“What stuff?” Doc didn’t like surprises.
I didn’t answer him, just jacked in, and then discovered I already had an account.
“Man was awfully sure of himself,” I muttered, and Doc snorted.
“Standard practice,” he said. “You’d have found that out if you hadn’t gone running off with the first sweet-talking AI you met.”
“What’s my password?”
“About that...” and Doc pulled out a small tray.
“Oh, Hell, no!” I said, and tried to push my chair back.
“You and whose army?” Mack asked, standing behind me so I couldn’t move an inch—and I hadn’t heard him come in.
I twisted in the seat, preparing to slide out the side—and discovered that Tens was blocking my way. He reached down and grabbed my hand, even as Mack rested his hands on my shoulder.
“Come on, Cutter,” Mack said. “It could be worse.”
It could? I glanced up at him, and Tens lifted my arm, hit the pressure point that left it numb, and pressed my thumb against the pad.
I yelped as the needle inside it, punched into my thumb tip, but Tens applied a self-adhesive dressing to the wound, and laid my arm on the desk in front of me.
“The feeling will come back, soon,” he said, and left as silently as he’d arrived.
Mack stayed while the machine verified my DNA, and then left to drag a chair into the cubicle. Doc settled himself into the seat on my other side, and logged himself into the console, followed by Mack.
“Standard procedure,” he said. “Everyone using a terminal has to log their presence. If they don’t, we log them out, and then come and ask why they piggy-backed into the system. It’s murder on saboteurs.”
He sounded like there’d been more than one of those, and I shivered. I didn’t like thinking that even here, in a place I was coming to think of as sanctuary, there was danger.
“Don’t worry, Cutter. Crew we’ve got now? You should be safe. You’re the newest member we’ve had in the last six standard.”
“Years?” I asked.
“Yeup.”
“Load ’em up,” Doc said, sounding impatient. “I haven’t got all night.”
I created three files: one titled “Lab_Critters”, one titled “Corovan_Estate_Arach”, and one titled “Arach_on_Ship”.
“Lab critters?” Mack asked, but I didn’t answer, just uploaded the footage of what I had thought were spider-human hybrids, when I was being attacked by them in the labs.”
“Holy shit,” Mack said. “Tens, are you getting this?”
“I got it during the battle,” Tens said—and that had been something I hadn’t known.
He’d been there?
“Yeah, I was there,” and I don’t think I’d ever heard Tens sound so tired.
He didn’t add any more, though, and I went through the files stored in the implant, putting the relevant clips into their folders. Doc, being the systematic guy he was, started with the arach on the ship.
“Wh...” I started, and then just shrugged. What the fuck ever. I’m sure it made some sort of sense somewhere.
“Priority order,” Doc said. “Your lab monsters aren’t it, but these bastards hit the warp point before Odyssey’s ship could get to them.”
“Did they wing it?” Mack asked, and I stilled.
Odyssey had fired on the arach ship?
“They can’t be sure,” Doc said. “All we know is that it hit the warp point wobbly, but went through.”
“And?”
“That point? No one’s following them through that. Not even FedExplore have put ships through it, yet. They’re too busy plundering other parts of the galaxy.”
“Ooh, that’s new,” said Delight, and reached in over my shoulder to mark her presence with the machine.
We all looked at what was on-screen, and Doc wriggled his chair a little closer.
“New new?” he asked, and Delight nodded.
Doc flicked to the next image.
“What about this?”
“Uh huh.”
“And this one?”
“Yup. All new.”
Doc turned in his chair and looked at Mack.
“What do you think, Mack? We hand these over to Odyssey’s boffins, and let them have at?”
Mack stared at the screen, then looked down at me.
“How much footage is there?”
I clicked on the file properties in my implant, and he whistled, then backed up a few steps. I watched the computer screen flicker, noting his log-out.
“Come on, Delight,” he said. “Looks like we need to talk.”
The screen flickered a second time, and they left the cubicle.
“Shut it down, Doc. We’re done here, unless Odyssey decides it needs us.”
“Sure thing, Mack.”
Doc turned further to watch the two of them leave, and I shifted enough to see them go. When they’d left the booth, Doc turned back to me.
“How do you feel about having another way to log in?” he asked, and I stared at him trying to work out what he meant.
“Instead of having to donate blood each time?” he added, and I glanced at the computer, remembering what had been required the last time.
“Please?” I asked, and Doc smiled.
“Here,” he said, and showed me how to set it up so I could log in with my implant.
“But only inside the rec center,” he added. “We’ve shielded it so the two systems don’t talk, and there’s no wireless crossover.”
I wondered if I could find one.
“Tens set it up,” the Doc told me, “but you’re welcome to try.”
Tens had set it up, had he? Well, challenge accepted.
34—The Skymander Debrief
The challenge had to wait. Once I’d logged out, Doc took me back to medical, and gave me a once over just to make sure I was okay.
“Hit the sack,” he said, when he was done. “You’ll be reporting to Mack in the morning.”
“What time?”
“Oh-dark-hundred,” Doc replied, which was hardly helpful. “I’m sure you’ll work it out.”
Oh-dark-hundred? It was always dark in space—and Doc snickered. Yeah, sure. Laugh it up, old man.
“I can still kick your butt on the mats.”
There was a part of me that disagreed with that, but the rest of me made sure it stayed real quiet. This was not a theory I wanted to test. I left the med-center listening to Doc making soft chicken noises under his breath and pretending I couldn’t hear him. I was way too tired to take him on, and he was way too old for this kind of
