Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(11)

Except Beck.

She almost called out to Fisher to ask him not to point toward her perch. Would have done but for the fact that calling attention to herself that way defeated the purpose. Instead she waited as the stranger grabbed his pair of beers and made his way through the crowd, a smile plastered on his face.

“Hi,” Guard 5110, sans armor, said as he approached her. “We met the other day. I’m Eshton.”

*

For lack of better options, she led him upstairs. Once they were in her room with the door shut, she rounded on him.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Beck hissed. “You’re stalking me now?”

The look of horrified bewilderment on his face was nearly enough to drive her sudden burst of anger away. Almost, but not quite. “What? No. I...shit, I’m not good at this. I wanted to talk to you and I thought a show of good faith might make you a little more willing to listen.”

Beck crossed her arms. “So you decided coming to see me when I’m not surrounded by people was a bad idea? That making sure people who are already whispering about me every time they glance my way—oh, the poor girl who lost her family—will have another reason to, was a good idea somehow? What were you thinking? What could be so damn important that you’d make me more of a target than I already am?”

Eshton’s face grew tense. “I didn’t mean—”

“What you meant to do doesn’t really factor in, does it?” Beck asked, poking him in the chest. “Whether you meant to do it or not won’t change anything. So here we are. You’ve seen me. You have two minutes to tell me whatever was so important before you go back downstairs with your beer and fuck off out of my life forever. Maybe next time you decide to step out of your armor and join the peasants, you’ll think first.”

Part of her wanted to draw the words—pretty much all of them—back. Some of it was culture. You didn’t yell at members of the Deathwatch. Some was basic fairness; he looked genuinely distraught at his thoughtlessness and Beck was venting her own checked anger to a level beyond what he probably deserved.

But she didn’t. And after he spoke she was glad.

“I wanted to make sure you made your decision about joining up with all the information,” he said in a rush, clearly not wanting her to cut in.

Beck took several deep breaths. “Wow. Okay. I gave you two minutes and didn’t punch you the other day, but I’m seriously rethinking that policy.”

He sat the mugs down on her nightstand, raising palms toward her. “I don’t mean it in an insulting way, and if you hear me out and decide it’s not for you, I’ll respect it. I just remember being shocked at how much I didn’t know about the Watch when I joined up. I’d hate for you to miss an opportunity.”

Beck frowned. “Opportunity? You say that like you’re not trying to meet a quota or something.”

“Quota?” he said, confusion etched on his face. “No. We don’t have quotas. We turn away more than half the people who try to join, and only one in five makes it through the training. The Watch doesn’t have a problem finding members.”

“Then why me? Why go to all this trouble?”

Eshton gestured toward the lone chair in the room, an elderly polymer affair. “Can I sit?”

Beck hesitated, then grabbed one of the beers and sat cross-legged on the bed. She waved for him to continue.

“You’re smart,” Eshton said. “Not just normal smart, either. You’re brilliant. By the way, I wouldn’t suggest accessing our Mesh again. If anyone notices it, someone else in Enforcement might take it a lot worse than me. Anyway. You have a lot of potential. If you stay here and keep working the mine, I don’t doubt you’ll be in charge of it in five years. You might decide to join the civil service and work on the Rez’s systems. Maybe take aptitude tests to see if you can move away and work somewhere with more opportunities. And if that’s what you want to do, I can respect it. But you have other options. Other chances.”

Beck tapped her fingers, nails cut short and pads callused from endlessly tinkering with machinery, against the side of the mug. “Seems like the Deathwatch is just a different version of what I could do in the civilian world.”

Eshton bobbed his head. He wasn’t all that short, she decided. Average height, and wiry muscle. The kind you got from hard work.

“I understand why you think that, but it’s not an even comparison,” he said. “There are a bunch of divisions in the watch. Science division is on the cutting edge. They’re years ahead of anyone else when it comes to new tech, new programming, physics, biology, you name it. We all have to do a year in Defense manning a wall, but after that the possibilities are endless.”

“What else do you have, aside from science?” Beck asked. Her tone was calm, almost bored, but inside something had begun to smolder. Fascination, maybe. Certainly interest. She had long ago exhausted the mysteries available to her with mining drones. “Impress me.”

“Reclamation is always popular,” he said, taking a drink of beer.

She snorted a laugh. “Sounds like waste management. You want me working in treating shit to make fertilizer?”

“That’s...no,” Eshton said, laughing. “Reclamation goes out into the old world. They scout and bring back things. They explore and map. It’s one of the best ways to get into Special Projects. That division is so secret, literally all I know about it is that it does a little bit of everything, but only the most interesting stuff goes on there. Beyond classified.”