Page 11 of 20% Stud 80% Muffin
Something’s deeply wrong with my omega instincts.
My teeth chattered in the cold. The nest I’d hastily dug in the corner was too shallow and poorly lined for Tern. Curled into a ball, I contemplated my desire to submit to a human. Such an unattractive species. Damn, alpha pheromones baffled me.
He didn’t even have a tail. If my brother, Bonic, were here, he would compare his color to the tasteless paste we cleaned our teeth with as younglings and dismiss him with a flick of his tail. That option didn’t exist for me. I needed to get in the archbuilder’s good graces and get my business off the ground.
I jacked the last bolt into the wrap-around lamar windshield on Sisip’s hoverbike and slapped the dust off my jumpsuit. My clothes collected the dirt off my floor like rocks to an asteroid field. The polished floor of my dreams sparkled in my imagination, five hoverbike repairs out of reach.
The fuzzy tips of Sisip’s upright ears twitched. “Thank the goddess Sola, for the new windshield, Makir!” the lead enforcer exclaimed. “The windchill up the Starry Mountains has me close to donating a frost-bitten nose to my hometown cantina.”
What would her cantina want with a nose?
I laughed, dropping my torque wrench into a bucket of charging liquid. “Remind me to never visit that cantina.”
Sisip’s tawny ears twitched on top of her head. “I’d have your back. They wouldn’t put any of your lovely, furred appendages into drinks on my watch,” she said with a sincerity I appreciated, even if we both knew I would never visit that cantina.
“That crybaby, Warren, has the next patrol in the Starry Mountains sector.” She smirked. “I can guarantee you will see him soon.” She rolled her hoverbike out of what would one day be a bay and muttered, “Now, if only there was something to keep my hands warm.”
“Spread the word. I have plenty more lamar,” I shouted to Sisip’s retreating back, and she replied with an over-the-shoulder wave. So what if I didn’t have any more lamar physically in my shop? I was only a few spare parts away from outfitting my hover trailer to haul as much lamar out of the wastelands as I could find.
My wristport pinged. I lifted my wrist, read the message, and exhaled. Then, with my eyes fixed on the ceiling’s overlapping tin sheets, I thanked the goddess Sola. To my great relief, my credit account icon turned from a dismal red to a gratitude-filled green. The timing couldn’t have been better. My fingers itched. No time like the present to purchase supplies for an extended trip to the wastelands.
The market was cheerfully busy, species of all colors: giant gray Rock Dwellers, white-winged Nacers and dark-skinned Boola chatted behind tables draped in the bounty the first season of Tern offered.
An enforcer armed with a blaster, a smile and no sense of urgency, leaned with one foot bent against the bakery’s wall. Crumbs littered the ground by his feet.
“Makir, Raz passed along your compliments.” D’ovey, the baker, gestured toward the door he stood in, drumming up business. “A graneth puff on the house.”
Still warm and smothered with honeyed graneth flower oil, the puff melted in my mouth. “Excellent strategy,” I teased the dark-skinned Boola, who handed out samples from his storefront. “I’ll take a dozen, please.” The baker’s lips pursed as he held in a knowing chuckle and returned from behind his counter with a still-warm paper-wrapped package for me.
My nose steered my steps toward the stand that boasted grilled mantu as my stomach grumbled. I purchased and then devoured a mantu skewer in two bites. Rich and smoky, it melted like velvet on my tongue. While I licked my fingers, I recited the recipe the stand proprietor, D’irk, told me back to him. “You ferment the mantu in fungus paste in a cool dark place for three days, then add graneth honey and char?”
“Yep. Three or four days, depending on how soft you want the meat.”
D’irk shared more recipes, but my focus narrowed on a dagger strapped to a fabric-covered wall of hunting supplies behind his grill.
Can I afford that?
Would a weapon in my possession give me the sense of security I longed for? Who knew what I would find in the wastelands? Or my own neighborhood, for that matter? As it turned out, the Fires That Cleanse hadn’t eradicated everything organic on Tern as initially thought.
“I’ll also take a reel of that thin line. How many credits for that dagger?”
D’irk tipped his head deeply, a Boola trait I’d picked up on. “Thirty-eight.” He unstrapped the dagger from the wall and held it out to me to inspect. “Are you a hunter?”
I gulped at the cost. It wasn’t unreasonable, but my credits were spread thin. It looked like I’d have another month of ration bars. “My brother and I used to trap bush-tailed monties on Lorne.” I deposited the dagger in my satchel, holding up my wristport for D’irk to scan. “Not the largest of prey, but they were tricky little beasts.” Even though my account was treacherously close to red again, I beamed as I shared my story.
“You should join us.” D’irk flipped his skewers on the grill. “I’m planning a hunting trip, new moon, with a couple more enforcers. We could use a fourth.” Many of the enforcers charged with policing Yurstille, the first and only settlement to be recolonized on Tern, held side jobs. Their shifts were so long that they were compensated with extendedtime off.
If I got lucky on the hunt—my tail twirled—it would mean no more ration bars. “Count me in. Sounds like an adventure.” I’d committed to trying new things, it was part of starting over on a new planet, and the weight of my worry over alphas and hoveries had lightened already. I added D’irk’s contact info to my wristport. With a hunting trip in the works, a knife was a must. It was a well-made purchase. I licked the last of the mantu from my lips and savored every drop.
About to turn around and walk back to my dwelling, I jolted to a stop. My skin tingled and my tail stood rigid, hyperaware of the attention suddenly on me. I found my fingers wrapped around the handle of my new knife inside the satchel that crossed my body.
Across the path from D’irk’s grill stood D’ovey’s bakery, and exiting it was the archbuilder. His eyes were locked on me and his lips were pressed into a rigid line. I don’t know how long he’d been standing there, but when he recognized my matching glare, he fumbled his fresh baking. His bag split open just as a Rock Dweller walked past and churned the baked goods into the ground. I snickered as I walked back to my dwelling.
With the final touches added to the bay doors for my hovery, I’d finished brushing up my drawings to include JayJay’s suggestions in preparation for tomorrow. I double-checked my alarm and emptied the containers collecting rain. It was forecast to come down hard this moon. Finally, I settled into my nest to sleep.
The meeting with the archbuilder was at seven suns, and I wanted to depart immediately afterward to maximize the rotation in the wastelands. I would desperately need the solitude to recharge after a sun in the archbuilder’s presence.
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