Blowback (21 page)

The farm smell got stronger as they moved through, so
someone had put a manure pile somewhere near the junkyard. That was bad news
for their lungs, but it probably improved their chances of finding something
good. No one was going to go leisurely picking through with that smell in their
nose.

Stopping, Tom waited for the girls to catch up so he didn’t
knock down a booth with the leash by cutting the corner too sharp. There was an
older man pitting cherries and dropping them into a bowl, and Tom had the
feeling he’d call the law in if Tom knocked over as much as one apple.

“Tom, look at that.” When Becca caught up to him, she
pointed at a native woman.

“Little scrawny for me, but she looks healthy enough. Why?
You think she’s a doxy?” Tom asked. Becca looked at him for one second and then
punched him in the arm. “Hey!”

“Her dress. Look at her dress. It’s so pretty.”

Tom rubbed his arm. “It’s a dress. I ain’t even sure why
people wear those except to show off how helpless they are. They’d tangle
around your legs in any kind of fight.”

Becca pressed her lips together just long enough to let Tom
know he was in some sort of shit that made no sense. “Da’shay wears dresses,” Becca
said.

“I don’t suppose it matters to her if she gets shot in a
fight, being a
genta
.”

“Tom doesn’t want you shot,” Da’shay said walking past them
both.

That was kind of obvious as far as Tom was concerned. “Hell
no. Someone shoots you and I’m going to have to gut them, and that won’t change
you being shot.”

“That’s almost sweet,” Becca said, her anger vanishing.

Tom looked at her for long seconds. “I’m starting to think
I’m glad you’re more interested in women,” he finally said. “You’re about as
crazy as her.” He poked his thumb toward Da’shay. Becca just punched him in the
arm again and headed after Da’shay.

Shaking his head, Tom started after them.

“Women never do get any easier to understand,” the old man
with the cherries offered with a smile. Tom ignored him and trotted until he
could get ahead of the girls and walk point. The junkyard was a small one,
piles about as high as Tom’s shoulders stacked up in rows without any sort of
order.

“I’m not real hopeful about finding anything too much for my
flyer,” Becca said as she walked past the man at the front booth and trailed
her finger over a cracked heat shield.

“You know what you want?” Tom asked Da’shay.

“No diamonds, only reflections off glass, invisible until
the prism turns.”

Tom sighed. It’d been too much to hope that she was having a
reasonable day.

“Can I offer help? We have nice drive shafts and some sealed
silicon chips that still work if you don’t mind limited processor speeds,” The
attendant said. Tom tried hard to ignore the black leather collar the man wore.

Becca stepped forward. “You got any bits for the landing
assembly? Priority divider or winch motor or bevel gears, maybe?”

“I think we have priority dividers on the third row. Fifteen
to twenty credits for most.”

“Thanks.” Becca smiled at him and headed toward that row and
Da’shay followed. Tom gave the girls half his attention while he studied the
layout. The low piles of junk gave lots of cover for any enemy, but Tom didn’t
think anyone could have guessed where they were coming quickly enough to set up
an ambush. Besides, the stench of composting animal shit would discourage any
of them from hanging around for too long. Becca sneezed.

“I swear, I haven’t smelled anything like that since I left
home. Ag areas are usually pretty far from the docks.”

“Limited resources and access to off-world credits,” Da’shay
said absently, her attention on a particular pile that looked like stacked body
flaps and payload doors. Three bullet-shaped tanks stuck up from the center and
an elevon from a delta wing threatened to fall over as it perched on top.

Becca rubbed her nose. “I spent most of my school days
studying quantum propulsion, cheating on the stupid English papers and smelling
goats. I longed for space because I wanted to get away from that smell.” Tom
couldn’t blame her too much; it really did stink.

“They ain’t putting enough straw in with the manure when
they’re letting it go to rot,” Tom said. Becca looked over in surprise, as
though she hadn’t expected him to know about anything other than shooting
people. “While you were studying quantum propulsion, I was hauling manure and
running a tractor,” Tom said with a shrug.

Before either of them had a chance to compare the relative
failings of their homeworlds, Da’shay caught his arm. “There!” she said,
pointing at a round something under a hinged manipulator arm.

“Well, shit. Why don’t you just ask for something at the
very bottom?” Tom complained as he crouched down to consider the bit she
wanted.

“I want it.”

“Yeah, I heard ya,” Tom said. Crab walking to the side, he
peered at the bit from a new angle. He’d have to move a half-dozen panels and
wing bits to get to the melon-shaped piece, either that or risk having the
whole pile fall on his head.

“I’ll go ask the attendant if they have lifting equipment,”
Becca offered. Tom stood up, brushing his pants off.

“That’d be best,” he agreed.

“No!” Da’shay darted in front of Becca, her hands held out.
“No,” she repeated. “Tom will get.”

“I will?” Tom eyed the pile. “Ain’t like I couldn’t, but if
they have lifters, I’d rather use them.”

Da’shay turned toward Tom, a stubborn look on her face. “No.
You get it.”

Tom sighed and looked at the pile. “Well, shit.” There was
no way his shirt would survive hard labor, and Da’shay had put too damn many
credits down for it, so Tom stripped it off and draped it over the end of a
gear shaft. “You might get over here and help,” Tom said to Da’shay.

She smiled and moved toward him, her body twitching and
swaying to some inner music that made Tom’s whole body suddenly very aware of
the fact that he was already half-undressed and she was a beautiful woman. A
strange one, but once you stopped noticing the strangeness, she had a grace to
her that not many women could match. Da’shay reached him and stroked her hands
up his stomach, her fingers splayed. Leaning closer, her fingers brushed the
collar, and then the weight of it seemed to fall away. When she stepped back,
she had his leash in her hand, the end disconnected from the collar.

“I helped,” she said with a smile.

Becca snorted, a sound that came suspiciously close to
laughter, but when Tom looked over, she had a carefully neutral expression on
her face.

Tom turned back toward Da’shay. “Might be you could help
lift this crap.”

Da’shay swung her hips back and forth, making her skirt
twirl around her calves. “I’m wearing a skirt, so I’m helpless.”

Becca outright laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said when Tom
glared at her. She held her hands up as if she were surrendering, but she kept
laughing. “It’s so hard to see Da’shay as just a
genta
, because
genta
aren’t good at metaphors and sarcasm and jokes, but Da’shay is having fun
playing with you.”

“Yep,” Da’shay agreed. Flipping her skirt, she went over and
sat on a salvaged bench with the metal edge sheared off and scorch marks up the
side.

Tom glared at both of them. “I didn’t say skirts make a
person helpless. I said that wearing ‘em was stupid. It tangles up your legs.”

“So you can lift,” Da’shay said with a huge smile. Tom shook
his head. He’d walked right into that one. Some days he thought he must have
more chicken fat than brain cells in his head.

“I’ll help,” Becca offered.

“No.” Tom pointed a finger at her. “You go and get a hand
crushed and Eli or Ramsay are going to have to be digging big old hands in the
engine. You ain’t helping.”

Becca put her hands on her hips. “Tom Frieden, are you
saying you don’t trust me to lift a few parts without doing something stupid
enough to get hurt?”

“It ain’t about being stupid, just not being strong enough.”
Tom knew he was in deep shit with her, but instead of waiting for her response,
he turned to the pile and shook a few of the pieces, trying to decide what was
caught up on what.

“Tom lifts much more. Look at his strong muscles,” Da’shay
said. Tom risked a quick glance and Da’shay was pulling Becca back toward the
bench. “You can shoot people who sneak up.”

“I can shoot people and lift crap,” Becca argued, but at
least she didn’t look as mad arguing with Da’shay. Tom found a solid piece and
climbed up onto it to get a better hold on the wing elevon up top. He’d known
Becca for years and he still couldn’t find a way to talk to her without pissing
her off. True, she never got as pissed as the gunhand they’d had a few years
back; that woman wanted to shoot Tom. Still, Becca never did seem to give him
credit for wanting to do right, even if he said things all wrong. He supposed
he had a lot in common with Da’shay in that department. He got both hands
around the edges of the flap and steadily pulled it toward him. Metal scraped
against metal and then the huge piece started sliding down. Tom strained to
control the slide so the whole pile didn’t collapse and bury him.

The next few bits were fairly light, twenty or thirty
pounds. Tom pulled those off and flung them at the next row. One hit and caused
a small avalanche of gears and tubes. From his perch on top of the junk, Tom
could see the attendant stand up and look over. Tom raised a hand to him, palm
out to say he didn’t need help, and the attendant raised a hand back and then
sat back down. Tom was more careful with the next bit, a Y-shaped tube that
must have weighed forty pounds. He lifted it off the top and let it slide down
the pile in a clatter of small bits. This was going to take a while. Tom wiped
his palms on his pants and started in on the truly large pieces.

“Tom is beautiful, all straining under the sun,” Da’shay
said. Tom grunted in the middle of shifting a piece of decking. He strained to
lift the edge and flip it, but his hands were sweating too much to get a good
hold. He dried them on his pants and shifted around to get a better angle on
it.

“He really is pretty,” Becca agreed.

Tom got the decking up onto its edge, balancing it on the
pile before he glanced over his shoulder at them. Hoisting the decking up so
that it rested on one corner, he twisted it and then let it fall to the ground
on the far side of the row of junk. Breathing heavily, Tom took a second to
wipe his face with the back of his arm. His eyes stung from the sweat. “You can
call me lots of things, but I ain’t pretty,” Tom repeated.

Becca was giving him an innocent look, and with those blonde
curls, she could really pull it off, even when he knew she was playing devil
with him. “Hot and sweaty and sexy?” Becca asked with an impish smile.

“I thought you bedded women?”

“I thought we weren’t going to go talking on that topic.”
Becca crossed her arms.

Da’shay reached over and rested a hand on Becca’s arm. “All
sweaty,” she said happily. “Not many men could move all that.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t most men,” Tom said as he turned back to
the pile. He was going to feel older than Ramsay when he finished, but if
Da’shay wanted her bit from the bottom, he’d get it.

He’d lifted off the big pieces before he slid back down to
the ground and crouched down, his shoulders aching and the sweat dripping from
him. When he looked over, both women were watching him with dark gazes.

“Someone best be looking for any trouble,” Tom pointed out.
For some reason, Becca turned immediately red, her whole face and neck going
from fair to scarlet in about three seconds.

“Oh yeah,” Becca leaped up and looked around as if she
expected to find someone she could shoot. Tom just did not understand women.
Da’shay leaned forward and kept right on watching him.

Rolling his eyes, Tom went back to work. It was harder now
that he’d gotten the bigger pieces off because every time he pulled out one
bit, three more seemed to fall in on him. It was like trying to dig in sand,
only instead of sand, he was trying to dig in pieces of sharp metal. If this
turned out to be some bauble that Da’shay wanted for the shine, he was going to
be more than a little unhappy. Actually, unhappy didn’t even describe it. He’d
put everything into backing her, and if it turned out she was as crazy as she
seemed, Tom was going to look a fool. He’d have to go back and play doxy at
Carla’s house because he wouldn’t be able to look Ramsay in the eye again.

Kneeling down in the dust and reaching into the pile, Tom
got his sweat-slick fingers around the edge of the piece. It was shaped like a
melon, only the middle had etching and above that were small vent holes. It
wasn’t anything Tom recognized, but then he mostly knew tech that was used for
killing and spying. This looked more like something Becca would use. He could
get his fingers around it, but he couldn’t quite get it out. His hands were
sore from the lifting and the piece was either stuck or heavier than a dead
bull.

He jerked when something cool touched his back. “What the—”
Da’shay was there, running cool fingers over his hot skin. The sweat made her
touch slide over his back and she looked at him with this smile that he
couldn’t understand. With her other hand she raised the leash and Tom held his
breath as she brought it up and triggered the magnet to lock it in place. She
stood beside him, her skirt brushing against his arm and her one hand tracing
patterns and pressing into sore muscles. With her other hand, she held his
leash so close to the collar that he really couldn’t go anywhere. He was
caught, kneeling at her feet, and the quiet that had been teasing at the edges
of his awareness came crashing in like a wave.

Whether the piece was important or not didn’t matter. She
wanted it and he didn’t have to wonder what it was or why she wanted it because
he was hers. If it turned out she only liked the way the light reflected off
it, he’d still be hers and putting everything into getting it for her made
sense.