CHAPTER 1
STELLA
My husband has been dead for a month. On the frontier planet of Traxia, that’s a small lifetime for a woman to be single, and it isn’t unheard of for a widow of one week to remarry. It’s the way of life here: on this planet's surface, we’ve harkened back to something like the days of Earth’s Westward Expansion. In a lot of ways, it’s exactly like those long ago days on that faraway planet.
Traxia is in the process of being terraformed. Men were dropped here to establish it, to carve out an existence in this harsh new corner of the galaxy. A lot of modern tech doesn’t work here. Communication gets no fancier than paper letters in most areas, although some devices get enough reception in bigger cities.
We—
...I mean, me. Just me now. I’m in a ranching district. Our ranch is this district. The closest civilization is a mining town, and it’s our ranch who puts the meat on the locals’ tables.
And miners are hungry men. A metal similar in properties to gold was found a year or so back, and it’s been a hive of activity, a modern-day ‘gold’ rush for the area, ever since. Baron and I—
Just me.
I raise a hybrid version of cattle, the meat of which is in even higher demand if I can drive our stock up to the markets even further outside of the region.
The cattle are similar enough in looks to Earthen cattle. The rest is Nfurian, a tough monsterish bovine native to the planet. To survive the constantly harsh climate, the cows are tough and mean, and their bulls are even meaner. Their meat though is sublime. We run eight thousand head and were lucky enough to end up on land with a river and a natural spring with water so pure you can drink it from your cupped hands, no treatment needed. It’s priceless.
It may be worth killing over.
I’d be naïve if I didn’t look at Baron’s business partner and wonder if he killed my husband in order to secure the rights to our water. In a region as arid as ours, water is more precious than the metal veins the miners are making fortunes off of. Our water means we’re rich as panners, because sure it’s only a commodity and not a precious metal—but men still get stupid over it.
Although Kashykc’vest Ithor, or C’vest as my husband referred to his partner since we settled here, is not a stupid man.
...If you can call him a man, that is. He’s technically a cyborg.
He’s a cybernetic system created from an otherworldly-planet creature. An ocean humanoid called a Yonderin—
Essentially, an alien merman in the flesh.
—who started life with a tail rather than lower limbs, but now he has two artificial legs called C-legs, a term that is aurally ironic since he’s originally from the sea himself.
His eyes, ears, and gill slits have had changes wrought upon them too, referred to as ‘upgrades.’ He can see, hear, and breathe on land just like the rest of us. But… a lot of locals are freaked out by what’s essentially a fish-man walking around like a person. Frankly, most humans have an aversion to cyborgs, period.
Chilly reception aside, I can understand why his people altered their designs to leave the ocean. They’re an incredibly advanced society, but limited in their scope of control. On their planet, the only way to direct what happened on land was to alter their people to survive on surfaces where they could act for the greater interest. Now their cyborgs have spread out, like C’vest. How C’vest ended up on a terraforming planet with a naturally arid climate is a mystery—I mean, why the hell would you stay?
But I’ve never asked him why. Technically, I’ve said very few words to the man, although Baron has worked closely with him for years. I’ve made breakfast with C’vest in mind, serving the few seaside dishes we can occasionally get ahold of the ingredients to make from time to time. That way, he’d feel a little slice of home as he talked business with my mate at the dining table.
Now I’m sitting across from him wondering if he murdered my husband.
C’vest looks mostly human in his face, although his skin appears to have rougher textures and next to no weathering, no gathering of sun wrinkles. His features are handsome, I suppose, in that way that powerful creatures are. His eyes are usually dark, like shark’s eyes. Occasionally they light up with blue flares. Flares that snake out in circuit-symmetry patterns as he receives biofeedback. As you can imagine, the sight of his dark eyes beginning to glow doesn’t make him look less imposing. Neither does his height, which is enough alone to make him cut a formidable figure. When he walks, his long prosthetic legs eat up the ground, his gait measured. In no way is it a swagger; it’s probably the effect of his biosystem efficiently traversing whatever plane he’s striding across, using all precision. But the effect is a man who has pure confidence. And today, dressed in a collared dress shirt, a red vest, pinstriped pants, and his black-dyed leather duster, he’s intimidating.
He did take his hat off at the door (along with the duster). But that’s less about making himself look less threatening and more due to decent manners. He has excellent manners.
We’re sitting in the wingback chairs my husband and I have had since we were gifted them by his parents when we got married. When C’vest entered the room, suspecting what I suspect he’s done, I was prepared to crack a whiskey bottle over his head if he dared to sit in the chair that Baron always claimed.
He didn’t though. C’vest took the same chair he always has. The one he used when he was here for business or to shoot the breeze with Baron.
It feels like he’s prepared to speak about business matters now. I uncurl my fingers from my fists and smooth them down my jean-clad legs. For years, I’ve worn dresses because Baron appreciated the look of me in feminine things. He was a throwback to another time in a very far off place, and it didn’t bother me to indulge him. He made me feel pretty. And in a place this rough, it was a special kind of comfort at the end of the day for Baron to come home to me and envelop himself in my softness.
I’ve been in jeans since the day he died.
Chiefly because it isn’t safe for me to look any softer or gentler than I already do, being a woman. A lone woman. Just as if we’ve been transported back in time, it’s old world laws that hold sway around here. Which is frustrating. And for me, dangerous. Because when a man dies, everything goes to his widow. If she remarries, everything gets turned over to her new husband. There’s another twist to that law, but the gist is: it means the sharks are circling.
I look C’vest right in his weirdly lit blue-circuit eyes.
They haven’t faded to black once since he’s sat down. It’s unnerving me. “Why are you here, C’vest?”
His mouth tightens imperceptibly at the corners. “I haven’t heard that name since Baron died. He was the only one to use it. And you.”
I stare at him.
He nods once, his hands cupped over his square-shaped knees, mechanics covered by cyberskin draped in cotton fabric. “I’ve come here with your best interests in mind.”
I keep staring at him.
His eyes are glowing brighter than ever as he studies me, so uncharacteristically silent. I’ve never had reason to sit down and shoot the breeze with C’vest but I was a good hostess. Pleasant. Warm.
Now?
C’vest leans forward, elbows planting on his thighs. The leaned-forward posture lowers his height some, but he’s still taller than me by a head and a half. “We need to get married.”