Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  Worst part was that Tom was feeling this damn need to believe Da’shay on day three of his slavery. He thought of himself as a strong man, had some good evidence for that, in fact. There weren’t two men in the whole universe who had a chance of winning a street fight with him and he’d never lost a fight where he wasn’t outnumbered three to one. When he’d discovered at fifteen that the trick to a fight was to not be afraid of the pain, it was like discovering The Holy Grail. He had a real talent at ignoring pain, and that let him focus on inflicting more pain than his opponent could handle. Ever since he’d made that discovery, he’d thought of himself as strong.

  Now though, he felt a need to reevaluate that conclusion. Three days in and he was already trying to explain away feeling sorry for the woman who owned him. About the only way he was ever going to be okay with this was if Ramsay heard her talk and came to the same conclusions…either that or if they were out of slaver space and the collar was off him so he could think clear. Right now, he could feel twin pulls—one to try to keep Da’shay happy and the other to poke her until she had no choice but to hit him. He didn’t figure either one was particular healthy.

  “Diamond floating through dark waters, sparkling without light,” Da’shay said. Tom rolled his eyes. Clearly they were going back to the crazy.

  “Diamond ain’t likely to float,” he pointed out. “It’s a rock.”

  “A mineral. A rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids, classified into igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic and incendite.”

  “Ain’t no reason in the world for you to be knowing that,” Tom pointed out. He sat up and pushed his chain leash to the side. “Ain’t any reason for the leash, either.”

  She looked over at him. “Totally and completely fucking crazy people watch, wondering if they didn’t taste enough. Have to give them a reason why I would claim you, pay your fines.”

  Tom looked around. He was security, so he knew full well what was and was not possible in terms of watching a person. The wind had pushed sand halfway up the wind break and it still made a rustling sound against the tarps, almost like rain. “No one’s listening out here. Sand would bugger up their equipment. Satellites are expensive and you still can’t really tell shit. Oh you can tell where a car is driving or if someone’s built some big honking weapon, but spying on a person from space is science fiction.”

  She lay down on her side and looked at him, and he wished for about the millionth time that he was better at reading people. “Can’t stay out here. Have to go back and then they’ll watch. Have to be like the people who dress up and say things they don’t mean.”

  “Actors,” Tom offered while still thinking about how much he didn’t like what she was saying. “And I ain’t good at acting. If you want me to act like a fucking slave, I’m going to lose my temper and break someone’s neck. Now I know that sometimes the captain says things he don’t actually mean, like when he told Becca that he was going to have her scrub the hull with a toothbrush next time that wild paint of hers showed up in the galley. But I ain’t kidding. Someone looks at me like…” Tom stopped. If someone looked at him as if he were powerless, as if he were some victim who couldn’t protect himself, as if he were some stupid bastard who’d gotten himself into a mess… He sighed. “I’d break more than one neck,” Tom finished.

  She got up and walked over and stroked a hand over Tom’s shoulder. She still hadn’t given him a shirt, and he shivered as her warm finger traced a pattern against his skin. It felt good, too good, just having a woman touch him. Her hand trailed over his skin until she reached the chain hanging from the front of his collar. Picking it up, she backed away, the leash sliding through her hand. Tom watched her, suspicious. She hadn’t done much to him so far except chain him, but she owned him, so she could do anything that came into her mind. That worried him since her mind wasn’t exactly steady or predictable.

  She was near the end of the chain before she closed her fist around it and started wrapping it around her hand as she moved closer and closer. Tom tensed up, not sure what to do. Fighting was about the first thing that came to mind, but that was just all kinds of stupid.

  “Hands on your knees,” she ordered him. Tom’s hands were at his sides, and he fisted the sheet, pulling it away from the plastic pad below. Da’shay stopped and looked at him. Despite the fact that his whole body ached with a need to do something, Tom slowly moved his hands to his knees and dug his fingers into his own flesh. Lots of times he dreamed about some woman taking control, and now he was having trouble figuring out if his body really was warming up to the idea of Da’shay or if his fantasies were getting tangled up with reality. Da’shay went back to wrapping his leash around her hand until her hand was under his chin and he was looking up at her as she stood between his legs.

  He wanted to reach up and put his hands on her hips. They weren’t the familiar round hips he always sought in a woman, but she was a woman. She smelled like one, and now, as she pressed close, his cock was getting all sorts of interested. It didn’t hurt that she had the sort of strength to keep on fighting, even after taking so much damage. Most people took one really good hit, and they didn’t get up again. Those people had thought to end Da’shay, and she still fought back. She’d played her game well enough that they never did figure out that the Kratos was full of spies. There was something about a woman who didn’t give up that appealed to him, but he couldn’t sort out which of his feelings was real. Seemed as though he should be carrying more hate for a woman who’d had him marked as a slave.

  “Ain’t liking this,” he said because he was liking it a little too much. Maybe there was something wrong with him because he couldn’t imagine Ramsay getting his feelings tangled up this fast.

  Da’shay pulled the leash a little tighter and Tom was forced so close that the fabric of her shirt brushed past his lips. He swallowed and tried really hard to ignore all his feelings—both the ones that wanted to touch her and the ones that wanted to punch her so hard that she’d feel it for a week.

  With her free hand, she brushed hair back out of his face. Tom hadn’t realized he was sweating until her fingers slid over the damp skin. “Not going to do more than touch.”

  Tom snorted. That wasn’t worrying him one way or another. She could beat the shit out of him or push him down and ride him, but none of that was as worrisome as the feelings that were getting all tangled up in his head.

  “Show them that I need you.”

  “That’s not far of a stretch. You just about got arrested for punching some random idiot,” Tom pointed out. Focusing on Da’shay’s faults was a lot more comfortable than trying to sort through his own feelings.

  “Can’t focus. Swimming through water, deviation of light from its original path so that all objects are distorted, moved, larger than reality,” she whispered. She closed her eyes, and even as bad as Tom was at reading people, Da’shay in particular, he could see just how tired she was.

  “With diamonds in the water?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m guessing diamonds ain’t diamonds then, but you’ll have to give me a lot more to go on if you want me to figure that part out.” He waited for her to go into more of her cryptic descriptions or maybe to draw another lop sided star chart. She fingered his hair, twirling short locks as she stared at nothing.

  “Refraction dependent on angle of light. Keep moving, but can never see true shapes.”

  Tom waited for some sort of explanation, but when she finally looked down into his face, he didn’t understand anything except that she needed something and he didn’t know how to help.

  She sighed and kept playing with his hair. “Need someone to tell people to go away before I break their necks.”

  That made him laugh. She cocked her head to the side and frowned. “I’m more the type to do the breaking than to keep people from it,” Tom explained.

  She pulled her one hand away while still fisting his leash. “Never broke stepfather’s nec
k.”

  Tom jerked back so violently that he could feel the steel collar dig into his skin as he pushed Da’shay away, his hands against her stomach. She didn’t let go, though. Instead, she fell on top of him as he struggled to get away. The weight surprised Tom and he collapsed back onto the inflated sleeping pad with her on top. He froze.

  “Get off.” He spoke each word carefully, ignoring the way her weight rested on his cock.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Just talking breaking necks,” she said with a hurt expression as if he’d just insulted her. He gritted his teeth, and kept his eyes focused on the wall of the tent.

  She slid off him so that now she was lying beside him, her arm resting on his chest, and her hand still fisting his leash. He could feel the slight pressure of the collar around his bruised neck as she held tight.

  “Lesser man would have killed stepfather,” Da’shay said softly. “Anger like rust. An anode yielding electrons, absorbing oxygen to make iron oxide to crumble under your fingers. But your iron resists corrosion.”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about my stepfather,” Tom said darkly. “You want to talk on anything else or give me some fucking order, fine, but you stop discussing my family or we’re going to have that fight you were asking about yesterday. Got it?”

  She didn’t answer and he looked over to find her studying him. His skin crawled as he wondered how far this was going to go. Sometimes he’d won the fight with his stepfather by intentionally getting the old man worked up and just taking some god-awful licking. That would let in just enough guilt to get something done if he really wanted it. Part of him wanted to do that. But Da’shay was too strong, and as much as her mind seemed to be constantly slipping away, Tom figured she’d kill him sooner or later if he made this a regular feature of their relationship. However, if she really pushed things, he was very willing to go down that road again. Bruises healed. Guilt tended to stick around a little longer, so some things were just worth a good bruising.

  Her head was tilted to the side and it looked as if she wasn’t even breathing. “No discussing family,” she finally agreed in a quiet voice. She unwound his leash from her hand and practically crawled over him to get off his sleeping pad.

  Tom blew out a relieved breath. “You hold to that and I’ll play actor,” he told her. “I ain’t sure I can do it too well, but I’ll do my best.”

  She looked at him for a minute. “Sit up.”

  With a sigh, Tom sat on the edge of the bed and didn’t react when she caught his leash just under the collar again. “Hands,” she said and Tom forced himself to take a deep breath as he put them back on his knees.

  “So, if you want to play slave owner and slave, you have to do something for me,” he said.

  “Am doing something. More words excised from the brain,” she pointed out.

  Tom frowned, not sure he understood that.

  “No discussing short men with inferior genetic lines and poor parenting paradigms,” she tried again. It still took Tom a second to understand she’d taken him literally and wasn’t going to use the word stepfather. He couldn’t help but smile. For gentas, calling someone genetically inferior was about the worst insult they could come up with. Considering how Kevan Teppe’s genetic sons had come out—weak, back-stabbing little weasels—Da’shay might even be right.

  Tom shook his head. “Deal is that you don’t talk about genetically inferior men in return for me not starting a fight we both know I’ll lose and you’ll feel guilty about.”

  She frowned. “Guilt would be illogical when—” She stopped in the middle of her sentence and cocked her head to the side as she stared at Tom as if she was waiting for him to say something. Crazy genta.

  “Look, princess,” Tom said slowly, “I can play at being whatever kind of slave you want. I can’t promise I’ll be any good, but I will promise to try if you give me one thing.” She started running her fingers through his hair and gave him the sort of look his ma sometimes had on her face when she looked through old photographs of Tom’s father. He wasn’t the sort of man who others touched often much less looked at with fondness. Sometimes Ramsay would give him a slap on the arm or he’d hire a doxy, but it’d been a long time since he’d really been comfortable with just touching.

  “Deals. Give and take. The exchange of services.”

  “I play at being good and we go find Ramsay.”

  She kept running her fingers through his hair and Tom wanted to grab her and shake her until she said yes, but that wasn’t going to work for any number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact she was simply stronger. Eventually, she stopped stroking his hair and bent down to push a corner of the blanket aside to expose the hard-packed sand below. Sliding down to the ground, she started tracing, her finger making little valleys and mountains in the sand as a shape started to appear. It was a top view down of the Kratos. The quantum string engine took up over half the space and the living quarters were small squares tucked into the hulls. Three enlisted crew quarters, one of which was Tom’s, two officer quarters and two VIP quarters that were the same size as the captain’s quarters. Da’shay had set up in one of the VIP rooms and no one had bothered to tell her to clear out.

  “That’s the Kratos,” Tom said when it looked as if Da’shay might start drawing out the furniture if he didn’t stop her.

  She looked up at him and gave him a smile that seemed way too bright when all Tom had done was recognize his own ship.

  “Need representational proxies. Wait here.” She jumped up, ducked under the axle and ran out the open side of their little shelter. Tom sighed and scratched his slave mark as he looked at her sketch. He never expected to miss a ship so much, but there was a part of him that wanted to start running and keep going until he got to the Kratos or someone shot him in the back. He just might have tried it, only he’d seen what happened to slaves that ran. If he slipped away from Da’shay, which probably wouldn’t be too hard, he’d be prey to any bounty hunter looking to collect on a runaway slave. Nope, it was better to try to talk Da’shay around to his point of view.

  Da’shay hurried back into the room and threw herself down on the ground next to Tom. Reaching out, she put a pebble in the middle of the engine room and looked at him. Tom looked back, waiting for her to say something. She frowned at him and Tom could feel his stomach souring. He needed coffee and food before dealing with this shit.

  “Becca!” Da’shay said sharply.

  “We’re back to that? It ain’t like the names of crew are missing out your brain,” Tom complained, but when she put another rock down, this time in what would be Tom’s quarters, he rolled his eyes and said, “I figure that’s me.” She put down a pebble for Ramsay in the pilot’s station and one in the other enlisted room for Eli. Then she put a much larger pebble in the corridor just inside the main hatch. “So, that would be you.”

  Her head whipped around. “No.”

  Tom really did not understand the shocked expression on her face. “Where are you then?”

  She frowned at him for a second and then reached out to put a second pebble in the irregular square that represented Tom’s quarters. He snorted. “Trust me. Place ain’t big enough for me most days and I’ve had a whole lot of time to reflect on that lately.”

  She frowned again and picked up the pebble that meant her and moved it to the VIP quarters she’d claimed. The last politician they’d ferried around had spent the whole trip complaining about his quarters, but they were nice. Each one was more than three times larger than Tom’s quarters, meaning it had a full sized bed, a narrow desk and a half-circle table with enough floor space that a full-grown man could do sit-ups on the ground if he felt in the mood. After a second, Da’shay took the pebble from Tom’s quarters and moved it into the VIP quarters with her pebble.

  Tom sighed. “Princess, you are about as subtle as a dog with explosive diarrhea.” Rooms were something they’d have to fight about later. “So, who’s on the Kratos?”

&
nbsp; “No one.” She tilted her head in confusion.

  Closing his eyes, Tom counted to ten to keep himself from cursing her out or storming away. Her hand brushed past his knee right before she gave his collar a little tug. When he opened his eyes, she was looking up at him with her hand wrapped around his leash. Trying to control his urge to punch someone, Tom pointed at the pebble just inside the Kratos’ hull. “Who’s on the Kratos? Who is that?”

  “It’s a pebble.” She blinked at him and Tom was really pretty much sure that he was going to punch her, whether she owned him or not. “Only improbable futures and representational proxies. At last check, Kratos was safely docked and captain had hatches secure.” She looked at him with huge, dark eyes.

  Tom bit his tongue and took several deep breaths. “Listen, pea brain, that is the Kratos and you’ve named every other rock on your diagram, so unless you’ve changed your mind in the last two minutes, that pebble is supposed to represent someone.”

  She looked at him and then her own diagram, staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. With a finger, she poked the rock in the corridor as if it were a snake about to bite her. “Unnamed personnel without authorization from captain to be on board.” She plucked it up and moved it to the engine room on the far side from where Becca’s pebble was.

  “So someone’s wandering around the ship?” She called her diagram an improbable future and he could see why. There weren’t no one good enough to trick the Kratos computers into opening for them.

  Tom might be an idiot in some matters, but when it came to security, he knew his business. He’d cut off and eat his own fingers before letting a stranger get access to the engine room and all that equipment. One false reading and a quantum string engine would lose whatever fancy equations it used to pull a ship from one spot to another and they’d be left sitting in the dark between stars. Depending on just where that happened, it could take months or even years for the push engines to get them back onto a known route, and even then, the push engines caused time distortions that would make life complicated.