“There’s nothing for you here. Or anyone else.” I picked up the feed bucket. “Get off my land.”
He didn’t argue. Didn’t push. Just nodded once and turned back toward his ship.
I watched him go. Turnip watched too, a low rumble in his chest.
“Don’t,” I told him. “Let him leave.”
Turnip made a sound that might have been disappointment. I scratched behind his ear and went back to work.
The water reclamationpump failed two hours later.
I heard it first. The hum that had been background noise for years suddenly stuttered, coughed, and went silent. By the time I reached the pump house, water was already pooling on the floor.
“No. No, no, no.”
I dropped to my knees beside the unit. The housing was hot to the touch. The intake valve was clogged with sediment, which explained the overheating. And one of the seals had cracked, which meant water was leaking into the motor assembly.
I could fix it. I’d fixed it before, three times in the last year alone. But the seal needed replacing, not patching. I’d ordered a new one six weeks ago. The supply shipments to this backwater came when they came, and for the last three months they hadn’t come at all. Delayed, lost off a manifest, rerouted to somewhere that mattered more. The usual excuses.
And now here I was, on my knees in spreading water, with years of careful work threatening to fall apart because the universe didn’t care about one woman on one forgotten moon.
I started pulling the housing apart anyway. Muscle memory. Maybe I could patch the seal one more time. Maybe it would hold long enough for the replacement to arrive.
The intake valve was worse than I’d thought. Packed solid with grit. I needed to clear it before I could even assess the rest of the damage, but the angle was wrong, and I couldn’t get enough leverage with just two hands.
“I can hold that if you need to work on the valve.”
I didn’t jump. Didn’t reach for my weapon. Just went very still.
He was standing in the doorway of the pump house. Hands visible. Not coming closer.
“I heard the pump fail from the ship,” he said. “Recognized the sound.”
“You recognized the sound of a water reclamation pump failing.”
“Torek’s first lesson. A warrior who can’t maintain their equipment is a warrior who dies of thirst in the desert.” He tilted his head slightly, the light glinting off the small horns thatran back from his temples. “Or something like that. It’s been a while.”
I stared at him. He stared back. Neither of us moved.
The water kept spreading across the floor.
“Fine,” I said. “Hold this housing. Don’t touch anything else.”
He moved into the pump house. Careful. No sudden movements. He crouched beside me and took hold of the housing where I indicated, bracing it at the angle I needed.
I turned back to the valve and started clearing the sediment. Neither of us spoke. The work was delicate, requiring focus. I couldn’t afford to think about the Vinduthi crouched next to me, so near that I could smell him. Something clean and sharp, not unpleasant.
The valve came free. I set it aside and started examining the seal.
“Cracked,” I said. Mostly to myself.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough.” I sat back on my heels. “I can patch it. Might hold for a week, might hold for a day. The replacement I ordered should have been here a month ago.”
“I have adhesive compound on my ship. Military grade. It won’t replace the part, but it should hold longer than a standard patch.”
I looked at him.
