Page 24 of Star Champion

“Aye, but she won’t spend the money.”

“We can use that gold card in your pocket to get her a doctor.”

“No compound doc is gonna come into the city to treat a trill rat. Besides, to Ma, it’s blood money. She would rather die than benefit from street bajha.”

Jemm exhaled. “I’m sure she knows where the extra money is coming from. She says nothing because it means better food and clothing for Button.”

At that, Nico’s hands curled into fists on top of the table. Jemm made a face at his gloves. “Why do you keep wearing those dirty old gloves when there’s money to buy a new pair?”

“Why do ya wear that timepiece? It doesn’t work.”

“It was Da’s. And I mean to get it repaired.”

He turned his hands over, looking at them with those old-soul eyes that never seemed to fit his boyish face. “These are what I was wearing when Kish got killed. If I wash ’em, it’s like washing off her.”

Jemm’s breath caught. It was like he had reached inside her chest and squeezed her heart. She slid her hand over one of Nico’s battered gloves and twined her fingers with his. They sat in silence, their dinner plates picked clean. Button’s breathing was slower and deeper now, her lips slack around her thumb. She had fallen asleep.

“I’ll meet ya tomorrow at the processing plant when ya get off work,” Nico said finally. “I know a place where you can change clothes.”

“Aye.” She pushed back from the table, shifting a floppy Button from her lap to her hip. Ditsi darted out from under the table and leaped through the cat door, heeding the call back to the night now that her belly was full. Jemm hitched Button higher in her arms. “Would you like to put your daughter to bed?”

Nico shook his head.

If only he would hold on to his daughter as fiercely as he did his gloves. Even a gesture as small and kind as feeding Button a few scraps off his plate like he did for the ketta-cat would give Jemm hope he would act like a real father one day. But ever since Kish was killed he had steered clear of the mines—and their baby. “I will if your arm hurts,” he mumbled.

Her arm.

She stopped in her tracks, yanked up her sleeve. The discolored bruise was almost gone, as was the swelling. “I don’t feel it anymore. That salve, it’s all but healed it.” Her next thought was for their mother. “If these off-worlders have miracle medicines for sore arms, they might have something to help Ma’s cough. I’m gonna ask.”

“The better you fight tomorrow, the more likely they will be to help.”

“Aye, I know it.”

When she at long last made it to her bed, despite her bone-exhaustion, she could not fall asleep. On her side, she looked out the dirty window, and thought of the building’s open midsection five floors below, the enormous round terrace supported by columns with trill cores. Other daughters had learned to hang laundry to dry on the racks placed there, but her father brought her to the midlevel to watch him practice bajha. Eventually, she joined in, and those were the best of days, playing bajha, falling in love with the sport and soaking in his excited praise as she improved. They would be out there for hours at a time, Da using the broken-off handle of a shovel to train her to wield his sens-sword, the expanse of the city spread out beneath them, the edge only one blindfolded misstep away. All the while, he would tell her stories of the galaxy and its history, of pirates and kings, of the boggling array of creatures and merchandise from myriad worlds. It was where he taught her to read, to work with numbers, to think for herself. To dream.

“You are never to touch those things!”

The memory of her mother’s grief-laden voice ripped into the blissful images. The cry reverberated in Jemm’s mind with as much sharpness as it did that day on the terrace, when Ma discovered her wearing her father’s bajha suit, the fabric billowing around Jemm’s small body. Even now, lying in bed some fourteen standard years later, that moment remained vivid: the sens-sword gripped in her hands, Jemm frozen to the spot, as if she had been caught standing over a dead body with the murder weapon still in her hands.

Her father’s dead body, judging by her mother’s reaction.“I swear, I’ll burn all of it before the day’s done!”

“No, Ma! Please. They’re Da’s.”

“Your Da isdead. You’ll end up the same way if you’re wanting to play…that game.”

Bajha. Ma could not bring herself to utter the word. Not then. Not now. It was as if she blamed the sport for Da’s death, but her father died of an infection from a broken leg he suffered in an accident in the mines. Jemm watched him die, bit by bit, day by day, burning up with fever, until it seemed a mercy when he finally breathed his last.

The bajha suit might not have his scent anymore but as long as Jemm had his boots, his suit, and his sens-sword, the spirit of Conrenn Aves would live on. Maybe that realization convinced her mother to relent on her threat to burn the gear. But it came with a caveat.“You’re never to use these things again. Do ya hear me, girl? I forbid it.”

Because it seemed to hurt her mother so, Jemm did give up bajha. It was like losing her Da all over again. At eleven years old, she sneaked out on the terrace to practice a year later, on the anniversary of his death, just once, seeking the joy, peace, and centeredness that only bajha could bring her. That one taste was not enough. She snuck out again the next week to practice. Soon she was doing it all the time. She had never set out to lie to Ma or, eventually, flat-out disobey her. It just happened to end up that way.

Her father—ring name: Badlands Fire—had dreamed of going pro but never had the chance. He had wanted to make a better life for the family, but never could. Now, it was up to her to do it. Once, bajha was only an escape from the hell that was Barésh. Now it was far more. What she needed to do now, she would do for her Da. After all, he was the one who taught her to dream in the first place.

“You’re either all in or all out.”

Jemm pushed upright and swung her legs off the mattress. Nico was right. There could be nothing halfway about this.

She combed her fingers through her hair that was still a wee bit damp from her shower. How pretty the strands were, how soft Then she reached for her pocketknife on the bedside table.

---