Blowback (20 page)

“That ain’t making sense when
meaiai
are on the other
side of human space,” Tom said. The slave worlds were closest to
casslit
in terms of aliens. This part of the universe had taken a bad beating during
the war.

Ramsay shrugged. “There’s been rumors of
meaiai
around these parts. She seems to be using some version of it we haven’t heard
before and the bugs like it more than the dialect our translators have been
using.”

“But why make that classified?” Becca asked.

“Enslaving a
genta
could give the wrong people
ideas,” Eli said slowly. “And if the public suspected we were having
communication problems with
meaiai
and the only woman who seemed to know
a better way to talk to them was clearly insane…” He let his voice trail off.
“About the only thing that scares people more than
casslit
ships are
meaiai
.”
Eli was right about that, even if it didn’t make one bit of sense considering
the
meaiai
didn’t have a word for war or death.

“She’s not insane,” Tom said, but the minute the words were
out his mouth he realized they were a little stupid. “Not without cause,
anyway,” he added. “According to her, she left full-
genta
space and went
somewhere else first, somewhere that she met people who were crazier than she
was. When she didn’t like them, she came to meet half-
genta
in our
space, only those people she’d seen before thought she was a threat, so they
followed and had some doctor stir around in her brain to pull out memories of
what she’s seen, and that meant they pulled out certain words.” Tom said all
that while studying Da’shay, waiting for some sign that he was getting some
part wrong. She stared at the far wall. Slowly her fingers tightened against
his arm so that he cringed.

“Well, shit. Any idea who might be after her?” Ramsay asked.
Tom wasn’t sure if the captain really believed, but from a security point of
view, it was always best to assume you had someone after you.

Tom shrugged. “She calls them the totally and completely
fucking crazy people.”

A rough laugh slipped out of Ramsay. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Might be she was using my suggestions for what to call
people,” Tom admitted. “They sent vultures to pick her brain apart, so that’s
why I’m assuming doctors did some rearranging. And according to her, at least
four of them are here now. One was in that prison where we were,” Tom said,
looking at Ramsay. The man’s expression turned grim.

Tom frowned and turned to Becca since she knew tech better
than anyone. “Do you know of any sort of brain scan that works without some big
machine? Maybe something handheld?”

Becca frowned and slowly shook her head. “Brain’s too
complicated for that. It takes a big machine with huge computing power to do
even the crudest of brain scans accurately. You might be able to do something
handheld that could judge if someone was lying or telling the truth, but even
then, I wouldn’t think it would be completely accurate. If you had someone just
off the street, you could probably get a good read, but pupil dilation and
heart rate can be faked if someone has the right training. And the evidence on
gray matter and white matter use during lying is shaky. A liar uses more white
matter, sure, but that changes if the liar has told the story a lot or if
they’re mentally unbalanced, and a truth-teller could use more white matter if
he was just the kind to get easily confused. At least, I think. I’m not exactly
up on medical tech. Why?”

“I think I met one of her crazy people.”

“Totally and completely fucking crazy people,” Da’shay
corrected him softly, but now her fingers were threatening to crush his arm.
Tom used his free hand to pull at her fingers and she looked at him with wild
despair.

“Just ain’t looking for you to break something,” Tom
explained. Immediately her fingers loosened, but then her arm struck out like a
snake and she grabbed his collar, pulling on it so that his neck popped. “Fuck!
I ain’t no
genta
who heals up fast. Take it easy,” he told her, resting
a hand on her back.

When Tom looked up, Ramsay was staring as if he’d spotted a
casslit
wandering around in the ship. “What?” Tom demanded.

“Are you going to let her grope at you like that?”

“Are you going to try to tell her to stop? It ain’t like
she’s going to listen.” Tom’s glare dared the captain to make something out of
this.

“Sparkles and refractions, light in every direction. Lets
the corners come creeping out.” Da’shay’s whispers were distant.

Tom sighed. “Now you set her off on sparkles again. You
ain’t helping.”

“This is getting more disquieting by the second,” Ramsay
muttered, but before Tom could ask what that meant, Ramsay moved on to another
topic. “Why do you think you met one? Why ask about brain scans?”

“In the cell, she said that they could taste my hate and
that would make them think I was nothing more than a mercenary, but if they
tasted your thoughts, our cover would be blown. She said that’s why I had to
stay and get caught. Now unless we want to assume there’s some group out there
randomly licking people, and that’s a mighty disgusting thought, then I just
thought she was talking about scanning.”

“So you stayed behind? On her word?” Ramsay sounded almost
angry now.

“Fuck no. I would have run for the hills whether she said or
no. I stayed behind because she blocked the door. It was only after I’d pretty
much figured out that I couldn’t fight my way past her that she tried
explaining things.”

“Oh gods and saints.” Becca breathed the words so softly Tom
wasn’t even sure he’d heard them, but he couldn’t understand what had her
panties in such a tight wad.

“Before marking me, someone came to see me, and she insisted
on blindfolding me because if I saw this guy, he’d rip out parts of my brain.”
Tom ignored Becca’s loud gasp.

“You’re sure on that part?” Ramsay asked. His voice had a
deadly quiet to it and Tom figured the captain would go shoot someone right now
if he knew whom to shoot.

“Yep. I heard the guy. He wasn’t talking right, and I ain’t
exactly the most educated seeing as how
Beauteous
didn’t have three
schools on the whole planet, so when I start taking note of people’s poor
grammar, it means they’re worse than most.”

“So, a non-English speaker,” Eli concluded. “There are a
number of other languages out here. The Chinese languages, Russian, Spanish and
Hindi are still popular, and if Command is right, there may be several
meaiai
languages.”

Tom frowned. “You think it was
meaiai
?” He couldn’t
control a shiver as he thought of those multi-jointed stick legs on creatures
that looked like leathery jellyfish. If it was one of those spiderish things
that had touched his face, he was feeling a need to go scrub it until the skin
came off.

“No,” Eli said, “I’m simply saying there are many reasons
why a speaker might be unfamiliar with English. I learned Cantonese in school,
but if I tried to speak it, anyone who knew the language would think I was some
sort of idiot.”

“So, we’re talking about someone who didn’t grow up speaking
English,” Ramsay said quickly. “What did he say to you, Tom?”

“Not much,” Tom admitted. “He thought it was interesting
that I cared about Captain Smyth’s death. After that, he babbled about rivers
and drowning. Then he said that I had a simple mind full of hate and either
threatened to break my neck or predicted that Da’shay would—I wasn’t real clear
on that part. But when he wanted to kill me out of mercy, Da’shay said he couldn’t—said
I belonged to her and that as long as I hadn’t seen him, she had a right to
keep me. After that, he left. I suppose she saved my life.” Considering Tom had
put a bug on her, he wasn’t real sure why she was willing to do that, but she
had.

“Clearer diamonds reflecting new light, light I missed,”
Da’shay said wistfully.

“You think he scanned you?” Ramsay asked.

“Seems like,” Tom answered the captain. “He knew I had a
whole lot of nothing but hate in me.” Both of them looked at Becca for some
sort of answer on the tech end. She made a funny face and shrugged.

“I’m starting to get the feeling there’s a whole lot more
going on than a terrorist trying to target a few Corps ships,” Ramsay said with
a sigh. “And I’m not sure there’s anything we can do about it.”

“Sir,” Eli said, “we should take off without clearance. We
should get this information back to Command.”

Ramsay folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the
ceiling again. “That’d be a good trick if you could figure out how to do it.
Tell you what, you get some ropes hooked up to the nose to pull the
Kratos
,
and I’ll push her, and we’ll get her over to the launching deck.”

Eli opened his mouth, but Da’shay just about exploded off
her seat. She caught Tom’s hand and tugged him toward the door, catching
Becca’s arm on the way, pulling her with them. Becca gave a startled little
yelp, but came along anyway. “Going shopping!” she said with the sort of
careless joy Tom might expect if they were in the middle of government space on
a safe planet.

“You’re what?” Ramsay was up and chasing them, clearly
trying to get in front, but Da’shay happened to pull Becca close enough to
block the captain as she headed for the passage. She pushed Tom toward it, but
he balked, grabbing the edge of the wall.

“Now wait,” Tom said.

“Need shopping.” Da’shay showed frustration in every taut
line of her body. She did look mighty unnatural when she got good and mad.

“Like Tom said, you need to wait.” Ramsay caught Becca’s
other arm so that Becca was caught between Da’shay and the captain, each with
an arm. She gave a little squeak and then fell silent.

“I meant you,” Tom said, looking at the captain. “She don’t
make any kind of sense when she talks, but she got Hou to believe we were
mercenaries looking for a payback and she got me out of that prison. What she
says is crazier than fuck, but I’m telling you that what she does makes sense.
If she says we need to go shopping, I say we shop.” When Tom finished, the
whole crew looked at him as if he’d just lost his mind and a little part of Tom
was thinking the same. Da’shay wasn’t tracking reality all that well and
leaving the ship meant that he would lose the protection these walls gave him.
No one in the
Kratos
gave a rat’s ass about the slave mark, but that
wasn’t true out there where people would see him as little more than property.

“Tom.” Ramsay was using the same voice on Tom he sometimes
used on victims they’d come across in their investigations.

Tom crossed his arms and glared at the captain. “I don’t
appreciate your tone,” Tom warned him.

“I don’t appreciate you acting like you trust Da’shay. It’s
unsettling.”

“If the choices are sitting around and scratching our asses
or hoping that she has some plan that she just can’t explain, I’m willing to
take a chance on her plan.”

That didn’t seem to reassure Ramsay none. He pressed his
lips together and stood there for a time. “If that’s true, then we all go. Eli,
you have point.”

“No!” Da’shay let go of Becca and Tom to turn on the
captain. “No. Tastes wrong. All going tastes of fear. Becca can…” She stopped
and got a real constipated look on her face.

“Two girls going out shopping ain’t going to make anyone
think twice,” Tom said for her. “And with a slave mark, they aren’t even going
to notice me.” There was a certain tactical advantage to that.

She turned and pointed at him while still looking at the
captain. “Da’shay,” Ramsay said slowly, “I understand that you’re trying to
show us something without raising suspicion, but if there are enemies out
there, you can’t put Becca in a dangerous situation without backup.”

“Hey!” Becca said loudly. “I can shoot as well as the next
person, just as long as the next person ain’t Tom.”

“And I’m going to be there to shoot anyone she don’t,” Tom
added. When Ramsay’s gaze flicked down to Tom’s chest where the mark stood out
against his skin, he had to clench his fists and order himself to not punch the
captain.

“Tom, let’s talk on this,” Ramsay said as he backed up
toward the hatch that led up to the pilot’s deck.

“We’ll wait,” Becca said as she looked at the hatch where
Ramsay had vanished. Tom sighed. Right now he didn’t really want to deal with
Ramsay, but he figured he was going to have to. But if Ramsay suggested that a
slave mark made him any less of a soldier, Tom was going to shoot the captain
in the foot.

By the time he got up to the bridge, the captain was sitting
on the edge of the navigation table with his arms crossed.

“I’d be more comfortable talking if that collar was off,” he
said before Tom could even get in the door.

“Collar ain’t any more or less obvious than the mark,” Tom
pointed out, but he was suddenly hyper-aware of the chain leash clattering on
the floor behind him. “But if you think either one makes my shooting any less
accurate, you’re wrong.”

“It’s not your aim I’m worried about.”

Tom crossed his arms and waited for Ramsay to have his say.

“Shit. Tom, I’ve known you for six years. If you decide you
hate someone, you hate them. If you decide you like them, then you like them
until they cross some line that only exists only in your head. But you never,
and I do mean never, get over hating someone. You’re a damn good crewman, but
you’re about as unforgiving a bastard as I’ve ever met.” Ramsay shifted and
braced his hands on the edge of the navigation table. “This isn’t feeling
right, and don’t go getting upset for me saying this, but four days is enough
for the people to develop coercive identification with a captor. Now I’m not
even saying she meant for it to get this bad, but—”

“You think I like her because she didn’t sell me or take a
whip to my backside,” Tom said. He had trouble getting too upset with Ramsay
because he’d had that same thought about himself more than once.

“Four days is more than enough to start losing your
emotional balance.”

“Three,” Tom corrected him. Ramsay frowned. “Three days is
when I started thinking maybe she wasn’t all bad, even if she did help those
sons of bitches catch me. But then, you were the one who said I should trust
her and I figured either you were right and she was trying to help or you were
wrong and she was going to sell me to someone who needed a slave to haul boxes
from point A to point B all day. Well, she didn’t sell me. She got me back here
and there just wasn’t one tactical reason for doing that except that she’s
telling the truth and she’s on our side.”

“So, you’ve decided to follow her even if she can’t explain
anything?” When Ramsay looked to him for an answer, Tom refused to say
anything. He stared at Ramsay until the captain sighed and closed his eyes.
“You do see why I’m not okay with letting you walk out there with her, yes?”

Tom scratched his stomach and leaned against the side of the
hatch. “I can see why you might doubt whether I’d follow your orders, whether I
was competent to stand crew,” he admitted. “But no, I don’t see why that means
you won’t let me walk out with Da’shay.”

Throwing his hands up in the air, Ramsay made a disgusted
sound. “You’re admitting that your head’s up your ass, you’re wearing a mark
that strips you of every human right and you’re still asking why I don’t let
you out the door? I know you like to tell people that you’re dumb, but God
almighty, you’re not that stupid, Tom. You aren’t anywhere near stupid when it
comes to doing right by the ship.”

“Then let me do right by the ship. We’re all at risk anyway
because we’re stuck on this planet. You want I should list the number of ways a
stranded ship can turn into a coffin for the crew inside?” Tom demanded. “If
she’s telling the truth about there being more going on here than we know,
maybe she’s trying to give us some clue we can use to pry ourselves free of
this.”

“And if she decides to sell you to someone who needs a slave
to haul boxes?”

Tom took a deep breath and thought about that one. The very
fact that his guts ached at the idea of Da’shay betraying him meant that he was
in over his head, but that wasn’t the only consideration. “If she does, then
you’ll know to change the access codes. Only, if she turns on me, Captain, you
get Becca and yourself out of this ship. One blast from a RT cannon is going to
turn the
Kratos
into a radiation oven.”

“That would blast most of the surrounding mile too,” Ramsay
pointed out.

“Yep, but I’m telling you that this feels like a trap. The
Kratos
ain’t safe if this all goes south and I ain’t looking to put any of our necks
in the noose.”

“Not even your own?” Ramsay asked. The question caught Tom
so off guard that he didn’t answer it right away.

“My neck is already there,” he said with a shrug. “But that
don’t mean the rest of you have to get hanged with the same rope. And maybe, if
Da’shay is right, we can find a way to get us all out of here. Now I hate to
say this, seeing as how we’ve been together for six years, but this mark means
I don’t actually have to listen to anything you say as long as we’re on a slave
world. If you let Becca come or not, that’s your choice, but I’m going out
there with Da’shay to try to get some information.”

“God damn it… It’s you I’m worried about, Tom.”

Tom looked at Ramsay, not even sure what to say. The man had
been a good captain for six years. Hell, Tom trusted his word enough that when
Captain Ramsay told him the only way out was a quick death facing the wrong end
of the
Kratos
’ thrusters, he’d believed him. He’d followed Ramsay into
slave territory and he’d followed him when Ramsay had told him to trust
Da’shay. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t follow him now. Ramsay’s eyes
darted down to Tom’s chest again, as if they were drawn to the mark.

Yeah, that was why he couldn’t follow the captain. It didn’t
matter what Ramsay said, there was some part of him that saw Tom as a
victim…just like there was some part of him that would always see Becca as a
woman first and as his engineer second. “My aim’s just as good. I put a bullet
right in Hou’s shoulder joint and I plan to shoot anyone else who threatens me,
sir,” Tom said before he turned to head back down to the galley.

“Tom!” Ramsay called, but he kept on walking.

“We’re going,” Tom said as he strode through the room.

“Tom! Hold on!” Ramsay’s footsteps rattled against the
decking, making a weird sort of harmony with the rattle of the chain leash. Tom
caught movement out of the corner of his eye as Eli moved to intercept him. Tom
and Ramsay knew each other well enough to make some allowances for each other’s
faults, but Eli had no cause to be getting in the middle. Tom knew Command
wouldn’t agree since Eli was technically Tom’s superior, but Tom never had
cared much for Command and their rules. He detoured and caught Eli’s arm just
as the man was reaching for him.

Eli’s eyes went wide with shock as Tom used Eli’s momentum
to swing him around and shove him, stomach first, into the wall.

“Tom!” Ramsay barked out the name.

Tom held Eli captive for a second. “Da’shay and I are going
shopping. Are you coming with, Becca?” Tom asked as calmly as he could. It
wasn’t easy when he was really starting to get good and truly mad. Becca looked
over at Ramsay. With a sigh, the captain sank into one of the galley chairs.

“Go. But do not let anyone get the drop on you. If you three
end up dead, I’m chasing all of you to the next life and kicking your asses.
Tom, that goes double for you.”

Tom nodded at Ramsay and let go of Eli’s arm, backing away
and watching to see if Eli was going to counterattack. Instead Eli moved slow,
turning and rubbing his shoulder.

“Just don’t follow. We’ll keep in touch and let you know if
we run into trouble,” Tom said. Da’shay was already standing at the hatch and
Tom followed after her. Behind him, Becca’s softer footsteps echoed his own.

“Maybe we can never do that again,” Becca said softly. “I’m
not really good with conflict and that was more conflict than I wanted.”

“More and more, diamonds turning and spinning,” Da’shay said
as she hit the outer hull and ran fingers over the controls to open it. The hot
air of Nodar swept into the
Kratos
as Da’shay jumped out without
lowering the ramp.

“Is she stranger than usual?” Becca asked.

Tom shrugged. “About the same. She seems pretty obsessed
with diamonds.” Tom sat down in the open hatch and then dropped to the ground.
Da’shay was already looking around, but Tom gave his leash a jerk to get it out
of the ship and did a quick survey of the area anyway. Da’shay might not
recognize trouble if she saw it. So far, it looked as if everyone was minding
their own business and tending their own ships. Tom turned and held his hands
up for Becca.

“Diamonds? Really? She doesn’t seem like the kind to care
about gemstones.” Becca was sitting in the open hatch. She reached down to
brace herself on his shoulders and let him help her to the ground. She felt as
soft and round and warm as Tom imagined, her weight solid in his arms, but he
didn’t have any hope of getting anywhere with her now. He let go and touched
the locking mechanism to make the hatch door slide shut.

“I don’t think she actually means diamonds, but maybe this
isn’t the time to really be discussing this,” Tom said. The docks were busy.
Three men bent over an engine part lying on the ground, and Becca went up on
her toes trying to see what they were doing. A whole group sat on a low wall
and smoked as they watched the crowd and a woman was disassembling external
vents, a gun on her hip. None of them looked like an immediate threat, but Tom
wasn’t comfortable taking a risk.

“Girls picking through all the bits and bobs and lost
parts,” Da’shay said happily. She walked over to where the long chain leash
dragged in the dust that had gathered on the dock’s floor and Tom’s stomach
clenched up. It was weird. The law on Nodar gave her all the power, so whether
she had the leash or not didn’t make a whit of difference, but he still
couldn’t help the visceral and raw fear as she gathered up the chain.

“Da’shay! That ain’t nice,” Becca gasped.

“Doesn’t matter,” Tom lied. “We’ve got places to go. So,
where do you girls go to pick through bits and bobs and lost parts?” Tom rested
his hand on the butt of his gun, the familiar shape helping him to force his
feelings aside.

“Um, usually that means we’re going to go picking through
the junkyards looking for parts.”

“Well, let’s find the nearest junkyard,” Tom suggested.
Da’shay looked at him, her dark eyes hiding whatever she was feeling. After a
second, she reached out and touched his chest, her fingers brushing over his
mark.

“Let them see you’re mine. Not theirs. They can’t take,” Da’shay
whispered.

“Seems like she really likes you,” Becca commented.

“Hopefully that means she don’t have plans for selling me
any time soon.” Tom took off down the docks toward the main exit. He didn’t get
far before the leash pulled tight, forcing him to stop. Tom turned around and
waited, but Da’shay was only looking at him, her alien gaze searching for
something. “Maybe we can talk on this later, princess. You wanted to shop,
remember?”

“Tom, she wouldn’t ever sell you.” Becca moved to his side
and looked up at him with innocent blue eyes that didn’t know anything at all
about betrayal. Tom hoped she never did. The fact was, though, that people
betrayed each other all the time. Husbands turned on wives, wives on husbands,
slave owners sold favorite slaves, mothers chose their husbands over their
children—life had taught Tom that life wasn’t about fairness. The most he knew
was that Da’shay didn’t want to sell him. He’d have to settle for that and
trust that if the day came that she betrayed him, she had some real good cause
to make it worth it.

Hell, in the end, even Ramsay had betrayed him, chaining him
to a wall instead of giving him a clean bullet to the head when he thought Tom
had turned traitor. Friendship went just so far and Ramsay wasn’t going to leave
any evidence that might make himself look guilty. No, six years and the best
Ramsay did for him was pick a method that would be over quick and still leave
Ramsay in the clear in case of any possible investigation.

Da’shay walked to him, and her fingers found the slave mark
again, tracing the curves of the tattoo. “Won’t lose your or your light,” she
whispered to him in a tone that made it sound like a promise, but Tom had
learned that promises didn’t always work out the way people intended.

Tom rolled his eyes. “We going shopping or not?”

She didn’t respond at first and Tom stood there as she
traced his mark right over the flimsy shirt she’d dressed him in. Soon her hand
trailed down over his stomach and then she stepped back. “Going shopping.”

“Good.” Tom turned back toward the exit and started walking.
Any junkyards in the area would have an advert up near the main sign. With a
dock this size, there should be one or two around. Every planet had dock rats,
orphans who snatched up about every part that wasn’t actively bolted to a ship
and junked it for money.

Three junkyards had signs up and Tom waited for Da’shay to
choose one, but as far as he could tell, she’d picked at random. “Good as any,”
Tom said, taking note of the instructions and heading toward the yard.

“Oh look at the pretty colors,” Becca said as they left the
dock complex with its steel walls and the traders’ tents filled the desert in
front of them. Goats wandered through, and as someone raised on a farm, Tom
started being real careful about where he stepped.

“Sparkling, but dull with hunger,” Da’shay answered.

“Well, I don’t think they’re dull at all. Look at that
tent.”

Tom ignored them both as he headed out into the tent city.
The good thing about the collar was that traders weren’t nearly as likely to
annoy him now, focusing more on the two women. As far as Tom could see, Becca
was likely to buy the whole tent city if he didn’t keep them moving. The
pressure at his neck meant that he was pulling Da’shay faster than she wanted
to go, but as a
genta
, she could stop him easy enough if she was truly
unhappy. Unless that happened, he didn’t intend to give the girls time to shop
for trinkets, not when they had unknown enemies who could be targeting them.
The best strategy was to move too quickly for anyone to get a good line of fire
on them, at least until they’d reached the junkyard.