by Jody Wallace
“And a person and a cat helped me escape,” he said. “People beat technology every time.” He believed it in the world of dance, and he believed it in the world at large. No technology could replace what humans thought, did, and created. No technology could replace art or friendship or…love.
“I don’t know about that.” She flicked a dial, and a signal bar registered on the small screen. With a grin, she regarded him from the corner of her eye. “Your friend Casada is trying to jam us, but Trash Planet tech is about to outsmart the person.”
Wil freed one of his hands from her lovely hair and squeezed her shoulder. “Only because you’re the one using it.”
“You flatter me.” She stood, the wire that connected her comm to the sweeper bot pulling taut.
“Yeah,” Wil agreed. He didn’t know what to do with her long, curly hair, so he kept a loose hold on it because he liked the feeling it gave him. “Is it working?”
“Depends on your goal.” She spoke into the mouthpiece. “Scrapper. You there? It’s Mama Junk.”
She had a child? Well, she was more than old enough. Humans could live up to three or four hundred years with megadoses of nanobots, though two-fifty was more common. He was one-twenty-five, and he’d guess she was around the same age. Not youngsters anymore.
“Where are you?” said a gravelly male voice. Her son sounded adult. Maybe she was older than he guessed. “Shit is hitting the fan out here.”
“Did the union come?” Su asked. “They’d better have. We paid our dues.”
“Garza said you was dead, blown up in the explosion. He weren’t no help.” The man coughed into the mouthpiece, and Su waited patiently for him to finish. “There’s some rich gringo from Gizem Station who says you aided and abetted an escaped fugitive.”
“I don’t know about this abetting a felon stuff.” Su looked at Wil as if deciding whether he was a felon. Technically, he was. And a swindler. He blamed Pumpkin. “Would I do something like that?”
Scrapper laughed. “Garza also said you got a spotter. And that you cheated at pikka to get first look. Thought we didn’t do spotters after you gave it up?”
“It’s a semi-long story I don’t have time to tell. We’re in a meeting room in the mountain. Standard signal’s jammed. We need a way out.”
“We, huh? So you do have a spotter. Or a felon,” Scrapper guessed. Wil could vaguely hear more voices in the background, as if other people were clamoring to talk. Did Su have lots of kids? She did seem like an accomplished caretaker, what with nursing him through cryo lag and all, but if having kids meant she had a life partner, he didn’t want to think about why that disappointed him. “Will we like him?”
Su looked back at the tiny screen on the comm. “It’s temporary and he’s in trouble.”
Her answer, too, disappointed him. He hadn’t decided what he and Pumpkin would do next, but the money-making opportunities on Trash Planet wouldn’t meet the cat’s criteria. Not that he was indentured to Pumpkin. But if he didn’t assist the cat, the cat would find someone else, someone who might exploit him. Pumpkin wasn’t infallible, and Wil had grown to feel responsible for the little fucker.
“So what’s the status?” Su asked.
“The gringo’s got a roundabout at both entrances, won’t even let the tunnelers in to clean up the mess,” Scrapper explained. As they talked, Pumpkin trotted up to the sweeper and leapt on top of it as lightly as a feather. He batted at the wire connecting Su’s comm to the machine. “Traffic’s being rerouted through the overpass. Why’s it matter if you’re dead, I kept saying. I knew Garza was wrong.”
“Garza didn’t care about him blocking the tunnel?” Su tried to dodge Pumpkin and talk to her son at the same time. “Some bigwig from Gizem Station ordering people around on our planet?”
Sometimes the cat behaved…like a cat, instead of a rational being. Wil motioned at him to knock it off. Su was trying to save their asses, and the cat was about to disconnect them from the cavalry.
“Told you shit was hitting the fan,” Scrapper said. “We ain’t let that gringo realize we know you, and the tunnelers are too mad to tell him, either. Frankly I think Garza’s in it with him. Don’t make no sense he’d pull back the union militia.”
“That man would abandon his own baby for five DICs and a jug of alky.” Su lifted a hand to her head, realized Wil was still holding her hair, and sent him a strange look. He let it go, and her hair fell around her face, hiding it from him. “Is the factory safe?”
“No sign of trouble. Started a perimeter, though,” Scrapper said. “Told you we shoulda switched to Hazer Union when they asked.”
“Hazer Union. As if I would ever,” she responded. “This is where the factory is, and you can’t just up and move a factory.”
“We can get a new one. A better one. Like if a hailer crushed this one. It happens.”
“That close to Hazmat District, nothing’s better,” Su grumbled. “You know why I don’t go there.”
“I keep hoping you’ll grow out of that,” Scrapper said. A funny thing for a son to tell his mother. “So I think we can slip you out through the bristler den, if you can get there. It’s closest to the overpass and we can clear out the bristlers. I was afraid we were gonna hafta break in the back door to see if you was still breathing.” At the end of his proposition, Scrapper’s voice choked up a little. “Glad you’re right and tight.”
“Glad you are, too,” Su said with obvious affection.
“I hate to interrupt,” Pumpkin said, “but the cretins are close to our position. Our six, I believe it’s called.”
Su and Wil both glared at him. Pumpkin blinked. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” Su snapped.
“Who’s that, the felon?” Scrapper asked. “Is it a girl?”
“If I’m not there in sixty, I’m dead. Gotta go.” Su clicked off the comm and yanked the wires loose. “Where are they?”
“One floor down. They’re doing a sweep. There are four left after the incident.” Pumpkin licked a paw with the claws extended.
“Do I want to know?” Wil asked. If the cat had graduated to murder, Wil was definitely going to rethink their alliance. Unless he got to pick the targets. At this point, he wouldn’t mind if Pumpkin managed to off Casada and this Garza fellow who’d betrayed Su.
“You do not. It was exceptionally bloody.” Pumpkin hopped off the sweeper and galloped toward the meeting room. “They’re coming from both directions. Make haste while your pitiful excuse for a sun shines.”
“I want to know,” Su said, jogging after the cat. “Was it the bristlers? What did you do? There’s no way you did what you’re trying to make us believe you did. You’re barely even the size of my butt.”
Pumpkin didn’t answer. They grabbed the satchels and hurried after Pumpkin whose hairy tush disappeared into a natural crevice with metal flooring.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Su muttered under her breath as they jogged. “It’s a good fucking thing you woke up when you did.”
“Do you know where we’re going?” Now that Wil was clothed, shod, and rested, he wouldn’t be a drag on Su. Though he was hungry.
“Mostly.” Su raised her voice to be heard over the slam of their boots against the corrugated metal floor. “But it’s for sure higher up, so we go up.”
“And they’ll be downstage from us the whole way.” Wil and Pumpkin had done a fair bit of avoidance in their adventures. He’d picked up a few tricks. “They’ll be listening ahead, using drones. Thinking they’ve cleared what’s behind. I bet they activated that tunnel sweeper.”
They reached a ladder and she grabbed a rung, swerving herself to a stop. “And we just let them know right where the sweeper ran into us.” She smacked her forehead. “Genius. I’m a genius. Well, it was worth it to get a message out. We’ll just have to be faster.”
It could still be worth it. “What if we sneak below them?”
She stared at him with arched eyebrows. “Clever. I like it. Better to chase than be chased.
Hey, Pumpkin, did you hear that? Going down.”
“He’ll find us later.” Wil had learned that if he couldn’t actually see the cat, the cat was probably nowhere nearby.
She shook her head in disgust. “Some teammate he is. We could use him as a lookout.”
Su peered down the dark ladder shaft. Wil did remember many ladder tubes and zigzags yesterday. His dance training and nanobots had almost rinsed the exhaustion and soreness from him, so he was ready.
“Pumpkin said they were close, not that they were here. We can use the ladder,” Wil guessed. Sweepers had various climbing attachments, and drones flew. They hadn’t spotted any drones yet. “I’ll go first. They’re less likely to kill me on sight because they think I control the cat.”
“Fair,” Su said, waving him onto the ladder. She showed him how to hold onto the side with protective gloves and where to put his feet so he could descend faster. With their satchels strapped close, they zipped down through the murky channel, not stopping until they passed two levels.
Wil thrust himself off the ladder and hit metal flooring, bending at the knees to absorb the shock. Then he shifted aside for Su. When she dismounted, he caught her in his arms like he had so many fellow dancers in his time.
He did not, however, flip her overhead and twirl her, since they hadn’t practiced that move and she likely wouldn’t appreciate it.
Su blinked up at him in surprise as he lowered her to the ground. Their bodies rubbed from chest to knees, and even through their mutual coveralls, he enjoyed himself more than he should.
“Catching women is part of my job,” he explained. “Force of habit.”
“I can catch myself.” But she was still pressed against him. Leaning against him. A smile flirted with a dimple right beside her mouth. The scar didn’t stretch that far down, and her lips remained perfectly shaped. “I have a bionic leg and stuff.”
She was looking below his eyes at his mouth, and that would be enough for now. He hadn’t romanced anyone since Pumpkin had entered his life, but Pumpkin hadn’t talked to other humans, either. Perhaps Pumpkin had given Su his stamp of approval.
“I expected you four levels up by now, you big oafs,” Pumpkin said at their feet. “Stop mooning. Neither of you is in season.”
Su patted Wil’s chest twice and squatted down, eye to eye with the cat. “If you would stick with us, you could prevent these things you dislike from happening.”
“I thought you were smarter than this.” The cat hunched in on himself, raised his hind leg, and licked his belly.
“It’s called doubling back,” Wil explained, enjoying the sight of Pumpkin nonplussed by Su. Nothing Wil did phased the cat.
“We don’t have time for grooming, either.” Su straightened. “Would you like to be carried?”
Pumpkin rolled to his feet and swatted at her boot. “I would like you to back away from the ladder or they will hear the echo of your stupid voices.”
“And yours,” Wil said.
“Mine doesn’t echo. Like a duck.”
“Don’t lie. Physics are physics,” Su chided. But she walked quickly and quietly down the wide maintenance corridor away from the ladder. Large pipes ran the length of the ceiling along both sides. “We need to be on the other end of the tunnel. I know where we are. We’ll catch the runway.”
Pumpkin scampered after her as if angry that his first swat at her boot hadn’t landed. He reached her, swiped again, and dashed on ahead.
“What’s his deal?” she asked when Wil caught up. “He can’t hurt me through these coveralls.”
“Never stops him from trying.” Humans had instincts that were difficult to overcome after all these billions of years. A cat that was presumably closer to its own evolution, whatever had caused it, might have even more trouble with instincts. “Your son sounded pretty worried about you. You think we can reach this bristler den in an hour?”
“I don’t have a son,” Su said, stepping up the pace. “You are so weird. And yes, we can get there, because we’re going to take the runway.”
Wil jogged after her. “Who’s Mama Junk?”
“Me,” she said.
“And Scrapper?”
“My employee, but that’s all the family I need.” The tunnel widened more, not as wide as the highway but substantial. He soon realized why. A moving walkway with a rusty railing cruised along one side. “Excellent. I was hoping it would be turned on. Watch your step.”
Lots of underground cities and space stations had moving walkways, but her caution on his behalf was considerate. He followed her onto it, and they were propelled along at a faster pace than expected. He balanced on the balls of his feet, shifting his weight forward. He didn’t trust that railing, and Su wasn’t using it, either.
Pumpkin, of course, was nowhere to be seen.
“This is how the staff cruises back and forth,” she said, voice raised. “Goes almost as fast as the truck. My poor truck.”
The wind blew her hair into a frightful, delightful cloud. His own short hair whipped around, and the cold sliced into the skin of his face. He lifted his hands to his cheeks and remained balanced behind her, just in case she slipped.
“Pay you back,” he promised. He’d never purchased a vehicle, but he had a lot of money and Pumpkin had several times that.
“Damn straight you will.” She flashed him a grin over her shoulder. “Almost there. Hit it at a run.”
They vaulted off the end of the railing and stumbled to a halt, Su laughing aloud. “And guess what? If the runway’s operational, so is the lift. No more climbing. I should have tried this in the first place, but it seemed too obvious.”
They rounded a corner into a large room that housed heavy construction equipment with huge bay doors blocking one end. In front of the industrial lift were Casada, Pumpkin, and one of Casada’s goons, who had a rifle pointed straight at them.
Chapter 7
She should have known. It was indeed too obvious.
“Meow,” Pumpkin said. As if he were a completely standard-issue cat running around loose inside a mountain on Trash Planet. Because that was normal. He wasn’t close enough for the Gizem jackhole or his flunkie to grab, but it did surprise Su that he was letting himself be seen.
“Thank you for bringing me the cat.” Casada was a pale man, grey haired, short statured, with a tight, plastic face much younger looking than it should be. Richie rich nanobot addict. “Now you need to die.”
Wil jumped in front of her and spread his arms like his presence was some kind of EE-proof shielding. “She’s not a part of this.”
“I don’t really care,” Casada said with a sneer in his voice.
Was the cat going to do his thing and convince the bad guys to shoot themselves? Pumpkin was currently lounging in front of a scoop truck as if preparing to take a nap.
So no.
Good thing pickers were always ready for an ambush.
“Wil, get out of the way.” Su shook the arm of her coveralls, and the zapper she’d stashed in the hidden pocket fell into her hand. Wil being all growly and protective meant she could take aim without their opponents noticing what she was doing.
The goon lifted his rifle. But she was quicker.
Pzzzzzzzzzzzzt!
The stun bolt sprang from the zapper and caught him right in his fat head. Yes! He convulsed, dropping the blaster, his choked warble even louder than Casada’s curse.
Casada lurched toward the blaster, and she shot him, too. He fell to the ground, quivering.
“You couldn’t whip that out earlier?” Wil fussed. “With the bristlebacks?”
“Didn’t have it then. I swiped it from the supply closet with the coveralls.” Pumpkin flipped his tail as if annoyed by the delay. Wil walked over and picked him up. They all three paused at Casada’s side. “Do you want to kill him?”
“I’m not a murderer,” Wil said. Casada’s mouth opened and closed, but only gurgles emerged. The zapper would immobilize him and his bully for about t
en minutes. They weren’t allowed on waste freighters, either, but they were a convenient, non-deadly defense on a planet where unions agreed not to murder each other and SPA strictly enforced the laws against killing bristlebacks.
“You might not be a murderer, but I am,” she lied, letting a slow smile spread across her face. Casada’s eyes widened in horror. He would be staring at her scar, her wild hair, the blood stains on her coveralls from Wil’s outpatient surgery, and believing any threat she cared to make. “It kinda gets me hot.”
Wil cleared his throat. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“How about yes?” She toed Casada roughly with her boot. Okay, she kicked him, right in the ribs. “That’s for my truck.”
Casada thrashed, but it wouldn’t do him any good. Trash Planet bristleback zappers were hardcore.
“No,” Wil decided. Did he believe she would murder the helpless men or was he playacting, too? She hoped it was the second. “We’re going now, Casada. I’m leaving you with your life. We’re taking my money and ditching this planet forever, headed for the other side of the Rim. You’ll never find me again. You know I already deactivated the homing chip.”
“GGgggkkkk,” Casada growled. Or maybe it was kkkkggghhh?
“Leave. Me. Alone. You owe me your life. Even a Gizem Station scum lord like yourself knows what that means.”
Su could tell by the expression on Casada’s face that he did know what it meant. And that he didn’t give a drakh. Those beady eyes gleamed with vengeance and lust for power.
Wil spun on his heel to walk away, but then paused. “I’m also going to comm Zev and tell him you’re plotting to overthrow him,” Wil added. “How you were so stupid you thought a cat could help. Maybe you should head for the other side of the Rim, too.”
Then he marched straight to the industrial lift and punched the button.
Su fingered the zapper. If she shot Casada two more times, it would stroke him out more than his nanobots could handle. Then Wil would be safe, and so would she.
But then she would have murdered a helpless person. A waste of cells, but a person. Not an industrial accident, not a mistake, not carelessness. Just murder. This would be a good time for Pumpkin to push her into doing one thing or the other, because she couldn’t decide. But the cat remained quiet and her urges remained her own.