Blowback (29 page)

“I’ve worked for Master Hou for six years now. Keeping a
master happy is a skill,” Kada said after a few minutes of silently eating.

“I suppose.”

Kada looked up from his work. “You haven’t thought about
it?”

Tom stopped and took a second to think about it right then.
“I piss most people off, but Captain Ramsay and Da’shay always seemed happy
enough to have me around.”

“Captain Ramsay…was he your first master?” Kada gave Tom odd
little glances while keeping most of his attention on his screen and his mouth
half-full of food.

Tom snorted. He’d followed the captain about as faithfully
as a slave might, but Ramsay would cut off his own dick before he’d let someone
call him a slave owner. “Not likely. He was the captain I was serving when Hou
blew us up and had us arrested.” Tom shook his head. He didn’t mind an honest
fight, even if that fight left him on the worse side, but explosives just
didn’t seem right. “That was about as unfair a move as I’ve seen.”

Kada laughed and Tom glared at him. “You really are new to
your mark. Masters aren’t fair. I spent six years working to make myself
invaluable to Hou and he trades me to your Master. Is she going to keep me or
return me?”

“Don’t really know for sure. I’m guessing she’ll give you
back soon enough.”

Kada frowned. “I hope it’s soon enough. Master Hou has very
exacting standards. Not many humans can meet his expectations and I am very
skilled in both managing a
genta
household and coordinating the sort of
data
genta
expect.”

“So you understand Da’shay?” Tom asked, not believing that
for even a second.

“I understand
genta
in general. Master Da’shay is
very different.” He paused. “I’ve never had a
genta
ask for rumors.”

“Are you finding any?” Tom moved to look over Kada’s
shoulder, and for a second, the man froze as if he expected Tom to slip a knife
between his shoulder blades.

“More than I expected. I can provide Master Da’shay with all
the details.” He touched his screen and a half-dozen feeds and documents
vanished.

“You trying to hide something?”

Kada looked up and he had that half-panicked expression on
his face again. Most days Tom didn’t understand people and today was no
exception. “You know, I could offer some invaluable advice.” Kada’s voice was
slow and cautious.

“How’s that?”

“If you’re a slave, you’d better pay better attention to
your master. You’re the favorite now, but with that attitude, you won’t be for
long.”

Tom could feel his guts tangled at the idea that Da’shay
would get tired of him. God knows, others had. That’s one reason he stuck to
doxies most days, but Da’shay was different. She’d pursued him. And then this
little pipmouse was suggesting that she’d get tired of his attitude. “Are you
trying to piss me off?” Tom demanded as he took one step closer. “You can keep
your fucking opinions to yourself.”

Tom stopped suddenly. Kada was leaning slightly forward, as
if he was preparing to defend his stomach, and his eyes were dilated. Tom could
just start to smell the sourness of his body. “What the hell are you afraid
of?” Tom asked as he looked around. There wasn’t nothing on the screen and the
room was still empty of anyone except themselves. Tom had to admit that he felt
a little vulnerable without Da’shay there to enforce her ownership to anyone
who might decide to break down the door, but he sure as hell wasn’t afraid.

Kada straightened up. “I’m not. You’re distracting me.” Kada
might have denied it, but Tom could see the fear in every line of his body. If
the man had been armed, Tom would have expected him to draw his weapon at any
time because he was showing every sign of a panicky sort of terror and
terrorized people were dangerous.

“I ain’t the one having conversation about who’s the
favorite.” Hell, last time Tom had a conversation like that, he’d been nine
years old and he already knew he was about to lose to a three-year-old Andy.

It wasn’t that their ma had favored Andy as much as it was
that Kevan Teppe had loved his own son about as much as he’d hated Tom, so with
their ma refusing to play favorites, that had put Tom pretty low on the totem
pole. He hadn’t liked that feeling much and he didn’t appreciate anyone
reminding him of that. It wasn’t even that he blamed Andy…well, not much. Of
all his brothers, Andy was the one Tom could stand. Lester hadn’t lived long
enough to do anything to Tom personally, but the way his illness stole all
their ma’s attention away was enough to make Tom hate that brother and Carl and
Evert were plain ugly human beings. Sometimes Tom wondered if he wasn’t going
to run across them some day and have the chance to arrest ‘em both.

Tom sighed as he realized that whatever he said had just
about sent the little twerp into blind panic. People didn’t make a
half-credit’s worth of sense. “Maybe we could make a deal,” Tom suggested. “You
don’t go talking about Da’shay and I—” Tom stopped. He wasn’t actually sure
what Kada wanted.

“You won’t hit me?”

Tom blinked. He might have laughed, only Kada had a real
serious tone. “I ain’t never hit someone who wasn’t big enough to hit back and
you ain’t.”

For a long time, Kada looked at him. “You really haven’t
been a slave long. Avoiding getting hit is always good, but if you’re in a
household, you’d better watch out for people getting more creative than just throwing
a punch.” Kada gave him another look. “Either that or you’d better hope you get
sent out to work one of the farms or quarries. Out there slaves stick together.
In the houses, someone’s going to go out of their way to make you look like a
fool and take your place as favorite.”

“Are you trying to say you’re out to steal Da’shay?”

That made Kada look up. “No!” Then he sighed and sagged.
“Nevermind. You’ll figure it out for yourself. But if you have any influence on
your master, I would like to go back to Master Hou soon. Eventually that idiot
who took over my job is going to figure out how to get around the traps I set
in the system. I’d prefer to reclaim my spot before that happens.”

“Okay,” Tom agreed. Personally, he’d go out of his way not
to work for Hou, but if Kada liked the
genta
, Tom wasn’t going to try to
argue him out of it. Without anything else to do, Tom headed for the windows.
He touched the surface, but the glass didn’t react to him. The one blue window
and four pink ones all refused to change color, so Tom studied the layout of
the city towers he could see from the enormous windows.

“Captain?” Tom had been sitting with his back to the blue
tinted window, but now he stood. Da’shay walked in behind Ramsay and she headed
straight for Kada. “What are you doing here, sir?”

Ramsay had a look on his face that usually came right before
him ordering someone to scrub grating with a wire brush. “Did you give her a
kill code for the
Kratos
’ security?”

“What? No.” Tom was offended that Ramsay even asked. “I
never even built one in.” Tom knew plenty of soldiers did that—built in secret
codes that would cancel out security protocols so they could get on or off the
ship when they wanted to. Every second who’d ever come onboard went searching
through the system to find ‘em, but Tom never bothered and Becca was too smart
to get caught at it if she did.

Ramsay sighed. “Da’shay broke into the
Kratos
and got
confrontational while I was in my underwear. She does make things uncomfortable.”

Tom rested his hand on his gun and struggled to come up with
something polite to say. “She got in on her own then. I always figured that if
a captain threw me off a ship, there wouldn’t be any reason for going back.”

Ramsay pressed his lips together. “You never do change, Tom
Frieden. Just to refresh your memory, I threw Da’shay off the ship and you
chose to follow her.”

“She had a plan. Any plan is better than sitting on our
asses doing nothing.”

“Not so sure about that,” Ramsay muttered. Then he held up
his hands. “Not to get in another fight with you. I should know better than to
argue when you have your mind set. You never do change your opinions, even when
you’re dead wrong. So, what’s this emergency that’s so great that I’ve got to
be pulled out of bed when I was up all night? Twenty hours without sleep and I
start getting a little less reasonable in my outlook.” The captain hadn’t even
pulled his white hair back into a pony tail, so it hung around his shoulder.

Tom looked over to Da’shay since he really didn’t know why
she’d gotten the captain. “Look!” Da’shay said. She’d been talking to Kada and
Tom could see the incriminating report up on the screen—the one that said
Command had arrested the crew of the
Reseda
days before it’d blown up.

Ramsay gave first Tom and then Da’shay a confused look
before he went over to look at it closer. “Seems like it might be an arrest
report.” His voice was cautious.

“She already outed you as Corps,” Tom said. No need to leave
the man wondering.

Ramsay got all stiff. “She…what? I never—”

“Told Hou,” Da’shay interrupted. Instead of getting upset
with her, Ramsay glared at Tom.

“It ain’t like I told her to,” Tom defended himself. “She
pretty much does what she wants, including going to get you. It’s probably best
she did, though. If that report Hou dug up is right, we’ve got more trouble
than a dead crew.”

Ramsay gave Tom one last glare before he went to examine the
report. “Someone must have filed it wrong—put the wrong year on it, maybe.
There’s no way another ship could have picked up Smyth six days before our
meet.”

Da’shay had a hand on Kada’s shoulder and he gave her a
simpering smile that made Tom clench his teeth. “Verify accuracy,” she told him
in a good impression of Hou.

Kada gave a nod. “Navigational satellite registered the
passage of a ship
Reseda
’s size into the
Alsha
system eleven
hours before the arrest. Ship identification was removed from the record. An
outgoing ship of the same size left the system thirty-seven hours, twelve
minutes later. Again, an anomaly in the satellite computer system removed the
ship identification, but no other data was lost during that time period.
Captain Hatzis was assigned to
Alsha
at the time and no daily report was
filed on this date. Finally, all seals and regulations are correct on the
actual document.”

“Sounds like plenty of evidence,” Tom said, suddenly
uncomfortable that he hadn’t asked for that proof.

“If I believe a report from a known slaver’s employee,”
Ramsay said. “I’m not so sure I’m ready to make that leap of faith.”

“You can. Firm footing when your leap ends,” Da’shay said.
“Whispers in whispers.”

When Ramsay’s expression turned cranky, Tom stepped in
before Da’shay could piss him off anymore. “Assuming that’s true, Da’shay and
Hou came up with two theories. Either Command is trying to get rid of her or
they’re trying to start a war. I figure since she was on the bomb when it went
off, the first is more likely, but Da’shay seems to be favoring the second.”

Da’shay twirled around and headed for Tom, reaching out to
catch him around the waist before moving to a spot behind him and resting her
forehead against his shoulder, her arm wrapped around him. “Command wouldn’t
kill
genta
-girl,” she whispered. “World caught in cobwebs of palest blue
until Tom and his gift cut through the threads with all the red.”

“Is she saying something?” Ramsay asked.

Tom shrugged. “About the only part that I get is that she
doesn’t think Command would target her.”

“So you think they’d cause a war? That doesn’t make sense.
Tom, you weren’t around during the last war, but let me tell you, there weren’t
any winners. Command has enough generals that still remember that; they
wouldn’t go out of their way to cause another one.”

Da’shay stuck her head out from behind Tom. “Presentation of
data. Drops and drips forming pools in which worlds slip.”

Sometimes it was flat out embarrassing when she went and got
strange. Tom probably shouldn’t be one even to think like that because he knew
that he’d done plenty of embarrassing things himself, but at least he knew
enough to just not talk. Most times he didn’t have much to say, anyway.
However, Da’shay had all the answers somewhere up in her head, and she couldn’t
even get to them. It made Tom want to find the bastards that had hurt her and
rip bits of their brains out. Da’shay reached up and caught his leash, tugging
it just enough to make him feel his collar. Tom slipped a hand around her
waist, and she leaned back into him without comment. He wondered how much
reading she could really do, but then if she hadn’t run screaming away from all
the unhappy thoughts Tom had rattling around in his head, maybe she couldn’t
catch all that much. Maybe she could and she just didn’t mind sharing the
unhappy. With how those bastards had ripped her up, he wasn’t sure she’d ever
be able to tell him.

“Present,” Da’shay said sharply. No one moved until she
pointed a finger at Kada.

Kada jumped, clearly startled. “Oh me? I’m sorry, Master
Da’shay,” he hurried to say. “You asked for a number of categories. In terms of
war preparations and concealed machines, I have a pattern over the last six
years.”

He hit a button, and a vid screen half the width of the room
rose up out of the floor right in front of the line of art. A star chart
appeared while Da’shay traced tight circles on Tom’s bare arm with her finger.
There was
Beystelle
that rumor had as the training center of the
Information Corps,
Alsha
where Captain Hatzis had picked up Smyth and
Diadem
where the
Kratos
had been blown up six days later. A system that was
dedicated to mining,
Iris
, and its sister planet
Minple
were the
planets closest to the central Command’s core planets before the map cut off.
Tom’s homeworld,
Beauteous
, wasn’t anywhere on the map because it was
clear to the other side of Corps space, closer to the
meaiai
than the
slavers.

In another color, the map had the slave colonies. The planet
they were standing on,
Nodar
, and its sister planet,
Sunkissed
,
were part of the same system and then there were
Freedom
and
Bevattna
and
Vinden
closest to the Corps border, all centers of smuggling.
Farther in,
Baj
,
New Terra
,
Suddi
,
Kinder
and
Black
Falls
all showed up as little dots. Tom wasn’t even sure he could tell
which of those five was which because the inner slave colonies weren’t any
place he’d ever worried about.

“War preparations are indicated by a number of factors in
this area.”
Iris
,
Minple
,
Beystelle
and
Diadem
all
lit up. “Increased metal production in
Minple
as indicated by increased
personnel and the redirection of ships to the area has not led to increased
materials. Based on an extrapolation of the workers and ships present ten years
ago and the numbers present now, I estimate Earth Command is producing seven
hundred and thirty tons of excess metals which are not appearing in any
accounting. Deep space attack ships require 155 tons of steel and various other
trace minerals, but a conservative estimate would place the number of deep
space attack vessels that they could have produced in the last ten years at
42.”

“If they were making them at all,” Ramsay countered.
Da’shay’s fingers stilled as they rested against his skin.

Kada ignored him. “Earth Command has transferred six hundred
and sixty eight high ranking officers to
Iris
. Given that a skeleton
crew for a deep space vessel is seventeen, that would put the number of ships
currently running at thirty-nine. With
Iris’
belt of meteor dust, ships
would be easy to hide. Fuel consumption has also increased twenty-seven fold on
Iris
, with no official notice of any additional development.”

“If all that is true, the government of the slave colonies
would have caught that. It’s too obvious,” Ramsay said.

Kada didn’t say anything and Da’shay looked around Tom, her
fingers curled around his arm. “Say the colors that dart across your mind,” she
said to him. Kada looked at her with mild panic.

“She thinks you have something running around in that head
of yours. I suggest you just spit it out,” Tom warned.

“Tom,” Ramsay barked out. “Don’t go using that tone on him.”

“You can’t go Tom’ing him,” Da’shay said sharply, pointing a
finger at Ramsay. “You listened to his actions and not his thoughts. Didn’t see
him with his brown and white and now you try to come in and ‘Tom’ him. He’s my
Tom. Stop Tom’ing him.” Da’shay poked her finger in Ramsay’s direction and
stalked toward him. Ramsay didn’t look even a little worried, but Tom reached
out to catch Da’shay’s arm.

“Now, Da’shay—” Ramsay started saying, and his tone the sort
he might use with a frightened child.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” Tom promised. He caught
her arm, but she kept going, pulling him right along.

“I’m was just reminding him to be polite to—”

“No!” Da’shay reached Ramsay and poked him in the chest.
Ramsay had been looking vaguely amused, but Da’shay poked him hard enough that
Ramsay’s eyes flew open in surprise and he stumbled back, his arms windmilling
as he struggled to catch his balance. Tom yanked hard on Da’shay’s arm and
didn’t even slow her down as she went after him.

“Didn’t see. Didn’t see and now you come in and make gray
out of white. Stop Tom’ing him.”

Maybe Ramsay had finally gotten the message, because he held
up his hand in surrender. “I’m not trying to take him away.”

“Yes, you are.” Her expression got hard. “‘Tom, stop
following her.’ ‘Tom, stay on the ship.’ ‘Tom, don’t trust yourself.’ Thoughts
and whispers in ugly colors. And you think you know more because all your lines
are straight and not like…” Da’shay’s face twisted and she poked at him again.
This time Ramsay flung himself backward before she made contact. “Like ant
trails winding through the forest, each thought following the chemical trail of
the one laid down before. Wandering blind with no chemical to follow. Stop it.
Stop thinking it.”

“I ain’t thinking anything except maybe I’d appreciate it if
you stopped poking at me. Tom, you want to do something?” Ramsay kept his hands
up in surrender.

Da’shay made a low, wailing cry that froze the blood in
Tom’s veins. He caught hold of both her arms and tried to pull her around to
face him. She was God-almighty angry and he could see that same expression on
her face that she’d worn on that vid when she’d cut those slavers to pieces.

“He’s just being a moron,” Tom said. “I’m a moron on a fairly
regular basis, so if you’re going to start taking that personally, you’d best
tell me now so I know to avoid you. But if you’re going to be around old
soldiers like me and Ramsay, you have to be used to a little stupid.”

Da’shay stood, her breath fast as she looked at Tom with
blackened eyes. Slowly, she brought her hand up and touched his cheek, her eyes
falling closed. “My Tom,” she whispered, and now Tom could hear the desperation
in that tone. He knew how that felt, to want someone so much that you were
dying inside for need of them. Tom pulled her close. Maybe he didn’t always
know what to do, but he did know how to hold on tight when someone was feeling
lost.

“Your Tom,” he promised her, holding her so tight that a
human woman would have been complaining. Da’shay’s breathing slowed and a
shiver went through her body.

Without letting go of Da’shay, Tom looked over at Ramsay.
“Da’shay’s right, Captain. I can’t follow orders from both of you if you two
won’t even listen to each other, so I have to choose. I’m choosing her. I said
that before and I meant it. Now Da’shay wanted you to know there was something
going on here, so I have to believe she has some reason for thinking that’s
important. But if you go assuming she’s wrong just because of who she is, you’re
going to make her plenty angry.”

“So, you want me to accept what she says with blind faith?”

Tom thought about that. “I reckon me following with blind
faith is enough, but it’d be nice if you weren’t just plain blind. Kada’s intel
looks reasonably good, and if Hou were trying to frame us, he could pick us up
right now. The second he started digging deep enough into the
Kratos
’
background, he would have stirred up some shit on us, especially if he has
sources this deep.”