Blowback (27 page)

Hou’s secretary looked downright panicked when they walked
in, but Tom couldn’t blame the man. Tom propped the carryall with all their
belongings up on its end and waited to see what Da’shay would do. She seemed to
look around with one of her blank expressions and he could feel panic start to
crawl though his guts.

She turned toward him and smiled. Closing the distance, she
cupped his face and leaned forward until their foreheads touched and then she
let him hold her weight for several seconds. Then, standing up straight, she
seemed to shake herself free of whatever had caught her. “Hou,” she announced
to the secretary.

“You don’t… I mean… He’s very busy…” The man was walking
backward through the maze of desks and workers and slaves, who were all
gathering up materials and handhelds and desk flats and papers in their arms.
They were expecting a fight and Tom watched Da’shay to see if she wanted him to
oblige.

Before she could give any clear signal, the office door
opened and Hou stood there, his enormous bulk filling the oversized doorway.

“Illogical human conclusions. Explosives are
counterintuitive to trading. I trade.” Sometimes it was hard to judge how a
genta
was feeling, but Tom could tell pretty easy that Hou was pissed.

“Come,” Da’shay said before she started toward Hou. Tom
caught the handle of the carryall and pulled it behind him without taking his
right hand off his gun.

Hou backed up as Da’shay and Tom came into the room. A vid
screen had slid down in front of the shelves, and Tom could see that
newswoman’s face on it and Captain Tarby’s picture at the bottom of the image.
So he’d gotten Da’shay’s message.

Da’shay looked at the screen, her head tilted. “Human
premise—the entity that set the first bomb set the second, the first bomb was
on a known slaver ship, slaver ships carry merchandise from slave colonies.
Conclusion—the slave colonies have attacked valued human. Retribution is
logical.”

“Flawed premises,” Hou snapped. He hit a button and a dozen
files, most of them with Earth Command logos, flashed onto the vid, covering
the newswoman. “New premises, more accurate.”

Da’shay walked closer, her fingers ghosting over the screen
so that the vid flickered as the computer tried to decide if she was selecting
one or not. Her fingers paused over a file and touched the surface. An official
arrest report appeared. Da’shay turned and looked at Tom. “You explain.”

“Me?” Tom felt a cold seed of fear. He was not interested in
exposing his past as a Command soldier—not when he was standing in the office
of a slaving embryo smuggler.

“Accuracy with bullets does not create accuracy in the
reading of documents,” Hou said. Tom figured he should be offended, but it was
the truth. Him and paperwork were not on speaking terms and he really didn’t
want to talk about how he might know about Command’s love of record keeping.

“He was Corps. He can interpret human thought process and
Command regulations for the tracking of data,” Da’shay announced and Tom
inwardly groaned even though he tried to keep a neutral expression. He did,
however, tighten his hand on his gun. If Hou was going to call planetary
security to come and throw them in a little cell as spies, he was going to have
the pleasure of shooting a few people first. He might even include Da’shay in
that number.

Instead of reaching for a communications device, Hou nodded.
“Then he can confirm,” he said, speaking noticeably slower. Tom was guessing
that mean the
genta
was trying to include him in the conversation.

“Explain,” Da’shay told Tom in a voice that made it clear
she wanted answers immediately. She held her whole body differently, and her
voice was clipped, like a true
genta’s
. He looked at Hou and then at
Da’shay. She was channeling Hou, changing because of how he expected her to be.
Maybe that was a talent, being able to slide from one personality to another,
but it did seem that the cost was too high if it meant she lost herself
somewhere in the middle.

She looked at him, and the angle of her shoulders changed,
her back swayed and she brought a hand up to rest against his chest. “Can find
myself now. Like a lighthouse from a children’s book, all white light cast into
the darkness,” she whispered. Tom looked down at her and swallowed. She was
strong enough to fight when most would have given up, but there was some
vulnerable piece of her that was clinging to his light, and that scared him.
Tom never had been good at being the trustworthy one. She brought her hand up
to cup his cheek, and Tom opened his mouth without finding any way to say what
he was thinking. She gave him a small smile before turning back toward Hou, her
body shifting again. “Explain,” she ordered curtly a second time.

Tom took a deep breath and walked over to the vid and angled
his body so he could look at the documents without putting his back to Hou.

“It’s an official arrest report,” Tom started, which was the
obvious part. He frowned as he looked at the rest. The captain who had blown up
the
Kratos
with that rigged crate of embryos had been arrested six days
before meeting with them, which didn’t make sense at all. He should have still
been in jail if this report was telling the truth. Tom enlarged the corner of
the report, checking the file numbers and seals and even the language used
where the arresting officer described how Captain Smyth had verbally harassed
the Corps crew. While Tom might be wrong, this felt a lot like a real arrest
report.

Tom cleared his throat which had gone dry. “According to
this, Captain Smyth and the crew of the
Reseda
were picked up trying to
land on
Alsha
because their papers didn’t match some new security seal.”
The arresting officer would have opened the embryos. The fact they’d been
genetically enhanced should have led to immediate disposal and arrest of
everyone on the
Reseda
. Explosives would have gotten Captain Smyth
twenty years on a penal moon, so him running around and offering the same crate
to Ramsay six days later didn’t make any sense.

“Describe procedure in case of confiscation of illegal
biologicals,” Da’shay prompted him.

“Command has been pushing real hard to get control over
biologicals lately.” The fact was people got flat out touchy about the idea of
eating food that had been tampered with by a
genta
—too many horror vids
used that as the first step in some mass human extermination. “When the Corps
finds paperwork that ain’t up to standard, they inspect every stick of cargo.
Anything that breaks code, local or Corps code, is confiscated. Biologicals are
inventoried so the lawyers can decide on the right charges against the crew and
then a sample is taken for evidence. The rest is sent to an incinerator and
destroyed. The equipment is then sterilized and held for a year before it’s put
up for auction.” As far as Tom knew, there weren’t any exceptions for that, but
then he was just a corporal, so he didn’t have the sort of law training that
the others had. “We know the crate was rigged with explosives six days later
when it blew up in our faces, but if those explosives had been there during
this arrest, standard procedure is to secure the area and trigger the
explosives on-site unless there’s a nuclear signature. The explosion is
measured for the lawyers to use in the official charges.”

Da’shay tilted her head. “They violated procedure. They
didn’t arrest Smyth or take Hou’s embryos and Hou’s merchandise blew up the
Kratos
six days later.” Hou didn’t answer, he just stared at the vid screen with the
scattering of documents.

Another title caught his eye, and without asking permission,
Tom pressed on the service file for the officer in charge of the
Alsha
arrest. Captain Lim Hatzis had two service decorations and three letters of
reprimand, one for excessive force and two for failure to complete missions in
a timely manner. He looked real average. But something wasn’t right. Tom
flipped farther back in the records. His psyche eval was there. Tom looked at
Hou, suspicious about how the man had gotten intel like this.

Command insisted that personnel files were held at highest
security levels, but Command might not be as secure as they thought. Tom would
tell them, only he figured Command was going to arrest him and Da’shay the
second they set foot on Command controlled worlds. Da’shay would get exiled and
he’d spend his life in a six by six foot box. It was funny how his life kept
coming back to that possibility, as if it was some sort of fate.

He selected the link for training and read about young Lim
Hatzis as a lieutenant. The man hadn’t come up from gun hand. He’d got a degree
and bought a spot in officer training. Tom frowned as he looked at the
training.

“Yellow flares though the teal,” Da’shay said to him,
stroking his shoulder.

Tom sighed. He wasn’t going to be able to keep much from
her. “He trained in
Beystelle
.”

Hou answered. “Earth Command controlled planet. 6,711 km
diameter, escape velocity of 5 kilometers per second with a system escape
velocity of 29 kilometers per second. Moderate use as trading base, but minimal
buyers on-planet to make the trip profitable. Unimportant.”

“Maybe,” Tom said. Da’shay rested her hand on his chest and
Tom just shook his head. He was going to have to execute himself as a traitor
after this. “Rumor is that
Beystelle
is a little more important than it
looks. A lot of funny things happen on that planet.”

“Unspecific,” Hou said with an unhappy frown. “Rumor is
irrelevant. Communication without veracity or verification, provided without
context, is meaningless.”

Da’shay gave a little hum. “Communication slipping free of
control. Rumor is water dripping through bricks built up to hold the river.
Whispers of truth swimming in the drop.”

Hou blinked at Da’shay, his head pulled back as though he’d
seen something particularly offensive, but she looked back at him calmly.
“Rumor is valuable if accepted as conditional,” she concluded. It suddenly
occurred to Tom that he didn’t normally hear
genta
using the sort of
metaphors that Da’shay did seem to love. They talked specifics, not poetry.
“Relate the rumor.” Da’shay rested her hand on Tom’s chest and Tom focused on
the job, surprised that he’d let himself lose track of events, even for a
second.

“I’ve heard stories of people going missing on
Beystelle
,
officers and crew called there who just never turned up again. And Corps
trained there don’t always act like they should. They’ll call themselves gun
hands, but then they’ll avoid the drinking and doxy houses. They’ll say they
don’t want to bother with officer training, but then they’ll know things about
the law that I figure come straight out of officer books because I sure don’t
know them. There’s just always something off about them…they don’t move right
or talk right to be who they say they are.”

“What is Tom’s conclusion from the given premises?” Da’shay
asked.

Tom thought about that. There was a good chance he was about
to make a fool of himself. “Seems like the rumors about that being a training
site for the Information Corps might be right. IC have got to be trained
somewhere and I’ve never known any other base to put out so many people who
didn’t feel natural.”

“Does the slave possess skills at quantifying human
psychology?”

Tom snorted, but before he could point out that he actually
sucked at understanding people, Da’shay interrupted. “Excellent skills with
threat assessment. Can predict aggressive and threatening behaviors with high
degree of competence. Moderate levels of paranoia, but without delusional
specifics he includes with this threat assessment.” She seemed to think for a
second. “He is incompetent with social interactions, but this is not social.”

“Social interactions are irrelevant,” Hou said dismissively.
“We shall tentatively accept the premise that
Beystelle
is a training
site for IC. That increases the probability that Hatzis is an intelligence
officer. Such a conclusion would suggest that Command engineered the first
explosion. Use of human logic would then dictate Command set the second
explosion as well.”

Tom didn’t like that conclusion, but he couldn’t find any
way to poke a hole in it. Command should have confiscated the embryos and there
was no way that one officer, not even a Commanding officer, could take a bribe
to let Captain Smyth and his cargo slide. The whole crew would have to be dirty
and Tom couldn’t see that happening. Most crew got moved around regularly. Him
and Ramsay had only been together for so long because Tom’s record had enough
reprimands that another ship wouldn’t take him. But if Hatzis had taken the
cargo in as contraband and then let it back onto Smyth’s ship, explosives and
all, it did seem as if Command had tried to kill them.

“Why?” Tom asked. Da’shay turned her back toward him and
leaned. He slipped a hand around her waist and let his fingers splay on her stomach.
He could feel her sigh, her whole body sagging toward him as she let him carry
more of her weight.

Hou and Da’shay were both silent for a time and Tom could
tell there was something not right in the room; however, he didn’t know what.
He didn’t understand this room anymore than he understood the evidence staring
him in the face. Da’shay had overstated things a bit by saying he could predict
people’s aggressive behaviors because he couldn’t come up with one reason for
Command doing something like this. Maybe Hou was lying and had made up the
whole arrest report, but it looked genuine and the description of the arrest
sounded like someone who’d been trained to make a report look pretty. Besides,
Hou going to all the trouble to make such a good forgery implied that he was
manipulating Tom and Da’shay and there just wasn’t one good reason for doing
that.