Didi and the Gunslinger Ride Again

By Patti Larsen

A girl, a cyborg gunslinger and family problems like no other!

Didi’s never felt so helpless as she does right now. Betrayal has led her to slavery and the loss of her gunslinger, but betrayal also offers her a new chance at freedom. When she finds herself once again on the trail of her father and mother, she encounters truths she never imagined, family with secrets of their own and a future that holds as much uncertainty as it does promise...

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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: Jul 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927464991

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 bends far forward, her tummy aching from holding her in place where she half hangs over the massive compost pod. The stench of rotting human waste hits her in the face every time she inhales, her nostrils flaring in grim determination despite her need to retch. At least her compressed stomach can’t disgorge from this position, her booted feet swinging from the ground while she grunts against the weight of the massive wrench in her aching hands.

Didi’s life used to be easier, days spent exploring her home on Trash Heaven, scrounging parts to build tech that made her life go the way she wanted. For the most part, that is. Even her month trapped on The Homestead had been heaven compared to this. She actually finds she misses the dusty remains of a planet she hated with a passion so powerful she betrayed herself and her friends to the man who ran it for a chance to escape.

Well, she’s escaped, hasn’t she? Just not as she’d intended.

Didi meeps in surprise as the rusting bolt at the bottom of the curved pod gives way at last and the sludge within gurgles in response. A giant blob plops as air flow from beneath triggers the drain, the large tangle of schmutz shooting upward and impacting her cheek in a slimy, stinking wad. She wipes at it with halfhearted disgust. There used to be times such filth would make her cringe, long for a cleansing and fresh clothing. Sure, she’s been dirty before. She grew up on a trash planet, by fargle, and is no wilting flower. But this level of disgustingness has degraded her natural fastidiousness to a point she simply lives with it.

Having no choice is almost as bad as being weak.

Didi watches and pants over the edge of the hydrotube as the drain releases the remains of three weeks of putrid waste, the sucking, sickening exodus about the best symbolic recreation of her life she could ever have hoped for.

Her boots impact the floor when she heaves herself backward, the wrench clattering to the deck while Didi sinks to sit next to the pod, sweat running down her face. It’s no use to cry, to whimper or scream. Any attempt to fight her fate leads to pain, to despair and loneliness as sharp as any blade. Her only form of protest these days are these moments of silent stillness she steals in an existence of endless, mindless slavery.

She could blame Elian Flinn for her captivity. The young Underlord master of The Homestead had sold her, hadn’t he? Like she is property and not her own person. His fury at her interference and ultimate destruction of his plan to take over the galaxy with a horde of cyborgs and a virus to contaminate all life has surely led her to this life of servitude and abuse. She refuses to regret her actions, and yet struggles to accept that her attempt to do the right thing ended in her own punishment. Doesn’t seem fair, by blikey. Though she’s been down this road long enough she knows fair isn’t any kind of destiny for a girl like her.

Didi knows she has a bare few seconds to sit here and rest before someone finds her and prods her to get back to work. But she needs this time, to crumple inside and rest just a little. She’s wrung to the end of her tether, to the last drop of her soul. Didi can’t decide which is worse, though. Working endlessly, mindlessly on tech that keeps this ship moving through space while quaking at the thought of the torture waiting her if she fails, or taking these stolen fragments of silence to commit her own brand of emotional hurt on herself.

She’ll make a call on that eventually. If she survives.

Maybe she should blame Murta, the other Underlord pain in her arse who drove her away from her home planet and on this crazy adventure thanks to kidnapping Didi's dad. If it wasn’t for the old bat and her lackey, Ives Jackus, Didi wouldn’t have needed to resurrect the gunslinger cyborg she misses like an ache she can’t heal. Or gone to Trash City in search of Tarvis Duke where her former friend and thief, Bo Rylen, first betrayed then saved her. She and Pip—that irritating corbie of a cyborg crow she’s come to love like her own—would still be on Trash Heaven, stomping and winging their way under and overtrash, ignorant to the truths Didi still struggles to accept.

Like the fact her mother is still alive. Had, according to her dad, sent Didi away when she was born. Or, if Elian is to be believed—and Didi’s pretty sure he’s a lying jackbutt who can’t be trusted with his own farts—was stolen from that same mother by Tarvis. To protect her, either way, she reckons, from the fact her family are all Underlords themselves.

There are times she’s tempted to march into Captain Marshall Atlas’s presence and tell him everything. That holding the granddaughter of Solomon Gont, the leader of the Underlord organization, is probably a terrible idea. That he needs to get his ugly and disreputable ship, the Solange, to Central right this minute and let Didi go. Except she has no idea what kind of reception she’ll receive at her family’s headquarters despite being the long-lost child of the Gont dynasty. There’s no promise that same grandfather won’t have her shot on sight. Not to mention the fact giving Captain Atlas any kind of information that might help him or make him money drives Didi deeper and deeper into silent depression.

From the moment she set foot on this ship, thinking Elian changed after being freed from the scientist, Dr. Alfred Titus and the cyborg commander, Lilas Greer, she has been in a state of constant shock. It’s dulled her mind, at least the part of her that makes Didi her. And started as soon as the betrayal was evidenced, the DNA tuned shackles around her wrists and neck shutting down any chance she has to escape.

Sure, she tried those first few days to find a way out, to flee from this horror of slavery and abuse. It used to be all she thought about. But constant pain is a teacher she’s tired of, the controlling agony the shackles deliver more than enough incentive to push her to the edge of her willingness to blame anyone but herself for where she’s ended up. And knowing Pip remains in the control of Captain Atlas, his safety reliant on her behaving and doing as she’s ordered, has beaten her down to a nub of spirit.

It only took one short forced witness of her crow friend writhing in agony to cut her off from her cleverness.

Besides, she has to face facts, down here in the bowels of a ship she hates, surrounded by people who treat her like trash. She put herself here. Ultimately, there’s no one to blame but Didi Duke for what’s happened to her. For her present predicament. And she’s more than willing to accept her fate is her fault. She can live with being a slave, she really can. It’s the fate of others that sends her spiraling into darkness and melancholy whenever she has a moment to think. That pushes her so far into sorrow she can barely eat, sleep fitful and bottomless with whirling nightmares.

Bo Rylen is safe, at least. She has no doubt he’s figured out his way home to Trash Heaven by now. As far as she can figure she’s been on board the Solange a few weeks, more than enough time for the resourceful thief to hitch a ride or hide on board a ship bound for her old homeworld. While she misses him, she has no fear he’ll manage well on his own.

Pip she constantly worries about, partly because of his active beak and attitude, though he’s remained in the possession of Captain Atlas since they came on board, so at least she knows where he is. As long as she’s a good slave girl, the crow will be protected, she’s sure of that. And, from what Elian told her, Tarvis Duke is in the protective custody of the Galactic Conjunction, so he’s safe, too. Or, as safe as he can be with the corrupt and giant corp controlled government of the galaxy holding his leash.

At least he’s safe from the Underlords, for now. Though there are days she’s not sure who’s worse—the so-called protecting collection of politicians and their laws who seem to do what they want and send their mech cops to keep folks in line or the criminal element of the organized and backstabbing murderers and thieves who think taking what they want by force and guile makes them some kind of unsung heroes of the galaxy.

Such debates aren’t for the likes of her, not now, maybe not ever.

No, it’s not her dad or her friend or her crow she fears for. It’s not their fates she beats herself with, tortures and abuses her soul and heart over in constant defeat. It’s the shining, plastanium cyber soldier who occupies her thoughts day and night, unravels her determination to see this trial through, to just keep her head down while looking for a way out. A way, she’s now sure, will never come.

There’s no escape, she’s aware of that. They keep too close an eye on her. Hope has fled along with Murta and Jackus and her heart. And that’s the worst blow of all. The one she’ll never forgive herself for, that she’ll carry to her death down here, in the filth and the darkness.

She failed him. She watched them take him, leave the Homestead with him, gone without her.

They have her gunslinger.

***

He’s been in the dark before, trapped over fifty years in the black and the silence, punctuated only by the occasional update to his system. But that was before she woke him first, the girl with the black hair and goggles and the kind heart and colorful swears. Back on Trash Heaven, in the cargo bay buried undertrash. Before she triggered his damaged chip and woke memories he’d thought long stolen by the process that made him a gunslinger. All for her father.

He doesn’t think badly of her for her need, to the contrary. He’s been grateful to serve once again, to have a task to complete. And when the Underlord Murta captured him, his thoughts were only of Didi, of failing to fulfill his promise to her and her father, Tarvis. To deliver her to safety and her mother, Petal. That woman’s face is embedded in his conscious mind thanks to Tarvis. Didi’s face, older and wiser and a little more cynical. But there’s no mistaking Didi is a Gont.

That’s not the trouble, not really. Certainly Didi is clever and able to carry on without him. He’s failed, but he remains diligent in his attempts to find a way out of his prison. Except, for the gunslinger, prison means the depths of his own mind.

This bout in the darkness feels different. He’s not alone this time, and he’s not sure that’s a good thing. At least when he was decommed, he had the quiet, the stillness, meditative subroutines to keep him sane and whole while the black leeched in around the edges and threatened to consume him. He could live with that, could fight off the devouring nothing with a steady and steadfast resilience he likes to imagine he’s brought with him from his previous life.

The old gunslinger would never think this way, would have simply processed and deleted any abnormalities as per his programming. Instead, he struggles with the waking of his emotions, the uncovered truths of his past. He’s met his wife, or the one who claims to have taken that role, the fellow former gunslinger, Lilas Greer. And though he doesn’t remember her, he has trouble calling her a liar. Because a deep and abiding part of him believes her. Knows she’s telling him the truth. And doesn’t want to let go of that piece of his past despite the damage it does to his already struggling systems.

Shedding his memories was meant to protect him. At least, that was the gunslinger way. He left his previous life behind, died and was resurrected. Gave up the right to be human for the honor of a second chance to serve his galaxy.

He shudders in the dark, because he’s not alone. He’s never alone, not anymore. Not when the laughing girl with the black curls and blue eyes runs through the grass toward him, her arms outstretched, her sweet face so crisply perfect he would weep if he were able.

Emma.

Whether Didi Duke knows it or not, she’s done what almost dying didn’t. What long years as a gunslinger couldn’t. The single thing half a century in the black failed to accomplish. She’s given his mind the means to destroy him. And he’s not sure he can last much longer.

***

Chapter Two

Her quiet time is up as fast as it arrived, the thud of boots approaching vibrating through the decking and alerting her someone comes for her. Didi chokes on a sob, chin dropping to her chest. She pushes herself upward an instant later, before that intruder can find her this way. Torment her for her weakness, abuse her for her tears before forcing her back into work. The miserable crew of this miserable ship have no idea their constant torture—physical and mental—isn’t necessary. That her own internal drive to hide from her failure and the loss of the gunslinger is all the motivation she needs to keep going, to do as she’s bid. That and the memory that aches in her muscles, in the pit of her gut, at the agony the cuffs and collar deliver at seemingly random intervals. Her headlong cooperation is fed more by her need to forget what’s happened to the one person she owes so much and has let down epically out of stupid, gullible need than any kind of pain her body can endure.

She spots Perco, her usual guard, just as he peeks around the corner. Didi’s hands make final work of the tears on her cheeks and she hefts the wrench, one boot kicking the edge of the pod hard enough the lid slides shut with a hiss and a burble of departing waste.

’Bout time, lazy git. He snarls, front two missing teeth making him lisp lazy as lathy. Move it, now. You’ve got more to do. He cackles, the thin, white hair over his deeply wrinkled forehead sticking to the filth caking his skin. At least it seems she’s not the only dirty one, the crew of the lower levels inclined to ignore the disgusting surrounds. She swallows, stomach still queasy, wondering if he ever bathed. From the stench, he’s been rolling in the pod behind her though she knows it’s just his personal musk.

Bad enough, even down here, she can smell him. That makes her want to throw up all over again.

Didi moves past him, scooting sideways out of experience when she enters the reach of his hands. Perco is the feely type and she’s already dirty enough herself without him adding to her need for a wash. He’s grabbed her in uncomfortable places in the past that make her want to punch him in the face and remind her daily just how vulnerable she really is. Because striking out at her captor will lead to agony and possibly hurt to Pip. While she might be able to live with