Blowback (19 page)

Tom stopped. His collar pulled tight as Da’shay didn’t stop
quite fast enough, but then she turned and came back toward him. She rested her
hands on his shoulder and leaned her weight into him again. “You think I’m
sleeping with Becca?”

Ramsay took a step back. “I have some evidence to suggest
it. You do spend a lot of time trying to get her to go places with you, enough
that I’m wondering if I should worry about the fraternization rule or the
harassment rule.”

Reaching down, Tom grabbed his crotch. “Seems that she likes
women. I got the wrong equipment for her.”

Da’shay smiled. “Tom’s genitalia rank in the top two percent
for size within his genetic profile,” she offered.

“His—?” Ramsay blushed.

“Damn right,” Tom said. He was many things, but he was not a
small man.

With a little hum, Da’shay turned back toward the shuttle
and started walking. Tom frowned. It seemed as if she’d suddenly turned a whole
lot more rational. While he certainly appreciated having some version of
Da’shay that made sense, these constant changes were a mite unsettling.

“Tom!” Becca rushed the hatch, barely letting Tom get in the
door before she was on him. “Oh my heavenly saints and gods, what happened?”
Her hand brushed over his slave mark.

“Went and got slaved out,” Tom answered. “I didn’t get some
mark put on me just for stupidity.”

“I didn’t—” She stopped and punched him in the arm. “Don’t
go doing that again,” she ordered him.

That was a dumb order. Da’shay came up behind Tom, pressing
close to his back. “Didn’t do it on purpose this time,” Tom pointed out.

“Will you two get out of our way?” Ramsay called from
behind.

“Captain’s getting irritable, but after he went and lost
you, he can stay irritable,” Becca said, but she started moving back toward the
galley.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me you preferred to bed girls?”
Tom asked.

Becca stopped. “Why didn’t I… What? Who told you that?”

“I did,” Da’shay offered while still hanging on Tom’s
shoulder.

Becca’s mouth fell open.

“Seems a little mean to never mention that considering that
I was putting some of my best efforts into getting in your…good graces.” Tom
had very nearly said something that even he knew would get him in deep shit.

“And I appreciated your best efforts,” Becca said, then she
leaned over and glared at Da’shay, “but I don’t think it was really any of your
business.”

“You could have saved me a whole lot of grief by telling me
anyway,” Tom said before he headed toward the galley. The collar forced him to
stop by nearly choking him. “Hey!” Tom complained as he turned back to see what
Da’shay thought she was doing. She was glaring at him and Becca had her arms
crossed. Tom gritted his teeth as life went back to the same old pattern of
other people taking offense when he just spoke the truth.

“Do you not like Becca now?” Da’shay asked. From her
expression, that thought wasn’t making her happy at all.

“It ain’t that I don’t like her. She’s still a beautiful
woman—all curves and soft bits—and smarter than any three other people I know
put together. But if she’s looking for another woman, at least I know why she
won’t look at me. Hell, I should have spent more time asking her to hit the
doxy houses with me if she was looking for female company. Maybe we could’ve
shared.” If Tom wasn’t going to get Becca, sharing a doxy would have been the
next best thing.

Becca was slowly turning beet red and seemed to have stopped
breathing.

“That really is the single most horrifying thing you could
have said,” Ramsay complained as he squeezed past them in the hall and headed
for the galley. “And as the captain, I am not listening to any of it because
there were about a hundred harassment regulations that just got broken.”

“If I can’t touch, I wouldn’t mind seeing, that’s all I’m
saying. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Tom defended himself. “I wouldn’t
mind if she expressed an interest in looking at me. Hell, in this shirt, she’s
seeing a whole lot of me already.”

“That I am,” Becca said softly. “Maybe we can just pretend
that this conversation never happened.”

“I’ll second that,” Eli agreed.

Tom might have said something, but Da’shay darted past with
a cheerful, “Everyone likes everyone,” before the leash pulled tight and Tom
had to hurry after her. Crazy
genta
.

“So here’s our status,” Ramsay was sitting at the galley
table when Tom reached the room. “We know that Hou sent the embryos that
exploded, so technically our mission is complete and we can report back to
Command. The problem is that our permission to take off keeps running into
trouble.”

“You’ve been trying to take off?” Tom didn’t like the sound
of that at all.

“We’ve been trying to get papers so we were ready to take
off as soon as we found you two,” Ramsay answered. He gestured toward one of
the other chairs and Tom walked over and sat down. The metal was cool against
his back because the stupid shirt wasn’t thick enough to do its job. “Trouble
being that we’re getting one excuse after another. Either I’m getting paranoid
in my old age or someone has taken a special dislike to us.”

Becca slipped into a third chair and Da’shay came over and
plopped herself down in Tom’s lap. Ramsay’s neck started to turn red against
his white beard, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’d call you two cute, but that collar is actually kinda
creepy,” Becca offered. “And as much as I’m normally a glass half-full kind of
woman, the captain’s right. It’s starting to feel unfriendly around here.
Unfortunately, I’m just not real sure what to do about it because there’s no
way for me to get the
Kratos
into the air without using one of their
launching decks.”

“Could be that Da’shay is the source of some of that
unfriendliness,” Tom said, relieved to have the privacy to finally share what
he thought he knew. “I know she’s not the easiest to understand, but as far as
I can tell, she knows someone around here, a group of someones, and they’re not
very friendly toward her.”

“Shit.” Captain Ramsay pulled his handheld off his wrist and
tossed it at the table.

“Captain?” Eli had claimed a spot near the door where he’d
been leaning against the wall, but now he stood up straight.

“She give you any information on these enemies of hers?”
Ramsay was leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. Tom frowned
because the captain was taking his word a little too fast. Normally Tom got
paranoid over someone trying to kill them and the captain spent at least a day trying
to pretend that Tom was overly paranoid.

“Just that she thinks they’re crazy. I think it goes without
saying that if Da’shay thinks they’re nuts, that’s saying something because she
isn’t exactly sane,” Tom pointed out. Ramsay rubbed his face without answering.

Eli asked the question Tom was trying hard not to ask. “Is
there something we should know, Captain?”

That’s exactly what Tom was wondering, but Da’shay’s fingers
were wrapped around his arm and he could feel her body coiled with energy, like
a spring about to let loose. She had something rattling around in her head.

“Look, this is classified, but…um…” Ramsay blew out a
breath. “Da’shay had a history with slavers, so this might not be her first
trip here.”

Tom looked from Ramsay to Da’shay and back, but neither one
of them was explaining anything.

“History like what?” Becca asked when the silence had gone
on so long it was getting uncomfortable.

Ramsay blew out a breath and then sat up, his eyes going
right to Da’shay. “You want to tell the story?”

“Ain’t right looking to her when she don’t have the words to
say it,” Tom said. Ramsay looked at Tom in clear surprise.

“You’re standing up for her?” Ramsay frowned at him and Tom
could feel his defensiveness rising up. If anyone other than the captain had
given him that particular look, Tom would have already been throwing punches.

“I’m saying what’s right. She got me out of a spot in there,
and I can’t say I like all the ways she did it, but I’m not dead and I’m not in
a slaver’s pen, so I figure I owe her on that.” Tom frowned as Becca gave him
about the biggest smile he’d ever seen on her face, and that was saying
something because Becca did smile a whole lot. Between her smile and those
blonde curls of hers, there were lot of people who had underestimated her
ability to fix an engine or swing a beer bottle in a fight, but she’d never
looked at him with quite so much joy. Maybe she was thinking of changing teams.

Da’shay reached out and caught his hand, tugging on it. Tom
shifted his attention to her as he tried to figure out what she was wanting to
say. “After
genta
girl went to meet
genta
humans and the totally
and completely fucking crazy people sent vultures to pick at scabs, they lost
me in the dark.” She reached up and traced a circle over her heart, right where
a slave mark would have been if she’d ever been marked as a slave. Tom didn’t
know of any
genta
who ever carried anyone’s mark, but Da’shay did seem
to be agreeing with Ramsay.

“How long were you in the dark?” Tom asked.

She closed her eyes and started rocking slowly. “Diamonds,
blinding me. Darkness in all the light, swimming blind.”

“You swim good enough now,” Tom reassured her. Whatever she
was remembering, Tom guessed it wasn’t a good thing to think on too much. Her
face reflected a whole lot of pain. “The past ain’t nothing to worry about once
it’s over.” Her eyes came open. She still had a hold on his hand and she
tightened her fingers. “If she was marked as a slave, how did she get
unmarked?” Tom looked at Ramsay because Da’shay was clearly not in a mood for
any sort of clear communication.

For a second, Ramsay looked from him to Da’shay, back and
forth like some ball was bouncing between them. “Um…it got cut it out.
Genta
healing fixed the scar it would have left.”

Tom frowned. “Mighty stupid, slaving a
genta
out.
It’s not like they’re known for following orders.”

“Maybe it’s because she looks so human,” Becca said. “I know
that
genta
—what we call
genta
—can’t have children because they’re
hybrids. It takes full-
genta
and their genetic manipulators to force
human and
genta
DNA together, but I always wondered if they weren’t
playing around with a half-
genta
’s and a human’s DNA, making something
only a quarter
genta
. It would explain why she’s not big like the others
and she doesn’t really look like them.”

Tom could tell from the utterly blank expression on
Da’shay’s face that she wasn’t going to answer that. Either they’d hit some bit
the doctors had picked out of her brain or she had just mentally wandered away.

“She told me some parts of her life before she came to this
part of space,” Tom said slowly. He wasn’t fond of the way the captain was
looking at him, but the
Kratos
was home and they were about the only
people he could turn to for help.

“She did?” Eli blurted that out.

Tom shrugged. “Give her sand to do some drawing and let her
play with pebbles and she does better acting it out than talking.”

“From before she came to this part of space? From her time
in
genta
space?” Ramsay leaned forward. “Tom, are you really sure?”

“No. It ain’t like she’s real clear, but I think I got some
parts figured out. But if she was a slave, how did she end up working for
Command?” Tom looked at Ramsay and pressed his lips together. If he was going
to put himself out there by sharing what might be a stupid idea, he wanted to
know whether Ramsay’s information matched with what Tom thought he knew about
Da’shay’s past.

“It’s classified.”

Tom looked down at Da’shay for some sort of help. He didn’t
have the words to convince the captain of anything. Hell, he didn’t even know
if she wanted him saying any of this, but her hands held his arm tightly while
she stared off with no sign she’d even heard.

“Sir,” Becca said, “it seems like we’re pretty much on our
own. The ship’s grounded, Tom’s wearing a slave mark and we don’t have any plan
for getting off the planet. Maybe now would be a good time to take the
regulations and shove them down the recycler. At least the ones we ain’t
already recycled. I’m pretty sure that letting Tom get marked as a slave
shredded a whole bunch of them.”

“And Da’shay thinks there are people here who are after her
if not us. They think we know something,” Tom added. From a threat assessment
point of view, knowing they had unidentified enemies was about the worst part
of the situation.

“She thinks… Just how much talking have you done?” Ramsay
demanded.

“I could answer that better if I knew I was right about what
I thought she was saying,” Tom said honestly. He knew captains were told to
keep secrets from crew, but he’d thought Ramsay was smart enough to ignore
Command and their rules about keeping crew in the dark.

Ramsay sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m getting
busted back to lieutenant for this, but here’s what I know. A ship intercepted
a slaver and Da’shay was part of the shipment. The crew was shocked, but when
they tried keeping her with the victims, she ignored them. She seemed
functional enough, jimmying their locks and wandering where she wanted,
including into the med lab where she took a knife and sliced out a big chunk of
her own skin and dumped it in the recycler.”

Becca made a disgusted face, but Tom had to give Da’shay
some credit for that. He’d do it to his own body, only he’d never heal clean
from that kind of muscle damage. Joint replacements were easier than getting
big grafts of muscle or skin to take.

“When the ship put off the other slaves to be rehabilitated,
she flat out refused to go. She started acting like crew. When the ship came
across a
meaiai
freighter, she did some translating voodoo and got them
some tech in return for a disk full of fictional vids. Then she started taking
turns at piloting.”

Now that made Tom cringe. The woman would say she was
piloting, but then she’d wander the ship with a blank look that made him think
they were about to fall off the quantum string. Ramsay took one look at Tom’s
expression and crossed his arms.

“Tom, she can shave entire days off a trip. She may not
follow all the safety protocols, but she’s the best pilot the
Kratos
has
ever had.” Ramsay sounded unhappy on that point and Tom tried to wipe the
unease off his face.

Ramsay sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “She never
seemed to recover the verbal skills, but she always acted in the best interest
of the ship, so Command put her on the payroll. Her last ship, something
happened. She refused to follow her captain’s order. I never did find out about
what.” Ramsay looked up at Tom. “Anyway, Command asked if I would convince her
to come on the
Kratos
. She doesn’t take getting orders well, but she
seems to respond if someone invites her to come to their ship.” Ramsay threw
his hands up. “That’s all I know. Command wants her for her piloting, and I
have orders to record any transmissions where she speaks
meaiai
.”