Blowback (7 page)

He wanted to come, but he fisted the chains and struggled to
hold back the growing fire inside…the heat that made his balls draw up and his
cock ache like a son of a bitch. Finally she started riding him, sliding up and
down with movements turned wild and uncontrolled as she started coming. She
threw her head back and fingered her clit, and Tom fisted his hands, desperate
to touch, but denied the right. She cried out and Tom took over the thrusting
again, allowing her to ride through her orgasms as he finally came with a low
grunt and a good deal more satisfaction than he’d felt in a long time.

Exhausted, Tom collapsed back onto the bed, his whole body
shaking from the sheer physical effort. Heat poured off him. She collapsed down
on top of him, her body fever hot. “Okay, that was great,” she finally said,
still panting.

“You’re paid to say that,” Tom pointed out.

“Actually, I’m not. I’m not even paid to do this anymore,”
she said. “However, if you’ve moved into the area, I could be convinced to
rethink that.”

Tom smiled. A doxy never offered to do it regular unless she
needed the money or she’d enjoyed herself, and this one didn’t seem the type to
need the money all that much. She shifted to the side and let her fingers trail
over the red marks she’d left with her fingernails.

“You looking for work around here?”

“Came in with a ship; I figure I’ll go out with it.”

“But you aren’t sure,” she said with some confidence. Tom
thought about that. Truth was, he wasn’t sure—not anymore. Seeing as how the
Kratos
was the first place that had felt like home in a good many a year, it stung a
bit to realize that the day might come that he needed to leave. And Ramsay was
right about one thing—he wasn’t getting another Corps job.

“This place could always use a good security man, and if you
don’t have anything against prostitution, I know a few women who would enjoy
your special services.” She placed a kiss on Tom’s elbow.

“Ain’t got nothing against playing doxy. It’s legal work and
more honest than most. I’m just not sure I’m ready to jump ship yet.”

“Well, you think about it. I’m Carla.”

Tom studied this woman again. “Like on the sign?”

“Yep. Spent twenty years on my back to get enough money to
buy my own place and then one of my best girls tells me she’s got some really
big guy whose getting choosy about who services him. I came down to say that I
don’t offer a menu of women. Whichever doxy feels like offering to bed you is
the only choice you get. Take it or leave it.”

“Seems like you forgot to give me that speech,” Tom pointed
out.

She smiled, her warm body still pressed to his side. “Seems
like I did. Now as much as I enjoyed myself, you will understand that business
is business and you did agree to pay twenty credits for my services.”

“Thirty five,” Tom corrected her. “Pants are on the ground
where you threw ‘em.”

She smiled. “You may talk like you’re from
Outflung
or
Beauteous
or one of those places that didn’t see fit to set up
schools, but you really do have a sweetness about you.”

“Don’t go telling people that,” Tom said. “You ask around
and you’ll find out that Tom Frieden has a reputation as a man with very little
sweetness to him.”

“Oh yes. We’ll let the rest of the world think you’re a
junkyard dog.” She smiled and leaned in to kiss him on the mouth before she rolled
off the bed and went padding over to where his pants lay on the ground.

“If you’re thinking of hiring me, you should know that ain’t
far off,” Tom said. “I’m not the type to go thinking on things a whole lot, but
if you give me a rifle and tell me that there’s a man who needs killing, you
won’t have to think twice about whether or not he’s dead.”

She stopped, Tom’s pants in her hand. Walking back over to
the bed, she dropped his pants near his knee and then sat down next to him and
leaned over him. “So, you kill for money?”

Tom thought about that. He was Corps…a cop, but when it came
right down to it, his job was to cover the others. In other words, Ramsay
pointed out who had to die if things went wrong and Tom made sure they died.
“That’s about the short of it,” Tom agreed.

“Would you kill anyone?” She looked at him curiously and Tom
wondered if she had a particular someone in mind.

“I don’t kill folks who don’t have reason to think it’s
coming and who can’t take care of themselves. And mostly, I just kill folks
Captain Ramsay points out as needing killing if they try to double cross us.”
Tom figured that was close enough to the truth without getting into the
details.

She nodded and reached for his pants. “So in other words,
you’re not as much junkyard dog as you let people believe. That will teach the
girls because several of them thought you looked too scary. But let some man in
a fancy suit come in and they’ll fight each other to take care of him.” She
shook her head. “Some days I wonder if I’m ever going to be able to teach any
of them to have any common sense.” She pulled the money out of Tom’s pocket and
counted out thirty-five of his forty credits, slipping the last few notes back
into his pocket.

“What’s this?” she asked. Tom looked at the tracker in her
hand.

“A computer thing,” he said with an awkward shrug.

“And you aren’t worried about me taking it?” she asked
curiously. “It looks pretty high end.”

“If I was going to worry, I’d have done that before letting
you chain me to the wall,” Tom pointed out. She smiled and put the disk back
into his pocket.

“That’s true.”

“You planning on unchaining me?” Tom asked.

“Oh I don’t know. As long as you’re chained, I can have my
fantasies about keeping you.” She gave him another of those wicked smiles that
Tom did love and he could feel his cock take an interest, even if it was going
to be a while before he could rightly do anything. “No protest?” she asked,
running her hand up and down Tom’s chest.

“I’ve got several hours before my captain comes looking and I
plan to use them to sleep, anyway. I can’t see where it matters where I do it,”
he lied. Fact was, doxies usually pushed him out of bed as fast as they could,
so if he found one to let him stay around after, that was a bonus.

She gave a laugh and got up. “You are one of a kind, Tom
Frieden. If that captain of yours ever cuts you loose, you remember my job
offer.” She came back to the bed with the controller and freed Tom’s hands.

“I’ll do that,” he agreed as he grabbed for his pants. By
the time she walked out of the room he was mostly dressed and a girl stood by
the door, cleaner in hand. Obviously they needed the room. His fantasy was
over.

Tom was almost back to the
Kratos
when Da’shay
slipped out of the shadows and started walking beside him. All the relaxed joy
he’d felt seconds ago vanished as every instinct turned on high. This was a
killer and he wasn’t allowed to consider taking her out first.

“Becca wanted cupcakes,” Da’shay said. Tom frowned, trying
to figure out where that came from.

“Listen, pea-brain, if you have something to say that makes
sense, say it.”

“Becca wanted cupcakes. Without damnation.”

Tom stopped. “You’re just all kinds of crazy, ain’t you?”

She seemed to think about that, and Tom stopped, turning so
he had a better chance to draw his weapon if she decided to take offense at
that.
Genta
were unpredictable at best and Da’shay was nuts.

“Compared to human neurobiology, my brain is functional and
well within parameters, but—” she physically cringed. “Prisms like spotlights
reflect off surfaces, trapping me in the beams.”

“What?” Tom backed off, pretty sure she had just slipped off
the deep end.

“Might be all kinds of crazy,” she said with a shrug. “Becca
says unique. Easier to think now. New light through the prism, but sometimes
the thoughts are all tangled like fallen yarn caught on the needles.”

Tom understood that bit. His brothers would sometimes run
around the house and trip on his ma’s knitting, tangling the yarn, sometimes so
bad that she’d have to pull out all her work and start over. Tom had learned
early that accidents like that led to a sore butt, but his stepfather didn’t
seem to take offense to his own kids causing the mess. It was only Tom who had
to be perfect.

“I can’t get the tangled yarn separated from the neat
stitches,” Da’shay said softly. Tom let his hand rest on his gun.

“Do you get confused enough to kill?” he came right out and
asked. She looked at with a blank expression. An innocent man defended himself.
Actually, a guilty man did too; he usually got more angry with his denials.
However, she only stared at him.

“Dreams all tiptoeing through the occipital lobe and pons.”
She turned her back to him and looked up at the stars. It wasn’t exactly a
denial, but Tom sure as hell didn’t think Ramsay would listen to another
argument. “Was lost out there so long. Trails vanishing into black.”

They stood in silence, Da’shay looking up at the stars, her
hands dangling at her sides. Tom watched her, his whole body coiled. “Easier to
find myself in all the red,” she told the sky. Her tone almost sounded as if
she was sharing some great confidence, but about the only thing Tom wanted was
for her to get lost now.

“I’m going to my bunk.” Tom edged away, not wanting to put
his back to her. He’d gotten several steps before she turned and looked at him
with nearly black eyes. Moving toward him, she didn’t stop until she was so
close that Tom’s skin crawled.

All the sated pleasure of the night evaporated as he thought
of that drop of blood falling from Da’shay’s braid. The others might think she
was one more
genta
, but Tom knew better. She was a dangerous woman. Tom
wasn’t exactly a fluffy kitten himself, so he knew he didn’t have much room for
complaining, but what she’d done turned his stomach.

Da’shay’s hand found his arm, pulling him along with her
while keeping her head tilted up to the stars. For a second, Tom considered
drawing his weapon, but he couldn’t really justify it when Da’shay didn’t seem
intent on anything but walking. The planet’s moon had set and another hour
would bring dawn, but right now, the whole world seemed perfectly silent. “Like
pricks in a purple velvet, light slipping through where the fibers break and
fray.” She kept her head tilted toward the night sky.

Tom didn’t risk looking up; he kept his eyes on Da’shay.
“Guess so,” he agreed. He’d been flying in the stars long enough that he didn’t
really see them that way. They were stars, no more and no less romantic than
the sun that was about to rise in an hour or so.

Da’shay gave up looking at the stars and stared at Tom.
“Sunlight like anger,” she finished. Dropping his hand, she turned around to
walk off in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” Tom called. “Where you going?”

She looked back at him and tilted her head to the side as if
she couldn’t figure out the question. Tom held his breath. His hand was in his
pocket, fingering the small disk. She stared at him and then up at the stars
and then back to him, and in all that time, there wasn’t a single expression on
her face that he could understand.

“The stars are leaking through. I’m going to go think on
stars and radiation and red shining through the dark,” she finally answered.
She seemed calm for a second, and then all her body language shifted. She
stalked closer, and stalk was the only word Tom could use to describe the
predatory way she suddenly looked at him. The angle of her head as she lowered
it and the roll of her hips as she closed in on him made him step back fast.
Her hands caught his shoulders and held him.

“Da’shay?” Tom asked, his mouth dry. His fingers closed
around the disk.

She shook her head and then she looked perfectly calm again.
“The stars are pretty,” she said with a smile, and then she turned and walked
away, a small metal disk clinging to the back of her shirt. Tom took another
step back and leaned against the
Kratos
, his heart pounding wildly.
Shit. Well, at least that decision was made for better or for worse. He’d have
to pull the bug when she got back to the ship because it was damn visible where
he’d put it, but with her being crazy, someone had to keep an eye on her and
the captain wasn’t.

Ramsay walked along the length of the
Kratos
with Eli
walking one step behind him in perfect military form. Tom figured Eli was so
military that he’d keep on starching his shorts until Captain Ramsay told him
to knock it off or the guy transferred away.

“Tom, you seen Da’shay?” Ramsay called.

Tom kept his face to his handheld as he checked numbers.
“Nope,” he said honestly. He hadn’t seen her today. Hadn’t seen her since the
wee hours of yesterday when she’d nearly scared him out of the ability to have
children. Ramsay grunted as he checked the dock-side read out on the ship’s
readiness. “We’re getting ready to go, so she’d better show up soon.” Ramsay
walked away from the workstation and Eli slipped into the space he’d abandoned.

“Yep,” Tom agreed. If they were all lucky, she’d go get
herself a case of dead.

“Eli, take second pilot.”

“Yes sir,” Eli said, immediately shutting down the station
and pressing the button that would lower the whole workstation into the deck
where plating would protect it during blast off.

“Tom, Becca has a faulty read on thruster two. Get in there
and see if that new seal is holding.”

“Checked the seal myself yesterday,” Tom complained, but he
headed for the back.

Kratos
was rumbling, the engines warming as Becca
prepped. After their last mission, Tom was really hoping someone else would be
piloting for a good long time because the idea of Becca at the helm made his
palms sweat, even if it wasn’t exactly her fault someone had rigged a crate to
blow.

Tom heard Ramsay’s footsteps coming up behind him and he
pulled his handheld out before the captain could give him shit about not
following orders. As much as Ramsay was willing to overlook certain
regulations, he didn’t put up with people who didn’t follow orders. That was
one of the things Tom liked most about working on the
Kratos—
the captain
gave real clear orders. Tom didn’t even have time to fasten the handheld to his
wrist before a blast slammed into him. His arms flew wide and his computer hit
the ground with a hard cracking sound right before Tom crashed into the blast
wall so hard he couldn’t breathe. He’d been hit by pulse guns in the past, but
not often. They were the sledge hammers of weapons; one blast and you took out
anyone in the area—friend and foe alike.

Dizziness forced Tom to his knees, and he felt something
cold lock around his wrist. Tom tried to twist away, but the blast had
scrambled his brains.

“You with me, Tom?” Ramsay slapped him on the face and Tom
jerked at the chain that now held him. Ramsay backed off a step. “Talk to me,
Tom. You talk to me about ship security.” Ramsay stood there with Tom’s own
blast gun, the one he’d taken from his stepfather the night he’d run away for
the last time.

“What?” Tom asked as he tried to figure out how much Ramsay
knew and just how he was going to get out of this.

Ramsay threw something down on the ground, something silver
with black threads hanging from long, spider-like legs that looked like a
meaiai
all curled up in death. Tom stopped breathing.

“Fuck. You do recognize it.” Ramsay slapped his palm against
the blast wall. “God damn it, I never—” With that, Ramsay stopped, his face
twisted with fury.

“They wanted to see what she was up to and that didn’t seem
like such a bad idea,” Tom defended himself. “Seemed like someone should keep
an eye on her.”

“And you appointed yourself the one to make that decision?
In six years, I’ve never seen you get this flat-out stupid. Suicidal? Yeah,
some days it did seem like it, but this…” Ramsay pressed his lips tightly
together and Tom could feel panic crawling through his guts. Fuck. He’d never
meant for Ramsay to get this upset.

“I didn’t—”

Ramsay cut him off before he could say more. “Conspiracy
against Corps personnel, conspiring with the intent to commit murder,
possession of illegal weapons, attempted murder. Damn it, Tom. Could you have
fucked this up any more if you tried?”

“Attempted murder?” Tom shook his head. “I ain’t been trying
to kill her. Now if she gave me an excuse, I wouldn’t mind putting a bullet—”

“Stop. You dumb fuck. You say shit like that and then you
put that on her…you’re going in for attempted murder, Tom, and I can’t figure
out why you would turn on crew.” Tom’s guts curled up and died in the face of
that pure anger.

“I wasn’t going to let her wear it on board,” Tom said. That
would have been just stupid because someone would have seen it on her back and
that would have been the end of that. “I’ve got an electronic safe for the
thing when we were flying and we could keep an eye on her without that little
man getting himself involved.”

Leaning against the blast wall, Ramsay hung his head and
pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as if he were trying to press
something right out of his brain. “Look at the tech, Tom. You’re rated in
weaponry, so you look at the tech.”

Tom frowned, but he reached out with his free hand and
pulled the disk closer. The bottom was open now since the disk was ripped out
of the cloth instead of getting deactivated so that the little legs tucked back
inside. Turning it so that he could see inside, Tom frowned.

“Can’t actually see much without magnification,” he
admitted, but an uncomfortable feeling was crawling up his legs as if he were
sitting in ice water.

“You see anything missing?” Ramsay asked, his voice deadly
quiet.

“Ain’t got no transmitter that I can see.”

“Not one large enough to transmit voice,” Ramsay agreed.
“But there’s a transmitter in there. One so small that you can’t even see it
unless you’re looking right at the circuitry nanowired into the casing under
the attachment legs.”

Tom’s fingers went numb. “It’s just a bug…a way to listen in
on what she’s doing when she wanders off.” Tom said it, but he wasn’t sure he
even believed that any more. Nanotech. Shit.

Ramsay gave a rough and dark laugh. “You are all kinds of
stupid, aren’t you? Someone shows you a pretty picture and you…” Ramsay threw
up an arm and Tom knew the man was done with him. Just done. Tom looked down at
the ground, not even sure what to say. Six years he’d followed Ramsay and he
could feel something important crumble under him as Ramsay looked at him with
hate. “You know weapons, Tom. You fucking know them, so why would someone gut a
listening bug and retrofit it with nanowiring?”

Tom didn’t want to answer because he could think of all
sorts of applications for tech like that. He’d never seen a bug with nanowiring
because that sort of technology was too damn expensive to waste it on something
you planned to use once, but if someone had limitless money, Tom could think of
several ways to use nanowiring. It could be used as a quantum disruptor to
throw a ship off her quantum string. It could be a beacon, transmitting a
signal that mimicked solar noise to help someone track the ship. It could…hell,
it could be pretty much anything.

“And here you are saying how you’d like to kill Da’shay.”
Ramsay shook his head and ran his fingers through white hair that hung to his
shoulders.

“But I couldn’t manage nanowiring. Not even Becca could do
that and she’s a whole lot smarter than me,” Tom protested.

“You think your defense attorney can really build a defense
out of you being too stupid to pull off what has to be the world’s stupidest
assassination attempt?” Ramsay was shaking his head now and backing away. Tom
struggled against the cuff, desperate to follow and explain how this all got so
out of hand. “The best that proves is that you had friends in this. You helped
someone target this crew, and depending on what that thing does, you just about
helped someone murder all of us.” Ramsay’s voice dropped to a whisper barely
audible over the
Kratos
’ engines. “Fuck you, Tom. Fuck you and your
traitor friends.”

“Captain…”

“I ain’t your captain, Tom, not anymore.”

Tom leaned back against the blast wall, pretty sure he would
fall down if someone took it away from him. “I didn’t mean—”

“The worst part is, I want to think you didn’t. Hell. You do
find trouble, Tom Frieden. Every damn planet we land on, you find trouble. I’ve
always respected you because you never actually went looking for it and you
always gave more trouble than you took. But this—” His tone was full of contempt.

Tom struggled for something to say, something that would
clear him, but he couldn’t come up with one damn thing. Ramsay wouldn’t lie—not
about the nanotech and not about how much shit Tom was in.

“I figure you have two choices,” Ramsay said. He had a real
calm tone that made Tom worry. “I can call the Corps and hand the evidence
over. Make no mistake—you’ll never see daylight again. That’s the last look at
blue sky you’ll ever have.” Ramsay poked his thumb at the sky visible just past
the
Kratos
. “Your other choice is to stand right there.”

It took Tom several seconds to realize what Ramsay was
saying. The
Kratos
was rumbling, but even looking down the butt end of
her thrusters, it hadn’t occurred to Tom that he was in grave danger of being
very dead. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was so dry that the sides of his
throat seemed to stick together and sting.

“You’d do that?” Tom tried pulling on the chain quiet-like,
but he was trapped and now he was looking death right in the face. Tom didn’t
think he’d ever been so scared—not when he was five years old and watching his
father die, not when he was not much older than that and watching his
stepfather come toward him with a stick in hand, not even when he’d stared down
the barrel of more than one gun in the line of duty. Ramsay. It was Ramsay who
was finally teaching him about cold-white terror.

“Your choice, Tom.” Ramsay held up his own handheld. “I’m
calling the Corps on this, but I can either call them right now and tell them
to come get your traitorous ass or I can call them from orbit after we find
your suicide note and say that you chose a particularly effective form of
suicide.” Ramsay pulled out a magnetic controller and dropped it on the ground.
“Seems like Tom Frieden was afraid he might back out at the last second, but he
knew how to kill a man. It seems like that extended to doing a pretty good job
on himself when he was cornered, because he chained himself to the wall.”

Tom stared at the controller.

“So, when do I call them, Tom? Now or after we blast off?”

Tom stared at Ramsay, his mind blank. This wasn’t the sort
of question he had an answer for.

“Tom, I need an answer. I’m trying to give you a choice here
because we’ve been together for six years and it about kills me to think of you
in a cage.” Ramsay stopped, his whole face twisting into an ugly version of
itself before he cleared his throat and kept going. “But I need to hear from
you. What do you want me to do, Tom?”

Tom wrapped his fist around the chain that trapped him.
Ramsay thought it was better for him to die right here. Tom couldn’t seem to
find any answer at all in his own brain. His thoughts kept circling like a
rabid animal, but Ramsay thought he should just sit here while the
Kratos
blasted him with hot gasses strong enough to strip the flesh from bone. All
these years that he’d lived adding up to nothing more than charred bones and
ash—that’s what Ramsay was telling him to choose.

Slowly, Tom sagged, his whole body weak.

“Tom, do you want me to make the call later?” Ramsay’s voice
had gone cold with frustration. Tom’s inability to die quickly was ruining
their schedule more than likely. Tom nodded mutely. He kept his eyes focused on
the thrusters even though a big part of him didn’t want to see death coming at
him head on. It’d be quick, that was sure. Tom wondered if he’d see anything at
all. With the decision made, Tom felt stripped of all emotion.

“Captain,” Tom called out. He remembered too late that
Ramsay had told him not to call him that. He supposed it didn’t matter anymore.
Ramsay stood off to the side of the ship and looked back at Tom with the sort
of pity that Tom hated coming from most men. He figured right now he’d earned a
little pity, even if he couldn’t get any forgiveness. “You be the one to launch
the ship. You don’t let Becca anywhere near that.”

Ramsay stared at him for a time before answering. “I take
care of crew.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Hell, you’re crew too, Tom. If
you weren’t, I would have called Command the second Da’shay showed me the
pretty little gift you’d given her. That nanotech is so illegal I thought I was
going to have to arrest myself for seeing it.”

Tom didn’t know why Ramsay wanted to torture him now when it
didn’t matter, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop him. He looked up and
Da’shay was standing beside the
Kratos
, watching him with wide dark
eyes. He’d expected her to be gleeful, but she looked at him with her head
cocked as if she couldn’t understand something.

“Who gave it to you?” Ramsay asked.

“Same little man who showed me the pictures.”

Ramsay sighed. “I should call Command and have them pick you
up. If you could help them sketch the suspect, they might be able to track down
whoever’s targeting Da’shay and the
Kratos
.”

Tom didn’t react. Whatever Ramsay said, Tom didn’t have the
energy to disagree. Da’shay inched closer, her fingers splayed out on the side
of the ship as she watched him with those big, dark eyes.

“I can call them, if you want. It doesn’t have to end here
if you don’t want it to.” Ramsay almost sounded as if he wanted Tom to change
his mind and Tom struggled to figure out what he was supposed to say.

Tom closed his eyes and let his head rest against the blast
wall again. “Ain’t like it makes any difference.” He thought about that for a
second—he thought about living in a little cage without any hope that he’d ever
again touch a ship or a gun or a woman. “Just make sure my suicide note says
something nice about my ma, okay?”