Page 12 of Star Champion

Just my luck. She circled back around to the front bumper, shaking grit from her goggles before sliding them up and over her forehead. Squinting upward at the dome, she tried to gauge how much actual light was left. “The sun’s as false as a miner’s hopes,” went the saying. Sunshine on Barésh was as manufactured as the domed sky, but it ruled the rhythm of life on the mining colony. Luckily the same dome that made their home habitable and protected everyone from the icy reaches and radiation of space also brightened and darkened on a schedule that never varied. Her great-grandfather’s timepiece, which she inherited from her father, was a heavy, familiar weight around her wrist. It had been broken for a long while now. Years. There never was enough money to get it fixed. Now that she had stocked up on food with her bajha winnings and paid to fix the broken window, even putting away a little extra for emergencies in the crock hidden beneath the apartment floor, she could finally rationalize paying someone to make the wristwatch function again, a luxury she missed having. Not that it would have told a different truth than the sun, less than a hand’s span from disappearing below the horizon.

In the fading light she could already make out the faint glow of Barésh City. It was the latest she had ever left with a load, and from the farthest smelter, too. No driver planned on having to cross the badlands after dome-set.

Jemm checked that her sidearm was fitted properly in her holster and then zipped her leathers to her chin. She swung herself up into the driver’s seat and drummed restless fingers on her knees. “Let’s go! Pick it up. I gotta get on the road.”

Grumbles and curses told her the men were moving as fast as they could. The lead was immune to her glare as he sauntered around the front of the tug with a tablet containing a form to be signed off by her and eventually the receiver at the docks. “You’re mighty itchy to get rollin’, lass.”

“Ya think?” She took the tablet and stylus. “It’ll be dome-set before we know it, Arik. You’re taking way too long.”

“Am I?” Arik’s glove wrapped around the open door’s frame. His sleeve was hiked up, revealing a nice rounded biceps. His teeth were clean and straight but his lean frame revealed the cumulative hazards of his job. Where there weren’t scars on his body there were tattoos, or both. “Ya never complained before,” he drawled, his tone reflecting the mischievous, flirtatious glint in his eyes. “I thought ya liked it long and slow.”

She shot him a darkly amused look. “Not if it’s gonna put me behind schedule.”

“Ya might feel different if ya took up with me again.”

“Why would I? No good came of the first time.”

“Not true. Some good came of it.” His lower lip sported tattooed stripes that formed a fan shape when he grinned. “Good memories.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “Aye. A few.” Then she switched her concentration to the weight-and-balance document displayed on the tablet. Arik was a good man. He just was not the right man. There probably wasn’t one. She had long ago stopped bothering to look.

One of the loaders signaled Arik with a sharp whistle. Then Arik nodded at her. “You’re good to go, tugger. The trill’s all on.”

“My weight gauge reads way past max, but here in the paperwork it says I’m hauling a normal load. Look.”

“Insurance,” he explained.

“Insurance? What do you mean? For what?”

“Accidental loss.”

As her stylus hovered above the signature line, she glared at him. “How am I supposed to sign off on this? It’s incorrect.”

“Look, Jemm, it’s not my call. It’s come down from the foreman. Every late-day haul from now on is gonna be this way. You got valuable trill going between the smelters and the processors, and too many sticky fingers in-between grabbing what they can. Blasted scurries and plains pirates, they’re getting bolder all the time. This way anything lost to those rock-roaches will be skimmed off the top, not eaten out of the authorized load.”

“So, let me get this straight—the mine bosses are padding loads to buffer against black market losses. Like this won’t show up on an audit?”

He shrugged. “They’ve always cooked the books, Jemm. Nothing’s changed but the method. Ya gonna sign off or not?”

“Crat, Arik.” She angrily scrawled her signature on the screen and thrust it back into his hands. Not that she had a choice. It was transport the trill or lose her job.

Resentment strangled her like fingers wrapped around her throat. The only thing worse than feeling powerless was being forced to compromise her principles. But the mine bosses were very good at using desperation as leverage; they knew their workers would do what they asked because the alternative was that bad.

It only hardened her resolve to get off this slagheap for good. She didn’t know where she would take her family, but anywhere was better than here. Da had said so. He died before he could realize that dream, but she had kept it alive, painstakingly saving up, most times only a few coins a week, to purchase one-way tickets for her, Ma, Button, and Nico in steerage on a starship bound for as far away as she could afford. It might be decades before she had enough to get them off-world, but she refused to let that fact demoralize her. It was why she had cooked up the bajha playing idea in the first place. At the rate she and Nico were earning silvers, she would be able to reduce the wait time considerably. And now, all of it had been put at risk.

By the simple act of signing for the load, an incorrect load, she was now complicit in the trickery going on. If the bosses found out about it, she would never have to answer to the charge. The lead loaders would be blamed, and the tug drivers too. Then she would be fired by some upper-class cog who would never know what it felt like to go to bed hungry, all because those who ran the mines cared more about looking good to their boss, some pamperedVashoverlord light years away.

Calm yourself. Everyone’s depending on you.

She tapped into a deeper resolve, her dogged determination not to be pulled off course, and took a steadying breath before fitting her goggles over her eyes. Out on the barren plains, the shadows were lengthening like streaks of grime on a wet wall. She needed to leave—an hour ago.

She thrust her boot against the accelerator, her thumb on the start switch, and the tug rumbled to life. “Time for me to roll.”

Arik poked his head into the cab. “Your engine sounds a bit rough to my ears, lass.”

“It’s fine.”

“You can always say it ain’t, though. A mechanical problem would delay ya overnight. You could then take the load out at dawn—a normal load, not a padded one. Owing to your late start, it might be a wee bit safer, all the way around. If ya know what I mean.”

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