The soldier opened a cabinet set into the wall separating the passenger compartment from the cockpit, and pulled out an auto-injector. I whimpered at the sight of it and buried my face against Mack’s shirt. It was an improvement on what my reaction had been a year ago.
Back then, I’d have been running before I’d realized I’d left my seat. Guess I was finally starting to get used these things. The Stars knew I’d had enough of them applied. Given none of them had killed me, yet, and most of them had made me feel better, it beat the Hell out of me as to why they still scared me shitless.
A slight pressure along the gown’s shoulder seam was followed by the sound of material tearing, and I tried to punch Mack on the chest.
“That dress was new!” came out muffled, and ended in a yelp as the auto-injector was set against newly bared skin and activated.
“There. All done,” Targil said, and he might have been addressing a child.
Man, I was just giving folk all kinds of bad impressions, today. As the cold burn of the stim raced through my system, I hoped those impressions weren’t going to get worse. Last time I’d had an unknown stim had been...interesting.
“You’ll be fine.” But Mack’s reassurance was more command than a comfort, and I could only hope for the best.
6—Unmasked
Barangail’s mansion was more of a small fortress than a house. He’d set it overlooking the Carafakt, several klicks out of the city, which explained some of the reluctance we’d had from the hire-car company when we’d first approached them—and also why our host had sent his own transport, although the hit at the beanstalk’s base explained that more.
Case hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d hinted at change coming to Alpha Nine. She just hadn’t said how bloody and violent it was probably gonna be. I sat beside Mack, appropriately harnessed, with the big lug’s arm around my shoulders. Once we’d left the city, Targil had lowered the extra shielding on the plassteel windows, and we could see the terrain as we passed.
The window shields made me wonder if we should have been expecting more than just small arms in town—and why Barangail would rate that much attention. The barren landscape made me wonder where in the Stars the Alpha Niners got their food. There wasn’t a crop in sight.
Mack must have been wondering, too, because he quietly surveyed the landscape for the first few miles, and then turned to Targil.
“I don’t see any crops,” he said, and the statement demanded an explanation.
“Not at this elevation,” Targil told him. “My lord has estates in the lowlands, and a fully-equipped bio-dome in the caverns below.”
There were caverns substantial enough for bio-domes?
“And the city?” Mack prodded. “Who serves their needs?”
I huffed a sigh, pretending disinterest as any space-borne lady might, and looked past Targil and out the window. He looked at Mack.
“The city is supplied by the lords,” he said, his words sending a chill through me, but he wasn’t finished, “and we have a guild that provides for visiting ships.”
‘At a price’ hung, unspoken, in the air between us.
One of the soldiers shifted restlessly, and I resisted the urge to look towards him. Instead, I turned to look through the window past Mack, and caught sight of the edge of the gorge. Fortunately, we were travelling far enough away that I couldn’t see over it. I pretended discomfort, anyway, leaning into Mack and closing my eyes.
At the same time, I sent him what I’d seen in the land beyond. He caught sight of the subtle movement along the cliffs rising a few meters above us on the opposite side of the gorge.
“Those resurgents,” he said, making a point of looking through the windows on both sides, and then pausing and looking more closely at the cliffs, “do they operate outside the city?”
Targil started to shake his head, and then frowned, catching the direction of Mack’s gaze. At the same time, one of the soldiers spoke.
“Incoming.”
And the shields went back up over the windows.
The shuttle slewed sideways, spinning full circle, and then accelerating away. An explosion occurred shortly afterwards and the armored craft shuddered, but didn’t stop. I kept my eyes closed, and pressed closer to Mack’s chest. Hopefully our hosts would take that as the reaction of a frightened woman, and not the action of someone acting as a conduit between Mack and the ship above.
“Well, fuck me,” Tens said, and I watched the scans go from showing empty countryside to showing life on both sides of the road. “I want what they’ve got.”
“I want to kill what they’ve got,” Case said, showing what lay ahead of the shuttle.
Mack gave a startled oath, unbuckled his harness and leapt for the cockpit. I kept my eyes closed, and heard him stop, the picture I was feeding him fragmenting, as I emerged from my skull.
“Cutter!” Mack roared through the implant, even as he yelled at Targil, “Let me through!”
I sank back into my implant, and hit the comms to the ship.
“Tens, Case needs control,” I sent, and wondered if I needed to break out of my role and get ready to go to war.
“Nah, we got this,” Tens said. “Just sit tight.”
So, I sat, and focused on feeding Mack the ship’s scans and updates on what Case and Tens were doing as they hacked the shuttle controls and took over. In the meantime, he was arguing with Targil.
“You need to sit down, Captain,” Targil said, and his words were just short of an order.
“But...” Mack said, although he was already taking a step back towards his seat.
“Now, sir!” Targil insisted, and Mack hit the seat beside me.
“Sir, someone’s taken control of the shuttle!”
Mack buckled in, his hands moving slightly faster over the straps than they had before.
“I hope you have an explanation for this!” he snapped, but Targil ignored
