If Ahiga was annoyed by my constant stream of questions, he didn’t act it. “Nah. I was here a couple years ago to work with an IAF group. Spent the longest ninety days of my life running drills and taking the guys out on the surface for twenty-minute training sessions. Swore I’d never come back.”

“Should I apologize?” It wasn’t my fault, but this situation was shitty for more than just me.

“Things change.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. This isn’t as bad as some other places I’ve been. Like NR3. That planet and its constant quakes…” His eyebrows rose, disappearing into the tattoos on his forehead. “Trust me. I’ll take the heat to that place any day.”

I wasn’t sure which colony he was talking about, but SpaceTech kept so much information confidential that I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t heard of it.

As we went down flight after flight of stairs, the fitted tank top felt like it was melting onto my back. I wiped a drop of sweat from my brow with my hand. “Jesus. You’d think they’d have an elevator in this place.”

“They don’t like any extra machinery in this part of the base that they’d have to keep cool.”

“Don’t they have a way to keep it cool? I mean, it’s not like fuel is a concern here, right? With all the access to lucole?” Not even SpaceTech could be this cheap.

“You’d think, but that’s not the case. SpaceTech rations every ounce of it.”

Well, I was clearly mistaken. SpaceTech was exactly that cheap.

Ahiga waved for me to keep moving. “We’re going to miss mealtime.”

“Sorry.” I had a lot of questions, but if Ahiga was hungry, they could wait.

The only people we passed as we walked through the base had STIAF—SpaceTech Interplanetary Armed Forces—in big gray letters printed across their navy tees.

“What’s with all the IAF?” I knew it was a base, but it was mostly for mining. Not for training. At least that’s what I thought. “It’s not like anyone could steal from this base. It’s in the center of SpaceTech territory. And no one can make a run for it, even if they got control of one of the mining ships.” The mining ships were meant for short-range at best.

And—as far as I knew—the Aunare didn’t have any interest in the lucole. They had much cleaner, more efficient fuel sources. Fuel that they’d shared with some of the other species out there, but not with the Earthers. I was sure they had their reasons though. Why give an evil corporation more power?