Chapter 16: Abandoned

Didi staggers into the trash, the heat of the day taking her breath away. But she doesn't care, just wants to run into the garbage and find a place to collapse. Not that she's quitting, she won't admit that to herself just yet. But Dad is gone and so is her house. Jackus is hunting her and the only hope she has is a run-down piece of rubbish who won't do what he's programmed to do, snargle it all.

Pip flutters as she stumbles, clinging to her too tight. She brushes him angrily from her shoulder, forcing him to take wing. Didi rubs at the painful cut he's made, the small puncture oozing. She's already filthy, but the fresh damage makes her feel like she's failed at last.

"You have to shut him down." Pip lands hard, voice sharp edged and hissing. "You can't just leave him in there like that, Didi. Who knows what mischief he'll get into. And, if Jackus finds him-"

"Hope he does." Didi doesn't care she's shouting. "Hope he stumbles in there and that rugging blikey gunslinger opens fire."

Pip blinks, settles. "I know you're upset," he says.

"Shut your beak." She turns her back on him. "Don't want to hear another peep from you, corbie. Not one." She stomps off, deeper into the territory. Where ruddy else is she going to go, blarg it? Back to the crater that was home? She shakes her head, arms crossed over her chest, old blood flaking from her skin in the heat before sticking to her in a mucky mess as she sweats.

She'll have to find a way to the city herself, see if she can catch the magrail. Maybe the gunslinger's suggestion isn't a bad one if the farging pile of useless scrap won't help her the way he's meant to. She should rewire his brain or shut down his full activation and just make him come with her.

That'd serve him, rightly. Make him do her bidding while his human brain couldn't do a thing to make her stop. She stomps to a halt, jaw aching from tension as she forces herself to unclench. When she glances back over her shoulder, she's surprised how far she's come, the cargo bay long vanished in the trash. And not a glimmer of Pip to be seen.

He's taken her warning to heart, the stupid bird. Just when she needs someone to yell at. Well, forget him, then. She spins and stalks further, heading vaguely west without a plan or a hope or even a breath of anything that might keep her moving. And yet, she goes. Moving.

Because Dad. She can't let him down.

When she finally staggers to a halt, sinking into the interior of an abandoned skimmer, the front seat still mostly intact, Didi shades her eyes from the beating sun, cursing herself for forgetting her bag back at the cargo bay. Defeated at last, she shrinks down into the crisped upholstery, the edge of the seat missing from some kind of blast, closing her eyes against the bitter sun.

She'll have to go back then, there's nothing solving it. She has to have water, above all else. In fact, with all the crying she's been doing, she's likely dehydrated as it is. Tears. What a waste of water. Didi grunts to herself, unable to muster even a hint of happy.

Something rattles in the trash behind her, the faintest sound of debris falling. She should sit up and look, just in case. But no, it's nothing. Just garbage falling over garbage. The story of her life.

A shadow falls over her face before she opens her eyes to look.

And into the beady black eyes of a trash rat. One whose snout oozes where a nose used to be. Before she can cry out or lift a finger to fight, they swarm her and darkness swallows her whole as the bottom of the skimmer gives out and she falls into black.

***

The gunslinger hears the beating of wings on the doorway to the cargo bay. Squawking, the tap of metal claws on exit. He listens, curious. The girl Didi had a crow. His mind is slower than he would like, more of it shut off than is really good for him. And while it means reactivating parts that are damaged, he needs those parts.

The door whooshes open and the crow flies inside, panting as it lands at his feet while his systems reset into the part of his brain where the most decay has happened.

And triggers the image of the laughing girl with the black hair while the crow speaks.

"Didi!"

The girl. She needs his help. And he turned her away. His body surges with adrenaline, the plasma pumping through his system not created to handle such a flow. He bends at the waist, seizing the crow gently but firmly, raising it to eye level.

"Where is she?"

***

Didi wakes to the sound of chittering, to the overwhelming stench of furred and scaled bodies pressed close together, their waste mingling with the fermenting, rotting scent she now knows is her clothing caked in the blood of the bole.

Perhaps it is that smell that has saved her so far. The trash rats have her surrounded, but keep their distance, their noseless queen hovering, squealing at those who try to prod Didi. She's deep undertrash, the faint glow from her goggles giving her sight as she slides them down over her eyes and examines her surroundings.

Calm settles over her despite her circumstances, the surety of someone who knows her life is over and fear has long since fled to another place. Surreal, this experience, but she embraces the flat, quiet silence in her heart and lies back after a moment, sighing out a heavy breath.

The rats skitter back, then crowd in again, as if sensing she's given up. And she has. She has nothing to fight them with. Her bag is back at the cargo hold, her laser pen there. Maybe her boots might serve as weapons, except she's wedged in, the ceiling of garbage above her just high enough for the rats. The hole she fell through has been sealed. Either that or they've dragged her deeper into the warren of their tunnels.

Had she her protections fully charged, she might be able to keep them at bay. Or with her generator, summon another bole. If, if, if. So many possibilities out of her reach. And no one knows she's here.

She feels the shift in their intent, the undertrash chamber heating with it as the queen squeals her attack cry, muffled and snotty with the weeping fluid that was her nose. Calm flees at the last second and Didi screams, unable to stop herself, as the trash rats flood over her.

The first concussion of sound and heat hits her through the garbage, the rats freezing in place as debris rains down on them all. When the roof of the nest blows apart a moment later, she gapes upward in shock, believing at first she is dreaming, escaping her death with a last-minute mental break. Or, that her soul has already left her body, that silly energy field abandoning her human form before the actual end. While she debates her belief in souls and mental breaks, the rats scream their fury at the invasion of their territory as a large, looming shadow casts over her and a second plasma blast sends them scattering.

Glowing blue eyes look down at her, at least ten feet above. "You are well, Didi Duke?"

She chokes on her answer, nods instead. The gunslinger leaps down into the space, one hand grasping her as best he can in the narrow gap and pulling her to her feet. Didi clings to the heat of his metal body while a brave rat-or foolish for all-throws itself at the gunslinger's leg. His hand moves with robot swiftness, the barest flash of light from his weapon as his computer system analyzes the threat and dispenses only the necessary force to vaporize the wriggling creature gnawing on his shin. Didi's mind, thoroughly shaken by the ordeal, can still find amazement in the simplicity and beauty of the cyborg's systems.

As long as she has that, she figures she'll be all right.

He leaps for the surface, the barest bending of his knees her warning as his arm slips around her waist. "Hang on." She clings to him, looking down as he launches them to the surface of the trash with a quick burst of power from the base of his boots. He has thrusters, functioning thrusters. She hadn't thought of those, will have to factor them into her plan to rescue Dad.

Just as soon as she finds a way to get clean and have a long, ugly cry.

When he sets her on her feet, she stumbles, her boots deactivated. Either the rats figured out how to sever the connections or the power has run out. Neither scenario makes her happy. In fact, her inactive boots, though a minor part of her displeasure in that moment, serve as the center of her attention-her very angry and frustrated attention-as she siphons off her desire to crumple and let go into a passionate need to break something.

Anything but the nothing she felt down below the trash. Anything.

"Didi!" Pip lands on her shoulder but she slaps him away, sending him squawking free.

"You idiot!" She shouts at the gunslinger, hands fisted at her sides, a new focus for her freshly woken fury. It feels good to vent, even if, a tiny part of herself admits while in the middle of her rant, it's unfair and she should be thanking him for saving her life. "Do you want the whole planet to know where we are?"

He tilts his head at her, blue eyes dimming before returning to their normal glow. "I hadn't considered that," he says.

"You don't say." Her voice could chill the surface of the sun. "And you!" She jabs a finger at Pip, feeling better already. "Where have you been? I could have used your help, you stupid bird."

"I thought I was helping." He's snippy, bless him. She needs the argument to continue and since the gunslinger doesn't seem willing to fight with her, well Pip will do just nicely.

"Some helping." She turns her back on him where he lands on some trash flung free by the gunslinger's attack on the hive. "Could have come with me instead of abandoning me like that."

"I abandoned you?" The corbie's shriek brings her no end of satisfaction. "You stomped off like a spoiled git with a hangnail. You're lucky I cared enough to fetch this one." She turns back to see Pip spinning himself, beak pointing briefly at the gunslinger before his shining feathered back is to her. "And that I figured out how to make that tracking chip you hid inside me work the other way around."

That's how he found her. Didi's anger fades, softens. She's had her shout, expelled her energy. Now, knees wobbling from the aftereffects, she crosses to the crow and scoops him into her arms. He tries to peck her while she snuggles him and rocks him.

"Dumb critter," she says.

Pip mutters at her.

"Thank you." Didi kisses the top of his head.

"Welcome." It's a mumble.

She turns to face the gunslinger who stares at her in silence. "Well?"

He shifts in place. "I'm sorry for drawing attention."

She laughs, can't help herself. Pip rises to her shoulder while she approaches the cyborg and hugs him. It feels odd, the heat of his metal body, the lack of humanity in his form outside his shape. And even weirder for him, she assumes, though his arms slowly rise and gently embrace her a moment before he lets her go.

Didi steps back, wipes at her filthy face with the back on one hand. "I need you to help me find Dad."

He nods. "I understand," he says. "Perhaps a compromise?"

She's not sure she'll like what he has to say, but crosses her arms over her chest and waits.

"I will escort you on your mission," the gunslinger says. "And, if the opportunity presents, I will speak on your behalf to the proper authorities."

She was right. She doesn't like it. "And if the proper authorities won't help?" She's no proof that's the case. For all she knows the mechcops of the Galactic Collective will be more than happy to assist. Except the way everyone she's ever met talks about the state of things in Trash City, she's not holding her breath. Especially if an Underlord is in charge.

"If not," he says, "I will do everything in my power to help you find and free your father."

"Promise?" She holds out one hand, waits for him to shake.

"I promise." He grips her fingers gently. "Might I suggest we begin immediately?"

He doesn't have to tell her twice.

***

The gunslinger follows the girl Didi over the trash heap, hovering behind her. Perhaps he should offer to carry her. The trip back to the cargo bay would be much faster if so. But, he's seen her pride, the humanity left in him recognizing her need to stand on her own two feet.

He should tell her about his timer. But perhaps he can take her safely to the city and deliver her into the hands of those in authority before they are at risk of his destruction.

Fourteen hours remain. Surely he has time.

With a growing feeling of protectiveness winding its way through his new heart and the laughing girl he used to know dominating his mind, the gunslinger follows the girl through the trash.

***