Didi and the Gunslinger Page 8

  He finally stops his constant backward surveillance, but doesn’t make her feel any better when he speaks. “Jackus might not be looking for you,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean getting into his territory again will be an easy thing.”

  Didi doesn’t want to think about that, though it’s all her mind has pondered since she let go of home. She’ll build a new one with Dad, bigger and better. There’s some fresher modules dumped not too long ago she’s been thinking would be nice additions to their place. The more she ponders it, the easier it is to consider this is a good thing, chance at a fresh start.

  Once she resurrects the gunslinger after sneaking into Jackus’s territory, finds and rescues Dad and stops the Underlord.

  Now she’s sounding like Pip.

  He’s fine with her plan to send him up into the sky, to scan for Jackus and his new friends as the sun rises fully over the edge of Trash Heaven. She’s sweating all over again, lugging the extra weight of the heart and generator, but it’s worth it when they reach the cargo hold without a sign of the squatter. Maybe things are heading her way just a bit more. It would be nice, for a change.

  The inside of the hold is cool, the power cell keeping it alive using energy on the aircon, for which she is grateful. Didi closes the door after Pip who wings his way inside, straight to the nearest gunslinger’s silent form. She lets him be, hurrying herself to the platform stairs, and the panel.

  Pip caws softly when the door slides open, revealing the form of the gunslinger. She doesn’t try to stop him when he flaps into the capsule and takes a perch on one silver knee.

  “Big fella,” he mutters.

  “Size doesn’t matter,” Didi says, setting the plas case and generator on the floor behind the chair. “As long as he runs.”

  Pip hops up on the gunslinger’s shoulder, peering over his back as Didi accesses the back panel again. She doesn’t have the proper tools to clean the chamber, but the remains of the gunslinger’s organic heart are now powdered to dust with exposure to air, so it’s easy enough to blow on the interior and hope for the best. With her tongue firmly between her teeth for luck, Didi opens the case at her feet, the hissing sound of the seal breaking loud in the dull air, only the clack of Pip’s beak and the tinkle of his cyborg claws on the gunslinger’s metal shoulder breaking the silence.

  “Now, the part that should be easy,” she says. Her hands grasp the slippery heart and lift it, gooseflesh rising as it pulses once in her hand, a static charge racing over her skin under her clothes. The system to install the new heart should be automatic, if the schematics she’s seen are accurate.

  If not, she’s out of luck. Attaching a heart to a cyborg is beyond her present tools and experience. Pip still had his own. With her breath held tight in her chest, she slips the wet, dripping mass into the chamber and lets go.

  Nothing happens, aside from the firm muscle of the bore’s heart sliding slowly down to settle on the bottom plate of the chamber, burping softly.

  “Crud,” Didi swears.

  “What’s supposed to happen?” Pip’s eye whirls.

  “The thing is supposed to take over,” she says. Waves her hands in front of the chamber as though that will make it work. “Drub it, Pipster. Now what?”

  He snaps his beak, head tilting, silent a moment. “Power’s your issue,” he says at last while she sags against the seat back. “Reckon?”

  Didi smacks herself in the forehead before wincing at the fresh smear of blood. Then shrugs it off. Not like she’s clean or anything. She probably looks like she’s been bathing in blood and gore all night. Which, technically, she has. With careful precision, she wipes her hands on the outside of her gloves, then the legs of her tights, until the tips are clean, even spitting on the ends to make sure all the blood and dirt are gone. Never mind the chip’s casing is tough and meant for battle, nor that it’s been damaged already. But, it seems like she should take precautions, at least what she’s able.

  It’s safe and sound in the small plas box in the bottom of her bag, buried under her water canister and the few food packs she has with her. Her stomach rumbles, reminding her it’s been hours since she ate a speck of anything, but there’s no time to think of her own wellbeing.

  She has a gunslinger to wake.

  Didi examines the chip with her goggles again. She’d meant to take the casing off, to clean the circuits and maybe see if she could replace a few. But, without her tools and the time she needs, she just has to trust that the chip will function well enough to make the heart pump.

  His chest panel gapes as she circles around him, the gunslinger’s head facing directly forward, eye slits black, silver body silent. Her fingers tremble as she replaces the chip she’d taken, pushing it firmly in place. It catches, sticking partially out, and it’s then she realizes this is the way she found it. Someone had removed it, left it in place but not activated. Excitement softens her weariness and sense of dread like nothing else as she pushes harder against the slim chip, her thumb popping it finally into place.

  She feels the rumble of his systems waking instantly, backs up and hustles around his seat to examine the heart chamber. Pip mutters in delight as the small chamber on his back wakes, light flickering around the edges, red and blinking, before turning blue. The heart shudders, a thin film of light flashing into place to cover the front of the chamber—the shielding his last heart was missing—as the bore’s organic matter lifts into place and four suction tubes connect to the deflated arteries and veins.

  Didi holds her breath as fluid begins pumping through the heart, wanting to squeal, to jump up and down, while the crow on the gunslinger’s shoulder flaps his wings and caws.

  “Well done, Didi,” he says.

  She spares him a tight grin. No time for losing herself to excitement just yet. Sure, he has a heart now. But that’s about all. His body’s vibration goes still again when she closes the panel and lets the machine take over.

  “When does he wake up?” Pip’s questions aren’t helping. “Huh, Didi? Now? Or are we missing something?”

  She waves at him to be still, chewing one fingernail before tossing her hands and exhaling all her frustration into the air.

  It’s the pressure change that warns her they aren’t alone, or won’t be, shortly. Didi spins, heart coming to a halt before beginning to pound a painful rhythm in her chest as she realizes someone has opened the door to the cargo hold.

  ***

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her first instinct is to lunge for Pip, and she’s glad she did, because he’s just starting to squeal a warning. Didi dives for the stairs of the capsule, circling it and slapping the panel. The tube door slides shut, closing off the gunslinger and returning the interior of the cargo hold to mostly darkness.

  In time? She can only hope so as she crouches on the far side with her wriggling crow in her arms, fingers holding his beak closed, while the sound of voices and stomping feet grow louder.

  Pip writhes so hard she wrangles him sideways into her arms and half presses the button on his chest. He sags in her grasp, eyes locked on her. He can be as angry as he wants later, but for now his silence means their safety.

  “Here it is, just like I said.” That’s Jackus, she knows his voice. Didi breathes through her mouth, as silent as possible, as the sound of footfalls grows closer. Please, don’t let them come to the capsule.

  “So what?” One of the voices is deep, gruff, like a sheared off edge of metal. Something thunks, rings. She peers around the side of the capsule, unable to help herself, sees the two hulking men who blew up her house standing not ten feet away. The big one with the balding head’s foot drops. He must have kicked the female gunslinger’s body, because she tips sideways. “Don’t work none.”

  “Maybe they don’t.” Jackus has a whiny tone to his voice, something she’s never heard from him before, like he’s trying to impress them. “But their weapons? Hey?” He leans forward, jerks the gunslinger’s pistol from her hip. Surely it’s nonf
unctioning, doesn’t carry a charge after all this time.

  The lead brute takes it from Jackus and hefts it, points it. “Might be worth something to the Underlord,” he grunts before handing it over to his partner. The weapon disappears inside the second man’s coat. “If you can get it to work.”

  “Leave that to Tarvis, remember?” Didi starts at Jackus’s words. Her father? He wouldn’t know a gunslinger weapon from a water heater. Would he? Her mind whirls. At least now she has information. Or, access to it, once the gunslinger is up and running. And Jackus will supply it, won’t he? Everything she needs to know before he dies at the hands of her new best friend.

  “You said you knew where the girl was.” The second man’s voice is softer, more alto, almost musical. But, he’s as brutish looking as his companion.

  “She’s around,” Jackus says, now nervous. She’s finding this side of him interesting. She’s been afraid of him, but sees that he’s as fearful. Her gunslinger will make all the difference when she pays him a visit. And she can’t wait, can she? He’ll be a quivering wreck by the time she lets her cyborg hero end Jackus’s miserable life. “I still think wrecking her place was a mistake.”

  The bigger brute shrugs. “Now she has nowhere to go. Find her, Jackus. Get us that final piece of the machine. The girl has to have it.”

  The two spin and leave, the second man helping himself to a second weapon from another gunslinger before they depart, leaving Jackus behind. Didi’s mind screams at him to get the hell out, but he lingers. Of course he lingers, his disgusting presence making her temper burn in her chest, up her throat. He seems to slink his way forward, a thief lurking where he doesn’t belong. Forget the fact she’s one, too. She considers herself a liberator.

  Will liberate Ives Jackus right out of existence if he’ll just get out.

  He takes a moment to fondle the rounded, metal breasts of one of the gunslinger women, licking his lips and grinding his hips against her before he barks out a nasty laugh and slaps her silver face. Her jaw unhinges, head tilting to the side.

  “Teach you to talk back, bee-atch,” he grunts. Big man, he saunters off, toward the front of the capsule to Didi’s relief. When the exit hisses open again, the air pressure shifting at the open and close, she collapses a moment, fingers fumbling to reactivate the crow.

  Pip comes to life, but lies there still, glaring. “I would have been quiet.”

  She smiles, strokes his feathers. “Liar.” Didi grunts her way to her feet, the crow transferred to her shoulder as she touches the panel one more time. “Back to work, you. We have a job to finish.”

  Didi refuses to consider her last, best effort might be a waste of time.

  ***

  He can feel his insides warming, the plasma pumping fiercely through his limbs, activating systems long dormant. Pain tingles across his forehead, though he doesn’t have an organic one anymore, toes coming to life as his brain wakes fully, awash with a fresh batch of oxygen, carbon and power fed through the pumping of his new heart.

  His brain remembers a nervous system once human, muscles and bones and skin made of flesh and blood, anticipates fully waking. The girl races toward him in his memory, laughter vivid, drawing a bubbling joy out of his consciousness and speeding the flow of plasma further.

  The girl has done it. And he will show her his gratitude.

  The gunslinger lives.

  ***

  Didi stands back as the door slides open. Stares in utter astonishment at the sight of the gunslinger looming over her from the interior of the pod about a half second before his weapon comes up, pointed at her chest. She dives for the floor as a pulse of energy lashes outward from the tip of the gun, sending one of his fellow gunslingers spinning sideways, a giant hole in the already damaged plate of its chest.

  “INTRUDERS.” His voice booms, the volume shaking the cargo bay, the metal under her body trembling from the sound waves as he clomps forward one step, big, silver boots stomping on the ground. “UNLAWFUL ENTRY WILL BE MET WITH DEATH.” He fires again, pivoting on his lean, metal hips, his weapon firing over and over again, scattering the remains of his gunslinger brothers and sisters, filling the space of the cargo hold with noxious fumes and smoke. Didi chokes through her mouth guard despite its filtering presence, frozen by the unexpected assault on her ears. This isn’t how things were supposed to happen.

  “INTRUDERS.” He spins back, feet never moving, gun lowering toward her and Pip, the crow squawking his terror as he thrashes under her, one wing pinned to the ground. “IDENTIFY OR BE ELIMINATED.”

  “Gunslinger!” Didi finds her voice, holding up one hand. “Civilian! Stand down now!”

  He stares down at her, his once silent eye holes glowing blue, the same color tracing around his limbs and shining from his chest, blinking every now and then as his newly risen body wakens fully.

  For a long moment, as Didi stares into those eye holes, she feels a terror beyond anything she’s felt before. This is her last moment, she’s certain of it. She’s made a terrible mistake and the gunslinger is about to kill her. At least it will be over quickly, his plasma gun’s power likely to vaporize her with the first strike. But, she can’t stop thinking about Dad and how dying here, like this, will let him down.

  “Dad,” she whispers into the sizzling air of the cargo hold, tears stinging her dark gray eyes.

  The gunslinger’s entire body jerks, his gun dropping to his side, sliding into the holster. Didi wipes at her face, unable to believe her luck. His human brain must have finally caught up with his defensive systems.

  “Civilian,” he says, voice no longer making the cargo hold rattle, modulated to a more normal tone, though deep and human sounding. She’s grateful he doesn’t have the metallic tones of a robot. His human voice is soothing compared to the gigantic figure he cuts. “Standing down.”

  “Pip,” Didi says, breathless, heart pounding. “Maybe you were right.”

  He pokes her with his beak, reminding her he’s still pinned down. Didi rolls onto her knees, stands slowly, hands outstretched toward the now silent gunslinger. He seems to watch her, his head tilting with her movement, but he doesn’t speak again as the crow shakes himself into order and flaps his way to her shoulder.

  “Now you say it,” he mutters in her ear. “Bit of a beast, isn’t he?”

  Didi lowers her hands, ignoring the insult toward the giant cyborg. Hopefully he will, too. “Gunslinger, designation.”

  The cyborg’s body stiffens, chin snapping downward as he stands at attention. “Battalion Commander G.S. 1275, 5th Regiment, Cyborg Regulars.”

  Foot soldiers, if her history is right, specializing in ground assaults. Perfect for her needs. And while she wouldn’t have turned down a pilot or a weapons specialist, the general purpose gunslinger in front of her couldn’t be more ideal. As long as she can keep him from shooting her.

  “Gunslinger.” Didi swallows past her dry mouth. “Run diagnostics program Alpha.” That should tell her if anything is out of order, if his chip is fully functional or if his brain has damage she couldn’t see. And if the heart she killed for is integrating the way she needs it to.

  The gunslinger’s head tilts forward, eyes blinking as the light goes out and returns. “Diagnostics in progress.”

  Before she can stop him, Pip lifts off from Didi’s shoulder and lands on the gunslinger. He ignores the crow, still focused on her, while the silly bird pecks gently at his cheek.

  “Seems solid enough,” Pip says.

  “I am constructed of plastanium,” the gunslinger says, voice falling into what sounds like a teacher’s, like one of her training vids. “My heart and brain are human, my blood made from human plasma, enhanced with fissionable materials and carbon based fuel fluids. The remainder of my casing is plas, my internal structure—”

  “Good for you,” Pip interrupts him. If Didi didn’t know better, she’d swear the irritating crow just rolled his eyes. “Do you have an off switch, chatty pants?”

&n
bsp; She chokes on his annoyance, though it’s half laugh, half hysteria. This giant relic from the past, this massive weapon with the soothing voice of a human man, almost killed them a minute ago. And the dumb crow is annoyed the gunslinger talks as much as he does.

  Typical Pip. She shushes her friend with a wave of her hand. “System’s check?”

  “Complete.” The gunslinger’s tone returns to professional, cool, competent. Helps her to feel better about what she’s doing, while the enormity of his presence and her audacity slams into her every time she allows it to. What was she thinking? “Brain function at 87 percent of optimal, some damage received in previous battle. Heart capacity at full, organics integrated.” He pauses a moment. “Unknown DNA, but compatible with plasma.” That’s one fear taken care of. “Fission chip.” He pauses again. “Fission chip damaged, at 42 percent capacity and falling.”

  Would it be enough? “How long will the charge last?”

  “Indefinitely,” he says, “as long as further degradation is prevented.”

  Relief washes over her. “Are you able to function at half capacity?”

  He waits, so long she fears he might be shutting down again. “Confirmed,” he says. “Full activation required for final assessment.”

  Full activation? She rubs the frown line on her forehead, tension making her face ache. She’s given him his heart, replaced the fission chip. What else? What is she missing?

  The gunslinger stands, silent and unhelpful, as Pip hops onto his head, cyborg claws ticking over the matching material. “Maybe a reboot?”

  Maybe. She considers the hulking man in front of her. Could it be this easy? And, if so, is it really smart to give him full control of himself again? She could just order him around like this, keep him pliable. But, she needs someone to help her rescue her dad, to have her back. If she just wanted a weapon, she’d have taken his plasma gun and been done with it.