Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  “So, I’m thinking we know who had us blown up the first time,” Ramsay said.

  “Fucking genta.”

  Ramsay didn’t disagree. However, there wasn’t much time to gloat. The lights were set high up in the wall, about as high as a second story window would be, but he might be able to reach them. If he could pull one down, he might get access to wiring, maybe even cause a short. From this side, the door looked pretty damn primitive—something that might be locked with a big old bolt on the other side, but most people preferred more sophisticated locks. A short might make the lock disengage. The odds weren’t good, but it was better than doing nothing.

  The rock walls were fairly smooth, and Tom felt along them, searching for finger and toe holds that would allow him to climb up to where the lights were embedded.

  “You know, genta always have a logic in what they do—a twisted and alien logic, but some sort of logic. After all, what we know as genta are really half human, and humans are very into self preservation. Maybe he thought we were a threat.” Ramsay mused.

  “We were,” Tom pointed out. Setting his toe against a small rock, he tried to lift himself up, but the wall was just too smooth, and his foot slipped off. “Damn it.” Tom slapped the rock. He looked over and Ramsay was looking at him oddly. “What?”

  Ramsay held up his hands. “Nothing.” Reaching down, he patted his pockets and clothing. “They stripped my weapons. You?”

  “The same,” Tom lied. He figured the wire in his belt and his smallest knife were probably still in place, but he wasn’t going to check for them when they might have any number of people spying.

  “Well, shit. Next time I have an idea this stupid, feel free to give me a kick in the ass.”

  “Pretty much all your plans sound stupid,” Tom pointed out. He’d have a hard time kicking his own captain in the ass every time they made planetfall, and it did seem as if Ramsay got at least one stupid plan per planet.

  Ramsay snorted. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”

  “It’s not like I don’t follow,” Tom said, feeling defensive. The captain had made the comment about his plan being stupid, so he shouldn’t mind Tom agreeing. But from the expression, Ramsay didn’t appreciate it.

  “Well, hopefully this time you haven’t followed me to our graves.” Ramsay rubbed his hand across his face before he pushed himself up onto his feet. He wobbled a bit. “I really am too damn old for this.” Ramsay stretched out the arm where he’d had the shoulder replaced.

  “I hope he blew himself right out the window.” Yeah, genta were tough as hell, but not even a big genta like that was going to survive a forty story drop onto rock. Better yet, he could impale himself on some damn spire and then die real slow. Tom wouldn’t mind that at all.

  “Doubt it. Anything that just knocked us around wouldn’t do more than tickle him. He probably blew up his pretty office, though,” Ramsay mused with a bit of sadistic satisfaction.

  Tom snorted and kept trying to scale the walls without much success, but failing was better than giving up. His fingertips were sore by the time a clanking made Tom whirl around, his fists raised for fighting. It took Tom a second to look from the metal cover still rocking back and forth on the ground up to the vent at the top of their prison.

  Two hands were grabbing the sides of a hole that didn’t look big enough for a cat to fit through, but as Tom watched, Da’shay slowly appeared. She seemed to be inching her way through a pipe not even big enough for her shoulders. She was all hunched up in ways Tom wasn’t sure a human could survive.

  “Da’shay,” Ramsay called. Tom flinched. Hopefully no one was spying on them, but then again, even if someone was watching, they couldn’t be blamed for Da’shay’s actions. Genta only took orders in the most general sense of the word. They’d take jobs as Corps pilots and then decide to fly from Alpha to Gamma by taking a detour through Omega sector. You sure as hell could never tell them how to do something. One thing Tom knew for damn sure—if Eli told Da’shay to get them out, Eli never would have suggested that Da’shay shove herself in a sixteen inch pipe.

  “Like birthing, only I was never birthed,” Da’shay said as she wiggled harder. She got a little more of herself out and then she could brace her hands awkwardly on the ceiling. “Little mice in the maze, chewing away limestone.”

  “Where’s Eli?” Ramsay asked.

  She stopped and cocked her head, a gesture that looked strange since she was hanging upside down out of the ceiling, her shoulders still in the pipe and her arms bent into angles that made Tom think of a spider. “Caught in an authoritative direction or instruction. A mandate, almost but not quite a formal disposition, although Eli Antelli is very formal.” With that, she started wiggling again. Tom gritted his teeth and wished he could shake an answer out of her, but he didn’t think the captain would be too amused by that. Instead he moved closer to the center of the room. It was a three story drop, and while taking a three story dive head first probably wouldn’t kill Da’shay, it sure as hell might disable her. The last thing they needed was a third crew member sitting helpless in this room, so he’d do his best to keep that from happening.

  “Too small,” she complained once and then she was falling. Tom caught her, stumbling back as her weight hit him. She might not be big or even particularly heavy, but falling from three stories had given her some serious damn momentum.

  She leaped out of his arms and grinned at both of them. “Hear your whispers echoing through mice tunnels.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” Ramsay encouraged her. “How about we find a way out of here before Hou’s men come back?”

  She tipped her head. “Cat’s cradle on the fingers, over and under and all the yarn tangled.” She turned toward Tom, her dark eyes staring right at him.

  “Da’shay, we need to get out of here, now,” Ramsay said, ignoring the crazy.

  She pointed up toward the ceiling. A strip of cloth hung down from the dark opening, but that was three stories up.

  “I ain’t fitting through there, not unless you break every bone in my body, and probably not even then,” Tom pointed out.

  “The bag,” Da’shay walked over and put a hand on Tom’s arm, and he had to work hard to not shake it off. “Teeth for chewing new mice tunnels.”

  Tom studied the hole, and sure enough, that was the strap of some bag hanging from the hole. She’d probably pulled something behind her, dragging it through the pipe with her toe. “You couldn’t bring the fucking thing down here with you?” Tom demanded, annoyed that rescue was so close, but still unreachable. Three stories up was too damn far for any of them to reach.

  “Tom.” Ramsay’s voice was dark with warning.

  “I’ll go flying,” Da’shay promised. She held her hands out for Tom, but he backed away and crossed his arms.

  “You ain’t got wings and I’m not going to go getting mixed up with your crazy.”

  “Tom, throw her up there,” Ramsay said wearily and Tom blinked as he realized what Da’shay wanted. He could feel his face getting warm.

  “She shoulda just said that,” Tom complained, but he went into the center of the room and made a cradle out of his hands. Da’shay put her foot into it and rested her hands on his shoulders. “One, two…three.” On three, he flung her up with all his might and she did go flying. She was light enough that she caught the dangling strap. As she fell back to the floor of the cell, a brown duffle came with her.

  “Open sesame.” She reached in and took a highly illegal signal hijacker out of the bag. With a smile, she headed over to the door.

  “Let me,” Tom said as he went to intercept her. He really didn’t need her getting bored in the middle and dropping the thing.

  “Tom, let her,” Ramsay said. Tom froze a step from the door, not sure what to think. This was his job. Yeah, he’d fucked up with the nanotech, but did Ramsay really think he couldn’t run a signal hijacker? Da’shay had stopped too, looking from one of them to the other for several seconds bef
ore she held the machine out to Tom. Without another glance, she went to Ramsay and got so close that he had to look up at her. Ramsay wasn’t a short man, but Da’shay was as tall as Tom, which made her a good six inches taller.

  “Tangled and tangled and tangled and tangled.” She ran fingers through Ramsay’s thick, white hair. Tom had a job and he needed to show Ramsay he could still do it, so he ignored Da’shay and her antics as he ran the signal hijacker slowly across the wood, searching for a signal. Sure enough, the primitive door had a sophisticated lock holding it in place. Sometimes Tom really did love how stupid people could be. A bar would be impossible for a prisoner to move, but people…they always had to make things more complicated than they should be.

  He worked on hijacking the signal, listening with only one ear as Da’shay rambled on about twisting and neural highways. At least Hou made some sense. Not much, but some. Tom could even understand the attack, but Da’shay seemed to have a language that didn’t even make genta sense. “Got it!” Tom said, grabbing the signal and ordering the door’s lock to disengage. The heavy scraping of metal slipping free from stone was going warn any guards in the corridor, so Tom pulled the door open as fast as he could, prepared to have someone charge him. Instead, he was faced with an empty hall.

  “No!” Da’shay called out.

  Tom ignored her. Command might think she was useful as crew, but he sure as hell didn’t. “Captain, let’s go.”

  “Why, Da’shay?” Ramsay asked, stopping to look at Da’shay. “Why is it ‘no’?”

  “Tangled and tangled—”

  “Okay, I get that.” Ramsay reached out and caught her hands. “There’s more involved than Hou. Why shouldn’t we leave?”

  “Captain!” Tom growled. He wasn’t fucking waiting for a guard to show up.

  Da’shay pulled Ramsay to the door, shouldering Tom back out of the way without a word, but Tom wasn’t about to complain about her manners now. “Right, right, right, left, middle, right.” She looked at Ramsay and fisted his shirt. “Right, right, right, left, middle, right,” she repeated in a sing-song.

  He repeated the directions and she smiled so brightly that she looked like a kid at her birthday party, but before Tom could point out that they needed to be getting the hell out, she shoved Ramsay out the door and slammed it shut with Tom and her still in the room.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Tom reached for the door before she could get it locked again, but she pushed his hands away.

  “Looking!” she about screeched. “Looking right and right.”

  “Tom! Da’shay?” Ramsay beat on the door from the outside and Tom threw a punch right at Da’shay’s head. He might not be able to kill her with his bare hands, but he sure as hell could knock her out of the way. She slid to the floor, ducking his punch and kicking him in the shin on her way down.

  “Tom, open this door.” Ramsay yelled.

  “I’m fucking trying!” Bending down as if he only wanted to rub his sore shin, he pulled his small knife out of his boot, trying to hide the motion.

  “Whispers of blood, but listen,” Da’shay was on her feet again. “Chasing and chasing through mice tunnels and they have to find one. They have to find one. Enemy sneak into your castle, you have to find one, to look in his mind for the cat’s cradle.” Da’shay fisted her hands as if she was about to go on the attack and Tom brought his knife up. It wasn’t feeling like a big enough weapon to take on a genta, but he’d go down fighting. She leaned forward, and now only her one foot was holding the door closed, but her one foot was strong enough to withstand all the pounding Ramsay was doing on the other side.

  “Whispers of blood.” She moaned, pulling at her own hair. It was longer now, the curls starting to turn to more of a wave, but she pulled at it until it stuck up every which way. “If you’re the king sitting in his castle and knights small as mice come creeping, what is your first question?”

  Tom took a step back. Threat assessments. She was asking him for a threat assessment. “Collect intel. Determine the enemy’s goals, find out his objectives and then make sure you don’t let him get it. Preferably you blow his head off,” Tom answered. If he had to play nice and answer her questions to get out of this room, he would.

  “Little mice, all scatter. How many do you catch?”

  Tom stopped breathing. He might not be smart when it came to women or even understanding most of the human race, but he knew the answer to that and he didn’t fucking like it. Da’shay seemed to sag, her whole body relaxing as she all but collapsed against the door, her back still holding it closed. “Scattering mice. Run them down,” she whispered. Tom’s guts twisted with fear. Lions chasing deer and security personnel all knew the same thing—if you tried chasing every single one of your prey, you fucking lost them all. Give people two or ten pictures of perps and they’d ignore them. But if you focused on one, there weren’t no way in hell that one infiltrator could get away. You put up one picture on the internal screens, you sent all your trackers after one man, and you were going to get him.

  “Captain, how sure are you that Da’shay’s on our side?” Tom called.

  The pounding stopped. “You want to stop and talk on that now?” Ramsay sounded pissed.

  “She’s saying we have to split up. She’s saying won’t neither of us get out if we don’t take different paths,” he said without mentioning that Da’shay was also telling him Tom had to be the one who got caught.

  Tom tightened his hand around his knife. Ramsay would never end himself; it wasn’t in his nature to know when to give up, but funny enough, not all that long ago, Tom had learned to do exactly that. If he ran slower than Ramsay, made poorer choices, he could lead the pursuit away and then kill himself before giving them any intel. That still left the Kratos stuck at dock, but hopefully Hou wouldn’t be high enough in the power structure to keep her planetside. It was a chance for Ramsay to get out of Capital City.

  “Captain, go. She’s not budging on this and we’re losing time.”

  “Tom!” Ramsay pounded at the door.

  “Just go. You stay out there and she’s going to keep me here. Go! I’ll meet you back at the ship.” Tom watched Da’shay and the relief on her face as muffled footsteps quickly vanished on the other side of the door.

  “Right then, if I’m going down, I’m going to take as many of them with me as I can. It’ll give Ramsay more time to get clear,” Tom said with this weird calm that came over him. “Unless you want to be the first, you’d best get out of my way.” Tom pointed his knife at Da’shay.

  She slowly looked up at him, something hard and feral in her expression. “Want you to kill them all,” she said darkly.

  He frowned at her. He’d never gotten that clear of a sentence out of her before. “Then move, and I’ll do my best to get you that,” Tom said.

  She shook her head. “The knife has to go higher. Cut off the arms and doctors put more on.”

  “Move before I move you,” Tom said. He didn’t have time for this. The city’s construction meant that everyone had to travel mazelike hallways and multiple elevators, but the guards would get here soon enough. He had to be out of this room or they’d cut him down before he could reach even one of them.

  She shook her head. “I want you to cut off the head. So many whispers, but you can ignore the voices.”

  Tom raised his knife. Fuck. She heard voices? Genta were crazy in the old-fashioned sense of the word. What they did never seemed to make much sense to anyone other than themselves, but hearing voices was the sort of thing that got you sent in for some creative redecorating in the brain by fancy docs. He’d never heard of a genta having anything like that. Then again, genta were half human, so maybe the great genetic manipulators had chosen the wrong human donor for Da’shay’s human parent.

  “Not much time, the whispers are already gnawing at me.” Her face twisted in despair and then she stood up so fast that Tom took an involuntary step back.

  “They can see inside your tho
ughts, so think on hate and hate and hate. You can think so clear. Only one thought, always one thought.”

  “You calling me stupid?” Tom demanded. It was one thing for him to know it about himself, but he didn’t rightly appreciate other people calling him that.

  She shook her head. “You see danger in a flick of an eyebrow. Not stupid. Single-minded. Always single-minded. Not like Ramsay. Too many rivers.” She looked at him and her face was full of the sort of clear anger Tom normally only saw on humans. “You have to give them another flavor. Hate and hate and hate. Nothing more than mercenary hate. Mercenary with mercenary hate, no deceit. No calculations.”

  That was terrifyingly close to making sense, only Tom wasn’t sure he wanted to understand her. “You want them to capture me?” he demanded. It wasn’t in his nature to give up like that.

  “Have to. Only with a taste will they think they know the flavor.” She shook her head. “Whispers and whispers.” She caught the sides of her head in her hands, rocking like a migraine had taken her, and Tom rushed her, swinging his fists in one last, desperate attempt to get free. He thought he was going to make it, but at the last second, she jerked herself out of the way of his fist and caught his wrist. Her body was steel, pushing him toward the wall, and Tom struggled to turn himself so he could counterattack. Instead, she was there, pushing him, slamming him into the wall so hard that the breath went out of him. He could lift her so easy, but she was so strong that without leverage, he couldn’t move her.

  She grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the wall. “I promise. Promise I’ll come for you, but they have to trip through your brain. Let the enemy walk past so you can strike at the back.” She rested her forehead against Tom’s spine and he could feel himself start to shiver. He didn’t mind facing death, but she was talking about letting someone go ripping through his brain. She was talking about laying down while they scanned his brain and picked out all the thoughts. “I’ll come for you. Father promised, but never came back like he promised. I will.”