“Oh, right, not from here,” Rali said. “How to explain this in a way that isn’t offensive...”
“Facts aren’t offensive, they’re how we learn and improve.” Kest pulled her welding goggles down. “Humans don’t live as long as most races—around a hundred years if nothing kills them before that—so obviously they don’t have as long to learn to control their Spirit as a race whose regular lifespan is multiple centuries. Some people—”
“Ylef trash,” Warcry growled. “That’s who.”
“—used that as an argument that human cultivators weren’t as stable as cultivators of other races.” The cinnabar rolled out of the hull-crack, and Kest put it back in the storage ring. Water seeped in. “For a while, the Confederation mandated that humans’ Spirit seas be clipped at birth to keep them from passing Sho.”
Blue-white metal Spirit strobed as she went to work fixing the hull.
“Holy cow,” I muttered under my breath. Then after a second thinking about it, I had to ask. “Are we actually less stable?”
“There’s no objective evidence that humans are more or less dangerous to themselves and the people around them than any other race,” Kest said, over the crackle of welding.
“As you can imagine,” Rali said, “all the unfair treatment eventually led to uprisings and the Ylef-Human Wars. Those are the wars Kest mentioned earlier.”
“They started it, didn’t they!” Warcry snapped. “If me ma and the Meat Roaches hadn’t set those pointy-eared bastards straight on Guvo-4, we’d still be under their heel, wouldn’t we?”
Kest pushed up her welding goggles and shot Rali a look. “I told you he was that Warcry Thompson.”
Rali shrugged. “I didn’t want to assume just because he had the same name and the stereotypical Qaspar-system accent.”
Warcry’s mouth dropped open, and he stared from one twin to the other.
Then he snorted. “Ya cackin’ bleeders.”
The crackle and hiss of welding filled the air as Kest got back to work. I held up my hand to shield my eyes from flash burn.
“Someone from the shuttle mentioned something like that, too,” I said, nodding at Warcry. “Like your mom’s famous or something, right?”
“And rich enough to choke a starwhale,” Kest said over the sparking. “Titan of industry rich. More money than anyone in the Qaspar system for sure.”
The redhead’s eyes narrowed for half a second like he wanted to stab her in the back.
“Sure, and it’s great,” he muttered. “Lap of luxury. Every amenity. Never wanted for a thing in me life.”
He cranked the engine back up, and we puttered to a slow crawl.
“So, why didn’t your family pay out your sentence?” Kest asked, dropping the stub of welding rod she’d used up and switching to a fresh one.
“’Coz maybe I’d rather bleedin’ rot,” Warcry snapped. “Ever think of that?”
“No,” she said. “If I had money, I’d throw it at every problem that came my way.”
“Maybe Warcry couldn’t throw money at this one because he did something that couldn’t be paid out,” Rali said, waggling his eyebrows and making his voice all spooky like he did when he came up with one of his crazy theories. “Like muuuurder.”
“Or maybe mind yer own, fatso.”
“He burned down an orphanage,” I said, remembering the line of bull he’d fed me at the Wilderness Territorial.
The welding cut off as Kest’s head snapped up.
“You only got three years for burning down an orphanage?”
That made Warcry laugh. “There weren’t no one in it, and me ma paid to have it built, so it was almost mine anyway, wasn’t it?” He grinned out at the trees like talking about arson brought back some fond memories. “Guess money does buy a bit a’ leniency, after all.”
I thought back to all the entitled jerkwads I’d dealt with growing up.
“You being rich makes a lot of sense,” I said. “You’re probably an only child, too.”
Fire erupted down Warcry’s shoulders. “Emmie Thompson was the first human to do half the things humans’re allowed to do now, grav, and you’re welcome for it. You think she got rich by wastin’ money spoiling her little scag of a son?” He rapped his knuckles on his prosthetic. “You think this hunk of junk is top of the market? I ain’t never seen a credit from her, and I never want to. Every number I post—in my USL account and in my Spirit reserve—comes straight from me own fists and feet. Every bleedin’ one. I work harder than anybody alive.”
“Yeah, I remember you working really hard in Ghost Town, getting rubdowns from saloon gals and texting Big Five recruiters.”
“You had your chance. If you wanted the life, you oughta’ve beat me in the join-or-serve fight.”
“I’m glad you didn’t win, Hake,” Kest piped up from the front of the boat.
Rali grinned. “Because we never would’ve left Ghost Town if he’d stayed or because you would’ve been jealous if Hake was getting rubdowns from saloon gals?”
Black lace trickled down Kest’s cheeks from under the goggles, hovering in the space where a human would blush. I felt kind of bad about Rali embarrassing her, but a whole lot more of me was hoping she’d say yeah it was because she would’ve been jealous.
“Because... lots of reasons.” Kest went back to work. After she’d had a few seconds to think, she said, “I would never have found that cinnabar for my arm if Hake hadn’t fallen into that old mine shaft, and he never would’ve done that if he hadn’t been working as an indenture. I may not have gotten an offer from a Technol, either, if I hadn’t been forced to make that location-hiding tech for Hake and Warcry, which wouldn’t have happened without everything leading up to it. And I know I’d never have stayed in a luxury hotel.”
“That’s true,” Rali said. “She hates parting with credits.”
“I don’t like throwing them away like you do. There’s a difference.”
He laughed. “What
