Chapter 4: Overtrash

Didi stops for a few minutes once clear of the cargo hold to perch on the top of a trash heap. With Pip keeping guard, she pulls free her boot and examines her deflector array.

The thin wiring is severed at the heel, an easy enough repair. She has to find the time to implant the array inside her boot to protect it from accidents like this. It's a fine balance between enough force to clear her a path and so much she leaves huge gaps in the ground around her. A tweak with her pliers and a reboot of the system and she's back on her feet.

Pip swoops over her head, taking his favorite place on her left shoulder once again when she heads for home. She makes notes of landmarks with her goggles, so she can find this place again. The steady tromp of her passing fills their time for at least ten minutes before the crow speaks.

"Thank you, Didi," he says. Chokes on the words, cackling his crow cough. "For coming for me."

"Always," she says, stroking his feathers. "Stupid bird. Think next time."

He sighs into her ear. "I know better," he says. "When they call me, they taunt me." She's been meaning to create some kind of translator, to see if she can figure out just what they say to him, those jackbutt crows he used to call family, but there are other, shiny things that pull her attention. Like the gunslingers. She's almost lost in them-in the shiny, hulking form waiting silently for her on that captain's chair-when Pip speaks again. "I just can't seem to resist them."

Didi thanks the goggles over her eyes at a particularly rough patch, though her nighttime eyesight is excellent and she's reached a path she knows well. Sure, it's still outside her territory, and she's not supposed to be here, but that's never kept her from slipping through, has it? At least, as long as the squatter who owns this territory doesn't catch her.

Not like she helps herself to anything of value the few times she does encroach. Though, that's going to change, isn't it? But, maybe Jackus won't mind her helping herself to a cyborg peacekeeper or two.

Gunslinger, her mind whispers. Thing is, if she does manage to raise one, Jackus won't be an issue anymore, will he? She skips a bit in excitement. Dad will freak if he finds out, until she brings the giant thing home. He wasn't happy about Pip, either, but he'll get used to having a gunslinger around.

She bites back a laugh at the image of the towering cyborg cohabitating with her and her father. She can dream, Didi Duke. She's allowed.

And, though the idea really is a daft one, she's well aware of that fact, and likely to fail, it will give her something to do in the long, empty days of Trash Heaven. A project worth getting riled up over.

And Jackus can kiss her boots. She'll figure out a way to sneak through, right quick.

Didi's grinning as she skims the giant mass of discarded ship's furniture recently left behind by a dumpall carrier. She wishes her father would agree to a more industrious section to take on as their own-there's an empty territory just beyond this one. In that the dumpall's use for computer parts she could have a lifetime of bliss exploring-but he's always insisted that the trash heap equivalent of a vintage pawn shop is the place for them.

And, thanks to the ancient tech surrounding them, she knows what a pawn shop is. Or used to be, back on Earth, Colony One. TV shows and movies at least she appreciates, though their way of talking makes her head hurt.

She wonders as they walk, as she often does on treks beyond her own territory, just how much trash there is on GTR-679. Trash Heaven has been the center of dumping for the galaxy for at least a hundred years. And dumpall carriers appear overhead sometimes on a daily basis. Must be weird living in a place where trash isn't a way of life. She's seen what that looks like, surely, thanks to the vids and films she's salvaged. But can't imagine doing it.

Where would she get spare parts?

A dumpall rumbles in the distance, the glowing red and green lights flashing on its sides, faint white illumination aimed upward, the ident number visible. It's over her territory, the last run of the night. She should go take a peek, but she's tired, finally, all this tromping and the heat and the fight taking it out of her at last.

And Pip's right. Dad will be looking for her, no matter her absent brush off to the contrary. He might be hard at work on his new invention, but he does look up from time to time. And if dinner's not ready, he might even come looking.

That hurries her pace. Not because Dad will be angry, but because he's not equipped to be out here on his own. She's tried a few times to guide him, when he's needed pieces for his project. She's never met a clumsier, more absentminded soul in her entire life, though fair to say she's maybe met a grand total of two dozen others in her sixteen years. Mostly other squatters. Once a crew of a dumpall who broke down nearby, and a couple of shop owners in Trash City. She's taken it on herself these days to get what Dad needs so she doesn't have to be so nervous over him trying to navigate the trash.

Just easier that way.

Didi scans the sky as she goes, anticipating the next dumpall. Sure, the one over her territory might be negligible when it comes to interest, but its typical partner usually has some fun tidbits to dive through. And, being right on the edge of her territory, it could soften Pip up to the idea she's forgotten their find.

As she slips down into a narrow valley, heart pounding all over again, she can't stop smiling.

She'll never forget the gunslingers.

"Didi." Pip loves using her name, inflecting it with all kinds of emotions, trills, edges. She ignores him as she often does, internally drooling over the possibility of maybe, just maybe, finding out what makes a gunslinger, well, sling. She's mastered small jobs, like Pip. But the idea of raising a full-sized humanoid... the power consumption alone is daunting. She's seen schematics, but nothing in detail. Easier, oddly, to get the tech drawings for the mechcops who replaced the gunslingers, fully robotic and heartless. That's the part she finds romantic, though if anyone ever said so to her she'd be the first to start a fistfight over the term. And yet, the idea that the human heart and brain still ran the soul of the gunslinger makes Didi lose herself in cyborg construction.

Even Pip's hissed, "Didi!" directly in her ear isn't loud enough or registers important enough to catch her attention. Only when he shrieks at her, flapping his wings, does she slam to a halt.

Too late, her greatest fear is realized. Lack of attention will be her downfall, she's sure of it, just as it has been now. She freezes in place as she looks up and into the snarl of the man who owns this territory, stomping toward her with a purpose. And he doesn't look happy.

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