We rode in silence through the mountain, the trike’s twin floodlights illuminating a long, downward-sloping mining tunnel. The air smelled dry, metallic. Like electric discharges from a frayed cable.

  The tunnel was wide enough to drive a train through. It even had the maglev tracks in the middle, but a quick check on my com didn’t show any current.

  Tomlin pointed out various tunnels branching off, vehicle-sized holes in the gray granite, naming the families that owned them. Vincentes, Tell, Vi-Luong, Rusmanov. When he got to Baylen, he spat air like his mother had done.

  “Why don’t you use multi-names?” I asked.

  Tomlin thought this over as he navigated the trike around a massive rock-fall without slowing down, his arms twitching the steering wheel around in a casual motion. The tunnel maintenance authority was apparently just as lax as the port maintenance authority for him to learn the route by muscle memory.

  “Whatever for?” he said. “Everyone knows you here, an’ family is the important part.”

  “But you do have them,” I said. “Baylen called your Ma Karice.”

  Tomlin spat.

  “Baylen i'nt Jackson,” he said and spat again.

  I didn’t push him on the subject. It was their fight. I had enough fights of my own. Right now, all I wanted was to repair the Bucket. I’d even forego a warm bath. With luck, Hao would be the one to help me.

  Hao’s shop turned out to be an old mine run, a wide, low tunnel propped up by steel girders, stuffed to the gills with mechanical junk. And Hao turned out to be a girl.

  She was tall and slim, at least two heads taller than me, but probably short and stocky by Jackson standards. She had a hammer in her hand, banging on a rusted nut the size of my fist and cursing loud enough to be heard over the clang of metal on metal. I revised my impression of slim. Her arms were muscular, just as thick around as mine, but she was tall enough to make them look slim.

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  The hammering was dislodging thin streamers of gray dust from the ceiling. The moment I exited the trike, I sneezed.

  “What’d ye want?” Hao yelled, without looking up. “I still ain’t got the parts to tune your engine.”

  “Ehm…” Tomlin tapped the toe of his boot against the dust on the ground. “I’m a…” His face had turned beet red.

  Mentally, I shook my head in dismay. Granted, the girl was cute, but I didn’t have the patience for teenage stuttering.

  “I’ve got a ship,” I said. “A Mino Javelin in need of some loving care. Someone suggested you might be the one for it.”

  “Might,” said Hao. “What’d you need?”

  I considered discretion. But if she was to repair the Bucket, she’d see for herself soon enough.

  “Warpstone,” I said. “Two if you have them. Four would be better. Two new engine housings. A reactor core overhaul. Some fresh plates, if you’ve got warded armor. And a coat of paint, but I can skip that.”

  Hao had turned toward me as I was speaking, stopping her hammering and leaning an elbow on the precariously piled junk.

  “Yah, the paint is what we’re lacking,” she said. “Where’d you think I’d get a warpstone?”

  “Nowhere,” I said. “But be foolish not to ask.”

  “True.” She looked away at the piles of junk illuminated by a trio of massive floodlights that cast a white glare and midnight shadows. “I can fix you up with the housings, if you can accept old Kadant refurbs. The core I can do, and all the plates you want if you can get Baylen’s pet mage to ward them.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’ll take them unwarded. When can you start?”

  “When can you pay?”

  “Right now,” I said, keying up my com and showing her my balance in the Jackson Depot Emporium.

  “That’ll get you a single housing,” she said.

  “I can give you ten kilos of vanilla,” I said.

  Hao raised a bushy eyebrow. Her eyes were very blue.

  “It’s a spice,” Tomlin blurted behind me. “Like methylated aldehyde, but a thousand times better. You can make amazing iced cream with it.”

  Hao raised the other eyebrow. “Your ma tell you that?” she asked.

  Tomlin started to stutter. I felt sorry for the kid. Hao obviously knew the effect she was having on him, and didn’t mind playing it for laughs.

  “Hey,” I said. “How about my engine cores?”

  Playing it for laughs was a crud thing to do. Teens were made for falling in love, and Hao was something of a looker. She shifted her hips, settling into a swordsman’s stance. I upped my estimate of her age, bringing it closer to my own than Tomlin’s.

  “What do I need vanilla for?” she said.

  “Making iced cream,” I replied. “Or you can stand here hammering away at that lug making nothing.”

  “Ha,” said Hao, glancing at Tomlin. “I like this one. Where’d you find him?”

  “He landed just now,” said the kid.

  “It was a rhetorical question,” said Hao. “You sure the vanilla’s good?”

  “Best of the Haven Reaches,” I said.

  Hao held out her fist and I bumped it.

  “Deal,” she said. “Now help me load.”