Blowback (15 page)

“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
?”

“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.

Reaching down, Tom got the pebble that was him and moved it
from Da’shay’s room to the door of the engine room. “He may have gotten in, but
he didn’t get in without me knowing about it,” Tom said firmly. She smiled.

“He offers to leave the ship he entered without
authorization. He expresses regret at attracting unwanted attention.” She
picked up her intruder pebble and went to move him out of the crude sand
drawing.

“Ah, hell no. He was in the engine room of the ship. He
ain’t getting off the ship until I find out what he’s done.”

Da’shay looked up at him, her lower lip caught between her
teeth as if she was expecting something, but Tom sure didn’t know what. With a
sigh, she put the pebble back down right next to Tom’s pebble. “Rules dictate
intruders must be put off,” she said, but the way she said it—all slow and
unsure—made Tom think that maybe she wasn’t agreeing with that particular rule.

“Don’t really care what Command wants,” Tom said firmly. “If
someone’s that interested in the
Kratos
, I want to know why. I ain’t
going to turn them loose without that answer and I don’t think the captain
would either.

Da’shay shifted around so that she was leaning against his
leg, one of her hands still holding his leash while she used the other one to
trace triangles on his pants. “Need a definition for the new rule.”

“A definition?”

She nodded.

Tom leaned back on his low sleeping pad and looked at
Da’shay sitting on the ground. He wasn’t good with words and she wanted him to
define a rule. In general,
genta
liked precision with words, so he tried
to think carefully. “If someone is in the ship and has had access to doing
things that could harm us, I want some time to ask them some real specific
questions about why they’re there.”

“What if the unauthorized person says he wanted to observe
the mechanics of a quantum engine?”

“That’s the stupidest excuse I ever heard. I ain’t buying
that.”

“What if the unauthorized person is ten and has a brain full
of quantum numbers, always thinking like Becca?”

“A kid sneaked on the
Kratos
?” Tom didn’t believe
that. If they ever found a kid smart enough to crack Tom’s security codes,
Command was going to recruit him to be some sort of genius. However, if it did
happen that way, Tom wouldn’t be too quick to shoot the kid in the knee…not the
way he would with some thief he found in the same place. “If he really was a
stupid kid getting too curious, I’d let the captain deal with it.”

“What if the unauthorized person had an audiotap and
handheld all full of pirate files?”

Tom snorted. “Locals handle stupid petty shit like signal
boosting. I’d put handcuffs on him and toss him out the hatch.”

“What if unauthorized person looked at you with undilated
pupils and a steady heart rate and said they wanted nothing and had just
accidentally arrived there?” She pointed at the engine room.

“No fucking way. I ain’t going to let that answer stand
because it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Define that rule,” she said.

“Well…I reckon if someone is poking around, I want some time
to ask them some real specific questions about why and I’m not letting them go
until I get answers that make sense to me.” He thought about that for a second.
“That or until someone from Command figures out that I’m off the rulebook and
sends me direct orders.”

Da’shay pushed herself up from the ground and sat on the
sleeping pad next to him, her hand resting on his knee alongside Tom’s own
hand. “A good rule should be followed. Never stop watching people who poke
around until you can determine the why of their poking.”

Narrowing his eyes, Tom tried to figure out why they were
having this conversation. As much as he liked knowing that someone on the ship
understood that sometimes a person had to go beyond Command’s rulebook, this
wasn’t really the place for a long discussion. He wasn’t even sure why they
were out here at all.

“Deals. Give and take. The exchange of services.” She was so
close that he could feel her warm breath against his skin. “I want you to play
at being an obedient slave—be an…actor.”

“You’ll take us to Ramsay, then?”

Da’shay looked down at her diagram and Tom wondered if her
mind had just jumped to a new topic. Leaning down, she carefully picked up each
pebble and held them out for him. Tom opened his hand, and she placed each rock
in the center his palm. Then she reached down and rubbed her drawing out. In
its place, she drew a giant circle. Reaching over, she took a pebble from him.

“Ramsay,” she said, putting the pebble inside the circle
about a quarter of the way down from the top. She took each pebble from his
palm, named it and put it in the same spot until she had a pile inside her
circle and Tom only had the larger stone that had been the unauthorized
intruder.

“We need him?” Tom asked. Da’shay shook her head and he
tossed the stone to the side and wiped his hand on his pants.

From out of her pocket, she pulled another rock. “Totally
and completely fucking crazy people,” she said and then she counted out four
rocks and made a separate pile in the circle, close to the one where she’d put
the
Kratos
’ crew. Her hand tightened around his leash until her knuckles
turned white and she turned to look at him. “What’s the rule?”

“Well, fuck. Either you’re making more sense or I’m turning
crazy enough to follow some part of that brain of yours. You’re saying that we
need to show them some reason why we’re here?”

She nodded.

“Solid tactical reason for spreading a bit of
disinformation,” Tom said. “We can do that from the
Kratos
.”

She shook her head. “
Kratos
is the hatch. Out. Away.
If we’re in the
Kratos
, we…Totally and completely fucking crazy people…”
Her face twisted as words seemed completely to fail her.

“They’ll blast us into atoms just on the chance that we’re
taking some information we found and running,” Tom finished for her. He wasn’t
surprised when she nodded. “We need to contact Ramsay,” he said firmly.

She shook her head again. If she was telling the truth about
not being able to talk because of someone ripping out little parts of her
brain, Tom was going to find whoever had done that operation and pull their
guts out because talking to Da’shay was just about the most annoying experience
of his life.

“I’m boss. You’re slave. Ramsay is driver.” She stopped and
picked up one of the four pebbles she’d used for whatever bad guys she believed
were watching them. “Let them look to me for logical reason. If they look to
Ramsay…” She hit another of those ideas that she couldn’t say.

“Is it like in the cell, what you told me then? If they look
too close at Ramsay there’s something in him that’s going to blow our cover?”

She nodded.

With a sigh, Tom shook his head. “I ain’t getting just why
I’m safe if Ramsay ain’t. He’s a lot better with this undercover shit than I
am.”

“That’s why you’re better.” Da’shay reached up and rested a
hand on his shoulder. “Diamond reflects like a spotlight, blinding the ants in
the corners.”