Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  “Tom, look at that.” When Becca caught up to him, she pointed at a native woman.

  “Little scrawny for me, but she looks healthy enough. Why? You think she’s a doxy?” Tom asked. Becca looked at him for one second and then punched him in the arm. “Hey!”

  “Her dress. Look at her dress. It’s so pretty.”

  Tom rubbed his arm. “It’s a dress. I ain’t even sure why people wear those except to show off how helpless they are. They’d tangle around your legs in any kind of fight.”

  Becca pressed her lips together just long enough to let Tom know he was in some sort of shit that made no sense. “Da’shay wears dresses,” Becca said.

  “I don’t suppose it matters to her if she gets shot in a fight, being a genta.”

  “Tom doesn’t want you shot,” Da’shay said walking past them both.

  That was kind of obvious as far as Tom was concerned. “Hell no. Someone shoots you and I’m going to have to gut them, and that won’t change you being shot.”

  “That’s almost sweet,” Becca said, her anger vanishing.

  Tom looked at her for long seconds. “I’m starting to think I’m glad you’re more interested in women,” he finally said. “You’re about as crazy as her.” He poked his thumb toward Da’shay. Becca just punched him in the arm again and headed after Da’shay.

  Shaking his head, Tom started after them.

  “Women never do get any easier to understand,” the old man with the cherries offered with a smile. Tom ignored him and trotted until he could get ahead of the girls and walk point. The junkyard was a small one, piles about as high as Tom’s shoulders stacked up in rows without any sort of order.

  “I’m not real hopeful about finding anything too much for my flyer,” Becca said as she walked past the man at the front booth and trailed her finger over a cracked heat shield.

  “You know what you want?” Tom asked Da’shay.

  “No diamonds, only reflections off glass, invisible until the prism turns.”

  Tom sighed. It’d been too much to hope that she was having a reasonable day.

  “Can I offer help? We have nice drive shafts and some sealed silicon chips that still work if you don’t mind limited processor speeds,” The attendant said. Tom tried hard to ignore the black leather collar the man wore.

  Becca stepped forward. “You got any bits for the landing assembly? Priority divider or winch motor or bevel gears, maybe?”

  “I think we have priority dividers on the third row. Fifteen to twenty credits for most.”

  “Thanks.” Becca smiled at him and headed toward that row and Da’shay followed. Tom gave the girls half his attention while he studied the layout. The low piles of junk gave lots of cover for any enemy, but Tom didn’t think anyone could have guessed where they were coming quickly enough to set up an ambush. Besides, the stench of composting animal shit would discourage any of them from hanging around for too long. Becca sneezed.

  “I swear, I haven’t smelled anything like that since I left home. Ag areas are usually pretty far from the docks.”

  “Limited resources and access to off-world credits,” Da’shay said absently, her attention on a particular pile that looked like stacked body flaps and payload doors. Three bullet-shaped tanks stuck up from the center and an elevon from a delta wing threatened to fall over as it perched on top.

  Becca rubbed her nose. “I spent most of my school days studying quantum propulsion, cheating on the stupid English papers and smelling goats. I longed for space because I wanted to get away from that smell.” Tom couldn’t blame her too much; it really did stink.

  “They ain’t putting enough straw in with the manure when they’re letting it go to rot,” Tom said. Becca looked over in surprise, as though she hadn’t expected him to know about anything other than shooting people. “While you were studying quantum propulsion, I was hauling manure and running a tractor,” Tom said with a shrug.

  Before either of them had a chance to compare the relative failings of their homeworlds, Da’shay caught his arm. “There!” she said, pointing at a round something under a hinged manipulator arm.

  “Well, shit. Why don’t you just ask for something at the very bottom?” Tom complained as he crouched down to consider the bit she wanted.

  “I want it.”

  “Yeah, I heard ya,” Tom said. Crab walking to the side, he peered at the bit from a new angle. He’d have to move a half-dozen panels and wing bits to get to the melon-shaped piece, either that or risk having the whole pile fall on his head.

  “I’ll go ask the attendant if they have lifting equipment,” Becca offered. Tom stood up, brushing his pants off.

  “That’d be best,” he agreed.

  “No!” Da’shay darted in front of Becca, her hands held out. “No,” she repeated. “Tom will get.”

  “I will?” Tom eyed the pile. “Ain’t like I couldn’t, but if they have lifters, I’d rather use them.”

  Da’shay turned toward Tom, a stubborn look on her face. “No. You get it.”

  Tom sighed and looked at the pile. “Well, shit.” There was no way his shirt would survive hard labor, and Da’shay had put too damn many credits down for it, so Tom stripped it off and draped it over the end of a gear shaft. “You might get over here and help,” Tom said to Da’shay.

  She smiled and moved toward him, her body twitching and swaying to some inner music that made Tom’s whole body suddenly very aware of the fact that he was already half-undressed and she was a beautiful woman. A strange one, but once you stopped noticing the strangeness, she had a grace to her that not many women could match. Da’shay reached him and stroked her hands up his stomach, her fingers splayed. Leaning closer, her fingers brushed the collar, and then the weight of it seemed to fall away. When she stepped back, she had his leash in her hand, the end disconnected from the collar.

  “I helped,” she said with a smile.

  Becca snorted, a sound that came suspiciously close to laughter, but when Tom looked over, she had a carefully neutral expression on her face.

  Tom turned back toward Da’shay. “Might be you could help lift this crap.”

  Da’shay swung her hips back and forth, making her skirt twirl around her calves. “I’m wearing a skirt, so I’m helpless.”

  Becca outright laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said when Tom glared at her. She held her hands up as if she were surrendering, but she kept laughing. “It’s so hard to see Da’shay as just a genta, because genta aren’t good at metaphors and sarcasm and jokes, but Da’shay is having fun playing with you.”

  “Yep,” Da’shay agreed. Flipping her skirt, she went over and sat on a salvaged bench with the metal edge sheared off and scorch marks up the side.

  Tom glared at both of them. “I didn’t say skirts make a person helpless. I said that wearing ‘em was stupid. It tangles up your legs.”

  “So you can lift,” Da’shay said with a huge smile. Tom shook his head. He’d walked right into that one. Some days he thought he must have more chicken fat than brain cells in his head.

  “I’ll help,” Becca offered.

  “No.” Tom pointed a finger at her. “You go and get a hand crushed and Eli or Ramsay are going to have to be digging big old hands in the engine. You ain’t helping.”

  Becca put her hands on her hips. “Tom Frieden, are you saying you don’t trust me to lift a few parts without doing something stupid enough to get hurt?”

  “It ain’t about being stupid, just not being strong enough.” Tom knew he was in deep shit with her, but instead of waiting for her response, he turned to the pile and shook a few of the pieces, trying to decide what was caught up on what.

  “Tom lifts much more. Look at his strong muscles,” Da’shay said. Tom risked a quick glance and Da’shay was pulling Becca back toward the bench. “You can shoot people who sneak up.”

  “I can shoot people and lift crap,” Becca argued, but at least she didn’t look as mad arguing with Da’shay. Tom found a solid piec
e and climbed up onto it to get a better hold on the wing elevon up top. He’d known Becca for years and he still couldn’t find a way to talk to her without pissing her off. True, she never got as pissed as the gunhand they’d had a few years back; that woman wanted to shoot Tom. Still, Becca never did seem to give him credit for wanting to do right, even if he said things all wrong. He supposed he had a lot in common with Da’shay in that department. He got both hands around the edges of the flap and steadily pulled it toward him. Metal scraped against metal and then the huge piece started sliding down. Tom strained to control the slide so the whole pile didn’t collapse and bury him.

  The next few bits were fairly light, twenty or thirty pounds. Tom pulled those off and flung them at the next row. One hit and caused a small avalanche of gears and tubes. From his perch on top of the junk, Tom could see the attendant stand up and look over. Tom raised a hand to him, palm out to say he didn’t need help, and the attendant raised a hand back and then sat back down. Tom was more careful with the next bit, a Y-shaped tube that must have weighed forty pounds. He lifted it off the top and let it slide down the pile in a clatter of small bits. This was going to take a while. Tom wiped his palms on his pants and started in on the truly large pieces.

  “Tom is beautiful, all straining under the sun,” Da’shay said. Tom grunted in the middle of shifting a piece of decking. He strained to lift the edge and flip it, but his hands were sweating too much to get a good hold. He dried them on his pants and shifted around to get a better angle on it.

  “He really is pretty,” Becca agreed.

  Tom got the decking up onto its edge, balancing it on the pile before he glanced over his shoulder at them. Hoisting the decking up so that it rested on one corner, he twisted it and then let it fall to the ground on the far side of the row of junk. Breathing heavily, Tom took a second to wipe his face with the back of his arm. His eyes stung from the sweat. “You can call me lots of things, but I ain’t pretty,” Tom repeated.

  Becca was giving him an innocent look, and with those blonde curls, she could really pull it off, even when he knew she was playing devil with him. “Hot and sweaty and sexy?” Becca asked with an impish smile.

  “I thought you bedded women?”

  “I thought we weren’t going to go talking on that topic.” Becca crossed her arms.

  Da’shay reached over and rested a hand on Becca’s arm. “All sweaty,” she said happily. “Not many men could move all that.”

  “Yeah, well I ain’t most men,” Tom said as he turned back to the pile. He was going to feel older than Ramsay when he finished, but if Da’shay wanted her bit from the bottom, he’d get it.

  He’d lifted off the big pieces before he slid back down to the ground and crouched down, his shoulders aching and the sweat dripping from him. When he looked over, both women were watching him with dark gazes.

  “Someone best be looking for any trouble,” Tom pointed out. For some reason, Becca turned immediately red, her whole face and neck going from fair to scarlet in about three seconds.

  “Oh yeah,” Becca leaped up and looked around as if she expected to find someone she could shoot. Tom just did not understand women. Da’shay leaned forward and kept right on watching him.

  Rolling his eyes, Tom went back to work. It was harder now that he’d gotten the bigger pieces off because every time he pulled out one bit, three more seemed to fall in on him. It was like trying to dig in sand, only instead of sand, he was trying to dig in pieces of sharp metal. If this turned out to be some bauble that Da’shay wanted for the shine, he was going to be more than a little unhappy. Actually, unhappy didn’t even describe it. He’d put everything into backing her, and if it turned out she was as crazy as she seemed, Tom was going to look a fool. He’d have to go back and play doxy at Carla’s house because he wouldn’t be able to look Ramsay in the eye again.

  Kneeling down in the dust and reaching into the pile, Tom got his sweat-slick fingers around the edge of the piece. It was shaped like a melon, only the middle had etching and above that were small vent holes. It wasn’t anything Tom recognized, but then he mostly knew tech that was used for killing and spying. This looked more like something Becca would use. He could get his fingers around it, but he couldn’t quite get it out. His hands were sore from the lifting and the piece was either stuck or heavier than a dead bull.

  He jerked when something cool touched his back. “What the—” Da’shay was there, running cool fingers over his hot skin. The sweat made her touch slide over his back and she looked at him with this smile that he couldn’t understand. With her other hand she raised the leash and Tom held his breath as she brought it up and triggered the magnet to lock it in place. She stood beside him, her skirt brushing against his arm and her one hand tracing patterns and pressing into sore muscles. With her other hand, she held his leash so close to the collar that he really couldn’t go anywhere. He was caught, kneeling at her feet, and the quiet that had been teasing at the edges of his awareness came crashing in like a wave.

  Whether the piece was important or not didn’t matter. She wanted it and he didn’t have to wonder what it was or why she wanted it because he was hers. If it turned out she only liked the way the light reflected off it, he’d still be hers and putting everything into getting it for her made sense.

  Da’shay’s smile grew and she crouched down beside him, her strong fingers kneading his shoulders for a moment before they trailed down over his chest and found his mark again. “I’ll take care of it,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the curl of his tattoo. Tom swallowed, not sure what she meant, but the hand on his leash kept him from doing anything.

  She let his chain go, but Tom didn’t move as she reached in and got her hands around the piece he’d freed up. Pulling it out, Da’shay put it at Tom’s feet before reclaiming his leash and standing up.

  Becca moved closer. “What is it?” she asked. Tom picked the piece up and flipped it around. Like an egg, it was slightly larger on one end. He held it out toward Becca with the larger end down and the vented end up. With a frown, she ran her fingers along the edged band in the center. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “That’s not making me feel any too good,” Tom said as he studied the thing in his hands. Vents wouldn’t make sense on a bomb and there was no targeting to suggest it was a weapon, but if it came off any sort of engine, Becca should recognize it.

  Da’shay handed Becca the leash and darted down the row away from them. “I—um…” Becca carefully lowered the leash so it hung against Tom’s arm and let it go. “Hopefully she’ll never ask me to touch that again,” she said with a disgusted expression.

  “It’s just metal,” Tom said. Becca crawled around inside engines most of her day, so a little more metal shouldn’t bother her.

  “It’s more what it represents,” Becca said softly. “I mean…” She sighed. “Tom, I know you’re good at the following. When I first joined the Kratos and I saw what sorts of plans the captain came up with, I had good cause to doubt his sanity. Actually, I had good cause to doubt either one of you was sane because you followed without even batting an eye, but maybe now I can see that Ramsay has a point with his planning. If you make a plan that’s too bad, other people won’t be guarding against it. I mean, we’ve come through some powerfully stupid plans where I was pretty sure we were all going to end up dead.”

  “You got a point in there?” Tom asked. He shifted the thing in his arms as it started feeling heavy. Either that or his muscles were worn out from the lifting. He was also starting to feel overly cool as the gentle breeze dried his sweat.

  “The point is that I know you’re a good follower, but, Tom,” she leaned close, “there are some things that are just true of genta. They’re into their hierarchies. For them, it’s really important who obeys who, and crews that have a genta are usually trained not to go making the genta think that they’ll obey him or her. It makes things confusing.”

  “If you’re trying to say somethin
g, you’d best say it plain,” Tom said, frustration rolling up through him.

  “If you go following Da’shay too much, she’s not going to let you go. She’ll assume you’re hers, that you’ll follow her over the captain. That’s not a good place for either of you to go.”

  “Oh.” Tom closed his mouth, not sure what else to say. Six years he’d followed Ramsay and he’d never questioned that. Of course, Ramsay had never questioned his sanity or his aim in the last six years, and now… Tom wasn’t sure that Da’shay was wrong.

  Something had shifted between him and Ramsay and Tom wasn’t sure it could shift back. After all, the man knew him better than anyone else and even he’d said that Tom wasn’t one to forgive. The attempted murder didn’t take any forgiving; the captain was protecting the ship and still trying to see that Tom got treated fair. But the way the captain kept looking at him with pity—that wasn’t easy to swallow. It occurred to Tom that the last person to look at him with pity like that had been his ma.

  “Might not be an unreasonable assumption for her to make,” Tom said with a shrug. Becca’s mouth nearly fell open, and about two seconds later, it occurred to Tom that as an officer, she had a duty to report to Command that Tom had openly suggested he wouldn’t follow his Commanding officer’s orders. Fuck. He really was an idiot.

  “Found Becca her priority divider,” Da’shay sang out. She came over with a black canister with a half dozen valves sticking out from it. She tossed it at Becca and Becca stumbled back as she caught it. “Found myself my Tom,” she said, coming over to claim his leash with one hand and the cylinder with the other.

  “I suppose we should pay.” Becca fingered the valves on her priority divider and chewed on her upper lip.

  “Suppose we should,” Tom agreed, all too aware of how uncomfortable he suddenly felt.

  “Yep,” Da’shay agreed, but her cylinder had vanished, and she was staring up at the sky and walking on her tip toes as she used Tom’s leash to keep her balance.

  Chapter Twenty-One