Jaxar Read online

  Noticing Stanelle wince slightly and readjust his leg, he asked, “Is it bad?”

  “Nah. I was on my feet too long, is all. What about you?” He jabbed Jaxar in the side with his elbow. “Tell me your bones are creaky in the morning, too.”

  He couldn’t, but he could offer his cousin a different complaint. “I find that I require a…” Jaxar paused, searching for the correct word, “a ritual in order to fall asleep.” He used to be able to close his eyes anywhere—sitting upright, leaning against a wall, on a cold floor—grab a few minutes of sleep, and wake up refreshed. Now, if he did not follow a precise set of steps, his mind refused to slow down enough to sleep. He would lie in bed feeling incomplete as his mind ran on a loop. “It is frustrating.”

  Stanelle nodded, taking a swig of his beer. Perspiration covered the bottle. “Dania wanted to know why her favorite uncle is hiding at her party.”

  “I’m enjoying the view.” Jaxar finished his beer. The oppressive heat of the summer faded to a comfortable warmth as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Night-blooming flowers perfumed the air, creating a heady mix.

  “You’re distancing yourself and being a moody bastard because you feel like you’re not part of the family anymore,” Stanelle said with far too much accuracy.

  “You can piss off right out of an airlock,” he muttered.

  Stanelle laughed softly. “I always thought Dania would be matched to one of your kind.”

  He did too. Compatibility often ran in families. “I’m glad she was not.”

  Stanelle plucked the empty bottle from Jaxar’s hand. “How many of these did you drink?”

  “Just the one. My melancholy has nothing to do with alcohol consumption.” His family was down there, dancing and celebrating, and slipping away from him yet again.

  “Melancholy. Digging out the fancy words.” Stanelle clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Come on.” He stiffly rose to his feet. “My daughter is engaged, and the celebration is not the same without her favorite uncle.”

  Chapter 2

  Vanessa

  One Year Later

  A drop of water landing on her forehead woke Van.

  She rolled to the side, into a damp patch on her mattress.

  Fantastic. Another day in paradise.

  Well, another day on the moon of Vel Mori, where it was always windy, the rain plentiful, and the atmosphere slightly corrosive.

  Her alarm sounded and the shutters on the windows opened, flooding the room with orange-tinted sunlight. Rust ringed the window frame. Van pressed her fingers to the discolored spots, practically feeling a cold breeze from the outside. No building stayed airtight on the moon. The corrosive atmosphere accelerated the wear and tear on roofs, windows, and seals, shortening the average lifespan of a building to just under a decade.

  The atmosphere itself wasn’t instant death, but long-term exposure had a nasty habit of breaking down lung tissue. Keeping the facilities airtight on the colony was too expensive. The Vel Mori Holdings found it more frugal to construct giant air purifiers to filter out the toxic elements of the atmosphere rather than deal with the cost of keeping their facilities sealed.

  Sure, the company was cheap, and the moon lacked breathtaking vistas, but it wasn’t the worst place in the universe. She could still be on Earth.

  Originally established as a mining colony, the environment proved too harsh to be profitable. Not even the high market value of hellstone could keep the mining operations from folding. Fortunately, several unique properties of the native flora sparked corporate interest and reusing existing structures—with almost no money put back into maintenance—turned the Vel Mori moon from a money pit to cost-effective. While they weren’t doing anything universe-changing like researching new biofuels, Van reasoned that the universe needed quality moisturizer too.

  Eh. It was a job. Not like Van got to do the cool, interesting stuff in research. She never finished her Ph.D. in botany and had only an undergraduate degree, which qualified her to scrub algae tanks.

  Living the dream.

  Van rolled out of bed and hustled across the cold floor to the shower. With hot water pounding her back, she mentally went over her daily schedule.

  Check algae tanks. Replace parts as needed. Empty filtration units. Replace filters. Go home. Eat. Sleep.

  Do it again until her contract expired in another two years.

  Super exciting stuff. Still better than being on Earth.

  Van wanted to claim that while Vel Mori Holdings had several flaws, at least they paid decently, but that wasn’t true. They paid the average rate for the work she did. However, factoring in the harsh environment and the potential for everything to go tits up in an instant, it paid diddly squat. She could get a higher wage working on a hunk of rock in the ass-end of nowhere, live in a bungalow that was not falling apart, and actually breathe the air, but the company had one thing going for it. Just one little thing. The rep that signed her took a bribe and conveniently left off four little letters from her name. Vanessa Acosta became Van Acosta at the press of the button and she no longer had to worry about that damn Mahdfel draft.

  Worth it.

  She had been matched once and did her duty. She would never be matched against her will to an alien again, so the authorities claimed. She had a medical exemption. Van didn’t believe a word of it. They also said the Mahdfel cherished their mates. They mated for life. Once they claimed you, they would never let you go.

  Bullshit.

  Add to that the weaselly contractor who tried to intimidate Van into volunteering again? She wasn’t going to hang around Earth and hope that everyone played by the rules. Nope. She happily paid the bribe to have the wrong name and gender entered on her work visa. Off-planet, the computer systems had Van Acosta listed as a man and as long as she was listed as man, she never had to worry about being forced to marry an alien.

  Totally. Worth. It.

  She’d live with the bad air, shit hours, and the fact that the entire moon was covered in a weird fungus. Okay, not entirely true. There were a few other plants, but the landscape was mostly fungus. If you stood in place too long, you got coated in a bright orange scuzz, because everything was orange on that moon. At least she didn’t have an orange foot fungus. Van kept her shoes dry and scrubbed down after every shift because she refused to catch the miner’s foot.

  The aroma of coffee pulled her to the kitchen. Esme sat at the table with a cup, reading the day’s news on a tablet. “Morning, roomie. You coming to the show tonight?”

  “My shift runs late. I might miss the first number,” Van said, pouring herself a cup of genuine Earth coffee. The company employed a good mix of human and Sangrin employees, so the company store kept plenty of Earth goods in stock.

  “No worries.” Esme drained her cup. “Time to water the plants. See you tonight.”

  Esme had the job Van dreamed about: doing research with the native plants. Okay, mostly fungus, but original research. No scrubbing algae tanks. Esme also had her Ph.D., played the violin and piano like some child prodigy, and never talked about her reasons for hiding on their lovely alien moon. Nearly every human woman who worked for Vel Mori Holdings stuck with the company for the same reasons as Van—to escape the Mahdfel draft—but Esme never uttered a word about her previous life back on Earth. Van only knew Esme played the violin because she performed with the company band.

  As far as randomly selected roommates went, Esme was great. So much better than the girl Van got stuck with her freshman year of college. Esme had a job, obviously, was clean, never brought gentlemen callers around for a sleepover, made enough coffee for two in the morning, and kept the apartment full of greenery. The plants were all local specimens as no alien species were allowed on the moon. Esme had gathered an impressive collection. Most of it was fungi, but the variety in shape and size was staggering. Van’s favorites were the little ones that looked like terrestrial succulents. Or the one with the red-and-white-striped “egg” that bloomed
into a mass of bright purple fungus tentacles. Or the green one with feathery tendrils. It was like living in a private botanical garden and it was a botanist nerd’s heaven.

  All in all, Van wouldn’t change a thing.

  Eight grueling hours later, Van scrubbed off the green algae staining her fingers. Her job wasn’t glamorous—so not glamorous—but the algae bioreactors provided fuel and nutritional supplements for the base. Solar panels degraded too quickly due to atmospheric conditions to be cost-efficient, and Val Mori Holdings was nothing if not cost-efficient.

  Plus, with the protein patties dyed a flesh brown color, Van could trick her taste buds into overlooking any algae aftertaste. Meat was great and all but raising livestock on the moon was not feasible. It was either feast on lab-grown meat, fungus burgers, and algae protein blocks or shell out your cash for the expensive imported stuff from Sangrin.

  Once clean, Van dressed in her favorite outfit of worn red corduroy pants and a super-soft ivory sweater. Cuddly and cozy, the layers kept her warm in the drafty buildings. Her orange work coveralls had zero breathability and trapped in body heat. Anything less than sweltering felt chilly to her now.

  The original colony had been organized in a series of concentric circles, starting with municipal services in the center and expanding outward to include residential, retail, medical and entertainment. The mining operations had ceased, leaving behind a network of tunnels under the buildings and mine shafts dotting the surface of the moon. Now domes surrounded the original colonial site, each containing a different ecosystem and plants. Her favorite was the fungus forest. The “tree” trunks were massively thick and towered overhead, spreading into a vivid purple canopy. Oh, and it smelled like cotton candy. It was like walking into a trippy fairy tale and she loved wandering through the cotton candy forest.

  The colony had a few watering holes. The bar Esme performed at was near the center of town and a brisk walk from their bungalow.

  A decent crowd had gathered for the show. Entertainment was sparse out here in the ass-end of the Sangrin system. Network streams for films and shows were unreliable thanks to an asteroid field. You downloaded what you wanted when the network managed a connection, or you took your chances of being bored. Van spent more time reading than watching television, so it didn’t bother her, and it wasn’t like she had anyone to call back on Earth. Her father didn’t count. Had he even noticed she left the planet a year ago?

  Probably not. He’d only call if he thought he could get some cash off her, but her phone hadn’t rung once while she had been on Earth. Even if he had her new contact details, Ricky wouldn’t pay for the interstellar connection fees.

  Anyway, not going to waste her time on him.

  Van spotted Trey sitting at a table front and center. His Sangrin boyfriend, Mateo, played an instrument that Van could only describe as a lap guitar. It was flat, boxy, had a lot of strings, and produced the most haunting sounds. Trey waved her over. “Hey, I didn’t think you’d make it. I heard there was trouble down on the old algae farm.”

  She gave a sarcastic laugh. “Ha ha. The parts Requisition sent over were the wrong size, so I had to scrub out the old filters to make do. Hence this.” She held up her green-stained fingers.

  “That sucks. You know what doesn’t suck? Beer.” He moved to pour her a cup from the pitcher on the table.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said quickly. The house brew was malty and bitter, and Van did not like it at all. “I’ll get something that I can actually drink.”

  By the time she returned to the table, the band finished setting up and tuning their instruments. Esme approached the mic. A drum rolled and a guitar picked out a few chords. “Hello. We’re Indentured Servitude and we’d like to play a few songs for you.”

  A cacophony of sound broke around her. Esme smiled and tucked her violin under her chin, bow working the strings. The noise coalesced into a swift rhythm and driving beat. They were good. They were always good, playing a mash of human and Sangrin folk music, the kind of tunes with an infectious melody that the audience couldn’t help but sing along with.

  Late one night, after a few bottles of wine, Esme confessed that she trained at a music conservatory. It showed. She commanded her instrument with skill and flair. What she was doing playing folk songs in a bar and not performing symphonies, Van could only wonder.

  The band fell silent. Esme turned to face Mateo, who sat with his instrument in his lap. They traded riffs back and forth, dueling. The crowd ate it up and the band exploded back into action.

  Three songs later, the crowd sang along with a slower-paced ballad about a miner leaving his true love behind. It was the sort of gooey nonsense that irritated Van. People always romanticized how hard it was to leave a lover, like they were being noble and heroic, but no one sang about how much it sucked to be second place to stardust or gold or whatever the miner needed more than his true love.

  Dumb fucker.

  “I’m cutting you off,” Trey said, watching her drain her third glass of fruity wine.

  “Nooo,” she protested. “I’m barely buzzed.”

  “You’re a snarky drunk and I’d like to enjoy the show.”

  “You like my snarky commentary.”

  Trey opened his mouth to set the record straight, but he never finished what he intended to say. The lights flashed a sulfurous yellow.

  The bar fell silent. Everyone knew what the lights meant. The company ran drills on a regular schedule, but this wasn’t a drill.

  Trouble was coming and, in this sector of space, trouble meant the Suhlik.

  “How much time do you think we have?” Trey asked as Mateo rushed toward him.

  Van’s comm, an outdated model with a thick plastic casing, chimed with an incoming message, along with everyone else’s in the bar.

  Suhlik warships have entered the system. All non-essential personnel, report to the nearest shelter.

  The vague message could mean anything from the Suhlik cruising through the system and not bothering the colony or they would be under attack in a few minutes.

  Van clenched her fist, short nails digging into her palm. The Mahdfel were supposed to prevent this. That was the point of them.

  “Leave it,” Trey said, pulling Mateo away from the stage. “We don’t have time.”

  “It’s a family heirloom. I’m not leaving it to be bombed into rubble.”

  “Actually, the Suhlik prefer gas attacks, so it’d be smart to grab your respirator,” Van said. The two men stared at her. “I mean, that’s what the safety protocols say.”

  Esme grabbed her by the wrist. “Let’s go. If we hurry, we can grab our respirators before catching a ride to the shelter.”

  A natural cave system and parts of the old mine had been converted into a shelter. Tucked in the surrounding foothills, the caves were removed enough from the settlement to avoid any bombing. The Suhlik were, thankfully, very predictable in their attacks. Van was only eleven when the Invasion happened on Earth, but she remembered the pattern of bombing major population centers, then infrastructure, then the sickly yellow gas that rolled through the rubble, and then the door-to-door searches for survivors. What she did not witness firsthand, the media relentlessly played footage so everyone on Earth could be properly traumatized.

  And grateful to our new alien overlords.

  “I’m essential personnel,” Van said.

  Esme snorted. “I know the algae tanks keep the lights on, but you’re not essential or security. What are you going to do, throw globs of gunk at the aliens?”

  Van knew her roommate tried to be funny to alleviate the tension, but Esme’s words pricked at her pride. “I took some certifications on the trip out here. It bumped me up the pay scale.” That made her essential in a crisis, a possibility she had never considered because Val Mori was safely inside Mahdfel controlled territory, not on the fringe of some neutral zone.

  Esme frowned, then pulled Van into a hug. She stiffened, surprised by the emotional disp
lay. “Be safe,” Esme said.

  Nearly the whole moon was riddled with underground tunnels. Van could scurry from one end of the settlement to another without ever setting foot above ground if need be. She hoped the need would never be.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said with her most convincing grin. “Enjoyed your paid vacation. Some of us have to work for a living.”

  Jaxar

  The warlord wanted speed? The warlord would get speed, even if Jaxar had to steal it.

  Darkness surrounded him and Fennec, a subordinate engineer.

  Their footsteps echoed down the hall. The whirr of the ventilation filled the silence.

  “I do not like this,” Fennec said, his voice gruff.

  Jaxar swallowed his initial impulse to tease the younger male about fearing the dark. “These abandoned levels are disturbing,” he said, “but I remember when they were full of warriors and their mates.”

  “Did they insist on living in the dark and the cold?”

  “As it happens, yes. The Judgment was built to suit the needs of the Sotet,” Jaxar said. Fennec groaned, sensing a history lesson. Jaxar cared little about the male’s complaint. “The Judgment is a fantastically complex beast of a ship, with layer built upon layer, and a good engineer needs—”

  “To respect her history if he wants to be part of her future,” Fennec said, his tone flat as he repeated an often-heard phrase.

  “So, you do listen.” The Judgment, while a marvel of engineering, was a relic. No amount of retrofits or upgrades could change the fact that the battlecruiser had been built for different purposes. “Go on. Dazzle me with your knowledge,” he prompted.

  “She’s from another era,” Fennec started. His habit of referring to the battlecruiser as female irritated Jaxar, but he remained silent on that point for the time being. “She was built for firepower, but she’s large and slow. Mahdfel territory was smaller and we did not have so many planets to protect. Speed did not matter.”