pulling on one of the vines to test its strength. “Some rope wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”
I got to braiding while he made and tested a sling, adjusting it until he was happy.
“Ready to try again,” he asked. “Or should we head back to the desert?”
“Let’s try door number three.” I wrapped the coil of rope across my torso. It was bulky and not terribly comfortable, and I wriggled, trying to make it work.
“A scrap metal spear and rope from vines,” I muttered. “What a couple of engineers we’re turning out to be.”
The third tunnel turned out to be not as tight as I’d first feared. It didn’t curve down, but didn’t look like it was going up anytime soon, either.
“I guess we’ll just see where it goes,” I said. My mind spun with the possibilities. More angry giant fish? Something wonderful and strange? Or some other monster I hadn’t even imagined?
“Tell me what happened to your father,” Hakon said softly from in front.
And all of my worries of the future were swept away by the gut-wrenching feeling that attacked me every time I thought about the past.
“The wonderful woman he thought he might marry turned out to be a spy for Desyk,” I spat. “It sounds so simple, doesn’t take that many words to say, but it changed everything.”
The tunnel was wider now, the ceiling a bit higher, though stalactites dotted the ceiling, occasionally reaching nearly to the ground. Hakon held back for a moment until I reached his side. He didn’t say anything, just wrapped my hand with his, and we walked on, together, the path weaving through the shining columns.
“Our company had been developing a new process for harvesting water out of the asteroid belts around Spectra 8,” I explained, the words strangely dry and empty in my ears, as if all the emotion had already been wrung from them. “It was my father’s brainchild, a project he spent almost as much time on as he did with my brother and me.”
Silence wrapped our steps as I let myself remember, go back to how it had all gone wrong. I’d kept myself safe and warm by living in the rage, the need for revenge.
Remembering why revenge had become important hurt too much.
“She took all the files for that project, and everything else we had. Details of negotiations we’d opened with other corps were splashed all over the darknet. No one trusted our security, no one would do business with us, contracts were canceled left and right.”
I stared blindly into the dimly lit tunnel ahead. “And my father knew it was his fault, all of it. My brother and I were at school when it happened, he and my uncle tried to keep the news from us, but it was everywhere, impossible to ignore.” My throat tightened too much to push the words out for a moment. “He sent us a note, but he must have known it wouldn’t reach our commtabs until it was too late.”
Hakon squeezed my hand gently, but didn’t say anything, didn’t offer useless words of comfort. He was just there.
“We found him, in the house we’d grown up in, where all of our best memories were made. Afterwards… Uncle Ran stepped in and took us in. He’s spent the last ten years trying to replace the company’s fortunes, to rebuild all the bridges that were burned by that one Desyk Consolidated spy.”
The familiar warmth of anger wrapped around me. “And then a year ago, we heard Desyk had a secret of their own. And I decided I would go and get it.”
Hakon
Yasmin’s lips were twisted in a bitter smile, but I wondered if she’d even noticed the tears that marked her cheeks.
“In the beginning, it was just the usual rumors, little mentions in reports about other corps. Or an odd note in a captain’s log running through that sector. It all added up to something hidden, something important, on Station 112.”
She stopped, pulled back to the here and now by the pile of rubble blocking the tunnel. “Damn.”
“Looks like the quake did some damage.” Part of the tunnel’s ceiling had fallen in, the columns of stone that had dotted our path broken and collapsed. Carefully, I edged around the pile. “I think we can get through here.”
Yasmin didn’t answer, too busy studying a chunk of rock, still softly glowing. “Maybe we should have figured out how to make a bigger bag,” she mused. “I’d really love to bring some of this back,