Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  “Divy,” Da’shay said when she reached him. He had to look up at her from his stool and he frowned. If this was the old guy whose profile Da’shay had looked over in the apartment, he’d shriveled up some since having that picture taken.

  He tilted his head to the side and studied her. “You do remind me of someone.”

  “A lost genta-girl wandering through the shadows.”

  The man scratched his shoulder. “Maybe. The girl I knew didn’t really talk much.” He looked at her suspiciously and then turned to Tom. “Can I help you folks buy something?”

  Using slow and precise movements, Da’shay unwrapped Tom’s leash. “Will be capturing a ship. A big ship.” She turned to Tom. “Get weapons.” She returned to looking at the old man. If they were going after a ship, they wanted heavy-duty ordinance for frontal assault…something to punch through metal, and something very accurate, sniper-quality guns most likely. He’d also want some pulse guns for fighting closer in without damaging the ship’s equipment.

  Tom moved around the room, his leash dragging across the metal grating on the floor. Since this planet didn’t have flooding, Tom wasn’t sure he even wanted to know why they had a floor made for draining off liquid. The room probably had all sorts of security measures and a quick-drown system would take care of intruders without damaging most of the weapons. Hopefully the fact that employees were still standing around with their hands on their weapons meant the automatic systems weren’t going to kill them all.

  Ramsay was leaning against the rail watching. “Are you going along with this?” he whispered.

  “Yep,” Tom said easy enough. His girl might not be one for explaining, but she’d found the biggest arms dealer in the area, uncovered a conspiracy, and now she planned to take a big-ass ship. That was the sort of planning he could get behind.

  The old man was watching Da’shay, and she had a friendly look on her face that Tom wasn’t quite understanding. “The girl I knew might not be able to pay for these things and I got out of the business of doing favors a long time ago,” Divy said. “The profits stank and the health benefits were worse.”

  Da’shay tilted her head and brought a hand up to trace the wrinkles across Divy’s forehead. Tom reached for a forty-pound lobber hanging above a selection of blades. The strap held, but then the old man touched his screen and the security lock popped, allowing Tom to pull it down. “Could go back into business of favors,” she said gently.

  Divy openly laughed at that. “Yeah, you’re my Da’shay, but you sure haven’t aged, not even for a genta. Do you still have your ghosts chasing you?”

  “Through the shadows,” Da’shay agreed solemnly.

  He seemed to think about that for a while, scratching with fingers that were so swollen up and bent that Tom wasn’t sure he could use them much at all. A man had to be real old to get arthritis so bad the doctors couldn’t fix it.

  “You know her,” Tom said as he brought the weapon to the counter.

  “A long time ago, I did.” He looked at Da’shay. “Shadows are a bad place to live a life.”

  “Going to blast light into all the darkness.”

  “Hell yes,” Tom agreed. “I figure someone needs a good blowing up.”

  Divy openly studied all of them. “I know she isn’t going to pay. Do any of you have credits?” Tom cringed. They actually did, but Da’shay had rushed them out of Hou’s apartment, so most of them were back in the carryall. He sure didn’t have enough in his pocket to cover what Da’shay had told him to pick out.

  Da’shay smiled and caught Kada by the wrist. He yelped. “His credit will work.”

  Tom returned to picking out weapons while Divy looked at Kada with suspicion. “We’ll see. Put your hand here,” Divy held out the screen and Tom pulled down three of the best sniper rifles he could find. Divy chuckled. “Well, what do you know? Your master will cover the purchases. Master Hou doesn’t usually do business in this part of town.” Divy sounded surprised. “Da’shay, you seem to understand the concept of money a little better this time around.”

  Ramsay cleared his throat. “What do you know about Da’shay?”

  Divy studied the captain for a minute, as if he was trying to decide whether to trust him. “About ninety years ago, I found her. She’d been tortured something terrible and she had raw flesh still clutched in her hands where she’d ripped it right off someone. She always did know how to make an impression on a man.”

  “Ninety years ago?” Tom looked at Da’shay, searching for some sign that she was ninety years old. Older actually. She’d been grown ninety years ago.

  “I was twenty-three, a navigational officer on a generational ship hired to try to cross the void, and still idealistic enough to think I’d save the lady in distress. It turned out the other way around and she vanished after getting us clear of the worst danger. I always did wonder if you had gone off on some idiotic suicide mission.” He shook his head at Da’shay.

  Da’shay looked sad. “Too much darkness in the light. A cat climbing into a hole to heal before ants chew her to bits.”

  “Yeah, I had hoped it was something like that,” he said sadly before he turned to Ramsay. “I named her Da’shay. She had this weird collar that had some sort of audio file, but it would only play the first two sounds, ‘da’ and ‘sh’. That was before slavery got to be popular around here and I see that now she’s taken up with being on the other end of the leash.” Divy looked toward Kada and Tom. Kada dropped his gaze to the floor, but Tom put the three sniper rifles down and met the man’s gaze.

  Tom bristled. “We both got in a spot and had to play at going along, but if you think she’s—”

  Divy held his hands up. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I’ve been here so long that I can tell you the names of the men who carved this city and I can tell you this. I don’t want in on Da’shay’s kind of trouble again. I’m too fucking old. When I hit a hundred and ten, I figured I didn’t have to worry about this sort of crap anymore. So, do you have what you need?”

  “Nope.” Tom turned back to the shelves, collecting ammunition and weapons of all sizes. Ramsay was frowning at him, but Tom felt like a cow in the grain bin and he wasn’t giving up a chance to get some top-of-the-line weaponry on Hou’s credits.

  He brought the last load to the counter and Divy recorded their purchase. “You’re planning to have fun blowing something up, aren’t you?”

  “Hope so,” Tom said.

  “Too much thinking in human colors,” Da’shay said.

  Divy gave a fond look that made Tom uncomfortable. “Well, you never were one for conventional plans, that’s for sure.”

  “What sort of plans is she known for?” Ramsay asked.

  “The sort that save ships and lives.” Divy paused. “The sort that lead a man to grow all sorts of gray hair. If you’re interested, it seems like certain people have had access to a whole lot of wet-tech lately.”

  “Why would you think we’d be interested in that?” Ramsay asked.

  Divy looked amused as he shook his head. “She’s still finding her white knights to fight next to her.” He chuckled. “And I knew because the audio file she was wearing like a collar was wet-tech. She always had a fondess for it. I made my first fortune trading stuff she taught me how to use when it was the two of us and a ship full of sleeping colonists against some pretty bad shit. You can always tell it from the way the metal colors blend together so that at first glance it looks like it’s made out of one material that’s gotten wet. It used to be marauders and pirates traded the stuff, but the last few years, something shifted.”

  “New trails wandering through leaves. Tried to come back, but all the colors and the darkness made the path hard to follow,” Da’shay said, her voice sad.

  “Well, if anyone can find a new path, you can,” Divy said. He turned to Tom. “Thirty thousand souls were on that generational ship and the only one we lost was Da’shay. That’s not a bad plan. Not a good one, but not bad.”
He looked off to the side, his gaze lost in some memory.

  Da’shay reached out and touched Divy’s hand. “Indigo reflections. Can take up doing favors again.”

  Tom swallowed as he realized Da’shay was asking Divy to come along. He wasn’t sure how he felt about having to share Da’shay with someone she’d known before and he really wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact he was jealous of someone already mostly in the grave.

  Divy’s eyes were bright, but he shook his head and took a deep breath. “No, that’s a younger man’s game. Besides, with all the profits off this sale, I plan to take a nice long vacation somewhere with low gravity and warm water. I get the feeling it might be healthy to be somewhere else for a while and I’ve learned to put staying alive ahead of riding to a damsel’s rescue.” Tom tried hard not to show just how relieved he was at that. He wouldn’t have made a fuss over Divy coming, but he sure wouldn’t have been happy.

  Da’shay nodded. “Genetic sampler?”

  “I got one if that’s what you need.”

  Da’shay nodded.

  Divy held both his hands up toward Ramsay to show they were empty and he meant no harm before he got off his stool and moved stiffly to a spot behind the counter. He had to brace himself to bend down and get back up, but he handed Da’shay the wicked looking needle.

  Taking the cap off, she drove the needle into her arm so hard that Tom cringed and Ramsay made a sympathetic hiss of pain. She triggered the collection and waited while it clicked away. When the light switched from pink to yellow, she pulled it out and capped it again. “For payment,” she said, carefully handing the sample to Kada. He clutched it tightly.

  She ran her fingers over the weapons Tom had chosen. “Divy will get Kada back to Hou. Make an offer to purchase. Make it clear Kada is most logical, found little mice trails and ant trails hidden so carefully. Hou should value. Divy can do that favor.” She smiled at Divy.

  Divy shook his head. “When have I ever said ‘no’ to you? I’ll get your boy home.” Divy limped around the end of the counter and Kada inched toward the old man, casting worried looks at Da’shay as if he wasn’t sure he was doing the right thing.

  Divy waved a hand at one of his employees, a small woman who reminded Tom of a mouse. She had quick eyes that never stopped and a small body that he could imagine led to a lot of people underestimating her. She seemed the dangerous sort. “Zabeth, take them to the wet docks.”

  “Divy,” she said, protesting.

  He laughed. “Trust me, they’re not going to come back around again. You’ll still have exclusive use of that tunnel for your thieving, but if Da’shay wants to find wet-tech, then we help her find it or I blast the cover on that tunnel and expose it to the whole world.” Divy’s voice got hard and Zabeth pressed her lips together and stared at the ground. She wasn’t happy, but Tom guessed she wouldn’t risk going against Divy. Whoever he was, he had power. At least until he died, which wasn’t all that far off. “A whole lot of people owed me favors when the ships landed and they cut me a dock that leads out into a low valley. I ran traders through it for a long time before I moved into this place, and lately, we’ve had some old friends running ships through there.

  “Ants through the leaf litter,” Da’shay whispered.

  “Are you talking about these mysterious new aliens of hers?” Tom asked.

  Divy nodded. “Yep. The same ones that tried shooting us out of space all those years ago. They seem a little more likely to talk than shoot these days, but I can’t say I like knowing they’re down there. I considered blowing the dock, but then where would Zabeth steal her toys?”

  “You seen them?” Ramsay asked, his voice sharp.

  “Yeah. I’ve seen more of them than I care to remember. They’ve pretty much taken over the old docks. The mouth of the place opens into a rock slot that makes a perfect launch ramp. I suppose they’re doing a lot of planetary travel they don’t want showing up on anyone’s paperwork. At least, that’s how I used the dock. Zabeth will take you through the tunnels.” Divy put a hand on Kada’s shoulder and leaned heavily on him. “Let’s get you home and impress your master.”

  Tom started draping the weapons over his shoulder, leaving one sniper rifle on the counter as the weapon he’d carry in hand. He kept looking at Da’shay, searching for some sign that she was as old as this withered old man who leaned heavily on Kada to get up the stairs.

  “Divy,” she said softly.

  He looked over and smiled at her. “I’m glad to see you again.” He turned to Tom. “You take care of our girl. I never did a very good job of that and she can’t take care of herself when she’s too busy lost in that darkness of hers or when she’s off saving everyone else.” With that, he started for a door behind the counter, pulling Kada along with him. Tom tried to imagine what he’d been like at twenty something, a scared kid going to war against some strange aliens with only Da’shay for help.

  “So, seems like you’ve been around a while,” Tom said carefully.

  She shrugged and took the forty-pound lobber in hand as if it were light as a handgun. “Cat in the cavern, healing.”

  Ramsay came over to claim his own share of the weapons. “I am getting plenty of tired of secrets,” he complained in a whisper. “Tom, they’re talking about a ninety-year-old war, about a war with a species that has set up in the middle of Nodar.”

  “Were those the ones that had to taste my hate?” Tom asked as he remembered the odd speech pattern of the one who had touched his face when he’d been blindfolded. Da’shay nodded mutely. “Shit. That means the doctor saw them and most likely others did too.”

  Ramsay rubbed his hand over his face. “The fucking slavers are making alien alliances,” Ramsay concluded. The employees were politely keeping their gazes averted, but Tom figured the rumors would start two seconds after they’d left the room. Tom didn’t say anything, but that might be a reason for Command to want to start a war.

  “Whispers empty as air,” Da’shay said loudly, startling both of them into silence. “Let us find the totally and completely fucking crazy people now.” She smiled and brought the lobber around to firing position. She looked over at Zabeth. “Now.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Tom lay on the ledge and sighted down his sniper rifle. Whatever had been on the hologram of that egg-shaped thing, a whole bunch of them were walking around down in the cavern. The heat was crawling up the stone walls and the cave’s narrow mouth shimmered, so he guessed they were looking at the backside of the hologram that hid the opening to the rock slot Divy talked about. As far as docks went, this was a tiny one with only a single launching bay, but three ships were crowded into it.

  Da’shay sat on Tom’s ass. “I’m thinking Da’shay was being a mite bit optimistic when she said we had four of these guys to deal with. I’ve got forty-one targets,” Tom reported. He didn’t like that Da’shay was so close to the edge of the ledge where Zabeth had led them, but he figured she knew more about what they were doing than any of them.

  “Four diamonds, shining through the dross,” Da’shay answered him.

  “Shit. They look like casslit.” Ramsay pushed himself back from the edge, the succulent-like moss that grew all over the rock staining his shirt green.

  “Careful,” Da’shay said. Tom looked over his shoulder and Da’shay was plucking weird clinging vines of the stuff from Ramsay’s shirt. “Divy saved.” She carefully laid the broken plant back down onto the place where Ramsay had accidentally ripped it from the rock. “Tiny fragments of diamonds all white. They use it to soften the voices. Doesn’t work so good for genta-girl because too much DNA twirls around each other.”

  Zabeth was sticking to the back of the ledge near the tunnel. “She’s right. Those things will hear anyone the second they stick their head out of any tunnel that doesn’t have that stuff. I stay here and use remote hooks to try to capture anything they leave laying around. Divy said it came off a pirate that attacked the generational colony ship he worke
d on when he was young. He calls it cati-moss.”

  “Totally and completely fucking crazy people,” Da’shay whispered.

  “Cati? Are those your crazy people down there?” Ramsay asked.

  “Cati.” Da’shay sounded it out as though she’d never heard the word before. Then again, they’d ripped all sorts of things out of her brain, so who knew how much she could remember.

  “The cati themselves started showing up about five years ago. Before that, marauders used this bay,” Zabeth explained. “Years ago, this was all Divy’s territory. A whole lot of people owed him for saving their lives, and even if the big shots liked to pretend the captain had saved the ship, most of the workers knew the truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “Those guys attacked the ship and Divy saved it.”

  “Trails in the dark. Red and teal streaking through space,” Da’shay said softly. “Kill the new. Rub it out so colors are forgotten,” Da’shay said, her voice sad.

  “Divy and Da’shay saved it,” Tom corrected her.

  “From how Divy tells the story, there were two generational ships and a half dozen of those cati ships. I suppose that would make Da’shay the refugee he talks about. He said she was part cati or deformed cati or something”

  “Part-cati genta girl lost and wandering,” Da’shay said. “Colors streaking so bright she couldn’t figure which way to turn.” Da’shay stroked Tom’s back, her fingers fisting his shirt for a second. Tom had an image of her ninety years ago, a young woman confused by thoughts she couldn’t understand and trying to fight folks who were just plain evil. He had to admit that he admired any woman who could stand that strong. At the same time, his stomach was almost knotted at the thought of her alone, collared and struggling to do right by sleeping folks who never even thanked her. It wasn’t the sort of story that came with a happy ending, especially knowing that she somehow went from saving folks to getting enslaved. This was going to turn out better this time, even if Tom had to blow the whole fucking planet to bits in order to make it happen. He’d die before he let her get lost the way Divy had.