“Give it up, girl,” Mack said. “You are way outclassed.”
And I decided, then and there, I was giving nothing away. The arrogant sonuvabitch wanted to win? Well, he was just going to have to do it under his own steam. I was going to make him work for it... at least, that was the plan.
We didn’t make three rounds. Mack either got bored, or decided to take pity on me, because he took less than a round to put me down. The pain in my chest blossomed into full-blown agony as he landed a second blow, and I felt blood bubble into my throat—and then I caught a fist in the face, and was out for the count.
Bastard.
8—The Hiccup
Mack was standing on the other side of the regen tank when I woke up. My chest still hurt, and my vision was a little blurry, but I was conscious enough that his next words made sense.
“I’m chucking in some nanites,” he said. “They want us to deliver Blaedergil, and the girl, by nine bells Costral time, tomorrow.”
Costral? But we were nowhere near the place.
“I know,” Mack’s voice came clearly through the implant. “We go to warp in ten.”
He hit a button on the control panel, and a stream of grey entered the tank.
“They won’t hurt you,” he said, when I flinched away from the moving mass. “Stay still.”
I stayed, imagining I could feel the penetration of a multitude of tiny machines burrowing their way through my skin.
“Nine,” came Tens voice over the intercom.
And Mack ran for the door.
Did you know you can’t tell the difference between warp travel and normal travel if you’re stuck in a regen tank for the duration? Yeah, well, you can’t. This might actually be a small mercy. You can, however, feel it when millions of tiny machines get inside your cells and start making alterations to damaged tissue.
Honestly. You can. It’s like a vibration running through bone and muscle, or an itch that you’re never going to be able to scratch. I was awake, right up until I started to try making it stop, and then the tank’s sensors picked up my distress, and I wasn’t awake anymore.
Mack was on the other side of the glass when I came to.
“You done, yet?” he asked, and I glared at him.
He smirked, and crossed to read the sensors.
“Yep, you’re done,” he said. “I’ll send the med-techs in to get you out. You’ve got about an hour to get ready.”
An hour? I was going to be in on the delivery? Fantastic! Maybe I could get myself reassigned.
Mack scotched that thought, when he came back to collect me from the medical bay.
He snapped a cuff, which felt like elasticized metal, around my wrist.
“You need to stay close,” he said, as I looked at the cuff, and then looked up at him. “This round of training is on me. You stay within two meters of me, and you get to keep your hand.”
I what?
“You get to keep your hand,” he said, and I wondered how he had read my mind.
“The implant,” he said, catching that thought, as well. “We’re linked, remember?”
I blinked, and looked up into his face, not trusting my voice to speak. And he smiled.
When we got back up to the ship that was something else I was going to get him to change. He caught that thought, too, of course.
“We’ll discuss it.”
“On the mats.” This time, I managed to find my voice.
Mack grinned.
“Not unless you feel like hitting me, again.”
Hells yes! Now, I felt like hitting him. He raised an eyebrow at me, but I shook my head.
“Let’s try talking this one, through,” I said, and ignored his look of feigned surprise, “and we can also discuss how we’re going to split the bonus, while we’re at it.”
“Teleport crew gets a chunk for getting you out,” he said. “Without them there’d be no retrieval—and then there’re comms and navigation.”
It caught me by surprise, but it made sense. Outside of Tens, Rohan and Doc, I hadn’t met a lot of the Shady Marie’s crew, and a ship like this wouldn’t run itself. That made sense. Before either of us could follow this up, a crewman came into the room. The look of relief on his face, when he saw we were ready, was almost comical.
“They’re waiting,” he said, and Mack offered me his arm.
“You ready for this?” he asked, and I nodded, ignoring the part of my mind that told me he was darn sure I wasn’t.
It was a delivery. How hard could it be?
And that was when I discovered just how many things could go south, all at once—and how fast.
The trip down the beanstalk from station to planet, was followed by a quick ride to the meeting place, and went without a hitch. I was beginning to breathe more easily, as the personal shuttle pulled up by the memorial to something called Shelock’s War. The man on the statue had to be Shelock, and there was a plaque on the plinth on which he stood.
At any other time, I might have gone and read what it said. Today, I stuck close to Mack, as he supervised the unloading of the girl’s stasis box, the body bag carrying Blaedergil’s remains, and a small medical kit that, I was assured, carried the cure for the disease that had had been used to infect the girl and her people.
Blaedergil had specialized in a very specific type of blackmail—a highly contagious one, one that ensured entire worlds fed his twisted pleasures. This mission had seen him take his last planet hostage. It was something Mack and I should have been proud of, but I sensed nothing but apprehension coming through the implant.
What had Mack seen that was making him feel like this?
He didn’t answer, not a word, not a hint, and I sharpened my gaze on our surroundings. Something here was not right. Mack sensed it, maybe even saw it, but I
