Cool.
I crossed over and pulled open the cabinet, found my armored leotard, and pulled it on, because, yeah, I’d woken up without a stitch on—pretty much like most times. It was a good thing, I wasn’t that good looking, or I might have been worried. As it was, Heaven only knew what Mack found worth staring at while he was waiting for me to come to.
“The wall.”
Nice. Way to go putting a girl in her place, Mack.
I pulled out the ship suit that went over the armored underwear, and then reached for the combat armor that had been shoved into the bottom of the cabinet. It fit like a glove, and Mack moved over to check the straps when I was done getting it on. Man could pick me up by the shoulder cinches, but at least I knew nothing was going to come adrift.
I turned back to the cabinet, and saw that it was empty. Not surprising, given this suit of armor came with its own built-in boots and gloves, but, then, I wasn’t looking for more to wear.
“Where are my weapons?” I asked.
“Doc wouldn’t let me stash them here. I had Tens put them in the teleport center with mine. We’ll pick them up on the way through.”
Well, that seemed downright strange.
I took a step back from him, reaching for the comms in my implant.
“Tens? Mack with you?”
“Nope, he should be down with you.”
“Isn’t he?”
“Let me check.”
But he didn’t need to. The skin was melting away from Mack’s face as his form began to ripple and shudder, and the arach leader I’d last seen speaking to Delight took his place before me.
Tens! was a scream that didn’t get past my implant, as he reached into my head, and broke the connection I’d been using, which was pretty much all the time he needed to reach out and grab me by the arm.
“Some of us take memories when we feed,” he said, “and I’ve been tapped into your implant for the last hour. Your Mack is rarely accompanied when he watches you revive. His devotion is touching.”
Devotion, well, that was one word for it. I had others… stalker, possessive bastard, straight-up bastard, complete and utter bastard, voyeur, voyeuristic bastard… There were more, but I didn’t have the time.
I tried to shake the arach loose, but only succeeded in getting him to tighten his grip. I wondered what he was going to do, now, given I bet the shuttles were locked down tight, and the arach didn’t have teleports.
“I’m going to use you as a passport,” he said.
“They’ll never give you a shuttle.”
“I won’t be asking.”
“Then what am I going to be a passport to?”
In answer, he pushed me up against the wall, and pulled the suit’s helmet up over my head.
“The airlock,” and he pinned me until I worked out I wasn’t going to be able to break free.
Arach strength mirrored that of their smaller counter-parts, only on a larger scale. He used two sets of legs to pin me in place, while he used the other two to make sure the suit was secured properly.
“Don’t struggle,” he whispered into the implant, “or your air won’t last long enough for us to be picked up.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted it to last that long, but I was pretty sure I wanted it to last long enough for Tens to teleport me back into the ship, or for Delight or Mack to come and get me. I took the arach’s point, and stopped trying to break his grip. All the time, I was aware of activity outside the links to the implant—probably Tens trying to break through.
Or Mack.
“What did you do to Mack?”
“I took what I needed.”
“Did you… Did—”
“The queen has forbidden it. He will make a good, strong host for her young. To harm him is to bring the same sentence on myself.”
“And me?”
“All this crew will be hosts for my queen’s children—and, unlike the courtesy done by the wasps, you will be aware of them as they feed.”
I froze, and he shook me.
“Time to move. Your crewmates come.”
I wanted to tell him, he was dead as soon as he stepped out the door, but I figured he wouldn’t believe me. I guessed it was just one of those things he was going to have to find out for himself.
Or not, I thought, as we stepped into the corridor, and found it to be empty.
“Where are they?”
I shrugged.
“You know why Mack comes to watch me wake up?” I asked, as he looked up and down the empty hall.
“Why?” and he began walking, keeping me with him by hooking one arm through mine, and keeping a grip on my bicep with a second.
“Because I keep trying to leave.”
That much had been true for the first few months aboard the ship, but I wasn’t so sure it was true, now. I hadn’t tried to walk off the ship for… I couldn’t remember how long. A bit, anyway. I didn’t know why Mack still came to watch me when I came out of recovery. I just needed something to say, because the empty corridor was bothering me.
We’d almost reached the intersection we needed, in order to reach one of the maintenance hatches, and fear was starting to twist and coil through my gut. I really didn’t like airlocks—and I mean that in almost the same way I meant it when I said I didn’t like needles. Usually, the mention of one was enough to send me running in the opposite direction… which was pretty much what I wanted to do, now.
“Hang in there, Cutter.” Tens’ voice was a solitary whisper in a tiny corner of the implant. “Don’t look, just hold on.”
I badly wanted to offer to help, but I had nothing to do that with. I had no weapons, nothing. Hell, I couldn’t even break the critter’s grip.
“You don’t need to. Just hang in there.”
I was hanging, but not by very
