Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  “I’ll shoot you again if you keep up your caterwauling,” Tom warned. Tyles limited himself to a moaning cry as he clutched his bleeding leg.

  “He destroyed my knee,” Tyles complained to Ramsay, his voice high and whining, which didn’t seem right considering the man was involved in the import and export of everything from guns to slaves to crates full of embryos that exploded. Seemed as though a man like that should face a bullet wound with a little more dignity. Ramsay knelt down and wrapped a pressure cuff around Tyles’ upper thigh, slowing the bleeding to a trickle.

  “Yep, that’s a real bitch. I recently had to have a shoulder replaced and I have to say, joint injures are about the worst, aren’t they, Tom?”

  Tom shoved his gun back into its holster and wiped Tyles’ weapon clean of fingerprints using his shirt tail before putting it on top of the nearest crate. “Yep.” His hip still ached if he sat too long.

  Ramsay pulled out a hypo of pain killer and jammed it into Tyles’ thigh. The little gasping whines that Tyles had been making slowly faded away as the painkiller kicked in. “It’s even worse on old shits like us. Now, do I have your complete attention?”

  “What? Yes. Whatever you want, you let me know and I’ll get it. I have access to a lot of people…merchandise…money.”

  With a sigh, Ramsay patted Tyles on the shoulder as he crouched down beside the man. “I know I told you that I preferred to stay close to the legal line. True, the profits are there for those who step over the line, but I didn’t want to step too far over that line.”

  “Yeah, yeah , and I’ve always taken care of you. That last job…that was a good one. Genetically enhanced cattle. That was a good job.”

  Tom was starting to think that either the alcohol or the blood loss was starting to affect Tyles.

  “Let’s talk about that job,” Ramsay said in that friendly tone that meant he was about to rip someone a new asshole. “See, that job should have been a simple one, only Captain Smyth refused to deliver the goods. In fact, he went from doubling the price to refusing to let us have the goods at any price at all.”

  “What?” Tyles looked alarmed…or more alarmed, anyway.

  “Yep. He double crossed me, but here’s the part that really pisses me off. When I called my ship in, venting the engines made that crate explode. That’s why I had to have my shoulder replaced and Tom over there had to replace a hip and most of the skin on his left side. That wasn’t fun, was it?”

  “Nope,” Tom agreed. The captain was exaggerating a bit about Tom’s injuries, but Tom figured he was making a point, and it was working. Tyles was white now, so white that Tom was starting to think that he might pass out before giving them any information.

  “I didn’t…but…when?” Tyles finally settled on asking.

  Ramsay slowly stood up and then sort of loomed over Tyles for a minute or so before answering. “We just got out of the hospital and Smyth is not going to be coming back at all. In fact, I have to wonder if you told him what he was carrying. Most men are more careful around a load of explosives big enough to take out a ship.” Ramsay leaned against a crate and let his hand rest on his gun. “So, all I need from you is a name. Where did those explosives come from, Tyles?”

  Tyles pushed himself back with his hands, leaving a red trail as he bled. “I can’t. I mean…I can’t.”

  With a sad expression, Ramsay shook his head. “Now see, that’s a problem, because I’m trying to be forgiving. I’m so forgiving that I’m not interested in having you find out how unpleasant it is to have a shoulder blown apart—or a hip.” Ramsay sucked air through his front teeth. “I think I’m being plenty nice by not making you feel how much me and my crew suffered because the job you sent us on literally blew up in our faces. And because I’m being so nice, I’m expecting you to be nice in return. So, one friend to another, where did that crate come from?”

  Tyles looked from Ramsey to Tom and back again, the whites of his eyes showing all around the blue center. “He’s dangerous. You don’t want to get involved with him.” Tyles’ voice had that annoying whine in it again.

  “I’m dangerous,” Ramsay said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “Tom over there is dangerous. Luckily Tom and I think of you as a friend. You’ve gotten us work and we appreciate that. If we didn’t, we’d feel a need to let you know just how much it hurts to have a shoulder and a hip blown out, wouldn’t we, Tom?”

  Tom moved a little closer. “I wouldn’t mind sharing a little pain,” Tom agreed.

  “Maybe you should shoot him once in the hip and once in the shoulder, just to show us how much we enjoyed that last job,” Ramsay said. Tom pulled out his gun and pointed it, hesitating for a second because if he did this, he and Ramsay were both crossing a line. Shooting a fleeing suspect was bad, but shooting one who was on the ground looking as if he was about to vomit was significantly worse.

  “No! No! Wait. It was Veska Hou. He runs embryo labs up in Palapa Tower. It was Veska Hou.” Tyles blurted out. “It was Veska Hou.” The third time, he whispered. Rolling onto his side, he sank back down to the concrete and lay there curled up. Tom put his weapon away and Ramsay crouched down next to Tyles again.

  “Who can we call for you? Who can help you?” Ramsay asked, his voice going from dangerous to sincere in an instant.

  “My handheld. Jeremy Hick.”

  Ramsay patted Tyles shoulder and pulled the handheld out of Tyles’ pants pocket before flipping it on. Tom retreated and turned back toward the street.

  “His friend’s coming, let’s go,” Ramsay said, walking past Tom. Tom followed the captain without looking back. If the bastard had to lie in bed while the docs regrew a joint, it served him right for setting them up.

  Ramsay stopped several times, looking through city terminals and maps trying to find the Palapa tower. As far as Tom was concerned, this whole place was built like a maze, but he suspected the engineers were carving wide curves and tunnels that split and split again in order to carve out veins of softer rock. No matter the reason, Tom found himself getting more and more uneasy as he followed Ramsay into what was feeling like a rat trap.

  As they moved up in the towers through a series of escalators and elevators, arched windows started to interrupt the stone walls, letting light spill into the cool tunnels. And the farther up they traveled, the more out of place they looked. Down in the lower city, no one had looked at them, but these wide, well-lit tunnels were full of middle class merchants and business people in neat clothing. Tom started closing the gap between him and the captain since there really wasn’t much tactical reason for the separation at this point. People were going to know they were together no matter how much distance Tom kept between them.

  “You starting to feel like maybe we don’t fit in here?” Ramsay asked when Tom fell in next to him.

  “Was starting to consider it,” Tom agreed. He frowned as a woman passed him with a shiny collar with a silver chain lying against her blue shirt. Made him feel real strange to know that someone owned that woman. Corps said that the slaver worlds were full of abuse and corruption and Tom tended to believe them. It wasn’t so much that he thought the government was all-knowing but rather that people tended to treat those below them like shit. It was just human nature, as far as Tom was concerned. A man in a gray suit passed them and made a little disgusted noise.

  “Next time, maybe you should bring Eli,” Tom suggested. At least Eli looked respectable.

  “I didn’t figure we’d get this high up the food chain quite this fast.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that, so Tom followed past a sign hanging from the stone ceiling that announced they were entering Palapa Tower right next to a hieroglyph of a palm tree. Small shops still dotted one side of the walkway, but now there were arched windows with glass tinted green and pink.

  After walking for what felt like a mile, they ran into a glass wall that clearly marked where public space ended and private property started. Without hesitating at all, Ramsay pu
lled the glass door open and strode into the space. A tall man with a thick collar and large handheld stood up from a small desk and gave Ramsay a dismissive and disgusted look.

  “This is private property,” he announced grandly.

  “I assume that’s why you had a door put up,” Ramsay said. “We’re here to see Mr. Veska Hou.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” Ah, so he was the secretary…and from the fact that he wasn’t even checking his handheld, he already knew Tom and the captain weren’t on the guest list.

  “Yep. Since about three weeks ago when his cargo blew up in my face.” Ramsay walked right past the man and toward the west side of the suite. Tom had noticed the secretary glance that way too, so he figured it was a good guess for where to find Hou. The secretary went running after Ramsay, reaching out as if he was going to grab him, and Tom darted forward, grabbing the little man by the arm and giving him one good shake.

  “You do not go grabbing people, got it?” Tom asked with another shake. The man hadn’t answered, but Ramsay was opening a huge, ornate door, so Tom dropped the secretary and headed after him.

  “But you can’t do that! I’ll call security!” he called after them. The moment Ramsay opened the door, Tom knew the secretary was bluffing. The man sitting behind the desk was clearly the boss—and he was blue. Unlike fools who painted themselves, this one had the wide face and huge shoulders of a real genta, and if genta had a problem, they handled it themselves. As near as Tom could figure, they didn’t even understand the concept of Corps or security.

  “We need to talk to you.” Ramsay strolled into the enormous office.

  Hou glanced up from his terminal. “No you don’t.” With that, he focused back on the terminal.

  “You could try back later, sir,” the secretary offered with an unctuous smile. Tom wasn’t surprised at all when Ramsay ignored the suggestion and walked over to sit in the guest chair. Moving to the wall, Tom leaned back and watched the room. Push came to shove, he figured he could take Hou. He was typical of his kind—taller than even Tom and wide in both his hips and shoulders so that he gave the impression of being a blue wall. However, this one had been behind a desk too much. He had a belly that pushed out to almost his knees and not even a genta’s impressive strength was going to get him up and moving fast. One bullet to the base of the brain and he’d crash to the ground dead as a disemboweled bull.

  The genta ignored them for long minutes while Ramsay picked at his fingernails with a knife. “Sir…” the secretary said, gesturing toward the door. Ramsay kept picking at his nails and Hou kept typing on his terminal as though they weren’t there. It got real awkward after a time.

  “See,” Ramsay eventually said while still picking at his nails. “I had this deal. I was buying a hundred thousand embryos, all good breeding stock cows. Oh they were a little on the illegal side because of this genetic tampering to make the milk a little more nutritious and the government is full of pencil-pricked men and tight-assed women who won’t approve a genetic mod, but that’s fine with me. I don’t mind carrying goods that are a bit illegal. The problem is that Captain Smyth refused to sell for the price we’d already agreed on. Since Smyth worked for you, I guess that makes you the back-stabbing, double-dealing son of a bitch.”

  Ramsay waited a second, but Hou didn’t react. He didn’t act as if there was even anyone in the room with him. Crazy genta. Reaching into his desk, he pulled out food and slowly crunched away while poking at his terminal, completely oblivious to the fact that Tom had pulled his gun the second the genta’s hand went in the drawer. The secretary gave a gasp so loud that Tom was surprised the man didn’t start choking on his own tongue.

  “Now there’s no need for violence,” the secretary rushed to say.

  “I suppose that’s up for debate,” Ramsay said. “See, there’s already been violence. Violence against me and my crew.”

  The secretary swallowed. “Mr. Hou does not advocate violence.”

  Ramsay nodded slowly, as if he was listening to the man’s argument, but Tom knew better. “You know, I’d be more likely to believe that if his employee hadn’t tried to blow me up.”

  “Blowing up customers is counterproductive,” Mr. Hou said with a brief glance up. “Your inability to distinguish truth disturbs my working environment. Leave.”

  Ramsay didn’t look worried, but Tom tightened his hand on his gun. “There certainly were lies,” Ramsay agreed. “I was lied to when I was promised a hundred thousand embryos. I was lied to when Captain Smyth tried to get money out of me, but even worse, I was lied to about what was in that crate. I called my crew to bring the ship in hot since I was getting double crossed and that crate exploded. Your crate exploded.”

  Ramsay shoved his knife back into its sheath and he leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t appreciate having my ship blown up and I sure as hell resent spending three weeks in a hospital because your employee is a double-dealing pirate.”

  Hou stood up. Tom took real careful aim because if the situation was going to go bad, this would be the time. If Tom missed the brainstem, Hou could rip Ramsay apart with his hands. Instead, he sort of shuffled off to a huge, carved cabinet along one wall. He opened it and took out a box.

  “Chocolate is favored by most genetically homogenous humans,” Hou said, holding out the box. Ramsay glanced over at Tom, signaling him to check it out, so Tom inched forward, half expecting Hou to pull out some weapon. With thick fingers, Hou pulled at the top of the white box, opening it to show six chocolates inside. The second he saw that, Tom backed up a step and gave a brief shake of his head. No danger there…just a genta being a genta.

  “I want to talk,” Ramsay said.

  “You did.”

  “Yes, I did. I told you that your shipment blew up.”

  “Lying involves the medial inferior and pre-central areas, the hippocampus and middle temporal regions and the limbic areas of the brain. It involves more brain white matter with its associated myelinated axon tracts than truthful description as unrelated topics are connected within the liar’s brain.”

  Ramsay took a deep breath and seemed to think about that for a second. “Okay, you hook me up to your scanner and see if I’m lying then. I will tell you the same thing. Your cargo blew up.” Ramsay articulated the last four words slowly and carefully.

  Unlike Da’shay, who had delicate features, Hou’s were on the heavy side. Tom had been around Da’shay so much that he’d forgotten how much regular genta gave him the creeps to look at. Their eyes and mouth were a little too small, their chins and noses and foreheads a little too large and there was something inhuman in the way they moved. Sometimes it was hard to remember they had as much human DNA in them as they had alien. Da’shay was as inhuman as any of them, but her face didn’t look genta except for the part where she was blue. And crazy. She got that same blank stare this one got when he didn’t understand—like now.

  “Blowing up merchandise would lead to lost income and an unacceptable reputation.” Turning around, Hou put the chocolates away.

  “It led to lost income, all right. I had credits blown to bits, a ship scorched so that my engineer just about had to scrub her with a toothbrush to get all the soot out and four crew in the hospital—two of us with full joint replacements. That’s a hell of a lot of lost income and we’re here to find out what you’re going to do about it.” Ramsay sounded angry now.

  “Circumstances require action.” Hou started moving for his desk, charging toward it with footsteps that seemed to make the floor rattle.

  Tom shifted so that he had a clear view of Hou without a lamp in the way. Hou might be giving them the person who had set the bomb so they could go yell at him or he might be typing out an order for them to be shot by one of his flunkies—with genta you never knew until two seconds after they’d decided for themselves. He waited for Ramsay to give a kill signal, but the captain stood up, his hands held up in front of him as though in surrender.

  “Let’s talk about
what—”

  There was a flash of light so bright that Tom closed his eyes before his brain had time to process a single thought…then the sensation of heat and movement and finally pain as Tom slammed into the wall so hard that his gun fell from his hand and all the air left him. Something sharp hit just under the ribs and Tom had a half second to realize he’d been blown up for the second time in a month before he fell unconscious.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tom groaned his way to consciousness, something hard under his shoulder so that he’d lost feeling in his arm. He rolled onto his back and could tell without opening his eyes that he was on a floor. Shit. Tom cracked his eyes open and cringed as the light cut through his brain. He and Ramsay were both lying in the center of a round, stone room with a heavy wood door set into one wall and nothing else. No toilet, no bunks, no windows—just a vent in the center of the high ceiling. Whoever put them in here obviously didn’t intend to keep them here long… Either that or their attacker didn’t care if they died and stunk the place up.

  Tom reached out and grabbed Ramsay’s arm. The captain groaned and opened one eye. “What happened?”

  “I’m getting real sick of people of people blowing me up.” Tom felt along his ribs and found a spectacular sore spot, but it was high enough that the bone had taken the impact and saved him from any real damage. He’d have to wait out the bruising and pain because this didn’t look like the kind of place with doctors.

  “You think maybe it was something I said?” Ramsay grinned as he said it, but Tom figured it wasn’t that much of a joke. “Any exits?”

  Ignoring his raging headache, Tom rolled onto his side and forced his body up. “One door.” When Tom reached the door, he found it didn’t bulge a bit no matter how hard he pulled.

  Ramsay pulled his legs up so that he was sitting cross-legged on the ground and pushed his hair back away from his face. His white beard was getting scraggly and his hair was long enough to get tangled in it. Tom rubbed his face, and he had a good amount of stubble going too. While Tom rarely shaved himself smooth unless he was going to go be a woman, he was guessing he had spent at least a good day unconscious from how much growing it had done.