Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  Tom hadn’t really thought about it that much. “Until you opened the door,” he finally said.

  Ramsay’s hand came up and grabbed the edge of the doorframe. With his other hand, he carefully put the handheld on the table. He moved so slow and careful that it was pretty clear he’d rather throw the thing across the room. “Get your head in the game, Tom. We’re out here on our own, and if I can’t trust you to be thinking clear, maybe this is a good place for you to stay.” Ramsay grimaced. “I need you out there, so just…just pull your head out of your ass, soldier.” Turning around, Ramsay stormed out so fast that Tom wondered if he’d said something else wrong.

  The door hatch shut without locking, but he still wasn’t sure if that mean he was off restriction or that the captain was simply too pissed to remember the lock. With a sigh, Tom realized that he had no way of figuring it out either.

  In the field, he understood every move Ramsay made. Let him scratch and Tom could figure out if he was worried or pissed. A mark blinked wrong and Tom knew where to expect an attack to come. He’d walk into a warehouse and one look would tell him exactly where to expect sniper fire to come from. In the field, Tom knew how to keep his team alive. It was just the rest of the time he felt like a total failure. Standing up, Tom grabbed for the handheld and stood looking at it. Mission report now, food later.

  Sitting down again, Tom brought up the mission specs.

  Chapter Nine

  Nodar was a desert world and Capital City was a gathering of spires and towers carved out of solid rock that used to be an enormous mountain of granite, osmium, quartz and chert. One of the lower mountains on the far side of the range still had a long scar down the side where a colony ship had crashed into it. The mountain survived; the ship and its passengers hadn’t.

  The shipyards were several miles west of the town proper, on the desert side of the city, and tents and shacks stood in neat rows. Most had piles of trade goods—olives in huge metal barrels and tall stacks of sheep skins and bags and bags of pistachios, their white shells gleaming in the noon sun where bags had broken open. Mech trucks were dragging the Kratos to the harbor sheds and then later they’d have to drag the Kratos to one of two launching pads. Now that they were down, they weren’t getting back up easily or quickly. It made Tom’s skin crawl.

  “Wow,” Becca said. “Okay, this place is really colorful. And dirty.” Tom had to agree on both fronts. He wondered where the tentmakers got the dyes for their tents. It seemed like a whole lot of fuss for something that didn’t matter, but Tom was out of his quarters and eating an apple Becca had brought him with all the seriousness that his ma used to bring copper marks to the minister on Sundays. Not much else mattered to him.

  “Stay with the ship. Make sure she gets tied down because this place has sandstorms and we don’t need to lose the ship. Literally lose. We’ll all be out there running metal scanners over the dunes if a wind tears her loose from the cables,” Ramsay warned.

  “On it, Captain,” Becca immediately agreed. She took a step back so she was closer to the Kratos as it inched along behind the mech.

  It took Ramsay some time to come up with his next words. “Eli, stay with the ship. Keep it on lockdown.”

  “Sir,” Eli immediately protested, his flicking toward Tom. Tom gave the man a real good shit look. Even if Eli knew there was something going on between Tom and the captain, that didn’t give him a right to assume that Tom wouldn’t have Ramsay’s back.

  “That’s an order. Something happens to that ship and we’re done. We’re just done,” Ramsay warned. Tom didn’t think it would be all that bad. It’d be humiliating to have to hitch a ride back to Corps controlled space, but it wasn’t as if they were meaiai. Those spider-like creatures gave Tom the willies worse than genta ever did. Keep a meaiai away from its ship long enough and the damn thing clicked itself to death.

  Government had killed the first couple of ambassadors before they figured out that the aliens needed something that was on their ship to live. No one knew what they needed, not even now, but they died quick enough if kept away from their ships. Tom figured that the only reason the human race hadn’t gone to all-out war was that the meaiai didn’t actually seem to understand death. They’d keep doing their click-talk to a dead body until it collapsed and turned to dust. Now the casslit had started the biggest war in human history over a ship with a busted nav unit wandering in their space. Tom hated aliens. There weren’t any of them that made a lick of sense.

  Da’shay came wandering over. She’d been peering at the nomadic tents until she’d pretty much gone and creeped them out. Now she was back to make Tom’s life extra uncomfortable. “Your gift returned to component elements. All gone.” She looked at Tom sadly.

  Ramsay snorted. “You’ll have to get her a necklace to replace it.” He started toward the city on the far side of the sea of tents.

  “I ain’t like to ever do that.” Tom followed immediately behind him, his eyes watching the crowd for any sign of someone who was too damn interested or someone who was trying too hard to look not interested at all.

  “A necklace wouldn’t replace lost whispers in the dark, pulling the red through all the night.” Da’shay turned around and started walking backward. Tom didn’t know if she was watching their six or just being weird, but he sure wasn’t going to trust her to notice trouble.

  “Hidden meanings in objects. White wedding dress. Old penny. Stepfather’s gun. Tom’s gift to me.”

  Tom stopped and stared at Da’shay, the hairs on his arms standing up and his skin cold, even in the desert heat. He sure as hell never told her about his stepfather, never told anyone on the Kratos. Either she’d seen his Corps files or she’d researched him. Either one meant that she was doing things she had no right to be doing.

  “Tom?” Ramsay was standing ahead of them, his hand on his weapon.

  “Da’shay ain’t having one of her good days,” Tom said carefully. He wasn’t going to threaten her in front of the captain. Hell, after seeing her cut slavers up into pieces, he didn’t have a lot of illusions about what would happen if he threatened her at all.

  Ramsay walked back toward them. “Oh?”

  Da’shay smiled at them both.

  “Let’s get to the train before we miss it and have to walk the whole way to the city,” Ramsay said before heading back into the crowd. Tom let Ramsay get ahead some before he followed. Unfortunately, Da’shay seemed to be sticking to him.

  “I miss the gift you gave me.” Da’shay reached out and caught his arm. Tom stopped himself right before shaking her off. Even if he did manage to get her away from him, he’d make a scene. Worse, her fingers were tight enough on his arm that he wasn’t sure he could anyway. His ego didn’t need that kind of bruising, so he put up with her pressing close and tried to ignore her firm grip. Tom shoved a slow-moving paper-seller out of his way.

  “Bad manners,” she said in a sing-song.

  “Don’t rightly care,” Tom answered. That earned him a sharp pinch on the inside of his elbow.

  “Ow.” Tom shoved at her, but Da’shay clung to him and smiled. “I ain’t about to put up with you pinching me.” He tried to shove her away again, but she twisted around and somehow he ended up with her pressed against his back, her arms wrapped around his waist and her head resting on his back. He grabbed her wrists and then froze as she tightened her grip just enough to be painful. Shit. She could kill him right now and Tom suddenly understood how little defense he had against this woman.

  “You shouldn’t put up with me pinching you,” she whispered, her body warm against him in ways that made his cock get all kinds of confused.

  “Then you’ll stop?” Tom asked. That seemed entirely too easy.

  “Make me,” she whispered, this time a playful tone in her voice. Her arms tightened a little more and Tom grunted as his guts complained.

  “I ain’t about to start a physical fight with you,” Tom said carefully. “Captain would gut me even if you didn’
t.”

  She sighed. “That’s not how to stop me. Tom needs to listen to what I do.” She let him go and Tom backed off a step.

  They had plenty of people watching them now, but there wasn’t much Tom could do about that. Da’shay did her own thing, and if Ramsay wanted to blame Tom for that, there wasn’t a damn thing Tom could do about that, either.

  “We’re going to go miss the train, pea-brain,” he pointed out. Her arms loosened and Tom yanked himself free and ran for the train platform. It was still some distance away and the train was already settling into the station with a squealing of metal wheels against metal track.

  Tom’s muscles weren’t totally recovered from three days of not eating and the stairs left him shakier than he wanted to admit, especially when Da’shay wasn’t even breathing hard. Ramsay stood at the top, near one of the already-crowded cars, three tickets in hand.

  “You done playing?” he asked.

  “Play ain’t the word,” Tom pointed out, but Da’shay just smiled sweetly at Ramsay and then moved into the train car, studying the people seated along the sides. Since all the benches were full already, Ramsay and Tom took hold of the bars and braced themselves. Da’shay wandered, stopping when she reached a man a long white shirt. He ignored her at first, focusing on his handheld, but Da’shay moved closer and closer.

  Tom chuckled. Da’shay was annoying as hell, but she was fun to watch when she tortured other people. The businessman shifted to the side and a woman with three bags full of fruits and nuts gave him a shit look as he pressed into her.

  “Sorry,” he offered without pretending to be sincere. That was the point where he lost the battle, and Tom could see that clear as day. The man’s squirming had opened a tiny sliver of bench space and Da’shay just about threw herself into it. The man squawked, but it was too late because Da’shay had set up her claim. The old man on Da’shay’s other side chuckled and Da’shay smiled at him.

  “Been a long time since I had a beautiful young woman pressed up to me,” he told her with a wink.

  Da’shay smiled back. “Not so young.” She reached up and ran a finger over the older man’s cheek and her leg just so happened to end up in the businessman’s lap, making him throw his hands up, clearly not sure what he was supposed to do with the crazy woman now half-lying in his lap. However, even the stupidest person on the planet wouldn’t get too confrontational with a genta, so he looked around at the other passengers, silently begging for help. No one offered any. Tom sure as hell didn’t.

  “I was old when you were young,” Da’shay told the old man in a serious voice.

  He looked at her with an amused sort of disbelief. “You’ve held up well, then.”

  “Yep.” Da’shay twisted back around and Tom was almost sure that her heel caught the businessman in the crotch. Either that or the first jerk as the train pulled away from the station pushed his crotch into her heel. No matter how the heel and crotch met, the businessman gave an undignified yelp and decided he had enough. He bolted out of his seat and grabbed one of the hold bars for those who were stuck standing. The train was moving now—the engine pulling them forward with rough jerks as it tried to get momentum going.

  “You’re right about her being in a mood,” Ramsay said softly. “Try to not let her make too big of a scene.”

  Tom looked at Ramsay in horror. What the hell was he supposed to do with her? After going to all the work to get a seat, Da’shay abandoned it and came toward them. However, when a woman tried moving toward it, Da’shay turned around snake-fast and pointed at her. “Mine!” she barked out. The woman froze, and then Da’shay smiled sweetly before reaching out to grab Tom’s hand.

  “Oh no,” Tom said as he held onto the hold bar.

  “Da’shay, maybe you’d like to look out a window,” Ramsay said and Tom could hear the panic in his voice too. Whoever had let Da’shay come along on this mission needed a full psych evaluation and Tom was including Ramsay in that group. However, Tom eventually had to give up or let Da’shay pull his arm off. She tugged him over to the seat and pushed him down before promptly dropping down into his lap and draping an arm over his shoulders.

  “I like red,” she announced grandly. She tilted her head and gave Tom an intense stare, like when his ma had tried so hard to teach him how to read. She’d sit with a bucket of peas for shelling and point to the words on an old primer as she tried to get Tom to read. He remembered that intense expression, only he didn’t see it directed his way much. Da’shay had that look down real good, though. Just like back then, he got the feeling he was missing something important.

  Several people on the car were smiling now and the old man chuckled even louder.

  “You have a handful there, mister. I guess she gets her way.”

  Tom glared. Oddly, the old man chuckled more.

  “Look, the mountain sings,” Da’shay announced loudly, pointing out the window at the enormous towers of rock the train was now speeding toward. Her face relaxed until it looked blissful, and her fingers idly caressed his shoulder. The familiar touch unsettled him a bit so he focused out the window. Arches and spires and stone bridges looked like giant building blocks carefully stacked up to make a children’s toy, but three million people lived in the city carved by lasers out of the mountain that used to stand here. “Singing, calling for people to come see her and slip through her shadows,” Da’shay said, her voice dreamy.

  Well fuck. Da’shay really was having a bad day and they were supposed to be tracking down a smuggler. Tom might have asked what else could go wrong, only he had a real deep-set belief that asking questions like that always brought the bad on faster. So instead of saying anything, Tom just sat and tried to focus on a rivet on the far wall while Da’shay twisted and turned in his lap, looking out first one window and then the other as she rubbed on him. He knew she was a killer, but he’d never known she was so good at torture. If she kept this up for too much longer, Tom was going to whip his cock out and jerk off right in the middle of the damn train. The mission protocol did say to go out of their way not to look like cops after all.

  Da’shay’s smile widened as the city grew closer.

  Chapter Ten

  “Tom, you okay?” Ramsay asked softly as they stood in the deepest shadows of the city and waited for their mark.

  “Now you’re asking?” Tom asked. He’d managed to find a nice, dark corner and Da’shay had bugged off somewhere, so he was actually better now that he didn’t have her rubbing on him. From a distance, the capital looked like a fantasy, but up close, the lower levels were little more than long tunnels bored through the solid rock. True, the tunnels were wider than the Kratos and had vaulted ceilings with long strings of yellow lights, but then the stores pressed so close together at some points that there was only six or seven feet of walking space left in the center and the crowds pushed through. Tom felt as if he were buried alive. After three days in his quarters, he wanted to see sky. In Capital City, only those rich enough to live in the upper levels where the mountain was carved into hundreds of towers had any sort of view.

  “Did seem awkward to ask earlier,” Ramsay said. “I’m thinking that she’s getting stranger.”

  Tom looked at Ramsay.

  “You don’t have to say it,” Ramsay said wearily.

  “Say what?”

  “I told you so. You have it written all over your face, and yes, she is acting a mite bit more strange than usual, but don’t go thinking with your gun, Tom.”

  “Never considered it,” Tom said, not commenting when Ramsay gave him an incredulous look. “I’m just not sure I trust her to not talk ship’s business,” Tom said, his words vague even though he didn’t have any cause to think that anyone was eavesdropping.

  “She never has before, and we’re not the first ship she’s served on.”

  Tom snorted. He’d seen what happened when she served on other ships.

  “There.” Ramsay pointed to a man coming out of a drinking place. Tom shifted so he
could rest his hand on his gun. Messa Tyles…the man who arranged most of the business for Captain Smyth of the Reseda along with a dozen other ships that ran the borders between slaver space and Corps controlled territories. At one point, Tyles had been an impressive man, but now he only had a thin crown of gray hair and a huge gut. He had to be about the same age as Ramsay, maybe even younger, but he hadn’t kept nearly as fit. “If you have to shoot him, take out a leg,” Ramsay said before he strode across the street.

  “Tyles! Messa Tyles!” he called, his voice warm. The captain smiled so that he looked like a friendly old white-haired grandfather greeting a friend. No one even looked twice. Tom slipped along in the shadows, watching as Tyles turned and studied the street with blurry eyes. It took him far too long to spot Ramsay. Tom didn’t mind getting shit-faced drunk, but he never did it unless he had someone there to watch his back. Tom couldn’t find anyone in the shadows watching Tyles’ back.

  Ramsay swung an arm across the man’s back. “Jonathan Ramsay, captain of the Kratos,” Ramsay introduced himself. “You’ve given us a couple of jobs.”

  “Oh.” Tyles seemed to think about that for a few seconds and that gave Ramsay the chance to maneuver him toward an awkward little space created when two shopkeepers built their squared off shops in a stone curve. It was a tight space, maybe twice the size of Tom’s quarters, but it looked like most everyone used the strange little triangle-shaped corner to stack up empty barrels and splintered crates. “You looking for work?”

  “Let’s talk,” Ramsay suggested, guiding Tyles into the narrow gap. That seemed to go a long way toward sobering Tyles up. Without warning, he shoved Ramsay into the wall and turned to run. Tom had his gun out before Tyles got more than two stumbling steps away. The bullet hit Tyles in the back of the knee and he went down in a heap of sprawled limbs and howls of rage.

  “You shot me!” Tyles bellowed as Tom tossed him farther back into the space. In less than ten seconds, Tom had taken Tyles’ main gun and checked him for weapons.