“It’s a pheromone,” Mack said, but even his outrage had a peaceful edge.
I wanted to both laugh and slap him out of it.
“Please remain still,” Tovy told me. “We do not want any incidents.”
Which was when Rohan slapped the bodyguard inspecting him upside the head, and scrambled back across the floor, keeping his hand scrunched firmly in the fur on Cascade’s neck. Mack and I moved at the same time.
At least we didn’t go for our guns. As the other bodyguards closed in on the boy, we dived for the space between them. I slipped between two before their sides came together with a sharp snap. Mack chose the space beneath the tail and skated under the thorax of the guard Rohan had hit. Tens tried to go around, only to end up being grabbed and lifted by Askavor, as he passed in front of the spider’s claws.
I thought I heard shouting in my head, but I couldn’t make out a single word above the buzzing that roared through my mind. This would not have been enough to stop me, but the hardened claws driving through my shoulder and thigh did the trick. Mack was in slightly better shape. He had a large foot on the center of his torso, and claws hooked through his shirt and over his collar bones—through the flesh.
Rohan had made it to his feet, but had been lifted up against the wall and held there, with Cascade turned onto his side, and pinned, growling and twisting, but helpless to help.
“Rohan!”
I caught sight of a stinger coming into view, and then a sharp whistle cut through the room, and everything froze. The air changed scent around us, going from sweet to a bitter amalgamation of citrus, cloves and honey. I watched the guards turn their heads, directing their antennae towards their queen. The scent around me softened, and the tension eased.
“That was extremely foolhardy, of you,” the queen said.
“Rohan…” Mack began, his voice rasping with pain. He tried again. “Young.”
“Old enough to know better than to attack something so much larger than himself,” came the queen’s reprimand, and I caught myself flinching, in spite of myself.
Typical boys, I thought. Always causing trouble.
The creature above me shook, and I heard the series of buzzes I’d come to associate with vespis amusement. Well, at least someone was happy. The wasp pinning me to the floor, bent its head to look at me.
“And yet, there you are.”
I glared at it, all too aware I was about to hurt… a lot… but probably not as much as I would have, if the queen had not intervened.
“More…and less,” the vespis guard said, and I recognized her as the one who had brushed my chest with her wing. “If the queen had not intervened, you would have died, and felt no pain at all.”
Well, that was hardly comforting.
I heard movement, and watched as Mack was dragged forward. The wasp holding him released its grip, passing him from the foot of its central-most pair of legs, to its unoccupied foreclaw, and propping him against the wall. Blood soaked the front of his shirt, but the wasp wasn’t finished.
I breathed a sigh of relief as it lowered Rohan into Mack’s lap.
“Your young,” it said, and I was relieved to see Rohan was unharmed.
Mack struggled to get an arm around the boy’s chest, but I doubted he’d be able to hold the kid, if Rohan panicked. The wasp that had me pinned, shifted slightly, and deposited Cascade beside his young master. The dog growled, and interposed himself between the boy and the big bodyguards, keeping its head and tail low, its ears laid flat against its skull.
The bodyguard standing over the three, looked down at them, and the air sweetened. I heard the dog stop growling, watched as it sat, and pressed itself against Mack’s side, leaning on him and Rohan. Nice… or it would be, if I didn’t have a clue about what was about to happen next.
“Not yet,” I whispered, when the wasp above me twisted to inspect where it was holding me.
“Not yet,” Tovy echoed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I couldn’t follow the discussion that followed, and the two vespis kept it well and truly out of my head. I figured, from that and the way they kept looking at me that I wasn’t going to like what was coming.
“It might be better if you weren’t conscious,” Tovy said.
“I’d rather see it happen,” I told him.
The vespis guard shifted both the claws she’d driven into me, and my body voted me out of the equation.
12—Cutter in Command
Personally, I think I’d have been better off if I’d let the bodyguard sting me.
I drifted back to consciousness and found myself in the ship’s control center, looking up at the back of Mack’s command chair. Fantastic. Just what I always wanted, a view of the back of Mack’s head. As if he could hear my thoughts, he turned the chair.
“This is my better side,” he said, looking down at me, with the faintest of smiles.
“How are we doing?” I asked, and I didn’t mean him and me, since that implied a relationship that didn’t exist; I meant the ship.
“Well, there’s another ship heading in-system. Askavor says it’s the arach queen, and the vespis want your advice on how best to secure the Shady Marie.”
My advice?
“But it’s your ship!”
“Yeah. Maybe you can explain that, after you get them to secure it.”
“I trust you,” sounded in my head, and I wondered why he’d decided to do a dumbass thing like that. Mack ignored the question.
“Also, you’re special; you’ve now got two escorts.”
I did? I turned my head to take a proper look around. I mean, I knew I was on the floor of the control center; I just hadn’t looked at anything but Mack.
“That’s because I’m the best-looking thing in here.”
I rolled my eyes, and made a note
