The Belter's Story (BRIGAND) Read Online Free PDF Page B

them, inside our body. We no longer needed our fixbot or our suit to be who we had become.
    Our Jase part was heartsick at the destruction — on both sides. He yearned for reconciliation that could never happen. He ached for Sardar and Madera, his father and mother. And he never quite forgave the Cromley for telling the Belters about the cavern.
    The others inside of us radiated primitive distress whenever a new lode was invaded. That was the hardest part for all of us. Because even from the little fragments we assimilated, we understood they were a united consciousness, spread through Europa's crust and connected by energy. That seemed exotic and strange at first. But all life is energy. Only the way it was packaged differed. And we felt the death of it every time we fought them.
    The Cromley part of us grew tougher. More pragmatic. We knew it was happening, but we didn't mind. The Belters would live. Others would die. It had always been that way. Far better to be predator than prey.
    The others in us gave us the senses we needed to stay ahead of our enemy. We no longer let them communicate, but their presence allowed us to see in ways that nobody else could, an advantage we used without pity. We were the colony's most effective scout. When we warned of an attack, everyone stood to the ready. When we led an incursion, they followed with confidence.
    We became famous among the Belters of Europa, almost legendary.
    Which is how Laena found us.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Laena stared at us, her expression hovering delicately between anger and disbelief. "That's not funny, Cromley. You know Jase and I were close."
    "It's not a joke. We — he would never do that to you. Jase is here." We touched our temple. "It's hard to explain."
    We were sitting in her family's tiny kitchen, where we always seemed to end up. Doing what we always seemed to do, talking far into our downtime. There were six and a half hours left before we had to be back on duty, but we didn't want to leave. We never seemed to want to leave. Laena had been one of Jase's friends — a strange word among Belters. But then Jase had never been a real Belter at all. Now we all felt what he felt. We didn't understand it, but it we were glad it was there.
    We didn’t know why we had revealed our secret, a secret we had kept for more than six years, but our time with Laena had changed us, maybe as much as the europine. We felt an urge to share all of us with her. Not just the Cromley.
    Her voice went hard, but she looked down at the table between us and moisture gathered in her dark eyes. "Try."
    "We… It started before the war, even before Jase found the first nexus."
    "The gigantic europine deposits? Everybody knows about those. It's part of history now. Jase was killed. You, of all people, would know that." Laena's voice grew huskier and she looked down at her hands. "I cried for a month, Cromley."
    "So did we. Yeah, everyone knows he was attacked, but nobody knows that we saved him — part of him anyway. We've never told anyone before. Who'd have believed us?"
    "And why tell me ?" She looked up at me under narrow eyebrows, straight black hair framing an oval face.
    Long bangs feathered over her brow. Her eyes were so dark they almost seemed to have no iris at all. Her skin had a golden tone, unusual in a Belter, that gave her an exotic look. She was beautiful in a way that was entirely her own and we could feel Jase's remembered affection. He had never told her, but he'd loved her. Now we all did.
    "Why now?"
    We struggled to explain — to put into words all of the horrors we had endured. Whole sites gone dark without warning. Families, entire clans, erased. Would she understand the rush of joy the Jase had felt when we saw her again after all this time?
    For a long time, the Belters of Europa had been scattered and desperate. The Guilds wouldn't help us, not unless we paid. So we found our own solutions. Laena had been part of that. The Jase remembered she'd always been