Orion's Belt: A Dark Cyborg Romance by Loki Renard

Author:Loki Renard [Renard, Loki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Orion

I’m only half-joking. Dehydration kills, and if she can’t stomach the brew, I’m going to have to get the liquid into her another way. Josie won’t like it, but I’m not going to lose her before we get to the ranch.

“I’m just going to sit underneath the brush here and conserve water,” she says, pouting at me.

“Alright. Let me get this desalinator up to save your pretty rear from becoming an intake.”

“Gross,” she complains. “Why must men be disgusting?”

“We’re not disgusting. We’re practical. And you’ve hardly got airs and graces yourself there, missy,” I remind her.

That’s not a bad thing either. I enjoy Josie’s company. She’s the first woman I’ve been with I don’t feel the need to have to play a role around. There’s plenty of ladies who like a rough outlaw to act like a refined gentleman. They think they want someone rough until the first time I spit on the ground or split a skull. But Josie doesn’t need me to pretend I’m something I’m not. She likes the rougher side of me. She laughed at the boy with the snake oil rather than lecturing me for my lack of mercy. I reckon I might have found a match in her. It’s a pity we’re going to be going our own separate ways soon enough.

“I’ve got another question for you,” I say as I pull the glass and metal contraptions we stashed here months ago out of their hiding spots. Water is life anywhere. In this desert, it is everything.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Like how you came to be out here all on yer own.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she says casually. “My father found out I wasn’t a boy and threw me and my mother out.”

“Would have been fairly obvious you weren’t a boy at some point after you were born, surely?”

“Not to him. He’s an asshole. Or was. I don't know. My mother was young when she married him, and he was old even then. By the time I was born, he could hardly see me. Wasn’t until I was a teenager he found out she’d been lying the whole time. He threw a fit and had my mother and I thrown off the farm. She died from the stress of it, I reckon.”

For a moment, I don’t quite know what to say. There’s plenty on this rock who’ve had hard lives, but it’s not common for men to abandon their daughters just because they’re girls.

“Yer Pa sounds like a real piece of work.”

“I guess,” she shrugs. “I never had much to do with him. He wasn’t interested in me. Just in keeping the farm making money. He sold most of his produce to the Imperium. Was the first one to strike up a supply deal with them. So it’s no wonder Atticus thinks the place should be his. Was theirs really from the beginning.”

I feel an impulse to get up and hug her, so I do. I grab her right up off the ground, wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight enough that she lets out a little yelp of surprise.

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