The Fever grew in him. While the medics were able to give him a med dose every few days to tamp down the worst of it, it still ran rampant through him.
“You better,” Phares growled back at his dad.
“You challenge me?” Shoval crossed his arms.
“You already fixed it once, remember? Or did you forget in your drunken stupor?” Where the snap came from, Phares didn’t know.
It just erupted.
Shoval jerked forward. “Who are you to speak—”
“I am your superior!” Phares’s fury and rage launched him at his parental. Years of taking his parental’s attitude and digs burned in him. “And I decide what you do.” He got right in his parental’s face.
“Only for the job!” Shoval snarled back at him.
“You should be—”
A green tail wrapped around Phares and pulled him back.
At the same time, Olmed yanked Shoval away.
“As fun as this is, boys,” Driqan said, stepping between them, “we have work.”
“Let go of me, Erzo,” Phares said.
“Let the boy go. Let him prove his failures!” Shoval snarled.
Olmed pushed Shoval back. “Stop,” he said. The Kantenan’s horns were starting to shift. He started to heave Shoval backward, away from Phares.
Erzo put his hand on Phares’s shoulder. “Peace, friend.”
Phares jerked out of the Charro’s tail grip, and Erzo rocked back, twisting his tail around, so he seemed to hang in the air, the tail the only thing on the ground.
“No peace,” Phares muttered.
No, he wouldn’t be getting peace for quite a while. Not now, not ever, when it came to his parental. The rest of the units murmured and started to break up.
“You have your assignments,” Phares said.
The rest moved out, heading off to do their job of maintaining the asteroid field’s integrity while the miners worked.
Technically, they all were miners, but Phares led a team of determined structuralists who made sure everything remained stable, and no miners were stuck inside a collapsed asteroid.
Or worse.
His parental was one of the structuralists.
When Phares had been offered the position of unit foreman, he’d assumed his parental would show some pride in his achievement.
Unfortunately, it had not worked out that way.
“You cannot let him antagonize you like that,” Erzo said as Olmed hustled Shoval out of the room. “It is jealousy, plain and simple.”
Phares grumbled. “It matters not. He will never show me respect because I’m his offspring.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to let him goad you.”
Phares rubbed his head. “I have not been, uh, well,” he said.
