And that reminded me… Since when did Mack have drop-ships? I’d only ever see inside of the Shady Marie’s shuttle, and this weren’t it. I turned to ask Askavor where he’d thought the shuttle had come from, but he was out of sight. Instead, I watched as Tek lowered an antenna to the side of his jaw.
“Your Majesty, we are clear,” and I realized we had comms—as in normal mission comms, like humans used.
And I’d thought these bugs were psi.
“You keep calling us that, and someone is going to sting you.”
Well, like that wasn’t an incentive to remember the proper term. A needle was still a needle, even if it was attached to somebody’s butt. Fine, vespis then.
“Much better.”
I turned back to the controls, and hunted through the system for a user’s manual. It was never too late to learn, right? Besides, if someone started shooting at us, I wanted to be able to dodge, and the auto-pilot wasn’t going to be so good at that. Landing might be a problem, too. Fuck.
I dug into the manual, and tried to work out a quicker way to get the skills I needed, in what was looking like a really short flight, and then I stopped. There was no point in trying to learn how to land this thing, if I got our asses shot off in the meantime. What I really needed was for a way for us not to get shot at, at all.
Better yet, I needed a way to sneak up on the ship, and that meant not being seen. Yeah, not being seen would be best.
“Shut up and make it so.”
Man, these commander types really were sent to the same school. It didn’t matter what species they came from. Tek sounded exactly like Mack, and both of them reminded me of the instructors I’d had in Basics. Assholes, the lot of them.
But I knew how to make the drop-ship invisible—at least to Mack’s ship—because the arach were assholes, too, and they’d made the ship invisible to the colony’s satellites. All I had to do was make Mack’s ship just as oblivious to the drop-ship.
To do that, though, I was going to have to get into the ship’s systems, which might be harder than it sounded. Who knew what the arach had done to it. I wondered if Askavor had any idea. He might not want to talk about it, but I was pretty sure the spider-man knew more about arach code than he was admitting.
“You need to be fast,” Tek said, and I wondered if I might already be too late.
I decided not to try going into the ship along my link to Tens. Chances were the arach had already locked him out. Mack would probably be just as dicey. Rohan? I thought—and, just like that, the boy was inside my head.
“Cutter?”
I didn’t have time to explain—or wonder how he’d gotten there so fast. Little shit had probably had another link hidden in the implant. Whatevs. I had more important stuff to worry about. Sneaky link stuff could wait for later.
“Can you get into the ship’s scan-ware?”
“I can try, but it’s a bit nasty in there.”
“Can you get me in, instead?”
“Sure.”
“I might be bringing someone in. His name is Askavor. You are not to fry him. He is a friend.”
I could sense Rohan’s puzzlement, but it vanished when Askavor arrived.
“Arach!”
“No, Rohan,” I told him. “Weaver. Native to this world. Prey like the rest of us.”
Until I’d said it, I hadn’t known it was true. Askavor’s reaction was revealing. He hunched, and then uncurled, and then we both became aware of a fourth presence.
“Who the fuck is that?” I demanded, glaring at Rohan—no easy thing in the digital realm.
“Cascade,” Rohan said, like I should have known. “My puppy.”
Oh…that was a puppy. That was that puppy? The one he’d rescued from the Ghoul’s complex? Against Mack’s orders? And mine?
“Yup.” The boy sounded quite proud of himself. “His name is Cascade.”
Cascade looked at us, his presence taking on a happy tone, when he saw me—and that was all the warning I got. I hadn’t realized you could be bowled over in your own mind, but Cascade showed me a whole new realm of possibilities. Apparently, you could be licked, as well.
Askavor, he wasn’t so sure of, but he looked to me, and then back at the weaver’s presence, the question obvious in his code: Pack? Friend? Foe?
“Friend,” I told him.
“Spider friend?”
“Friend,” and this time I was firm. “Guard me?”
Wuff.
“Guard him.”
Grumble.
Fine, whatever. Last thing I needed was a teen-brat dog to match the teen-brat human I’d added him to. Damnit. The whole exchange had taken seconds, but we still didn’t have a lot of time.
“Go that way,” Rohan said. “I’ll hold the link.”
What I heard next was his very tightly focused reassurance: “I’ll hold your back.”
He was still unsure of Askavor, but that was fine. Mack’s ship might have been home, but, right now, it was someone else’s home, and we had to take it back. Having someone like Rohan guarding my way into and out of it was a very good thing, even if he was still just a kid.
“I turn fifteen, next month.”
Well, f… damn!
Askavor shifted uneasily. Spider had a point. We needed to go and do whatever it was fast. Given how many arach were hitting the settlement, I could only hope they weren’t so on-the-ball in the control center. I wondered if they slept after they fed.
“Sometimes,” Askavor said, as we threaded the code and slid into the part of the system that controlled the doors.
“Do you think there will be any crew in the hangars?”
Rohan answered before Askavor had a chance.
“Nope. All crew have been secured
