage warning stayed off. Someday, she would get their other jenny online and kill it for good, but for now, at least it was no longer damaging the machine.

  As she stood to lean the large cylinder against the wall and stretch, the control panel on her jumpsuit flashed and sounded an alarm. She swiped it open, confused.

  INCOMING VESSELS (NO REQUEST)

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  VESSELS:

  (2) Orbital Momentum Bikes, (1) Strike Schooner

  PILOTS:

  OMB1: Cypher Mal-tov

  OMB2: Kangu Tor

  SS: (?) Unknown

  LICENSES:

  Mal-Tov: GR-4MT3Z9-1217-LVR (Active)

  Tor: GR-9KJ1P4-8802-LVG (Flagged – Pending Review)

  WARNING: COMBAT, APPROACH SPEED, UNKNOWN PILOTS

  The air around Tegan seemed to press into her ears, and her heart raced. Before she could react, she heard the scream of a kinetic lance rifle through the muffled walls of the jenny shed and thought it must be Lumi’s. She didn’t know what she would do, but she rushed from the shed looking for the hopper.

  As soon as she stepped into the bright light of the afternoon, she saw the vessels her control panel had warned her about. The gravbikes sped close to the edge of the dome, and behind them, what Tegan assumed must be a strike schooner. The schooner pursued the bikes, and both parties fired at each other.

  The ship was a little larger than Lee’s transport shuttle, but where hers was made for comfort and ease of use, this one was made for hunting. It looked like a sea predator, coasting side to side to avoid the retaliation shots from the hoppers on their OMBs.

  Another distinctive crack of the KLR, and Tegan whipped around towards the source. Lumi crouched behind crates at the docking pad with her rifle, choosing her shots on the striking schooner. She had shrugged her debris jacket over her tank, but otherwise looked rather exposed to be in a fight with a ship. Tegan ran to the crates and ducked behind them, huddling next to the hopper.

  Without taking her eye from the sights Lumi said, “What the fuck are you doing here? Get back in the jenny shed.”

  “I..I don’t know.” Tegan looked around, truly unsure of what she’d been thinking. Then, she realized she was angry. “What are they doing here? Do you know them?”

  Instead of replying, Lumi unclipped the pistol at her waist and handed it to Tegan.

  The hopper adjusted her cheek on the stock of the rifle and spoke, “I’m sure they’re wearing carbonite. They won’t go down unless you hit them somewhere exposed… so… just don’t fire until you’re really sure you’ve got it.”

  The hoppers and their gravbikes had started dropping into the mat planet, faster than Tegan had ever seen a vessel descend. They were firing up at the strike schooner as they plummeted. She had no idea how they were staying upright and balanced in what looked to her like a free fall.

  Another crack of Lumi’s KLR, and this time the strike schooner banked. Tegan’s ears rang, and she felt nauseous. She watched the ship struggle, and now that it was closer, she could see that much of it was damaged.

  A bay opened in its belly, and six helmeted fighters dropped. The dove downward, angling themselves toward the gravbikes and the docking pad. As the belly closed, the schooner peeled off the dome, setting itself in a high enough orbit to avoid taking any more damage from Lumi’s rifle.

  The larger of the hoppers touched down first, landing heavily next to Tegan and Lumi.

  After he popped the face shield on his vac-loc helmet, he looked over at Tegan and raised an eyebrow. She tried her best to look like she knew how to use the pistol in her hands, but knew she probably just looked awkward. He unclipped a larger coil revolver from his gravbike and threw it to Lumi.

  Lumi caught it from the air and spoke, “Who are your friends, Kan?”

  The second hopper landed much more gracefully, pulled her helmet, and slid from her bike. She spoke to Lumi. “You know he doesn’t have any friends, Velta.”

  If the man was Kangu Tor, then the woman must be Cypher Mal-tov. Tegan only had a moment to take them in before the strike schooner fighters crashed down around them. Air propulsion, much more powerful than Tegan’s, kept them from snapping their own spines on impact. As powerfully as they landed, Tegan assumed their mismatched carbonite gear did some of the work as well.

  Tegan wrestled the impulse to unload a whole charge into the closest fighter. Lumi had told her the pistol wouldn’t damage them, and she knew she would only draw attention to herself.

  She didn’t have to fight the urge for long. Lumi crossed the distance between them and the closest of the attackers in a breath. The man pulled a charge pistol and fired, and Tegan’s heart leapt from her chest. But, Lumi had slipped the shot and as she rose, she launched the base of her KLR into his face shield.

  Had Tegan not been at just the right angle, she would have missed the small rounded spike on the rifle's stock extend and retract as it made contact with his face shield. It punched a chip from the face plate, and a spiderweb of cracks formed. Before the man had recovered from the hit, Lumi fired the coil revolver into the center of the crack. The faceplate exploded inward as gore blew from the back of the helmet.

  As she brought the revolver down, she simultaneously flipped the rifle so that her hand was back on the trigger, raised it and fired a kinetic slug into the chest of a second advancing fighter.

  The shot caved in the woman’s breastplate, and she dropped before she could return fire. For as long as it took to charge, the KLR would be a one-off in this fight, but Lumi did not drop the weapon. Instead, she clipped the revolver back on Kangu’s grav bike.

  Then, she vaulted the gravbikes between herself and the two fighters engaged with the smaller hopper, Cypher. Just before she landed, she flipped the rifle so that she was holding it by its barrel again. Using both arms, she swung the rifle in an arc, sending the base of it down towards the closest fighter’s head.

  To Tegan, it appeared as though Lumi intended to hit the man on the top of his helmet. That didn’t make sense to her. Surely that would be a thick section of carbonite.

  Instead, the hit fell short. As it passed his head, a hook popped from the side of the stock and slid cleanly between his helmet and chest armor. The force of the blow ripped him off his feet, and he landed heavily on his back.

  Lumi followed him down, pulling her ceramic composite knife and sliding it under the corner of his helmet. Whatever breath he had been trying to drag back into his chest stalled and then halted.

  Tegan looked around. All six fighters were dead on the ground, the others dispatched by Kangu and Cypher. She stood, and the charge pistol hung limp in her hands. The three hoppers all turned to her. There was relief in Lumi’s face, and then her dark eyes grew wide.

  Before Tegan could register the look, she was grabbed from behind. She felt the cold barrel of a weapon pressed to her temple, and though she struggled, she couldn’t move the arms that were snug around her shoulders. Panic shot through her system. The pilot must have descended from the strike schooner.

  Tegan didn’t know what her first thoughts should be with a pistol pressed to her temple, but outside of the fear, all she felt was disappointment.

  Is this where she would die? On BR125? This muggy, green mat planet? This wet, claustrophobic place?

  She saw herself then, a child sleeping next to her brother on the floor. Coughing in the smog that permeated the walls of their shack on cityship LVG25. She saw Lee, a few years later, bright and happy at the farmer’s market with her father. Tegan had spent everything she had on a bag of rice. Just to talk to her.

  She saw her first year on the farm, how excited she’d been to be here with Lee. How lucky she had felt to have grass under her feet and a real bed to sleep in.

  Then, she felt the long drag of the last five years. She felt the labor, the staleness, and the pain. Most embarrassing of all, she watched herself start to fear the outside world. To fear change.

  Panic was replaced with rage. She pulled Lumi’s pistol to the side of her face and hooked it under the lip of the helmet she knew was there. There was no fear for herself when she pulled the trigger, only fury.

  The sound, flash of pain, and dead weight of the man behind her sent her to the ground. On all fours, she brought her free hand to her ringing ear. It was wrong. She felt the cartilage, mangled and hanging. When she brought her hand forward, the stark red of blood on her pale skin caused her vision to lapse.

  In her other hand, the pistol remained, her knuckles white with how hard they gripped it.