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I thought I had run into some rough, mean men in my time, but I reckon Orion has got to take top slot. From the moment the Imperium landed, he’s lead the resistance against the Imperium, going from criminal to vigilante overnight when he robbed an Imperium freighter and blew it up, stranding the Imperium forces trying to impose their will on us . Word doesn’t say what happened to them next, or at least, word didn’t reach my vulnerable ears, except through the closed doors where my parents were discussing the events, and he either had them skinned and boiled alive, or skinned alive and boiled. Or my mother was talking about dinner. I’m still not sure, but the awe and fear inspired by overhearing that story which may or may not have happened has stayed with me over the years.
Whatever he did, the Imperium has never forgiven him for it. Orion has a price on his head. A big one. You’d think they’d come down here and just kill him, but over the past decade, Imperium resources have diminished. They installed their puppet government and flew off to fight wars on a myriad of fronts. Orion is still alive because Cabbage Patch is a backwater the Imperium can’t really be bothered with. Just big enough to conquer, not big enough to properly police.
That’s one of the reasons I want to get out of here. Not just out of this region, but off the planet completely. There’s never going to be any place on Cabbage Patch that’s going to be decent to live. The best paid women here are the ones who spread their legs for money. The lucky ones are the ones who have jobs and no men, the spinsters who weave cloth, but there’s only so much slug silk out there, and the caves where silk slugs live are fiercely guarded secrets. Then there are the ones like my mother, who was thrown out of her home without warning and died of a broken heart before cholera could kill her. Cholera is one of the diseases the temporal settlers brought with them, so I learned in school, and it still runs rampant today in the filthy city streets where we took refuge in the hopes of finding our fortune. There’s nothing left on this planet for me. My one and only dream is getting the hell off Cabbage Patch as soon as possible.
“Ye alright back there?”
Orion calls back to me over his shoulder, breaking into my maudlin thoughts, reminding me that another dark adventure has overtaken me. I seem to have a habit of getting caught up in things beyond my control, taking the attention of men who wouldn’t know a good intention if it ran them over.
Right now, Orion has my attention. His muscular back rocks with the horse’s canter, and I have to settle into the same motion, my hips rolling against him to match the pace and speed. With my legs spread wide, and the seam of my denim rubbing against my secret place, I’m feeling something very unladylike happening between my thighs.
No. I can’t be attracted to Orion. That’s the same as wanting to do it with the devil, and I ain’t that stupid.
Orion
Her arms are small around my waist, and she’s so quiet that I’m worried she’s going to fall off again. I’ve seen enough of what this girl is capable of to know she’s not a weakling. She has that kind of grit that can get a person through hell. But it also lends itself to complete chaos.
We’ll be riding into woods soon, and that will make all of us feel better. As soon as the trees wrap around us, we’ll stop being as visible to the eyes in the sky. The Imperium likes to burn forests. They say it is because we need more farmland, but the truth is it’s because the canopy here messes with their sensors, and they hate anything they can’t control. Not me. I relish what I can’t control. I love to tame wild things. Horses and women alike.
The girl behind me is as wild as they come. I saw it in her eyes when she was tied down, and I’ve seen it dozens of times since. I’ve only known her a matter of hours, but what we’ve already been through is equal to several tests of character. She’s as strong as any man in my outfit, I reckon, but a lot more trouble.
I’ll sort her out when we next stop. We are on our way to set up camp in the wooded foothills several miles outside a little town called Slitneck. It’s a trading spot which is still friendly to people outside the Imperium, and we’ve got some loot to unload there that will put some extra dinari in our pockets.
