Page 1 of Alien Burn

PROLOGUE

ON THE STONEBROKE

Tori was waiting outside the galley with her arms crossed.

Dhomhes considered turning around. There were three other entrances, and she could not possibly be guarding all of them.

“I saw you,” she said.

“Then I needn't introduce myself.”

“You're three months late.”

“I'm precisely on time. I simply never told you when I was coming.”

She looked him over, from his polished boots to the tips of his horns, then glanced at the case under his arm. “Tell me you brought something besides excuses.”

"I brought something besides excuses."

“You practice that sort of thing, don't you?”

“On the journey over. I had a very patient pilot.”

She raised her eyebrow.

He continued. “A gift. Is Olmed here?”

She held his gaze for another moment before stepping aside.

The Stonebroke's galley smelled of hot cooking oil beneath the ore dust that seemed to get into everything on a mining ship. A pair of workers argued over whose shift had left a loader unsecured. Someone behind the counter shouted that the next male to steal a clean cup could wash the entire stack.

Dhomhes had eaten in grander places. This one reminded him of home.

Olmed stood at a table near the back. His shoulders filled out his work shirt, and the green of his horns shone where he had recently oiled them. He looked better than he had the last time Dhomhes had seen him. He was still watching the case.

“Gol-Vett.” He clasped Dhomhes's forearm.

“Olmed.”

The grip tightened. Dhomhes let it.

Then Olmed released him and pulled out a chair. Tori took the one beside her mate, close enough that her knee pressed against his. Dhomhes set the case on the table between them.

Olmed's hand stopped halfway toward it.

“What is that?”

The Coalition seal gleamed in its stone lid. Olmed knew perfectly well what it was. Dhomhes wished, briefly, that he had brought it wrapped in something less official.

“Your sentence of banishment has been revoked.”

Tori sat forward.

“Full standing restored,” he continued. “The record is amended. Anyone who looks up your name will find the truth about Barnak and the stabilizers, along with the Coalition's acknowledgment that your punishment was excessive.”

“Excessive.” Olmed said it slowly.

“I suggested other words. They rejected those.”