Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  “I know nanobots can alter faces, but I guess they couldn’t fake being able to dance.” She frowned. “Are you famous enough for people to recognize you?”

  “You don’t recognize me,” he pointed out. The road began a long, slow incline into the mountains, changing the pitch of the motor. “I’m a teacher now, not a performer.”

  “You not good enough to perform?”

  This time Wil lowered his own chin. “That is both rude and not relevant. I don’t perform any longer by choice.” And he wasn’t getting any younger.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of an ass,” she conceded. “Sorry. I mean, what would I know? I’m a picker. I sort garbage every day and hope I can sell it back to the idiots who tossed it. I can’t dance. I don’t even have two legs.”

  “What…” He inspected her soft grey pants, wrapped around what seemed to be normal calves, tucked into scuffed black boots. “Okay?”

  She smacked the knee of the leg not on the seat. “Robot leg. No, I can’t shoot with it. They made me take the gun out.” She grinned. “And yes, I got it at the same time as the scar on my face you’re so carefully avoiding.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you.” He’d noted the scar, but it was her hair that entrapped him. Her appearance and manner were so different from the people he saw every day that it jolted him like a brand new rhumba. “But I can’t begin to express how grateful I am that you helped me today. Even if the cat made you.”

  “Cat didn’t make me,” she scoffed. “I like…I like new things. I like to crack open boxes and see what’s inside. Even hazmat containers. You’re a fascinating box, Wil Tango. I don’t know if it’s because you’re a richie rich…”

  “I’m not an elite.” The idea of being unlocked and examined by this woman gave him frisky thoughts he’d best avoid in his desperate straits. “I just make my money off them.”

  “Or what,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And I also like to get paid. Any man who can buy a cat and just leave it behind in a cargo ship can afford to pay me DICs out the wazoo.”

  “Right.” She expected a big reward for helping him. In his newfound experience, money couldn’t buy anything but food, shoes, cats…and trouble. But for a picker with limited means, money was crucial. “I will make that happen.”

  “And I will make—”

  Su’s statement was cut off by a massive jolt of the entire vehicle, skidding it off the road and down the steep embankment.

  Chapter 3

  The truck hurtled off the paved road, bouncing from hump to hump so forcefully Su’s head nearly hit the ceiling. Beside her, Wil spread out and braced himself against the dashboard.

  “Fuck a tardipede!” Su exclaimed. Had they been hit by lightning?

  “You okay?” he asked as they neared the bottom. The truck knocked over an outcropping of rock. Luckily the vehicle was reinforced with armor plating for the hailstorms that plagued the planet. “Did we hit a pothole?”

  Nearly at the bottom. Still alive. Interesting that his first sentence was to ask after her wellbeing. The first thing she’d done was curse. “I’m okay, I’m just—”

  Another blast struck the earth beside them, the brilliant whiteness of the EE-cannon as easy to identify as…as a hazmat container on level two.

  Not lightning. Not a pothole.

  Rocks from the explosion splattered the side of the vehicle.

  “What in the void is happening?” Su punched the autopilot, switching it off, and gripped the steering wheel tightly enough to keep herself from smashing into the ceiling. Once the truck careened into the gully, she wrenched the wheel around, pointing the vehicle’s nose in the direction of least resistance. They crunched through the hail accumulation from the last storm, and ice flew in all directions.

  “Someone’s shooting at us.” Wil craned to see out the window. Another blast struck altogether too close to their racing vehicle. “Are pickers this vicious about stealing each other’s stuff?”

  “Vac, no, and we don’t have EE-cannons.”

  The whine of a ship looped overhead, racing past them. Against the cloud cover, Su caught the outline of a shiny Tomen roundabout. A small intraplanetary flyer, except with weapons. Something rich people had.

  Nobody on Trash Planet was rich. At least not rich enough for a Tomen. And the one person who was close to rich wouldn’t try to kill her. Not again.

  “They found you,” she guessed. The truck smashed through an ice bank with no resistance. “Maybe they knew you were in the trash, but how did they follow you outside the ship?”

  “Hells if I know. Somebody told them where to look? Maybe the guard flirting with you.” Wil continued to peer out the windshield as the ship cruised around for another run.

  “Nobody was flirting with me.” The guard trying to get his brother a job had not been flirting. She knew Bart, and she wasn’t a person he’d flirt with. But she couldn’t resist a bit of a poke. “Could the cat have told them?”

  “No, he wouldn’t…here it comes,” Wil said. “How much armor has your truck got?”

  “Not enough to reflect many hits from an EE-cannon.”

  Whoever was flying the Tomen couldn’t have come straight from Gizem Station. Tomen roundabouts weren’t long distance stellarships, which meant a bigger vessel had to be orbiting Trash Planet.

  Which meant more small ships could be anywhere. Stalking Wil. As for how…

  “You’ve got a tracker on you somewhere.” She spun the wheel to avoid another, larger accumulation of hail and crumbled pavement. The truck tires slid but there was nowhere to go. “You were naked when I found you so that means…”

  “Probably internal,” Wil spat. “Fuckfire.”

  He wasn’t dense. That was good. “Reach in the second left leg pocket of the coveralls and pull out the multitool.”

  The ship raced toward them, this time strafing the gully. It couldn’t miss. Obviously the fucker behind the trigger didn’t care if there was collateral damage.

  If they wanted the cat, as Wil claimed, why would they take such a risk? Was it because this had nothing to do with a cat and everything to do with Wil pissing off some casino boss?

  Su waited until the last minute, stamped hard on the accelerator, and pointed the truck uphill.

  The motor groaned as the heavy vehicle ascended the slope. Trash Planet machinery worked, by gum. They rebuilt shit to last here…from the pieces of shit that got dumped here.

  “I got the MUT.” Wil offered her the tool while planting his feet against the opposite door, scooting close to her. “I don’t know what to do with it, so let me take the wheel. I can drive.”

  “The MUT’s not difficult. You just…” Maybe it would be easier if he drove and she scanned. Her multitool was hardly regulation, and she didn’t want him activating the flame thrower on accident. “Right. Agree. Switch spots.”

  Their attacker must not be the best pilot. She’d flown a restored Tomen before, and they were a lot more maneuverable than what was happening in the air. Its rolls were wide and wobbly, or perhaps it was toying with them.

  The minute the truck hit the top of the embankment and leveled out, she punched the autopilot, hoping it could account for their speed without flipping them over. In a few hundred meters, there would be a hefty guardrail between them and the gully, preventing a plunge to their deaths.

  Instead, they might be blasted to their deaths.

  “You ready, Su?” Wil reached a hand behind her and another under her ass. With surprising strength, he dead-lifted her at a super weird angle into his lap while she clung to the wheel.

  The man had muscles. They slipped past each other almost as smoothly as if they’d practiced, and he deactivated the autopilot as he’d seen her do, taking over manual steering.

  “Any forks in the road I should know about?” he said over the roar of the motor. “We’d be better off if we could, I don’t know, dodge.”

  “Or get under cover.” Not much further to the Bristleback R
ange tunnel. Speeders could fit, but a Tomen couldn’t fly into there. Could they reach the tunnel and hide? Hit the maintenance shafts? It would put them outside the protection of the truck—would it be worth it to confuse their pursuers?

  Nothing was worth it if they couldn’t neutralize Wil’s tracker.

  The ship shot at them again, aiming poorly, before veering away from the mountain. The cannon blast struck the cliff, loosening way too many rocks. Pieces of the small avalanche bounced off their racing vehicle.

  “Close call.” Wil drove fast and steady, risking a glance at her as she snapped open the MUT. Combined with her goggles, she should be able to check for incongruous metals inside Wil’s body, the most likely type of tracking device that would function this far from Gizem. She set the requisite calculations and flipped her goggles down over her eyes.

  Shouldn’t be that different than scanning for specific metals in a pile of trash. A tiny cheep indicated the devices had synced. There was that reliable Trash Planet re-manufacturing coming through yet again.

  But she might not have time to find it. The ship returned from nearly smashing into the mountainside and was strafing again.

  “Is that a tunnel?” Wil said over the scream of the approaching ship and the explosions. It was like being in a vac-damn warzone. He swerved again and again, with enough skill that she quit worrying about his driving. The cumbersome truck practically danced through the rain of electrical fire.

  “What else would it be?” One of the blasts clipped the back of the truck somewhere, sending them fishtailing.

  Fishtailing but progressing. Fast, faster, the engines squealing with displeasure. She’d call in all the favors owed to her the minute she could breathe. She didn’t have to die because she’d decided to help a man and his cat.

  Now for the tracker. She stared at Wil through the glowing display, cursed, and flipped the goggles back off her face. “I can’t see your body through the damn coveralls.”

  She’d forgotten about that part. Their protective overlay included fibers that distorted minor scans. Helpful for deflecting radiation but not so great right now.

  “Trying to get me naked again?” Wil joked, speeding up as they hit the straight stretch leading to the tunnel.

  “Innuendoes at a time like this. Really?” Su shoved the MUT into her pocket and scrambled over the seat into the narrow storage area.

  “Force of habit. Hey, did you check my head?”

  “It’s not gonna be in the head. It’s never in the head.” Technically she could wriggle through the slider door into the truck bed, but she hadn’t grabbed anything in the waste management freighter that could be used as a weapon. Batteries or fuel cells, sure, if she could hurl them at the plane, plug the cannon muzzle, and cause a chain reaction, but that shit only happened in the holos.

  But she did store her leg attachment behind the seat whenever she went picking now that the new gun laws were in effect.

  Her hand fell on the tubular shape of a gun barrel right before Wil said, “Oh, fuck.”

  Energy beams hissed. Rocks shattered. The truck swerved, scraping the guardrail.

  “What is it?” Su popped above the tall bench seat, clinging to a headrest. Ahead of them, hovering just above the mouth of the tunnel, was the ship. It swayed back and forth as the pilot fought to maintain position.

  “Turn around?” Wil asked, decelerating. “We can’t get past that.”

  To their right, the gully was too steep to survive, hence the guardrail. To their left was a mountain. And behind them, somewhere, an avalanche covered the road. The rock fall would no doubt be reported and cleared soon, but not soon enough to save them.

  There was only one way out of this. “I’m going to have to shoot them down.”

  She hadn’t killed anyone in a long, long time and wasn’t looking forward to it. But she’d rather kill somebody else than die. She checked the charge level of her custom EE-gun. Yep. She had more than enough juice. She could—

  Wil slammed on the brakes, sending Su and her gun tumbling over the seat. Luckily she wanted to be on the other side of the seat, anyway.

  Luckily the gun’s safety was on.

  “Do not provide them with a stationary target!” she yelled. “What the frick?”

  “Uh, Su?” Wil cleared his throat. “I don’t think they’re gonna shoot.”

  Between them and the tunnel, lounging in the road like a tiny orange speedbump, was the cat.

  She blinked. The tip of the cat’s tail twitched like a human tapping their fingers with impatience. His back was to the truck as if he was protected by a force field and in no danger whatsoever.

  A cat, a helpless little mammal, on the surface of Trash Planet was in all hells of danger, if not from the awful weather then from the bristlebacks and the ship rats and the zards and the tardipedes, not to mention any pickers who saw him.

  “They must have dropped him off,” she said. Though why they would have let him out of their ship once they had him, she had no idea.

  “Nope. He did his popping thing.” Wil inched down the window and yelled at the cat, “Get your butt in here, Pumpkin. Are you trying to get squished?”

  The cat’s ear twitched to match the tail. In a human, a twitch usually signaled anxiety, but something about the animal’s posture belied nervousness.

  “Pull up until we’re right behind him,” Su said, getting inspired. “Then the ship can’t risk firing on us.” Whoever was in charge of the guns on the Tomen was hardly a sharpshooter, but it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra layer of protection.

  Wil obliged, inching the truck forward until they could barely see the cat in front of them. The cat gave no sign that he knew or cared that a huge truck rumbled behind him. Why didn’t he run away? This road was used by more than trucks. The bristlebacks liked it, which was a danger to anyone stranded, and they were very fond of the tunnel.

  Suddenly the cat stood, arched its haunches in a long stretch, and jumped, landing on the nose of the truck cab as lightly as a whisker. Orange eyes peered at them through the safety glass.

  “You got yourselves in a pickle,” said the voice that Wil had claimed was the cat.

  Su glared at Wil. “Stop it. Just grab the cat before it gets hurt and let’s figure something out.”

  “Wil, do not listen to her. I do not wish to be grabbed,” the cat interjected. Bending at an improbable angle, he raised one back leg into the air and began to lick his stomach, where the fur was a lighter, creamier color.

  “You’re making him mad,” Wil told her.

  An electric crackle from the hovering ship interrupted Su’s response. “Wilbur Suggs,” said a man’s voice through the ship’s projection system. “Hand over the cat and you can walk away with your life.”

  That answered one question—Wil’s real name. Her companion glowered, the first less than pleasant expression she’d seen on his face since she’d rescued him from the hazmat container.

  “Have you got a speaker?” he asked her.

  “Oh, uh…” She rummaged in a glove box and pulled out a handheld comm. “Point this at them and it should latch onto their frequency.”

  “How?” The old, boxy equipment seemed to puzzle Wil, so she showed him how to adjust the dial and press the talk button. Once he had it down, he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Hey, Casada. Long time no see. Perved on any interns lately?”

  If the man was surprised Wil had radio hacker tech, he didn’t show it in his voice or words. He just responded through the comm itself instead of the projection system. “I don’t know how you woke from your cryosleep and stowed away on that ship, but I can find you anywhere. There is no escaping my wrath.”

  “A bit melodramatic, isn’t he?” Su observed. While Wil talked, she clicked on the truck’s planetside comm and entered the code that would signal the Bristler Union. It was the code for “under attack from enemy union” since “casino boss guy who thinks this rando’s cat can talk” wasn’t a code they’d pre-established
. It would alert whoever was available in the union militia, one of the best reasons to belong to a union.

  The militia wouldn’t arrive immediately, but as long as they had the cat, their enemy wasn’t going to shoot. She could work with this. First they needed to secure the cat, who had shifted from the fur on his belly to repeatedly licking his paws and rubbing them over his ears.

  “What do you mean, how did I stow away?” Wil argued. “You stuffed me in a hazmat crate and threw me in the trash.”

  “I most certainly did not,” the man, Casada, retorted. His accent spoke of lots of money and lots of getting his way, all round in the vowels and snotty. “I intended to oversee your…experience myself.”

  “My murder,” Wil said. “You can say the word, Casada. Murrrrrrder.”

  The ship wobbled in the air. “If you’d like to avoid a fate worse than death, hand over the cat.”

  “Tell him nah,” the cat said.

  Wil glared briefly at the cat and made a rude gesture. But he spoke into the mouthpiece. “Nah.”

  The ship hissed as it lowered to the ground, the landing awkward. Casada was a crap pilot. It blocked most of the road to the tunnel, but the Tomen had a narrow nose. Could they squeeze past?

  “I’ll be taking the cat now,” Casada pronounced.

  Pumpkin tiptoed along the hood and batted at the side until Wil rolled the window all the way down. The cat slunk in, and the side hatch of the ship opened.

  Several swank-suited men marched out, large guns balanced in hands that looked distressingly experienced at shooting. Their posture spoke of battle training, and their square heads and squinty eyes spoke of people Su would rather not fight. None of those goons were the original shooter, or she and Wil would be carbon.

  Their presence and their mobility, however, changed the balance for the worse.

  “Wil. How did you avoid them taking the cat in the first place?” She flicked the safety off her gun and rolled down her window. “Can we do the same thing?”