“Void,” she breathed. “I haven’t seen mellilla in fifteen years … Where the hell’d you get that?”
“Lugen gave it to me after I joined the Titans.”
“Recruitment incentive?”
“Something like that.”
“Damn. All he got me was five more years of war…”
Griffith laughed. “Well, I’m kind of a big deal, as you know.”
She flexed her jaw, trying to look exasperated through the grin tugging at her lips.
He slid out from the maze of small crates, looking over the label carefully. “I almost forgot I had it—stashed it away forever ago for a rainy day.”
“And today’s that day?”
He glanced up at the beams of aerasteel truss lining the small cargo hold’s ceiling. “Looks cloudy to me.”
She crossed her arms. “It’s the middle of the day, Griff.”
“And?”
“And I’m the senior officer. I can’t drink in the middle of the day.”
He shrugged. “More for me, then.”
“Void.”
“You gonna write me up?” He palmed the bottle’s seal, giving a feigned whine and frowning deeply. “I can’t get it open—help.”
She marched over and snatched the bottle from him, ignoring how pleased he looked with himself. Her glare drifted down and she turned the cool metal over to read the etched label: REDWIND DISTRICT SPIRITS, DISTILLED 182 AV with the official Seneca-IV export seal stamped below.
She patiently undid the four tiny safety nodules. Some feat of engineering allowed the aging process to continue until the seal was broken, so the task had been made purposefully difficult to serve as a reminder. With the latches free, she twisted the top off. It hissed and let out a belch of warm air, sending a sharp scent drifting up.
She angled the bottle at Griffith. “You mind?”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled with amusement. “Please.”
She took a slow sip, letting the warm liquid roll around in her mouth. Though dryer than she’d expected, it came with a rich finish, and the slightest touch of honey smoothed the edge. She swallowed it and a spicy tinge lingered on the roof of her mouth.
Passing the bottle back to him, she breathed a sharp hiss from the back of her throat as the pleasant burn settled in the pit of her stomach. “You shoulda left it on the Argus instead of the Tempus. Would’ve aged longer.”
Griffith let out a hearty laugh. “Shit, you’re right.” Hovering the bottle below his nose, he inhaled a breath before taking a purposeful drink. A smile creased his eyes and he licked his lips. “Damn. That really is as good as they say, isn’t it?”
“Not bad,” she agreed.
He passed it back to her. “Surprised you’ll even drink Redwind, considering.”
A knot tightened at the base of her rib cage, and she tried to loosen it with another drink. The Seneca-IV distillery district might be the only good thing to ever come from her shitty Outer Core home planet, as widely known for its unforgiving sulfuric rain as its dense samarskite mines—home to a much less widely known practice of systemic indentured servitude. Though the star system had been claimed as a colony of the System Collective over sixty years ago, and was technically under their jurisdiction, greased palms went a long, long way in the Outer Core.
She handed the bottle back to Griffith and shrugged. “Sometimes great things have shitty origins.”
He nodded, his eyes drifting over her. “Indeed…”