Blowback

by Lyn Gala

  Tom targeted a wire strung between two ships. He hit the connector on the smaller ship. The bullet did nothing but make a couple of cati stop and look around as metal pinged against metal. Actually, several were looking toward the rappel line now. With a curse, Tom hit the tension wire again and this time it broke. The wire went whipping around, the cable slapping the second ship and ground. A couple of workers near it leapt back, but Tom had already moved on. His next shot took out one of the hanging lights and it fell in seemingly slow motion, the sparks arcing out around it like a halo. Then he shot another of the flammable canisters. The workers had pulled out a huge pressurized tank of extinguisher and attached hoses, but now Tom could see the helpless milling start.

  One of the cati started heading toward the crates Ramsay was running behind and Tom targeted just in front of its feet. The bullet hit the stone and ricocheted with a loud crack that made the cati stop. Tom put another bullet in the same spot and then skipped one in front of the cati so close that the creature had to feel the heat of it as it passed.

  The thing finally gave up and panicked like a rational person. It ran for one of the many pile of crates, and Tom targeted the support wires that helped hold the stack steady. Those were human made crates and that meant they were rough and not very well balanced. Traders didn’t get paid for good crates and they used the cheapest things they could get away with. Tom had shot through the third wire when the cati reached the crates and reached out to pull himself to safety. His pull made the whole stack start to wobble. The creature realized its danger and turned to run before the stack could fall on him.

  Taking out another light and a third canister of whatever the flammable stuff was in the canister, Tom covered while Ramsay and Da’shay moved into position near the large ship. They were firing now and Tom could see cati go down, their chests red with blood. Genta would have gotten back up, but these things just lay where they fell and their buddies raced right over them. Actually, a good number were racing around in a panic even without anything exploding in their general vicinity.

  Tom slung several guns over his shoulder and reached out to grab the drop hold on the rappel line. Ignoring the wide, worried look Becca gave him, Tom slid to the ground and started following Da’shay’s path behind the stack of crates. One of the cati was on the ground. It looked weirdly human when it was dead. Unattractive human, but more human than any of the other alien types. The clothing was plain gray that seemed to make their skin look ashy. Then again, that might have just been because the thing was dead. Tom didn’t take time to wonder.

  Ramsay was firing at cati and Tom stopped at the edge of the crates. There was a big gap between the ship and the last bit of cover and Tom didn’t like how the cati were starting to take cover themselves. Several were still running around like children’s toys with a wind up string that hadn’t yet run out and Ramsay was picking those off easy, but fifteen or twenty were forming a decent looking formation behind the wing of one of the other ships. They’d lowered some sort of flap so that Ramsay’s shots pinged off the cover when he tried to target them.

  Da’shay worked at a control panel, so she wouldn’t be much help, but Tom couldn’t get a good angle and he sure couldn’t take out all twenty before they started firing. He could see one of the cati calmly handing out weapons to the others. He could take that one out easy, but it left upward of nineteen armed enemy.

  Well shit. Tom looked around for better cover, but there wasn’t much. Da’shay had told him to create panic rather than killing them, but she’d also said to kill the armed ones. Tom slung his sniper rifle over his shoulder and brought the lobber up to his shoulder. If this didn’t work, they were going to riddle his cover with weapon fire and Tom had no idea if the crates would protect him. At least he had some protection, though. Ramsay was jammed into the space where the ship’s wing and body met, meaning he had very little cover, and Da’shay had none.

  Tom targeted the pressurized extinguisher tank. Those things were reinforced metal, but the lobber’s shell cut right through. Pressurized chemicals sprayed out over a good quarter of the dock, expanding and turning to a white, slimy foam as the tank sailed across the room, the hoses whipping wildly so it looked like a monster from a horror vid. The cati seemed to all freeze and Tom switched to the sniper gun as fast as he could, hitting the one who seemed to be the leader right in the nose. The cati went down without a sound. Now the armed cati started to mill aimlessly, their weapons seemingly forgotten as they wandered away from their cover.

  “Stop trying to kill ‘em. Confuse ‘em,” Tom yelled at Ramsay. The captain stopped and stared at Tom, but Tom raised his sniper rifle and started taking shots at the wires holding up a mobile construction catwalk high overhead.

  “No way in hell I can hit one of those wires,” Ramsay yelled back.

  “Then hit something else, but she said to confuse them,” Tom yelled back. Da’shay was still working in the panel and Tom was starting to wonder how long it took to get a door open and how long these guys would mill like sheep in a slaughterhouse.

  Ramsay didn’t answer, but Tom heard the explosion as something went up on the far side of the room. Ramsay’d found something interesting to shoot at. The catwalk finally groaned and Tom cursed as his next bullet missed its mark. The catwalk was swaying dangerously and the wires were so damn thin that it was like trying to shoot a flea off a mouse. After five tries, he finally hit the next wire and the whole catwalk started tumbling to the ground, the metal screaming as it twisted and fell onto one of the ships. A dozen or so cati took off for the ship and Tom let them go.

  Glancing over, he saw the hatch to the ship open and Da’shay sprang up, her hands catching the cati that appeared in the opening and throwing him out. Then, instead of waiting for backup, she darted into the ship and vanished.

  “Da’shay!” Tom called. Firing shots toward the groups of confused cati, he took off for the ship, crossing the open dock as fast as he could. “Da’shay!” he screamed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Tom got to the ship and took a second to drop the sniper rifles and switch to the pulse guns. Just in case Da’shay had been wrong about them working, he checked his main gun. He turned to head into the ship and a hand caught him. “Tom, you don’t know what’s in there,” Ramsay yelled over the sounds of crashing and screaming metals and fire.

  “I know Da’shay is.” Tom shrugged off Ramsay’s hand and headed into the hatch.

  The second he was inside, he knew he wasn’t on any human ship. The walls were glowing, but it wasn’t the straight lines of inset lighting he’d see on some fancy cruiser. It was like something that glowed was seeping down from the ceilings so the swirled metal was stained with light. A cati body lay sprawled on the floor, cut open from neck to stomach and laying in its own blood. Tom looked first one direction and then another, but there wasn’t a blessed thing to tell him where she went. Picking a direction at random, Tom took off. He made it not more than twelve feet before the curve of the hall had him turned around and the passage split in two.

  A cati with an iridescent shirt rushed at him from the left passage and Tom fired the pulse gun, waiting for a split second to make sure his first opponent actually did go down before he turned to meet the footsteps rushing at him from behind. The wait cost him and the second cati had hands on Tom’s arm before he could bring his weapon around. The fingers that caught his wrist dug into the joint and Tom had a second to wonder why every fucking species had to be stronger than humans, but strength alone didn’t determine who won a fight. Tom drove his boot down on the top of the cati’s foot. The large black eyes got a little larger and it made a whistling sound, but it didn’t let Tom go.

  Tom followed up with a knee to the groin and this time Tom made the pained noise. Either they were armored or they had sex organs that made rock walls envious. Damn. Changing tactics, Tom fired the pulse gun even though it was pointed at the floor because the cati still had his arm. The repercussion from the charge sl
ammed Tom back into the wall and the cati hit the floor with his over-long arms wrapped around his head while he wailed so loud that the sound echoed down the curving passages. Tom fired a second blast and the cati went silent.

  Footsteps echoed and Tom started running the opposite direction. If that cry had been some call for help, he didn’t want to be the center of a big pile of pissed off aliens. The corridor split again and Tom took the right branch again. A cati dropped out of a hole in the ceiling and Tom fired the pulse gun without even breaking stride. The alien fell.

  Some movement out of the corner of his eye made Tom throw himself backward and heat seared past his face a half second before hot air rushed past him. Either he’d just had a near miss or the aliens had just irradiated him and he was slowly dying.

  Tom pulled his second pulse gun and alternated firing them. Charging forward, Tom crashed into four cati. He’d expected a major fight, but once they were all on the ground, the cati seemed more concerned about getting up than getting in any hits. Tom kicked one in the face while pulling on the leg of another that had almost gotten upright. It was a messy, arm-biting, dirty, on-the-ground fight, but weirdly, Tom was the only one actually fighting. Kicking himself free, Tom got clear of the pile and fired his pulse gun. Three cati went down immediately and the last one back-crawled away and Tom let him. It didn’t feel right opening fire on something that was staring at you with huge, confused eyes and trying to escape.

  Tom headed deeper into the ship. The passages twisted and curved around, divided, merged and dead-ended. Openings in the ceiling and near the floor led into rooms that had the same alien dimensions, but they were either empty or had cati cowering in the corner when Tom checked them, so he ended up trotting in endless circles looking for Da’shay or someone else to fight.

  “Tom?” Tom brought the pulse gun up so fast that Becca nearly got blasted into unconsciousness. Tom dropped the barrel of the gun. He wouldn’t feel too guilty about knocking Becca unconscious, but a blast at this range could very well rupture eardrums or damage eyes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tom hurried past her to check the passage beyond her. “There’s aliens still around.”

  She rolled her eyes and hit him in the arm. “You’re as bad as the captain. I can fire a gun and the fighting’s pretty much over. Da’shay has some big important someone cornered in the other end and I’ve been wandering around looking for you. Da’shay says the cati who are left aren’t going to be much for fighting. At least, I think that’s what she said. She’s not all that easy to follow when she gets her metaphors going.”

  “The captain?”

  “He’s with Da’shay, arguing about what to do with the head cati.” Becca turned back toward where she came from and frowned as she saw the forked corridor. “I’ve never said this before in my life, but I think I actually don’t like this ship much.”

  “That makes two of us,” Tom said as he waited for her to make up her mind about which of the two passages she’d come out from. “So, Da’shay’s arguing with Ramsay?”

  Becca shrugged and picked a direction. “Um, the captain’s arguing; Da’shay’s pretty much ignoring him.”

  That sounded closer to the truth. “Eli?”

  “Guarding the hatch. Things seem unnaturally quiet, but the captain wants to take off before all hell breaks loose.”

  “Then why aren’t we?”

  “He can’t find the pilot’s deck and I don’t have any clue how the engine works. This looks familiar.” She stopped in front of a streak of particularly bright light. “Does this look like the bit that’s just inside the hatch?”

  Tom snorted. “I was more worried about shooting people.”

  She sighed as if he was going out of his way to annoy her. “Eli!” she screamed.

  “Trouble?” a voice called from the left.

  “Nope, just lost again,” Becca turned to the left and Eli was there next to an open hatch. He had one of the guns Tom had abandoned pointed out the hatch as he watched for enemy that seemed to have vanished. Tom looked out at the dock. The fallen catwalk was caught on the wing of one ship and white foam was streaked across everything, slowly turning to a slick slime, but there wasn’t any sign of life.

  “Should close that,” Tom said. He didn’t know when these guys would counterattack, but they would.

  “I’d love to. If you can figure out how, let me know,” Eli answered. “The others are that way. At the dead end, go up.”

  Tom took off before Becca could get ahead of him. It rankled. He’d come into the ship first and the others had all managed to find their way to Da’shay first. He was almost hoping to find more cati soldiers because shooting something sounded like a really good plan right now. Actually, after watching Da’shay go charging in without backup and without checking for traps, shooting a part-cati was sounding good. She could have been killed, and considering that the one body he’d found was killed with a knife, it meant she wasn’t even properly armed.

  “This whole level is nothing more than a maze of hallways. You have to go up or down to get to actual rooms. Maybe that makes sense to an alien, but it’s just real confusing for me,” Becca said. “I’m grateful I got through the engineering academy already because if I had to take a test on this tech, I ain’t so sure I would have aced it.”

  They hit the dead end and a series of narrow slots in the wall offered an awkward ladder. Tom was guessing the cati were more flexible than humans because the steps were too wide and there were just too few of them for comfort.

  “Tom, are you okay?” Becca asked.

  “Great,” Tom snapped. “Any better and I’d have to gut someone.” He climbed up into the next level. The round hole opened up into a small room with more irregular dimensions. The side with the hatch in the floor was the narrow part and it opened into a triangle shape before the far end curved into a wall. Da’shay sat on the floor near what looked like another ladder. Her dress was torn and she had a pulse gun sitting in her lap, but she was busy cleaning a knife with the hem of her skirt.

  Tom pulled himself up and started for her. “What kind of fool plan is that? You go rushing in without backup?” Bristling with anger, Tom strode right to her. She stood up, the pulse gun tumbling to the floor, but the knife still in her hand. “You gutted that cati inside the door, which means you didn’t have a gun at the ready. What the fuck were you even thinking?”

  She reached up to touch his cheek and he grabbed her hand, pushing it away. “Oh no. I want to be angry right now, so don’t go trying to pet me like your fucking dog.”

  “Tom,” Ramsay said, but Tom ignored that. This was between him and Da’shay.

  “Not dog. Mate. Toy.” Da’shay gave him a look that made Tom’s cock hard, but he could be pissed and horny at the same time just fine.

  “Either you trust me to have your back or you don’t, but you don’t go rushing off when I’m not even in position to have your back. Not unless you’re wanting to call this over.”

  Da’shay jerked her hand back. “Running water can’t reverse. You’re mine.” She gave Tom another of those fearful looks and Tom could feel a need to forgive her that was nearly as strong as his anger.

  “If I’m yours, then I’m fighting at your side, not wandering around a fucking maze, you got that?” She stared at him and Tom struggled to find the words to explain what he’d never rightly felt for any woman before. “You said you’d defend me over the captain and I feel about the same for you, so when you go charging in somewhere that I can’t defend you, I get so angry I consider gutting you myself.”

  “Confusion and confusion and confusion all adding up until the cati scatter to the corners,” Da’shay said. She reached out for him again. Tom tried to pull back, but Da’shay darted forward, her hand catching him behind the neck and holding him, fingers pressing into his flesh. It seemed wrong for someone so small to have such a strong grip but for all his anger and strength, Tom was caught. She hummed. Maybe that was supposed to calm
him down, but he just had too much anger running through him for calm to find any foothold.

  “So you needed someone confused to just attack random shit?” Tom asked. Tactically that had some advantage. If an enemy seemed unfocused, you didn’t rightly know what to defend. It made perfect sense except for the part where she ran off and damn near got herself killed.

  She nodded. Without warning, she started to smile at him.

  “I ain’t done being mad,” Tom warned.

  “Love you too,” Da’shay said with a huge grin. She looked almost human in that moment, and somehow her undisguised joy took the shine right off his anger.

  With a sigh, Tom jammed his weapon into its holster. “Don’t like being the one to play decoy, not if it means you ain’t got someone at your back. If you need me to do that, fine. But next time you grab the captain by the neck and haul him with you, but you don’t go rushing in without someone at your back. You may be near a hundred—older maybe, who knows. But you ain’t immortal. You don’t leave your back unguarded.”

  She tilted her head at him and her fingers gentled against his neck. “Years and years, I was the actor creeping among the mice, crawling through mice trails in the dark.”

  “Well, you ain’t anymore.” Tom didn’t get most of that, but he could understand how she was alone—different from everyone around her. She’d had secrets she’d kept, not because she wanted to, but because she didn’t have any way to tell them. But her secrets were out now and she wasn’t alone in this. “You go running off on your own again and I’ll…” Tom gritted his teeth as he tried to come up with a threat serious enough to make her understand that he wouldn’t yield on this. “I’ll go thinking some mighty dark thoughts for a very long time, you got that?” he threatened.