exchanging ship berths over drinks.
“I bet. But second, you can’t go believing pictures from
some stranger. Have you seen the pictures Becca has? She has pictures of
Einstein riding in the hover finals and you can’t tell it’s a patch job. Well,
except the part where Einstein’s been dead for a few centuries.”
“These weren’t,” Tom said firmly.
“Tom, I’ve seen them do patch jobs on vid. Hell, they say
that the government has the technology to patch live feed video, so don’t tell
me you can look at something with the naked eye and know whether it’s real.”
Tom stood there, not sure what to think. Maybe Ramsay was
right, but Tom had seen the pics. It wasn’t Da’shay’s face on someone else. That
was her body…the odd way she arched her back, the way her two feet never quite
seemed to be doing the same thing at the same time. His gut knew those were
real pictures of Da’shay.
“Just get the scans done by Thursday,” Ramsay said wearily.
Tom nodded and headed for the hatch. He’d have them done before he went to bed.
Maybe if he totally wore himself out, he could get some sleep without thinking
about Da’shay.
Chapter Five
It was close to oh-two-hundred before Tom finished and sent
the full report to Ramsay’s unit. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t get his mind
to quiet down. “Well, fuck.” Tom leaned against the Kratos and looked
out over the docks. The blast wall blocked most of his view; the huge curve
provided the solid foundation for the ship to thrust against to escape the
thick atmosphere, and each berth had its own. That meant all Tom could see was
a line of ship noses, all sticking out from the shelter of their individual
walls. The small, yellow moon gave the impression that the whole world had
jaundice.
Tom preferred worlds with white moons. When he’d been
growing up, he used to wait for the full moon before going running along the
creek and pretending he was never going to go back. His father had been one of
the first settlers on Beauteous , a huge, fertile world with an enormous
white moon, but disease had taken him, and his ma had taken a new husband.
Shaking off the unhappy thoughts, Tom headed toward town.
Most places would be shut down by now, but there would still be plenty of opportunities
to find a little trouble and get a lot drunk. Tom didn’t even bother changing
out of his work clothes with their long streaks of carbon soot and dirt. Unlike
Becca, doxies didn’t need to be impressed. He only had to tell them what he
wanted.
The docks echoed Tom’s footsteps as he headed for the
transports. At the small wait station, a short man with a round face gave Tom a
once over and Tom glared back, daring the little shit to try to pick his
pocket. The guy hurried down the tracks. If he wanted an easy mark, he’d just
have to look elsewhere tonight. Tom had never been a particularly easy mark.
He’d been tough enough to take care of himself even when he’d been seventeen
and stick thin because he kept growing up faster than he could grow out.
He took his first job shipside on a freighter at seventeen
and gotten into the granddaddy of all dock fights. Him and about four hundred
other men and women ripped the guts out of most of the Cassidy dock
complex. He’d tipped over a refrigerator unit to protect a door where a group
was hiding in a store room. When the arresting officer had figured out that Tom
had protected them, he’d invited Tom into Corps. Since that day, surviving and
shooting a gun were the two skills he brought to every single ship he’d ever
served, and that’s what he had to focus on now. Problem being—Tom couldn’t
figure out whether Da’shay was a threat to his continued survival. Captain
Ramsay seemed to think she wasn’t, but Tom had his doubts.
Fact was, when it came to women, Ramsay was all kinds of
stupid. The only person to ever talk their way into the ship and the classified
computer system had been some woman playing the
“I bet. But second, you can’t go believing pictures from
some stranger. Have you seen the pictures Becca has? She has pictures of
Einstein riding in the hover finals and you can’t tell it’s a patch job. Well,
except the part where Einstein’s been dead for a few centuries.”
“These weren’t,” Tom said firmly.
“Tom, I’ve seen them do patch jobs on vid. Hell, they say
that the government has the technology to patch live feed video, so don’t tell
me you can look at something with the naked eye and know whether it’s real.”
Tom stood there, not sure what to think. Maybe Ramsay was
right, but Tom had seen the pics. It wasn’t Da’shay’s face on someone else. That
was her body…the odd way she arched her back, the way her two feet never quite
seemed to be doing the same thing at the same time. His gut knew those were
real pictures of Da’shay.
“Just get the scans done by Thursday,” Ramsay said wearily.
Tom nodded and headed for the hatch. He’d have them done before he went to bed.
Maybe if he totally wore himself out, he could get some sleep without thinking
about Da’shay.
Chapter Five
It was close to oh-two-hundred before Tom finished and sent
the full report to Ramsay’s unit. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t get his mind
to quiet down. “Well, fuck.” Tom leaned against the Kratos and looked
out over the docks. The blast wall blocked most of his view; the huge curve
provided the solid foundation for the ship to thrust against to escape the
thick atmosphere, and each berth had its own. That meant all Tom could see was
a line of ship noses, all sticking out from the shelter of their individual
walls. The small, yellow moon gave the impression that the whole world had
jaundice.
Tom preferred worlds with white moons. When he’d been
growing up, he used to wait for the full moon before going running along the
creek and pretending he was never going to go back. His father had been one of
the first settlers on Beauteous , a huge, fertile world with an enormous
white moon, but disease had taken him, and his ma had taken a new husband.
Shaking off the unhappy thoughts, Tom headed toward town.
Most places would be shut down by now, but there would still be plenty of opportunities
to find a little trouble and get a lot drunk. Tom didn’t even bother changing
out of his work clothes with their long streaks of carbon soot and dirt. Unlike
Becca, doxies didn’t need to be impressed. He only had to tell them what he
wanted.
The docks echoed Tom’s footsteps as he headed for the
transports. At the small wait station, a short man with a round face gave Tom a
once over and Tom glared back, daring the little shit to try to pick his
pocket. The guy hurried down the tracks. If he wanted an easy mark, he’d just
have to look elsewhere tonight. Tom had never been a particularly easy mark.
He’d been tough enough to take care of himself even when he’d been seventeen
and stick thin because he kept growing up faster than he could grow out.
He took his first job shipside on a freighter at seventeen
and gotten into the granddaddy of all dock fights. Him and about four hundred
other men and women ripped the guts out of most of the Cassidy dock
complex. He’d tipped over a refrigerator unit to protect a door where a group
was hiding in a store room. When the arresting officer had figured out that Tom
had protected them, he’d invited Tom into Corps. Since that day, surviving and
shooting a gun were the two skills he brought to every single ship he’d ever
served, and that’s what he had to focus on now. Problem being—Tom couldn’t
figure out whether Da’shay was a threat to his continued survival. Captain
Ramsay seemed to think she wasn’t, but Tom had his doubts.
Fact was, when it came to women, Ramsay was all kinds of
stupid. The only person to ever talk their way into the ship and the classified
computer system had been some woman playing the
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