I slid my hand over the front of my thermal-suit, feeling the reassuring presence of the stun-baton hidden in the pocket on my thigh. Our mother-goddess, our patron saint of safety first, and now she was gone. The pain sliced through me, so sharp and jagged I had to close my eyes. As if Jacob hadn’t been the only one there with her. As if she hadn’t drowned, impossibly and inexplicably, inside that station on Ceres. Jacob nodded, and beneath the ginger stubble, his face was still the same stiff mask of calm normalcy he’d worn since we met on the mainland. We climbed down the ladder, and as the hatch sealed above us, we descended into the North Sea, trading the lashing wind and waves of the surface for the familiar murky stillness beneath.
The pod surfaced in the grey water below us–a bright yellow, almost spherical sub-vessel, stamped with the Company’s logo in black. I used to think those words were Jacob’s guiding light, too, but lately, I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes it was hard living like that, but no matter what bullshit missions the Company had thrown my way, no matter how long the hours or how dangerous the site, no matter who I’d been teamed up with for a job, Petra’s words had been my guiding light. It meant stripping your existence down to the bare necessities, traveling through life with nothing but your skin, your playlist, and your kit-bag. It meant working the utmost depths for the Company, surviving inside the system, finding fleeting moments of freedom and glory and togetherness in this goddamn profiteer’s paradise of a solar system. It meant living on the edge of the precipice where no one else would be stupid enough to go. Any loser could become a diver if they went through training, but becoming a deepster punk meant something more.
Petra told us that in training, twenty-five years ago, and it had been my mantra ever since. That’s why we have to look out for each other. No one cares about us deepster punks, except other deepster punks. “You might have sold your bodies to the Company, and you might let them ship you from sea to sea, but they won’t really take care of you. I thought of her laugh, raspy and warm, big enough to hold the world and everything in it. She always had the best tunes, raw and gritty stuff that would make your heart pound and your head spin, the kind of old-school shit hardly anyone played anymore. Thought of her grinning and cranking up her playlist at the start of a shift, the music ripping through us as we worked. I shrugged it off, turned up the music again, and thought of Petra. But at least he dug his gloves out of his kit-bag and pulled them on, sealing the click-seams against the cold. Jacob startled, and for a moment he seemed surprised to see me there, as if he’d forgotten where he was. Last thing I need is you going geriatric on me and getting frostbite.” I touched my earlobe to turn down the music volume, interrupting the satisfying, jagged blast of “Sloppy Gods and Monsters” that was rattling through my skull, the latest release by Martian Rust out of Chryse Planitia.
#FRONT THIGH TATTOOS FULL#
I’d known before I came here that he wouldn’t be in the best place after what happened on Ceres, but we were both Company vets, and not wearing your full kit when going below was such a dumb-ass, rookie thing to do. I watched his blunt, calloused fingers clench and unclench while the tattoos slipped across his ruddy knuckles, inked creatures darting into his sleeves. Of course, no day had felt particularly good since I got the news about Petra, and this day was made worse by Jacob who was flouting Company regulations by not wearing his gloves. Even with the frenzied guitars of my favorite tunes blasting in my ears, it was less than ideal. Temps were just above freezing, the North Sea was heaving up ten-foot waves all around us, and the rain was coming down like sheets of steel. It was a bad day to be waiting for a shuttle-pod on the ocean platform above Devil’s Hole. But he’s here, on Earth, with me, and he’s alive. In the sub-surface ocean of Ganymede, or in the tidal-flexing waters of Europa, he’d be dead-dead-dead.
Beneath the icy mantle of Ceres, in the 10 K depths of Enceladus, he’d be dead for sure. If the Company had sent us anywhere else in the system and you pulled this kind of stunt, you’d be dead already.” I unseal the mask of my thermal-suit so I can talk to him, even though I’m not sure he can even hear me anymore. By now, I should be able to see the lights of the ocean platform, but there’s nothing, only darkness above and below, no horizon separating them. “Don’t you dare die on me.” I’m holding his head above the waves, but his naked body is cold and slick and heavy in my grip.
#FRONT THIGH TATTOOS SKIN#
The animated tattoos on Jacob’s skin glimmer in the dark water, words and images swarming over his skin, bright and luminous, before they fade away again.