Didi and the Gunslinger Save the World

By Patti Larsen

A girl, a cyborg gunslinger and a whole world at risk!

Thanks to the traitorous ship captain who dumped her on a dustbowl of a backwater planet, Didi, the gunslinger, her cyborg crow Pip and the young thief, Bo Rylen, find themselves trapped and out of options to escape the dying world. But when the local sheriff offers an alternative, Didi finds herself embroiled in a plot that threatens the galaxy, one only she can stop. That is, if she can figure out who to trust first...

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Didi and the Gunslinger
Didi and the Gunslinger Save the World
Didi and the Gunslinger Ride Again

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patti Larsen
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927464953

Patti Larsen

About me, huh? Well, my official bio reads like this: Patti Larsen is a multiple award-winning author with a passion for the voices in her head. But that sounds so freaking formal, doesn’t it? I’m a storyteller who hears character's demands so loudly I have to write them down. I love the idea of sports even though sports hate me. I’ve dabbled in everything from improv theater to film making and writing TV shows, singing in an all girl band to running my own hair salon.But always, always, writing books calls me home.I’ve had my sights set on world literary domination for a while now. Which means getting my books out there, to you, my darling readers. It’s the coolest thing ever, this job of mine, being able to tell stories I love, only to see them all shiny and happy in your hands... thank you for reading.As for the rest of it, I’m short (permanent), slightly round (changeable) and blonde (for ever and ever). I love to talk one on one about the deepest topics and can’t seem to stop seeing the big picture. I happily live on Prince Edward Island, Canada, home to Anne of Green Gables and the most beautiful red beaches in the world, with my pug overlord and overlady, six lazy cats and Gypsy Vanner gelding, Fynn.

Book preview

Chapter One

She crouches behind a dusty hill, grit harsh between her teeth despite her modified mouthpiece, tiny bits stinging her eyes even past the plasglass lenses of her goggles. The black crow, normally shiny and soft, shakes his wings where he perches on her shoulder, his sable feathers grayed out by the constant, dulling powder this entire fardling planet seems to be made of.

Now, Didi? Pip’s voice, normally loud and piercing, sounds muted in the dull air. Either he’s making an attempt to pipe down for once or the dust is in her ears, too.

Not yet, pushy corbie. She swats at him but the effort is halfhearted, her energy sapped by heat and the film of gray that settles on everything she owns. Sure, Trash Heaven had its downsides. At least this place doesn’t stink. But she’d trade the decaying piles of the galaxy’s refuse on her home planet for the decaying crust of this one. Trade it all to see Dad’s smile again, to know he is safe and sound and not out there somewhere in the clutches of them she doesn’t trust to have his interest. But instead of being at his side on Trash Heaven or on that Galactic Conjunction ship where she last saw him, she’s hunkered in the dirt and none too keen on her predicament.

Pip sighs yet again. She’s lost count of his expressions of impatience in the hours she’s crouched here, waiting for their target to just show up and be done with things already. Didi tries not to feel bitter, as much as she’s tired of the taste of the dust, the way it clings to her own black hair, gets into her clothes, her food, and the water she drinks. Because bitterness is a road she can’t afford right now, not with her target moving into sight at last and freedom coming around the bend.

Landers approaching. She whispers her report into the mic she’s embedded in the strap of her goggles. It’s the same one the others have as subcues beneath the skin, but the idea of embedding one in her flesh gives her the wheeblies. The hum of the mechanism sighs while her vision adjusts in the flickering display of the plasglass. She can’t help the speeding of her heartbeat, the surge of adrenaline. Her small body shakes off the lethargy of waiting, the heat and gritty air no longer in her focus. A faint headache started behind her eyes about fifteen minutes ago, though it feels like she’s had one since the moment she and her friends were dumped like trash on CLX-117. She’s come to hate The Homestead, as the locals call it, about as much as she misses Trash Heaven and her dad, times she’s sure she’ll die here in the powdered remains of a once viable planet and the sticky swelter its dying sun produces.

This is the job. This one will take her out of this wretched place, put her butt on a ship and send her back out into the stars. In pursuit of her father at best choice and her mother if the friends she’s dragged into this disaster have much to say about it. Didi’s only goal since Tarvis Duke was kidnapped from their little greenhouse home on Trash Heaven has been to rescue him. It’s consumed her, that drive to find Dad and see him safe. It’s led her to places she never expected, to trouble she’s still wrangling. And to this vile little slice of the galaxy the ship captain who left her here can shove up his twaddle.

Roger that. The gunslinger’s deep, comforting voice does little to help her mood today, though she’s grateful here’s here with her, despite blaming him a time or two for their predicament. It wasn’t the Gunslinger’s fault that smarmy squeeber, Denver Ruddles, decided cowardice trumped the money her dad paid him to take her to Humnitara—the planet everyone calls Central—and her mother. But it’s the big, shiny cyborg gunslinger who delivered her to that captain’s rust bucket of a crapall spacecraft and he who stands out like a red eyed bole in a sea of trash rats. And the very reason, by snargle, they’re stuck here. She’d be snuck on board another ship by now, tucked into a hold or making herself useful and long called The Homestead a bad memory. But how to smuggle free a tall, shining, decommed gunslinger who no one would mistake for anything but the illegal piece of cyborg hardware and wetware he is?

She’s not leaving him behind. But she’s at the end of her rope with a plan to get them out of there. Except, of course, raising enough credits to bribe the ship captains who blast their way off The Homestead with decreasing frequency. To turn the other cheek, to give them a pass. Find one that has no love for the Conjunction and no fear of the Underlords.

So far no luck on either front. But she’s not staying here forever. She’ll steal a ship if she has to.

Didi blinks away traces of dust and exhales slowly to force her pulse to lower as her other companion speaks over the line.

Back door flagged, Bo Rylen says. Ready here.

He isn’t making their little exile on this wasted bletchhole of a planet any easier. If the young thief sighs at her one more time—Pip echoes the sound yet again, reminding her she is annoyed with him, too—she is going to do something permanent to him that will make him wish he’d never run into her back in Trash City. And the next instance of whiny boy baby shulling will gain him a black eye and maybe the need for some cyborg parts like she’s grafted onto Pip.

And yet, she understands his frustration. Because it’s her frustration, too. And part of her is surprised he’s still here.

Didi squints, rubbing at sweat beading on her forehead, the low, gray hill doing little to shade her from the constant sun, though doing its job to keep her out of sight of the approaching line of landers skimming toward her position. At last. Her informant told her they’d be here long and ever ago, but better late, she reckons, than a wasted job on a dirty, hot hill. Her fingers clutch convulsively around the gadget in her hand, thumb descending at last to trigger the device and the transmitter planted near the front door of the small shack squatting in the depression beneath her.

Call activated. She tucks the small, silver box into her hip bag, wishing she’d had time to test the mechanism more thoroughly before taking on this job. Didi just isn’t used to having to scrounge so hard for spare parts and tech, not coming as she has from the landfill of the galaxy. Everything comes so much harder here. Food, water, shelter, equipment, all of it at a premium and shipped in from off planet. Though, Didi still wonders and grumbles to herself, why anyone would choose to live here is so beyond her she might as well be in another universe.

Never mind it’s home to the very mineral that makes gunslingers and Pip and most of what she loves to build possible. The galaxy can keep its tirethium and cyborg tech and all of the rest of its mech diversity. She’ll happily go back to rubbing sticks together to make fire if she can just find a way to escape this nasty ass place once and for all.

Didi pictures capturing and torturing Captain Ruddles slowly and with tech assisted agony involved as the Gunslinger responds.

Standing by.

Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t willingly give it all up. She shifts her position in the sand, Pip squawking at her unannounced change of position. He’s loud enough she shushes him though the lander vehicles are still far enough out no one could possibly hear him to raise the alarm. That she knows of.

Did Ruddles purposely choose The Homestead as a form of his own torture? Or did he, like he claimed when he stopped here, sending her and her friends out into the spaceport at Purity Landing on a pretext of refueling, choose it for its proximity to Trash Heaven? Didn’t matter now, not after the months she’s spent choking on dust and cursing him daily for being such a fardling yoink.

She gets it, understands the fear of the Underlords and the Galactic Conjunction breathing down her neck. Didi isn’t stupid despite her now seventeen years. Not that turning a birthday here on The Homestead was marked with anything but her irritation at remaining stuck solid. It is clear to her she’s become embroiled in a mess not of her making thanks to her father’s brilliance and her mother’s connection to the criminal organization everyone says really runs the galaxy. The fact Petal Gont is part of the most powerful Underlord family isn’t lost on her, though the news is new. So she can understand Ruddles’s anxiety and his need to get the job over with.

But Tarvis Duke paid the captain to deliver her to Central. Not this wretched shmutzhole of a back system quagslag.

Didi shifts again, more out of the need to shake off her thoughts than from physical discomfort. Pip is silent this time at least, the landers close enough she can see past the cloud of dust they raise around them in a tornado like vortex, the leader’s glass dome catching the sunlight despite the layer of dirt.

One minute. She glances sideways at her heads up display, the goggles whirring to keep up with her mental demands. Are our friends almost here?

Sighted. The Gunslinger’s calm helps more than she’s ever told him. In fact, she waffles yet again between being grateful he’s here with her and wishing he wasn’t quite so… obvious. Incoming. Is that relief in his voice? Didi catches herself grinning, stretching the invisible mouth guard keeping the bulk of the surface of The Homestead from sliding down her throat. She only admits to herself now she has been worried her new invention would fail.

Almost to your location. Bo sounds like he’s faintly out of breath, so he’s moving fast. Good. She needs him back here if their plan has any hope of success. Though the Gunslinger’s assurance their friends are on their way increases their chances by a hundredfold, she reckons. But, she has decided to admit Bo is a part of her life now and she’d miss him if he left. Which she’s sure he’d do if it weren’t for the gold chip tucked under a scrap of plasskin she’s coded into her own DNA. It hugs her lower abdomen, invisible to view and to tech thanks to its hiding place inside her own body’s code. It cost her a pretty to build the incubator necessary to grow even enough to hide the small square of tech, but to Didi it’s worth all the trouble.

But it’s also the source of Bo’s retention to Didi’s cause, as far as she can reckon. Her father’s invention, turning trash into water, makes the chip priceless. Not to mention the fact her Underlord mother means a chance at reward for the young thief. Didi doesn’t blame him, takes him for who he is, has no illusions. And yet, if he leaves, she’ll nurse a broken heart and never, ever admit it to anyone.

Besides, Bo’s resourcefulness gained her tech and parts and keeps them in enough food and water she can focus on the important things. Where those items come from she also couldn’t care one whit about. This scrabby planet owes her.

Her job is making enough money to get them all out of here.

The landers are almost to her location, dust thick enough now she tucks herself behind her little hill and waits for the dirt to settle. The drivers will do the same, so there’s still a few minutes of quiet before Didi’s carefully contrived hell breaks over them.

If only she and her friends could just sneak aboard a transport. She and Bo could, the two of them, she’s sure of that. But doing something so brazen and dangerous would never work with Pip, chatty corbie that he is. And hiding a gunslinger? She might as well try to smuggle a supernova onto a lander.

Didi chafes internally, rubbing at the weariness and the wound of her irritation as if that will do her any good. She can’t help it, itching the scratch so hard it consumes her when she lets it. Which is any time she’s not doing something about it.

All ready. Bo’s voice has settled, draws her to the present and out of her thoughts.

Standing by. The Gunslinger has her back. One big reason she’ll never choose to leave him behind. She’ll find a way. Is making a way right now, as a matter.

Didi inhales. Exhales. And nods to herself while the uncharacteristically quiet Pip suddenly chatters crowspeak in her ear.

One rescue coming up.

***

Chapter Two

The landers come back into view from behind their cloud of dust while Pip decides it’s the perfect time to harangue her for the usual.

This is a foolish, foolish idea. His cyborg servos whir in his agitation, one mechanical eye glowing red far within as he glares at her, beak clattering together. We have no clue what luring our big friends will mean or if your gadget even works.

Stop complaining, she mutters at him. GS says they’re coming, so they’re coming. Besides, it’s too late now, you stupid bird.

He chuffs in frustration and pecks the strap of her goggles. I spoke up several times—

Didi turns her head and grasps him firmly in one hand before he can go on. Pip squawks at her loudly enough she winces and feels badly for possibly hurting him. But her grip on his leg doesn’t loosen as she stares him down behind the glass of her goggles.

You have a better notion, she says, low and humming with her barely contained anger, you should have piped up earlier. Truth being, you have a solution to offer, Pip Squeak, some means for us to vacate this dust marble without all the brouhaha, I’m yours with ears wide. She releases him and turns away as his dark head ducks in submission. Otherwise, less complaints and more trap shut.

He shudders, feathers settling, dust cascading from his wings. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

That prequel to I told you so makes her jaw ache as she clenches her teeth and considers heaving him out into the desert to fend for himself. Unlike Trash Heaven, The Homestead doesn’t have crows imported from Colony One, though there are plenty of rats adapted to the environment. While she knows she’d miss Pip if he went and got himself lost or damaged like he often did at home, just once she’d like him to shut the hell up already and be useful.

She chooses instead to ignore his comment like she does most of what he says these days and focuses on the settling dust below. The landers are now fully visible and there’s motion within as the passengers wait out the storm of powder their arrival raises. Perfect for her needs, just as she planned. She allows a brief, bright spark of optimism this might actually work the way she intended as the door to the lead lander opens and a big man in a long, beige coat gets out.

She’s instantly reminded of Old West vids she used to watch back home, remnants of ancient Earth discarded with the rest of the trash. From his tall boots to his ground length coat and the wide brimmed hat shading his bearded face, he’s the picture of a holovid cowboy. A second man joins him, this one short and whip slim beneath his own jacket and hat, the pair