Oh, shit.
It wasn’t as bad as the first time Delight had dosed me, but it was still going to be hard. I wasn’t quite hair-trigger hyper, but I was close.
“Good to know,” Mack said. “Case, Tens, you’re on overwatch.”
I needed both of them?
And my jaw locked tight before I could say it out loud. I could still protest inside my skull.
“Hey!”
It was both a relief and not, when Rohan laughed in response.
I got this, Mack, he said, and the little shit sounded far too pleased with himself. “Tens called me in. Leaves him and Case free for surveillance and comms, and maybe hauling your ass out of there if it gets caught alight.”
Well, no-one was going to say the boy was anything but Tens reincarnate...
“And you, Cutter. And you...” Mack didn’t sound happy about that combination, but he wasn’t arguing that it wasn’t useful. “Now, focus.”
Which I could do, now that Rohan was riding shotgun on the physical.
I focused on gliding elegantly down the steps and across the courtyard at Mack’s side. What had Case said? Oh, yeah: ‘In these societies, the ladies practice elegance from the time they’re born. By the time they’re your age, that grace comes as second nature. You don’t have that advantage, so focus.’
Well, damn. She didn’t have to be so mean about it.
I switched my attention from Mack to our waiting host, and counted the twelve men arrayed around him. Well, Hell. Who the fuck did he think we were? Assassins Are Us?
“Pretty much,” was not a comment I needed to hear from Case, but she was already showing where the sniper teams were situated overlooking the courtyard. “Don’t twitch the wrong way, okay?”
Rohan stopped me from nodding, or agreeing out loud, and I was grateful. Looked like I was going to be on a ban from every kind of stim pack known to man, the way the damn things affected me. On the upside, I wasn’t hurting or feeling tired, anymore, and I could now pay attention to the scans Case had running in the back of my head, while being conscious of my surroundings.
Bonus!
“Only if you’re paying attention, girl.”
Trust Mack to spoil it—but the man had a point. We’d come within three or four paces of Barangail, and he was holding up his hand. Mack stopped, and only the fact my arm was tucked through his, made me come to a halt, as well.
I really did need to pay more attention.
At least Barangail came straight to the point.
“Did you hack my shuttle?” he demanded, and the three men on either side of him aimed their weapons at us.
Targil and his men stopped, and took five paces away from us, which I thought was smart, if not very brave of them. Mack unwrapped my hand, so he could lay his arm across my shoulders, and Barangail’s lip curled.
“It’s a nice picture you’re trying to paint, Captain Star, but don’t I remember you from a little visit you paid me around three years back? You know, where you reacquired something I’d borrowed from a certain Miss Delight?”
Mack kept his arm around my shoulders, and kept silent. I leant into his side. The pain killers were working a treat, but I could still feel things moving where they shouldn’t. I wondered if Mack’s stim packs had any nans in them, because I could really do with some faster healing.
“Picky, picky, picky,” Mack said, in my head, but, externally, his attention never wavered from our host.
Barangail continued glaring at us, and then focused his attention on me.
“And you can drop the lord’s defenseless wife act,” he said. “I remember exactly how fast you moved when you put my vault guards out of action.”
This time, Rohan wasn’t quite fast enough to stop my grimace.
I remembered exactly how fast I’d been moving when I’d put his vault guards out of action, too. There’d been four of them, and Mack had been busy trying to keep the house guards clear of the door so we didn’t get stuck inside. I’d gone in, grabbed the chip, and gone out, again—and Delight’s instruction to ‘keep it quiet’ was blown fifty ways to stardust and back.
Like we’d ever been able to keep it quiet, anyway. That girl had left some serious intel out of her report—some of it the reason she’d lost the chip in the first place. Barangail’s intel had been first-class, and I guessed we hadn’t dealt with that as well as we’d thought.
“Rohan, you can let go of her mouth, now,” Mack said, keeping it in our heads. “Just don’t let her get loose, unless we need it.”
“You’re under guns,” Case reminded him, and showed him the four teams and their lines of fire.
“Well, fuck,” Mack said, quietly, out loud, as he started to lift his arm from my shoulders.
There was a chorus of clicks that sounded almost as one, and he froze. Barangail looked around at his men, and then back to Mack.
“I’d stay very still, were I you,” he said, “and I’d start answering my questions—or the next time you go over the cliff, it’ll be in a box with a teleport blocker strapped to the outside.”
Oh... so he did remember that particular expedition.
Well, crap.
I glanced up at Mack, and a single shot hissed out, and a bolt of energy burnt a hole just in front of my hemline. For once, I was grateful that Rohan had my limbs locked down, although he did let me turn my head back to face Barangail. I had never wanted to wipe the smirk off someone’s face quite so badly as I did right now.
“That’s the stim pack talking,” Tens said. “You really want to be very still, and extremely respectful.”
And Rohan caught the hint, because my jaw clamped shut and I couldn’t move it.
Well, fuck the ever-loving crap of a motherfucking, star-sucking, goat-smacking, symbiotic, turd-burgling, sphincter bard!
“Cutter!” Mack’s voice was as good
