Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  Lights flashed and swirled, headed straight for him. The lights swooped up like birds over the wreckage of the closest ship before arrowing straight toward the ground.

  Wil backed into the shadows of the cargo bay. Should he should alert the crew? The lights slowed, spinning, raising dust and litter as the individual machines eased into a landing.

  Red glow bars flickered on in the cargo bay, casting enough extra illumination for him to see Su, Scrapper, and several others hit the ground wearing contraptions on their backs that enabled flight. He’d never seen anything like them planetside. On exo-suits, sure, for navigating in the vac, but not in gravity.

  Clanks and thuds accompanied the new arrivals. Wil stepped out of the shadows and raised a hand in greeting.

  “You made it.” Su marched toward him, her face drawn, the pack obviously weighing her down. He knew exhaustion when he saw it. He hurried forward and met her at the bottom of the ramp with every intention of helping her out of the pack.

  Instead she reached up, wrapped her hands around his neck, and drew him down for a kiss.

  Chapter 11

  He was alive.

  She hadn’t known if he and Tama had escaped the barracks during the first hectic surge of the attack. The only substantial hit from a torpedo had been to the area where they would have entered the getaway tunnel. She’d had to assume the worst and focus on protecting her people, her home, and her very livelihood from a rich, lawless asshole who thought he could terrorize people into doing whatever he wanted.

  Needless to say, their home-grown Trash Planet surface-to-air missiles had proven to him that he was sorely mistaken. Composed of the finest flammable chemicals and reclaimed metal sharps, the scrapper missiles, for which her dear Scrapper was named, riddled Casada’s shiny trio of Tomens with holes and other damage. The fucker had probably thought he could fly around, drop a few EEs, and have them quaking in their old, patched up boots.

  Not Trash Planet pickers. No way, no how. They were made of tough, fully recyclable stuff. Even her leg could and would be repurposed after she died. Hells, there was a new union opening up on the other side of the planet that was going to specialize in reclaiming nanobots from human excrement and other waste.

  So when the union militia had made a token effort to chase Casada off the premises before he destroyed the factory that paid such lovely union dues…and when Omar had arrived with his crew…Casada had been driven away, but not before broadcasting his threats to any comm devices that happened to be tuned to the general band.

  Bring him Wil Tango and the cat in one standard day, or he would return with reinforcements to destroy the rest of the factory.

  Su had promptly informed him—with a realistic hitch in her voice—that he’d killed Wil and Pumpkin already. He hadn’t believed her. Said he’d scanned the section in question before launching the EE-torpedo, and it had been empty of life signs. If he’d been smart, he’d have offered a reward for their capture, but instead he’d blustered and run.

  Su had fled with Scrapper’s jetpacks before Garza could question her directly about Wil and the cat and insist she comply “for the good of the union.” Nico, Yat, and Joann would handle that blowhard, and if Garza was lucky, Javier would be too busy tending the wounded to notice their wormy brained union president was causing trouble. Omar was on the scene, too, and, as the former president—much more beloved than Garza—he was one of the few people who could convince the lowlife to behave himself.

  Su knew how to make friends. Unfortunately, she also knew how to make enemies.

  Like the current union president. Like the casino boss from Gizem Station. Like the person they needed to go see tonight in order to get Wil and Pumpkin safely off planet.

  Was Wil a friend or would this end with him an enemy?

  He kissed like a friend. A good friend. A great friend.

  “Out of the way,” Scrapper said, lugging his jetpack up the ramp. “Time for that later.”

  Su and Wil broke apart, breathing heavy, and she slipped her hands to his cheeks. “Seen the cat?”

  His gaze on her face, he didn’t so much as blink at her change in topic. “Nope. You?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” There had been a flash of orange a few times, a scamper across the ground, but it could have been a ship rat avoiding the gunfire. Or the shrapnel from an EE-blast. The fucking coward Casada hadn’t even had the courtesy to land and fight them hand to hand.

  “How many wounded?” Wil asked next. The fact that their first concern was the cat, but his second was her crew, impressed her. They trotted into the cargo bay with everyone else.

  “Four gravely wounded. Javier’s broken out the emergency nanobots. He thinks he can save them. That’s…gonna cost us, but worth it. Lots wounded. Nobody dead, when I left.” She offered a grim smile and let him help her out of the heavy jet pack. “Though we haven’t found some folks.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Caught a percussion blast and landed pretty hard on my ass, but it’ll just make me stiff tomorrow,” she said, before giving him a wry look. “I’m not as young as I used to be, either, turns out.”

  They placed the jetpacks in the rack. Scrapper and the others clambered up the stairs into the galley for meds and stims, but Su placed a hand on Wil’s arm to keep him in the cargo bay. “Can we chat? I have a plan.”

  “I do, too. Do you have any brokers on the planet? I’ll need to arrange for DICs to get passage on a Q-ship.”

  “What are you going to barter?” she asked, curious. He didn’t have so much as a pair of boots to his name. Not that she wasn’t happy for him to keep the boots, clothes, and coveralls he was wearing, but still.

  “I’ll be taking out a loan,” he said, lips tighter than they had been. “Against future earnings.”

  “You’re gonna let someone garnish you? You can’t. You’d have to tell them who you are and that ruins everything.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Someone garnishing me besides Pumpkin, you mean?”

  Garnishers weren’t the place you wanted to borrow money if you didn’t have to. If you weren’t absolutely desperate. With no down payment, no collateral, there was no guarantee one of those drainers would work with Wil regardless. His reputation in the dance industry might work in his favor, provided he’d told her the truth about it, but the reward for his capture would be a pull in the opposite direction. If Casada was here himself, though, it stood to reason he hadn’t opened up the search to mercs and bounty hunters yet.

  “I would say, more, that you were garnishing me,” Pumpkin interrupted, strolling toward them from behind the row of jetpacks.

  Su stopped herself from rushing the cat and clutching him to her breast like a lost child. “I am sorry I grabbed you and threw you,” she said, sinking stiffly to her knees. “I was worried about you when all that went down. I assume you’re not hurt?”

  “You meant what you said,” Pumpkin told her. He sat down outside of arm’s reach.

  “Don’t make her grovel,” Wil said with a groan. “Look at what they’ve suffered because of us.”

  She didn’t need Wil’s help to handle Pumpkin. Probably. She shrugged. “I did mean it. We do need to work as a team. Your silence and your game playing are putting my people at risk. You know you can trust me with whatever you’re hiding.” She stared into the depths of his luminous orange eyes. “Don’t you?”

  Su didn’t grovel. Squatting to his level wasn’t groveling. It was equalizing. She didn’t like it when people towered over her, either. Especially not when they spouted mealy-mouthed pronouncements about how family should forgive each other, no matter what.

  Pumpkin’s tail wrapped around his front paws. “Yes.”

  “Then stop this nonsense. Talk to us. Give me the tools I need to help you.”

  “I’m not the only one I have to take into consideration.” He hunkered down. “I have restrictions. But the money is needed. I cannot be finished yet.”

  “You have ot
hers. I get that,” Su said. Pumpkin hadn’t answered whether he meant cats or people, but it didn’t matter. There were lives at stake and he needed money to preserve them. “I have others, too.”

  “I confess, there are more trustworthy humans on this planet than I expected to encounter. That could alter some rulings.”

  She gestured, palms up. “You’ve been hanging out in casinos. You can’t trust gamblers.”

  “It was the easiest way to accrue large sums of money quickly.”

  Wil’s hand landed on her shoulder. Did he mean to help her up or kneel beside her as they did-not-grovel at the feet of the cat? “Ten billion wasn’t enough?” he asked.

  Pumpkin blinked. “So I understand. When last I checked.”

  “Are you buying their way out of servitude?” she guessed. “Were they captured by one of the mining outfits, something like that?” Moons and planetoids like Ydro-Down were populated by miners, trapped there, often enslaved by corporations.

  “I would like to prevent that…but no.” Had he just admitted he was worried about humans? He wouldn’t be protecting cats from servitude with a mining overlord. Unless it was a different type of servitude. The only populations of cats Su had heard of were the Earth’s Conservatory and Raeaa, and they were treasured. It was hardly torture to be a cat on Raeaa…but if you were a sentient cat, it might be torture to be treated like a dumb animal.

  “My crew is going to do everything it can to keep you and Wil safe. I would like to be paid back. The factory can’t completely weather the financial losses, and we have crew members who are gravely injured and a couple who are missing. This is no light decision we’ve made, but you are of consequence to us. We need to be of consequence to you before we move forward.”

  “You are,” Pumpkin admitted. “Wil already was. I acknowledge that you have sacrificed a great deal.”

  Su resisted the urge to hold out her arms. They should seal it with a cuddle, but Pumpkin didn’t seem inclined. Probably still pissed, like any man who got tossed out on his ear for being an ass and was forced to sort of admit his wrongdoing. Su satisfied her need to seal the deal by taking Wil’s hand to stand up.

  Metal clanks interrupted their conversation, and the cargo bay door alert sounded. “Everyone buckle up. We’re about to take off,” announced the pilot over the intercom.

  “I would prefer to know where you are physically, Pumpkin,” she told him. “Part of being on our team. I’d also prefer to know how you can help so we can utilize your skills in the most strategic way. I don’t want to have to worry about you. It saps my energy, considering the consequences of you getting catnapped.”

  “I’m not going to get catnapped,” he said in a surly tone.

  She didn’t want to aggravate him, but her questions were endless. Were his mental powers a psychic ability humans could learn? Was it possible his disappearances were micro-wormholes, in some essence like a Quantum Entanglement Drive? How many others were there like him, and were they planning to take over the universe?

  But she chose the most pertinent question. “Can you do this? Can you be part of a team instead of…whatever you’ve been doing?”

  Pumpkin’s ears swiveled toward her. He stared at her for a long, worrisome moment. She had to remember he wasn’t human and wouldn’t always behave the way she expected. “Yes.”

  She looked at Wil, whose eyebrows were arched practically to his hairline. “Pumpkin, are you feeling all right?” he asked.

  “I’m going find Su’s missing people. That is where I’ll be physically, utilizing my skills in a strategic way.” His eyelids half lowered, an expression Su was coming to recognize as his obnoxious face. “It’s called skipping, incidentally. And I will see you physically after you reach your destination.”

  “Wait, how do you know where we’re going?”

  Before their very eyes, Pumpkin winked out of existence. A tiny blip of bluish light was the only sign that he’d done something out of the ordinary.

  “I guess he can skip when you’re looking at him,” Su said, exchanging a glance with Wil. “What just happened?”

  “You got through to him.” Wil followed her up the stairs. Her knees and butt ached like the devil, or a bristler, had savaged them. “You’re a miracle worker.”

  “Don’t say that until I work this next miracle,” she grumbled. They lashed themselves into passenger seats next to the others as the Moll lifted off and sped through the thin atmosphere.

  The place they were going was worse than any garnisher. Any broker. It was the one place she swore she’d never go even if her life depended on it.

  But it wasn’t her life. It was everyone else’s. Perhaps it would be too late for a few of her crew, and that anguish would ride the pit of her stomach forever.

  This was either going to solve their immediate problem with Wil and Pumpkin—or ruin her life more thoroughly than Pumpkin on a bad day.

  They reached their destination more quickly than Su wanted. Then again, there wasn’t enough time in the universe to prepare herself for what she was about to do.

  The Moll set down with a seesaw and hum. Su’s crew was carefully not watching her, though she’d noticed Scrapper and Tama disappear into the galley halfway through the flight.

  “Leave the weapons here,” was all she told them.

  She rolled up her pants leg. After an exaggerated show of slipping her leg gun out of its slot and placing it under her chair, she inhaled a deep breath, closed her eyes, and whispered a prayer to whatever deities might have a vested interest in Trash Planet.

  They had docked in one of several visitor’s spaces. As they exited through the gangway instead of the cargo hatch, the abrasive scent nearly overpowered her senses.

  It had been so long, but it could never be long enough.

  Wil stuck to her side as they walked along the concrete track toward the tall, sturdy building closest to the landing pads. His gaze darted this way and that as he no doubt tried to assess the situation. He’d be wondering why this looked so different from her factory, from Bunk Port, from the tunnel. Why the structures resembled buildings on regular planets, inside domes, habitable and normalized. Places people actually wanted to live. Why there was no trash as far as the unaltered eye could see.

  The answer was DICs.

  She’d seen no signs of the cat and hoped that his search for her missing people was successful. She brushed a hand against Wil’s arm. “I need you to stay in the rear. Out of the way. This may not go smoothly.”

  “I gathered that.” He didn’t fall back. Drones buzzed overhead, regular patrols that ran throughout the whole district whenever there wasn’t a storm. Casada wouldn’t be able to traipse in here and get away with it—but could she? “Where are we?”

  They reached the entrance and she pointed at the brassy plaque on the wall. Large, secure metal doors were one of the few things that belied the normalcy of the building. That and the lack of identifiable windows. “Hazmat District Visitor’s Center.”

  Wil regarded her with surprise. “Trash Planet gets visitors? Like people on vacation?”

  “Just stay in the back, Wil.” Su stalked up to the inspection camera. “Entrance requested. Sulari Abfall and seven staff members.”

  No drone or scanner emerged. Instead, the doors unsealed, hissing open as if they guarded the vault that held the secrets of the universe. They didn’t, but it was good protection against accidents.

  If you could reach it in time.

  Su took another deep, settling breath, but the chemical bouquet brought back too many memories for it to unclench her teeth. They entered the lobby, which was…not anything like she remembered.

  They’d upgraded. White and grey tile floors, tapestries on the walls, plastene cases with various unusual elements inside, twisting and shining in fluid or vacuums or whatever brought out their luminescence. The reception desk was also new.

  Everything inside this building was a lie. The spotlessness, the grace, the clean lines…th
e safety. Hazmat District was the most dangerous place on all of Trash Planet. No one used the areas that bordered it; they had the eastern shelf of a continent to themselves, extending far into the wastelands to the north and south. Their union was more like a single corporation than a grouping of various factories and independent operators, owing to the nature of hazardous waste.

  The unfamiliar man behind the spotless white counter tapped a comm screen after the front doors sealed behind them. The red tint to the man’s pale skin probably meant he was new and suffering one of the many radiation burns he’d enjoy during his tenure in the Hazmat District. “She’s here.”

  Su assumed her target would make them wait. And wait. If he deigned to see them.

  To her surprise, a familiar clank of footsteps immediately followed the comm. They echoed along the right hallway behind the reception desk, and it sounded like he was in a hurry.

  The man who strode into the lobby was tall, dark, and bearded, like so many on Trash Planet. His steel boots raised his height several centimeters, just in case he wasn’t intimidating enough, and helped counteract the limp. One of his burly shoulders rode higher than the other, and the cut of his expensive purple jacket included a sleeve for the third arm on his left.

  “Susu,” he said, glaring at her. “Why have you come?”

  “Uncle Hoff. You’re looking well.” He wasn’t, actually. He seemed ferocious and a little demonic with his hair and beard grown out, instead of the trim goatee and easy smile she remembered. But he did look vigorous. Healthy. DICs would help with that, with the nanobots required to maintain wellbeing in the Hazmat District’s toxic environments.

  Luckily, hazmat reclamation was also the most lucrative business on Trash Planet, bar none.

  “You’re not.” He gaze landed on her scarred face and skittered away, diverting to her crew. Of course he wouldn’t acknowledge it. That was exactly why she wouldn’t let Javier take it away. “Have you come to tell me you were wrong and beg my forgiveness? I offered you a chance to rejoin the union eight years ago. You rejected it.”