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Who the fuck pays a hundred chips for water and doesn’t even take time to savor it?
Kaia squeezed more kerogel into her mouth. It was by no meansgood, but she paid for it, and she sure as shit wasn’t gonna waste it.
“How can you drink that shit?” Orion was scowling at the packet between her fingers.
“Some of us aren’t made of chips, I guess,” Kaia muttered.
Orion sniffed, glancing at Theo. “Another for the lady. No, I don’t mean that fucking gel shit. Water.”
Kaia balked. Her first instinct was to reject the offer. You didn't accept H2O without expecting to pay it back around here.
But Orion wasn’t from around here…
“Thank you.” Kaia forced a smile as Theo slid a glass in front of her, giving her a warning look. He was a good man, in his own way. At least, he wasn't gonna let anyone get fucked with within the borders of his establishment.
Kaia hadn’t splurged on H2O in months. She allowed herself a drink once a year on her birthday, and her twenty-fifth was marked with an especially good take from a skirmish a few hundred miles away, so she’d gotten one and a half.
She rolled her first tiny sip around on her tongue, closing her eyes instinctively to focus on the taste. It wasn’tgood, she was sure. But it was what she knew, and regardless of her gripes with the idiotic naming of it, to her it may as well be spring water from Old Earth.
“Thanks,” she said again.
“Have another for all I care.” Orion sighed.
Kaia grabbed the opening. “Tough day?”
He gave her a wry smile. “You could say that. And some more. What about you? You from here?”
He scanned her up and down with those freakish eyes, no doubt taking in her scuffed brown boots, black polymeat leggings, worn polymeat jacket. Was he judging her? His gaze lingered where the ribbed white tank top met her chest, revealing the faintest shadow of cleavage, if you could even call it that. Kaia was modest in that department—her tits alone wouldn’t pull a colony man.
“I am now,” Kaia said, picking at the dirt under her fingernails. “Been here ten years.”
Orion’s brows shot up. “A decade in this dump? I’m surprised it hasn’t had an oxygen leak in that time.”
“It has. I patched it.”
“You a mechanic?” Kaia was perplexed at the sudden enthusiasm in his voice.
“That and some other things.” She smirked. “Pilot.”
Orion turned to face her fully then, hand dangling off the edge of the bar where his elbow rested. “What do you fly?”
“Just a small scavenging vessel. A piece of junk, but it’s my junk. Gotta be a mechanic to keep it running.”
He whistled, leaning in. “Which academy?”
Kaia barked a laugh, and the way he frowned for a moment made her wonder how fragile this rich guy's ego could be. She raised the shot glass, which was still more than half-full, at him. “No academy. Learned on the job. Here.”
“You don’t have a license?”
“Why? You gonna report me?”
“Of course not,” he stammered. “Just didn’t think there were still places you could get away with that.”
“Welcome to Riker 109.” Kaia took another tiny taste of H2O.
Between sips of water, she pressed more kerogel onto her tongue. It felt almost criminal to mar the H2O with booze, but it gave her a nice buzz, helping her nerves.
“This station may be a shithole, but I’d fucking love to be in your position. I—” He paused to look at Theo, who placed a kerogel in front of him.
