Didi and the Gunslinger Read online

  “You won’t kill him.” Didi doesn’t know what’s gotten into her. She’s here for exactly this purpose, isn’t she? To trade the chip for her father. Not to challenge the Underlord in her own lair. “You need him. And the chip.”

  The old woman’s eyes glitter her rage. “Too clever already then,” she says before turning the gun on Pip. He squawks his protest, flapping his wings as he understands the threat.

  “I’m willing to hand it over.” Her father’s hand settles on her shoulder, and she knows he’s going to try to stop her. But, he’s too important, more important than some invention. “For a trade.”

  Murta lowers the gun a little. “I’m listening.”

  “The chip for my dad.” It’s that simple.

  The Underlord laughs. “You just said I need him. Why would I do that?”

  “Because,” Didi says, “if you don’t, I’ll leave the gunslinger’s self-destruct active and we’ll all be dead shortly.”

  She hadn’t meant to use that as a weapon, but Murta has her cornered. The old woman’s gaze flickers to the cyborg before returning to Didi’s face.

  “You’re bluffing.” She doesn’t sound convinced.

  “I’m not.” Didi reaches into her secret pocket and pulls out the chip. She hears her father groan.

  “Didi, no.” He reaches for her hand but it’s halfhearted.

  “Here.” She holds the thing out to Murta, the gold glittering in her hand. Wait, it’s not as shiny as it was before, is it? Seems tarnished. Hopefully she hasn’t damaged it along the way and it works. “You do whatever you want with it and you let me and Dad go. And I won’t blow half this planet into the solar system.”

  Murta spins on the gunslinger. “Confirm self-destruct.”

  He nods. “Self-destruct confirmed. T-minus one hour and 54 minutes, 19 seconds.”

  He pauses. “18. 17—”

  “Enough!” Murta lowers her weapon further, watches Didi with careful eyes before laughing a coughing, frustrated laugh. “If only things were different,” she says, “I would have recruited you, girl. What a protégé you would make.”

  Didi will never admit that idea sounds appealing. Why does this life seem to call to her like a bole to electricity? She’s never been so afraid—or felt so alive.

  “I need confirmation the chip works.” Murta snaps her fingers. “Hand it over.”

  “No chance.” Didi pulls her hand back. “We confirm the machine works then we leave, free and honest. I won’t let you have it and do some kind of switch, then lie to me and say it failed when it didn’t.” Sweat pools in the small of her back.

  Murta grunts, gestures with the gun. “Very well. After you, Didi Duke.”

  She strides forward without hesitation, head up, shoulders back, the gunslinger at her side, her father trailing along, his hand taking hers. Pip mutters his dissatisfaction in her ear while she fights the bubbling giggles in her belly.

  Pip is right. She needs to take this more seriously. And yet, the deeper into trouble she gets, the more fun this is. She has Dad with her. Nothing can go wrong.

  “Didi.” Dad whispers to her, barely audible. “No matter what happens, you need to escape. Do you hear me?”

  She nods ever so slightly as they pass down a tunnel made of what looks like liquefied plastanium. This place had to have cost a fortune to outfit and taken forever to build. She can feel the buzz of the shielding under her boots, wonders what would happen if that shielding died. How many giant boles would it take to shred this place?

  Something to keep in the back of her mind, maybe.

  What troubles her most is the way the gunslinger’s silver head turns at her father’s words. And when he nods in return. Tarvis’s relief makes Didi angry.

  “Don’t get any ideas, you two,” she says. “We’re all getting out of here, lickety.”

  “She won’t let you go.” Tarvis sighs heavily. “When the time comes, I will overload my invention and kill them all. But only after I know you are safe.” He looks to the gunslinger. “You must get her to safety.”

  Again that subtle head turn from the cyborg.

  Over Didi’s dead body.

  Someone pushes Didi from behind. She stumbles one step, forced sideways down a branching corridor and into a huge, arching ceilinged chamber. It’s bright in here, almost daylight bright, the expenditure of electricity astounding to her.

  The walls are lined with benches and tables, covered in tools. She thought the machine shop a dream location. This lab is something she could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. She’s practically salivating and almost forgets why they are there until Murta circles them and jabs the gunslinger’s weapon at the machine in the middle of the room.

  Her father’s invention sits, quiet and unassuming, in the center of a plas table.

  “I hope you enjoyed your little reunion,” the Underlord says. “And your plotting against me.” How much had she heard? But no, Didi must assume anyone in her position expects plotting. Just a natural course of doing business. She can only guess the Underlord is plotting the same against her. “Now, the chip. And our bargain can be complete.”

  With zero illusions the old woman plans to keep her side of things on the up and up, Didi turns to her father and deposits the chip in his hand. Only to have his eyes widen, his mouth fall open.

  “Didi,” he hisses. “What is this?”

  She blinks. “The chip Putter gave me.”

  Dad groans softly, eyes full of fear. “Then we’re dead, my darling girl. Because this isn’t the chip I left with him. It’s a fake.”

  To prove it, he snaps the thing in half.

  ***

  Chapter Thirty One

  As the pieces fall from her father’s fingers, Didi’s hurt returns. Her mind flashes to someone she trusted, to a face she thought she’d like to see again, even as a familiar voice rings out from the entry.

  “Nice try, Miss Duke.” She half turns, can’t bring herself to spin all the way, catching a glimpse of Bo Rylen out of the corner of her eye as he struts unencumbered into the room. Though, she’s aware of the guards following him inside. He’s grinning, the blikey bole feces.

  He’s played her and she let him.

  Murta’s lips twist, wrinkling the folds around her mouth. “And who might you be, young man?”

  He sweeps into a bow, at his most charming. Didi can feel the warmth of his charisma from where she stands but she’s immune to it now. “Bo Rylen, my dear Underlord. At your service.” He holds out one big hand. “The chip you so desire. Upon my first encounter with Miss Duke I liberated it from her and replaced it with a fake.”

  Murta laughs, horrible and cruel. “I like you already, boy.” She gestures to Jackus who steps forward with a grimace of dislike and takes the chip from Bo. “But your little coup does nothing for my present dilemma.” She jabs the gun’s barrel at the gunslinger. “Unless you know how to shut down the self-destruct sequence on that hunk of antiquated plastanium?”

  Bo’s blue eyes meet Didi’s. She dearly wishes for the power to kill with her mind. Dearly. She would give anything to see him drop dead right here and now. Would laugh while he did. Maybe do a little dance next to his cooling body.

  But Murta is right. He’s too late if he wanted to cross her. Sure, maybe he just wanted an in with the Underlord. He has that. But he’ll die along with the rest of them if she doesn’t get what she wants.

  “I do not,” Bo says with elaborate regret.

  “Then, go stand over there with your little girlfriend.” Murta laughs again while Jackus glares between Didi and Bo. She despises the way the squatter looks at her, but she’s had his ticket once and this time if he has the courage to touch her she’ll make sure he never gets up again.

  Bo shakes his head with a laugh and holds out his other hand. Didi stares at the plain black box. “As it happens, I brought some insurance of my own. Just in case.” He flicks open the top of the box, exposing a red button. “I’ve planted a few
explosives at key points in your shielding system.” His thumb hovers, dances, over the red light. “One touch and this place is bole heaven.”

  Well now, snargle it all. He might be a traitor, but he’s not stupid. At least, not completely. Stupid enough to cross her, but smart enough to bring backup. Didi will kill him later.

  He joins her without comment or argument, still smiling, the arrogant fool, his trigger in his hand. She resists the temptation to stomp his foot with one of her boots and ignores him while Murta growls and tosses her hands in the air, gunslinger’s weapon sweeping dangerously over all of them.

  “I’m going to shoot someone very soon,” she snarls. “Go find those charges!”

  Some of her people scramble from the lab, but from the confident smirk on Bo’s face, he’s not worried. Didi is, though. He could very easily ruin her own plans if she’s not careful.

  “Tell me what you want.” Murta’s grumbling acquiescence is a front, Didi is sure of it.

  “The money you promised my family.” There was a reward involved? Right, the price on her head. “And the girl.” Jackus makes a waver toward Bo, toward Didi, and her skin crawls as he looks at her with that same possessive expression that gives her the creeps.

  Murta shrugs. “Fine, whatever. Let’s get on with this before I die of irritation.”

  Jackus moves when she jabs him with the gunslinger’s weapon. He crosses to Didi’s father and hands him the chip.

  “The girl’s mine,” he growls under his breath at Bo.

  “The dead don’t have possessions,” she snarls back. Braver with her posse at her side, as odd a conglomerate as they might be.

  He flinches from her when she stomps one foot. That helps her confidence.

  “I’ll make sure you’re not charged the next time.” He licks his lips, her revulsion rising. Tarvis grunts, fury on his face, Bo looming. But, it’s a shining silver hand that grasps Jackus by the front of the shirt and tosses him with casual strength away from Didi. The squatter crashes to the floor with a grunt while Murta dodges the flying trash with a snarl of her own.

  “Don’t. Ever. Touch. Her.” The gunslinger goes silent and still again while Didi’s heart soars.

  She might be between a trash pile and a bole attack, but she’s got backup, by blikey.

  Her flash of happy dies as her father steps away, crossing to the machine he built with slow, heavy steps. Murta follows him with her eyes and the barrel of the gun while Didi hugs herself, Pip flapping a few times on her shoulder.

  “We can’t let him do it.” The crow’s anxiety matches hers.

  “We have to.” This is about her father. Just Dad. That’s it. Let the galaxy be damned.

  She’s not sure what to expect when her father opens the side panel on the boxy, boring looking machine and inserts the chip. Not the happy, burbling sound that emerges from it, the cheery row of lights flashing into existence inside. It’s fairly unassuming looking, a rectangle about three feet long and a foot and a half tall, with an opening on both ends. A small belt begins to run, chugging softly and bravely through the machine to a spout at the front.

  Murta’s rapt attention, her visible hunger at the machine’s activity, makes Didi nervous, though. If she’s this excited, then Dad is onto something after all. Didi’s been hoping this was all a mistake, that her father’s invention didn’t work.

  Can’t think that way any longer, not with it humming joyfully along as he lays one hand on it like it’s alive.

  “I give you the dream of the galaxy,” he says as one of Murta’s men feeds a hunk of trash into the back end. The machine gurgles and burps softly before a steady, clear stream of fluid exits the other side, down the funnel and into a glass.

  Bo jerks beside her, more motion than she can muster. “You… it…”

  Murta chortles. “The fool figured out how to turn garbage into the most valuable substance in the galaxy.”

  Didi groans. Her father made water.

  ***

  Chapter Thirty Two

  “How?” It’s the only word she can muster, but seems to do the trick. Dad turns toward her, a faint smile on his tired face. He might regret the Underlord gaining possession of his creation, but who wouldn’t be proud of what he’s done?

  Water from trash.

  “You gave me the idea, Didi,” he says, soft and with excitement in the back of his words. “Cyborg technology adapted to reverse the waste process.”

  She sees it, can almost trace his thought process backward until it glows in her mind like a lightbulb. “Instead of water to waste, waste to water!”

  “Exactly.” He gestures at the machine that chugs happily back at him. “The system works like a reversed digestive process, separating the waste into base components and extracting all of the oxygen and hydrogen molecules. It recombines them at the end to make water.” The machine burps again, the bottom hatch opening. It’s only then Didi realizes there’s a hole in the table. A large chunk of black, a perfect cube square, falls to the floor with a heavy thunk. “What’s left is a refined block of material that can be recycled into building materials.”

  Brilliant and amazing. She wants to run to his side and hug him, but the impact of what he’s done holds her in place.

  “The chip is a modified fission reactor, like that which powers your cyborg friend.” Dad sighs and pats the machine again as it gurgles to a halt. “Just a prototype. Larger versions could process enough garbage to clean the surface of this planet in a little over a year.”

  “And turn Trash Heaven into the most powerful place in the galaxy.” Murta laughs again. “Thank you, Tarvis. Well done.” She points her gun at Jackus. “Last test. Go taste it.”

  The squatter gapes at her, chokes before he’s able to speak. “Underlord!”

  “Get your scrawny behind over there and test it before I fire a hole in you the size of this plasma blast.” All good humor is gone from her face, leaving her a dried-up skeleton of pure darkness. Jackus staggers from her, goes to Tarvis who actually smiles at Didi’s enemy.

  “It’s all right,” he says, lifting the plas pitcher and handing it to Jackus. “I’ve tasted it myself. Pure water.”

  The squatter doesn’t look so sure, but takes a tentative sip while Murta’s gun hand shakes in threat.

  When he exhales with huge eyes and smiles, she bursts out into a shriek of delight. He hands her the pitcher when she marches to his side, jerking it from his hand to take a long swallow herself. Her cold eyes glitter with something dangerous as Murta wipes her mouth with the back of her gun hand and grins at Didi’s dad.

  “You’ve done it,” she says. “I’m going to rule the galaxy.”

  Didi knows there’s no time to waste, takes a half step forward. “The bargain is complete. I want my Dad. We’re leaving.”

  Murta shakes her head, lips twisting in a grin. “First, the boy here is bluffing.” She sets the pitcher aside, her men seizing Didi’s father, Jackus the first to grasp onto him with hard hands and an evil grin for her. “No way he’ll put his own handsome hide at risk. Or yours, if I’m reading him right.”

  Bo shrugs. “You’re not.” He raises his hand, thumb on the button. “Shall we find out?”

  Murta grunts. “Second, I’ll just shoot your gunslinger and that will put an end to his threat.”

  “Actually,” the gunslinger says with a calm that makes Didi grin, “doing so will prematurely trigger my self-destruct and kill all of us, taking half the planet in the process.”

  Her scowl would cut plastanium, Didi is sure of it. She smiles in Murta’s face, crossing her arms over her chest. “You were saying?” The Underlord glares. “My father, Murta. Now.”

  She chose to call the old woman by her first name, the only name she knows, out of disrespect. It has the desired effect as the Underlord snarls and gestures at Jackus.

  “Let him go.” The squatter begins to protest, but the Underlord is already focused on the machine, her cruel delight and possessiveness bac
k. “We have what we wanted.”

  Adrenaline surges as Didi’s hope flares. Have they won? Really? She reaches for her father’s hand as he pulls himself free from the men holding him and comes to Didi’s side. Bo winks at her when she turns to tell him off.

  “You didn’t need me after all,” he says, blue eyes sparkling. “But, just in case the old lady is planning to go against her word…” his thumb descends.

  Didi gapes at him one moment before spinning on her heels and running for the exit, Dad in tow, even as the sound of an explosion booms dully beneath her somewhere, her boots vibrating from it.

  The idiot. He has no idea what he’s done.

  Murta shrieks behind them, plasma discharging over her shoulder as the Underlord screams orders. Didi makes out, “Kill them!” before she dodges into the corridor and heads back the way they came, toward the elevator.

  “Fun, right?” Bo laughs.

  “I’ll feed you to the boles myself.” Didi hates he’s right. Hates it.

  She skids to a halt at the sound of another explosion, dust and debris hurtling toward her. A silver arm grabs her around the waist, pulling her free of Dad’s grasp. Didi squeals in protest, the gunslinger spinning around as the force of the blast hits him in the back. Dad and Bo huddle in front of the cyborg as the explosion’s aftermath ends, Didi’s ears ringing. But, even her assaulted hearing can’t miss a booming voice up ahead.

  “ALL RESISTENCE WILL BE MET WITH LETHAL FORCE! SURRENDER AT ONCE TO THE GALACTIC CONJUNCTION AND YOU WILL BE SPARED.”

  The mechcops have come.

  Bo shakes his head, shrugs. “Guess shooting at their ship from the Underlord’s plasma banks wasn’t the best idea for her continued health.” He looks far too pleased with himself.

  The gunslinger spins and sprints for the elevator as a mechcop, its legs bent at the mid hinges to accommodate its bulk, spins its turret toward them.

  “CIVILIANS.” The gunslinger’s answering boom rocks the small space. “SURRENDERED.”