Chapter 2
Sol slept well after that, the way he always did—deeply and so long that when he woke up his solar lamp was at full brightness, showing him it was day. There were no windows in his underground room, carved as it was out of the soft volcanic rock, but the lamp didn't lie.
He got up and got dressed. If the kitchen was still serving breakfast, he'd count that as a small miracle.
The mess hall was empty, which didn't bode well. Joza was in the adjoining kitchen, peeling potatoes. His long black locs were pulled back from his face with a sunny yellow kerchief that belied his dark glower. He glanced up when Sol appeared in the doorway and laughed shortly. "You're too late, friend."
"I knew I would be. There's instant?"
Joza nodded at a box on the counter. "Help yourself. There's bread and cheese. You want anything hot, you go in the fridge and zap it. I'm not making eggs for you this close to lunch. Too bad."
"Did I ask you to?" Sol opened the box of instant coffee, more amused than annoyed by Joza's surliness. He was always cranky, which was why he worked alone in the kitchen aside from a few robots to help him, so that he was only intermittently bothered by other people.
"You slept late," Joza said. "Long night?"
Sol gave him a look. He didn't know what the others knew or had guessed, and didn't want to ask. Didn't want to know that they were all laughing at him throwing himself at the resident alien. "Trouble sleeping."
"Sucks. Make some coffee. Then get out of my kitchen."
"Always a pleasure chatting with you, Joza."
There was some sort of egg bake in the fridge; Sol cut a piece and heated it up, and took a little container of orange slices in syrup. That plus coffee would make a decent meal. He sat at one of the tables in the mess and took out his handheld to read the news up from Mirolasor. Whatever was happening with the war there tended to dictate what sort of junk fell out of the sky.
The ceasefire held. That was good for the civilians planetside, but not so good for scrapping. Military satellites were always a nice source of rare metals, and a well-targeted missile could easily knock them out of orbit.
It wouldn't last, though. The war always started up again. People didn't change.
"What's the word?" a voice asked.
Sol glanced up. It was Remma, of course: maybe freshly risen, maybe awake the whole time since he had fucked Sol into oblivion. He was holding his own cup of coffee in one hand and his tablet in the other, and looked wide awake and obnoxiously cheerful, the way he almost always did.
Sol sighed. "The word," he said, "is no word. They're still honoring the ceasefire."
"For now." Remma sat in the chair across the table, which was the opposite of what Sol had been hoping he'd do, namely fuck off to somewhere else. "Loden wants us to go out again."
"The two of us?" Sol asked, clarifying not because he didn't understand but because he wanted Remma to be wrong.
"Who else? You think she'd send Turel out with us again? Not a chance." Remma unlocked his tablet and started swiping around. "I've still got the packing list from last time. You want all the same stuff?"
"I guess so." Sol shifted in his seat. His asshole felt a little tender. "No, try to get the other stove this time, if nobody else has it. That blue one sucks to light."
"Agreed. But everything else?"
"Sure. The weather hasn't changed that much since we were out last. I don't think we'll need anything extra. Maybe another tarp, just in case the rains start early."
"Okay. I'll get everything packed today. We can head out tomorrow."
"That soon?"
Remma shrugged. "That's what Loden wants. Maybe she heard something about an incoming drop."
"Maybe. I'll talk to her." And try to convince her to send him out with anyone, literally anyone, else. He would even take Turel.
* * *
There was no drop,or maybe there was, but Loden didn't know about it. "We're running low on cash," she said matter-of-factly when Sol sought her out in her office. "Is it worth the supplies to send you out? Not necessarily, but I don't have a better solution. We need antibiotics for the winter, and nobody's taking anything but coin. Sorry. I know you were just out."
"It's fine, but does it have to be Remma?"
"Why not Remma? The two of you work well together, and nobody comes home with a black eye, which is more than I can say about you and Turel."
Okay, that was true, but the trouble with going out with Remma was that they ended up fucking every night, and it was hard to shake the habit after they got back. But he wasn't about to say that to Loden. "He's annoying."
"He's annoying?" She raised her eyebrows. "You're twenty-four, not twelve. Somehow I think you can work out whatever interpersonal problems you're having."
Sol scowled at her. It was hard not to revert to acting like a bratty teenager when he was with her. She had, after all, birthed and raised him. They looked less alike as her hair went prematurely grey, but in every other way they were two prints from the same thumb: brown eyes, brown skin, the usual earth-colored hue of moonsiders. The same beaky eagle nose and strong chin. Sol didn't know his father, and when he was younger he'd sometimes wondered if Loden had budded him off her body like a new starfish growing from a discarded arm. If any man had contributed, Sol bore no sign of it.
Loden sighed. "Sorry. Look, he's the best option, and even if you don't get along with him, you get along well enough that it hasn't caused major issues in the past. Who would you rather be sent out with instead?"
It was a trick question; there was nobody. Their colony wasn't big, and of the other scrappers, Remma was the best option. Sol had to admit that, even if he hated the side effects.
"Fine," he said. "I'll go with Remma. And hopefully find something."
"The ceasefire won't last forever. Maybe it will even end while you're out." Loden rubbed her face. "Just do your best. I wish we had a more reliable source of income, but. It is what it is."
"That's scrapping," Sol said. "Don't worry, Mom. Something will work out. It always does."
"You're more optimistic than I am," Loden said, but she was smiling again. "How did that happen?"
"Couldn't say. Not how I was raised, that's for sure."
"Get out of my office," Loden said, and Sol went, grinning.
* * *
They left the next day,first thing after breakfast. Remma had packed everything onto an antigrav sledge that trundled through the gate after them. The autumn morning was overcast and windy, the air fresh with the coming chill of winter. Sol stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and was grateful he'd put on a neck warmer.
The colony sat high up on an outcrop above a valley, carved into the ridge and built around it. Remma guided the sledge toward the path that led a long, sloping route to the flatlands below, the vast pine barrens that covered most of the surface of the moon. That forest was where they would search for any scrap that had fallen from the sky above, the waste products of planetside wars and commerce. Sometimes they got lucky and found computer chips or batteries that had survived the long burn through the atmosphere; sometimes all they found was stray pieces of twisted metal. All of it had value—the only question was how much.
"It's too cold to be going out," Remma complained as they walked. "Didn't Loden look at the forecast?"
"It's not that cold. You're always griping about it, though. Is Tozra really warm all the time or something?"
"Yes, actually. We don't wear a lot of clothes. Then I was on ships for a while, and those are so climate controlled. I like living here, but I don't like the cold."
Sol hadn't known any of that, but he was afraid to ask any follow-up questions and make it seem like he found Remma interesting. He definitely didn't. "Well, you know it's only going to get worse, but maybe we'll have a good haul this time and Loden won't send us out again for a while."
Remma made a sound that wasn't necessarily agreement. Fine: they hadn't had a good haul in a long while. Maybe it would happen. Remma didn't know.
Down the ridge they went. A few birds called here and there, but otherwise they walked in silence aside from the faint hum of the sledge. Sol didn't relax, though. He kept one hand on the rifle slung over his shoulder. Pinecats were a threat, and so were bears, although he hadn't ever seen a bear in person. He knew they were out there. They'd lost a scrapper to a bear when he was a kid and he wouldn't ever take the danger lightly.
The soil changed as they came onto the flatlands, shifting to a sandy loam that made for loose footing. Sol slowed down and kept his gaze sharp. This was where pinecats liked to lurk, here among the trees.
"How far do you want to get today?" Remma asked. "We could aim for that outcrop near the river. That's a good place to camp."
"Fine with me, as long as we don't run into anything that slows us down. That's about as far as we can walk in a day assuming we don't do anything else but walk."
"You think we'll run into a drop this close to home?"
"No. But you never know." Sol eyed Remma, not sure Loden wanted him to know how dire their financial situation was. "It would be good to find something."
"We'd better find something, you mean. I know Loden wouldn't send us out again so soon if she didn't have to."
Sol shrugged. He wasn't wrong.
Scrapping wasn't a rich life. Loden was canny and bartered well with other settlements, and they kept going somehow, year after year, but there could always be an end to it. If the colony failed, they'd all disperse and find other colonies nearby to take them in. There were twenty-two of them now, what with Julen's new baby, and that was pushing the limits of how many people they could support; but there were colonies with twice or three times that many people, and everyone would find somewhere to go. Still, Sol wanted to avoid that fate. He didn't want the colony to fail. It was his home.
He had been hoping the sun might break through the clouds, but the day continued gray and chill as they slogged across the sandy landscape. This time of year was the worst—the wait for the autumn rains, which had their own appeal, the lovely silence of the forest under a sheet of rain. Winter was usually sunny, albeit cold, and spring and summer were mild and pleasant. But these weeks before the rains were only dreary.
It was good to be out in the forest, at least. Sol had been raised underground, but he still didn't like it; he would much rather be outside with the wind on his face and the pines rustling around him, speaking to each other in mysterious phrases he couldn't ever decipher.
"This sucks," Remma muttered behind him. Sol pretended he didn't hear.
They didn't run into anything interesting, as Sol had been half hoping they would. They stopped at midday to eat a cold lunch, then kept walking until the outcrop appeared in the distance. As the sky slowly darkened, they forded the river and climbed up to the rocky platform where they'd camped before, high enough above the forest floor for Sol to feel relatively safe from pinecats for the night.
"Make some dinner, will you?" he said to Remma. "I'll do the tent."
Loden was right: they did work well together. After so many scrapping trips, they each had their jobs and knew just what to do. Remma got out the camping stove and started dumping things into a pot, and Sol set up the tent and rolled out their sleeping bags. Remma did seem to lie down for a while at night, or at least Sol sometimes woke in the darkness to hear him breathing from the other side of the tent.
It wasn't cold enough that they really needed a fire, but Sol made one anyway; the light of it would help keep animals away, and plus there was nothing better than sitting beside a fire on a gloomy evening.
Remma made a stew with beans and potatoes. Sol watched him from across the fire as they ate. Remma had been with the colony for a little more than a year, but he was still largely a mystery to Sol. He'd never said much about his past, and everyone knew the reason he'd given for joining them—that he was burned out from working on an orbital scrapper and wanted to stay moonside for a while—was bullshit. There were other Tozren in Mirolasor system, or so Sol had heard, but not so many that Remma's story made any sense. Still, Loden had decided to let him stay despite her suspicions, and he'd proven to be good with electronics and had made himself useful. Sol would never be rid of him, at least until he finally decided he was burned out from scavenging and went back to space.
It would happen eventually. Sol didn't have any illusions about that. It was why he hated giving in and letting Remma fuck him. Tozren would fool around with humans, but it wasn't ever more than a passing whim. Sol didn't like being nothing more than a distraction.