The Belter's Story (BRIGAND) Read Free Page B

any living thing, it consumed and was sustained.
    I wouldn't tell. I couldn't. Even if the other miners believed that, somehow, Jase had become my little fixbot, then what? They would take him. And I would lose my new enlightenment, this symbiosis that, when I gave myself, opened me to things beyond all imagining.
    So I fed them — something. Something without which they would cease to be what they had become. When we fed the thing that was Jase and Su, it aged us. Maybe not exactly that, but the effect was the same. The price of my fabulous new world would be an early death unless I found another way to give them what they needed.
    My hands had always been deft. I had a knack for fixing and making, so it wasn't surprising that I showed up the next day with a new suit mod, a circular port between my shoulder blades where Su could nestle and connect to my suit's power systems.
    Except that was a lie. It was a breach-lock, a tiny self-sealing opening that fed directly into my suit. Now, whenever I was suited, Jase/Su could take what they needed and, in return, give me my brave new world.

CHAPTER FOUR
    When I'd come home with Jase's body, I'd told them about how he died. About the lode. They were shocked and sad and then angry. And then determined. That much europine would change everything. The whole colony would be able to buy out their contracts. I had to help them.
    Our supervisors consulted with the Guilds and it was decided. We would go back in. We would destroy the diggers. We would mine Jase's lode.
    The first trip down to the cave would be easy. Nothing more than scouting. I was to show a specialist the way so he could plant some monitors. They had sent bots, but they kept malfunctioning, shutting down as they entered the ice rift. And comms weren't much use. Europa's atmosphere was far too thin to scatter radio and the rille was too narrow and deep for line of sight. We were blind and deaf down there.
    They were careful. I'll give them that. They even contracted the Confed to supply an advisor. A professional soldier who could protect us if it came to it. He arrived two shifts before we went in. His short black hair and hooded green eyes broadcast an intensity we almost never saw in the Outer. While we Belters endured so much, I doubted this man would tolerate anything that balked him. We were survivors. This man was a conqueror.
    The supervisors wasted no time. We gathered at the lip of the rille — the specialist and I waited in the shadow of a huge ice block, careful to keep its bulk between us and the sleet of fast-moving particles that constantly bathed Europa's surface from up-orbit. With Su tucked between my shoulders, the nearly invisible aurorae those particles created were evident. They twisted and eddied around the ice, a ghostly chaos of water molecules battered into individual atoms.
    The advisor, crunched and bounded his way toward us over jagged, stone-hard ice. He wore an armored suit, an 'x-rig' the specialist called it, and he carried a stubby weapon held close to his chest. Other dangerous looking objects were clipped to his suit.
    "Aren't we just planting monitors?" I asked.
    "That's right. But this is why I'm here." He hoisted his weapon and thumbed the charging slide. "I'd be pretty stupid not to be ready."
    "But you'll make it worse. You'll provoke them."
    "How could you possibly know that, kid?"
    His question startled me because I had no idea how I knew. I just did. And that’s when I recognized what had been right there in front of me all along. Jase had been down into the rille countless times. He'd been in the cave before — probably all over it, and he'd been fine until he brought me. Nothing had happened until I talked about telling Sardar what Jase had discovered.
    It was my fault. It was going to be my fault again.
    "Wait. They know. The diggers. They know what we're going to do. They'll kill us."
    I could see concern flash in his eyes, but he shrugged it off. "Kid, it's just recon.