Blowback (22 page)

Da’shay’s smile grew and she crouched down beside him, her
strong fingers kneading his shoulders for a moment before they trailed down
over his chest and found his mark again. “I’ll take care of it,” she whispered,
her fingers tracing the curl of his tattoo. Tom swallowed, not sure what she
meant, but the hand on his leash kept him from doing anything.

She let his chain go, but Tom didn’t move as she reached in
and got her hands around the piece he’d freed up. Pulling it out, Da’shay put
it at Tom’s feet before reclaiming his leash and standing up.

Becca moved closer. “What is it?” she asked. Tom picked the
piece up and flipped it around. Like an egg, it was slightly larger on one end.
He held it out toward Becca with the larger end down and the vented end up.
With a frown, she ran her fingers along the edged band in the center. “I’ve
never seen anything like it.”

“That’s not making me feel any too good,” Tom said as he
studied the thing in his hands. Vents wouldn’t make sense on a bomb and there
was no targeting to suggest it was a weapon, but if it came off any sort of
engine, Becca should recognize it.

Da’shay handed Becca the leash and darted down the row away
from them. “I—um…” Becca carefully lowered the leash so it hung against Tom’s
arm and let it go. “Hopefully she’ll never ask me to touch that again,” she
said with a disgusted expression.

“It’s just metal,” Tom said. Becca crawled around inside
engines most of her day, so a little more metal shouldn’t bother her.

“It’s more what it represents,” Becca said softly. “I mean…”
She sighed. “Tom, I know you’re good at the following. When I first joined the
Kratos
and I saw what sorts of plans the captain came up with, I had good cause to
doubt his sanity. Actually, I had good cause to doubt either one of you was
sane because you followed without even batting an eye, but maybe now I can see
that Ramsay has a point with his planning. If you make a plan that’s too bad,
other people won’t be guarding against it. I mean, we’ve come through some
powerfully stupid plans where I was pretty sure we were all going to end up
dead.”

“You got a point in there?” Tom asked. He shifted the thing
in his arms as it started feeling heavy. Either that or his muscles were worn
out from the lifting. He was also starting to feel overly cool as the gentle
breeze dried his sweat.

“The point is that I know you’re a good follower, but, Tom,”
she leaned close, “there are some things that are just true of
genta
.
They’re into their hierarchies. For them, it’s really important who obeys who,
and crews that have a
genta
are usually trained not to go making the
genta
think that they’ll obey him or her. It makes things confusing.”

“If you’re trying to say something, you’d best say it
plain,” Tom said, frustration rolling up through him.

“If you go following Da’shay too much, she’s not going to
let you go. She’ll assume you’re hers, that you’ll follow her over the captain.
That’s not a good place for either of you to go.”

“Oh.” Tom closed his mouth, not sure what else to say. Six
years he’d followed Ramsay and he’d never questioned that. Of course, Ramsay
had never questioned his sanity or his aim in the last six years, and now… Tom
wasn’t sure that Da’shay was wrong.

Something had shifted between him and Ramsay and Tom wasn’t
sure it could shift back. After all, the man knew him better than anyone else
and even he’d said that Tom wasn’t one to forgive. The attempted murder didn’t
take any forgiving; the captain was protecting the ship and still trying to see
that Tom got treated fair. But the way the captain kept looking at him with
pity—that wasn’t easy to swallow. It occurred to Tom that the last person to
look at him with pity like that had been his ma.

“Might not be an unreasonable assumption for her to make,”
Tom said with a shrug. Becca’s mouth nearly fell open, and about two seconds
later, it occurred to Tom that as an officer, she had a duty to report to
Command that Tom had openly suggested he wouldn’t follow his Commanding
officer’s orders. Fuck. He really was an idiot.

“Found Becca her priority divider,” Da’shay sang out. She
came over with a black canister with a half dozen valves sticking out from it.
She tossed it at Becca and Becca stumbled back as she caught it. “Found myself
my Tom,” she said, coming over to claim his leash with one hand and the
cylinder with the other.

“I suppose we should pay.” Becca fingered the valves on her
priority divider and chewed on her upper lip.

“Suppose we should,” Tom agreed, all too aware of how
uncomfortable he suddenly felt.

“Yep,” Da’shay agreed, but her cylinder had vanished, and
she was staring up at the sky and walking on her tip toes as she used Tom’s
leash to keep her balance.

“You three come up with anything interesting?” Ramsay asked
the second the hatch latched behind them.

“Don’t know. I thought we did, but then Da’shay lost it,”
Becca answered.

“She lost more than a trinket,” Tom muttered. Da’shay had
been stranger than ever, staring at the colors on the tents and following only
when Tom pulled her with the leash. He was pretty sure she’d lost her mind out
there.

Da’shay did an odd little sidestep dance down the hall,
pushing past them in the corridor on her way to the galley, the only real
communal space on the ship.

“I found a priority divider,” Becca offered, holding the
piece up. “I should go put it in my room.” She gestured toward the other end of
the corridor and then turned and headed toward officer’s quarters. That left
Tom standing in the corridor with Ramsay.

“You okay?” Ramsay asked.

“No reason for me not to be.” Tom was hyperaware of the
chain draped over his shoulder, but he ignored it. Ramsay stood there, studying
Tom, and Tom crossed his arms and waited for the captain to finish. Sure
enough, the captain’s gaze kept going back to the slave mark.

“Looking at it won’t make it go away,” Tom pointed out.
Ramsay tore his gaze away and looked into Tom’s eyes, that same quiet sympathy
in them, and Tom really was going to punch the captain in the nose in about two
seconds. Generally he tried not to hit people old enough to have fathered him
unless they were threatening to hit him first, but he was real close to making
an exception.

“Green lights sparkling,” Da’shay called out. The words
didn’t make sense, but the tone was a warning.

“Where’s Eli?” Tom asked.

“We have some weird chatter and codes in the broadcasts.
Eli’s running code-breaks. You three were so late I was thinking about coming
out for you.”

Tom didn’t point out that the captain had agreed to not come
after them. When it was clear that Tom had no comment, Ramsay finally turned
with a sigh and headed into the galley. “Damn stubborn son of a bitch,” Ramsay
muttered just loud enough for Tom to hear it.

“Food!” Da’shay said as they walked in. She’d set a variety
of dried food bars in the middle of the table.

“Don’t look bad,” Tom said, passing Ramsay to grab one. Real
food would have looked better and the people in the tents were selling it at
prices that even he could afford, but Da’shay was right to stick to the
packaged foods. No use making it easy for some enemy to poison them. Da’shay
walked up and stood next to him, leaning into his shoulder.

“Maybe you should sit,” Ramsay suggested.

“Too round,” Da’shay said with a smile. Yep, she was not
having a good day.

“Are we eating?” Becca walked in. “Where’s Eli?”

“Working communications,” Ramsay offered. He ripped open a
bar. “So, what was it you thought you came up with?”

Da’shay interrupted by flipping her skirt. “Good for more
than being helpless.” She twitched her hips and the round device fell to floor
with a metallic thump. Da’shay smiled and dropped down into Tom’s lap. Tom
stared at the device, seriously hoping that she had only been keeping it
between her knees. The other alternative was just too disturbing. Tom went to
rest one of his hands on Da’shay’s leg and she flipped her skirt again so that
Tom’s hand came down on her bare thigh. He froze, half wondering if she’d take
offense. Most women weren’t fond of getting touched in public but Da’shay
reached up and traced his bottom lip with one finger. Tom’s cock was getting
all kinds of interested but this wasn’t the time. Tom wondered if anyone would
notice if he took Da’shay and vanished for a bit.

His musings were interrupted by an excited Becca. “Is that…?
Da’shay, you’re so bad, stealing that thing. Good for you!” Hurrying around,
Becca picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

“What is it?” Ramsay stood up and leaned over to get a
better look.

“I can’t really tell. Doesn’t look like anything from my
books and I know I’ve never seen one in person. I’ve never met an engine part I
didn’t remember.” Becca put it on the table and it wobbled like a children’s
toy. “Captain, could it be
casslit
?”

Ramsay pursed his lips. He was one of the few people to
survive getting captured in the
casslit
war, but near as Tom could tell
from the bits and fragments Ramsay let slip, he’d been unconscious and getting
poked and prodded for most of the time he’d been on their ship.

“Their tech had that sort of roundness to it, but I never
saw any sort of engraving like that. We could run it through the computer.”

“Not theirs,” Da’shay said. She draped an arm over Tom’s
shoulders as she looked at them. She wiggled just enough to put her weight down
on his cock and Tom struggled to not groan.

“Maybe the slave colonies are doing some research,” Becca
said. At least she believed Da’shay; the captain had his constipated expression
on.

“Doubt it,” Tom said, struggling to keep his voice even.
“Human tech tends to look more… I don’t know, human. That don’t look human.”
Tom couldn’t come up with a better explanation for what his gut said, and he
sure wouldn’t bet money on his conclusions, but he didn’t think a human had
made it. The surface was two different metals forged together to make random
swirls, and humans tended to make their machines a little more plain.

Ramsay sat on the edge of the table. “Da’shay, you got any
clue who might have made this?”

Da’shay stole the last piece of Tom’s bar. “Yep.” She ate
the food solemnly, looking at all of them in turn as she swallowed. “Totally
and completely fucking crazy people.”

Tom sat up so fast he had to catch Da’shay around the waist
or risk knocking her out of his lap. “Wait, you saying that those people who
cut you up made that?”

“Actors creeping in the shadows.” Da’shay nodded.

“Actors?” Ramsay snorted. “I’m starting to feel like I need
a translation dictionary. Tom, you got a clue about what actors might mean?”

Tom grabbed another food bar and shrugged. “Out in the
desert when she was making sense, she said we needed to be actors and dress up
in clothes that weren’t ours. I reckon this shirt is about not me as I can
get.”

Ramsay leaned back and blew out a breath. “Well, shit.” He
ran a hand over his face and looked about as weary as a man could. “Da’shay,
can you tell me what an actor is?” Ramsay asked.

“We were actors,” Da’shay said with a smile. “Dress up and
say things we don’t mean.”

“Shit, Tom. People who dress up and play act, like us. Those
aren’t actors. They’re spies.”

Tom blinked. Well damn, that actually did make more sense.
Da’shay had been telling him to finish the spying job Command had sent them on.

“Which means her crazy people are spies. Question is, spies
for who?”

“Um, Captain?” Becca’s voice was panicked and Tom looked
over. She had the cylinder in her lap and a blurred holographic image rose from
the vented end. The creature was making a humming noise, but it wasn’t any
alien Tom had ever seen. It looked a little like a
casslit
. Those were
stick-thin creatures, all sharp angles with an impossible number of elbows and
knees. Their faces had a long horse-like quality that led a lot of old soldiers
who’d fought in the
casslit
wars to call them “horsetails” because of
that animalistic face and weed-like body. Scientists said that humans were more
closely related to
casslit
than
meaiai
, but Tom got the creeps
every time he saw one.

This hologram had that same horse-face and oversized eyes,
but the mouth was larger, more like a human mouth and the hands that were
gesturing had five fingers, not the
casslit
’s three. However, it was
just as thin.

“Engineer Williams, is that playing or transmitting?” Ramsay
demanded. He was up out of his seat and standing over Becca so fast that Tom
didn’t have time to do more than blink.

“I don’t know!”

“Get it off.” The captain had lost most of the color out of
his face, but considering where he’d spent the war, Tom couldn’t blame him.
Da’shay got up and Tom went to stand next to Ramsay.

“I’m trying. I’m really trying,” Becca pressed every symbol
on the engraved band, but she only succeed in turning the alien’s image purple.
Da’shay walked over and knelt next to Becca, reaching out and sliding her
fingers along the band until the alien blinked out and vanished. The thing gave
a last hum and then went silent.

Ramsay stared down at it and Tom could see him breathing
fast. “I want that thing off my ship. Now,” Ramsay ordered.

“We could put it—” Tom started to say.

“Off my ship,” Ramsay snapped before he turned to head
toward officer’s quarters.

“Yes sir,” Becca agreed in a contrite voice. Tom pressed his
lips together and didn’t point out that the captain was being unreasonable by
dumping good evidence.

The three of them listened as Ramsay’s footsteps vanished
into the far end of the ship.

“It seems like those looked a lot like
casslit
,”
Becca said quietly.

“Seems like,” Tom agreed. “Only not quite as stomach
turning.”

Becca nodded. “Maybe the full-
genta
s are making
human-
casslit
hybrids.”

That made Tom cringe, but he supposed it would make anyone
who’d ever read about the war cringe. “Yeah, but if that’s the case, what’s
their salvaged tech doing lying around on a human world?”

Tom didn’t answer, but he looked at Da’shay. The bigger
question was what she knew and how exactly she’d run afoul of this mess
already. Da’shay looked back at him with an expression of utter calm, her blue
tinted face looking even more alien.