In the memory, he was shouting at it to change, and the vespis was refusing. The memory shut out as I admired the creature’s resistance, and I caught the king’s thought that it might not have been the best memory to show.
“Resistance is useless, huh?” I teased, and he snarled.
Mack cleared his throat, and I drifted back to an awareness of my surroundings.
Damn! The stims really “were” wearing off.
“Don’t worry, Cutter. I’ve got you.”
In the seconds it took me to work out what he meant, he’d unwrapped one arm from around me, pulled the emergency pack, he’d kept in one of his jacket pockets, opened it with his teeth, and hit me with a second shot.
“What the fuck!” I shouted, out loud, and realized we were the center of Barangail’s attention.
That didn’t bother Mack, though; he had a point to make.
“Remember what you were like the first time Delight hit you with a cocktail?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Well, this one’s just as bad.”
But I didn’t want this one to be just as bad. I wanted to be calm, and in control, and not some hair-triggered, spontaneous weapon of mass destruction.
“And master hacker,” Mack added. “Don’t forget master hacker.”
Well, how could I forget... but Mack wasn’t finished.
“Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the ship could connect with our implants? And if Barangail would share access to his security system?”
“No, I don’t think...” Barangail started, but that was as far as he got, because Mack was right, and whatever was in the little concoction he’d put in that stim was fast.
Mack the Bastard, Mack the Madman, Mack the I’m-going-to-kick-the-everloving—
“Where’s the Shady Marie, Cutter? Find it!”
And that was all it took. I was out of my head and looking for a way to connect with Barangail’s system through the wireless system that hung all around us. When I couldn’t get into that, I grabbed hold of the king’s psi connection and raced it down it, skating through the implant running the length of the creature’s cephalothorax—and who knew they’d had any implant at all?
Resisting the urge to take a closer look at it, I roared through the connection, and into the open terminal in front of him. As I did, things kicked up a gear.
Usually, I can’t see what’s happening outside my head, when I’m inside it using the implant. Call it a major disability, call it a hell of a defect, call it whatever the fuck you want, but it’s there. Stick me with a stim pack, and everything becomes clear, both inside and out. As in, I can fight like a mad thing, and hack like a beast, and I’m aware of every minute of it.
Of course, coming down is a bitch. Coming down off a double whammy like Mack had just hit me with? Now, that was going to be a real delight. And speaking of Delight, I really needed to borrow the Shady’s comms.
“Tens!”
Up to that point, I hadn’t realized I’d hacked a connection to the ship, shut down the blocker to our implant and external comms, and pretty much achieved everything Mack had wound me up to do. I’d also remembered we had an agreement with Odyssey when it came to the spiders. I wondered where the closest ship was...
“Cutter.” Now, who was that? “Cutter, Mack needs you.”
He did?
Oh. He did—and, sure, I’d been aware of him moving his hands so he had one on each of my shoulders, and I’d been aware of him shaking me in an attempt to get my attention. I’d just been ignoring him. Now, I turned away from the Shady’s scans, said ‘hi’ to Rohan and kicked him out of my head, so he couldn’t control anything I couldn’t lock down, and paid attention to what was happening in the real.
Mack was looking down into my eyes, but he wasn’t smiling.
Now, why was that?
“What?”
“Show them what happened the last time you were juiced like this.”
“Okay.”
So, I did, replaying the entire battle scene from the village incursion where I’d killed five arach in the cobwebbed home of another spider species, followed by the battle in the presidential palace on K’Kavor where I’d killed quite a few more.
And, since I didn’t know what Mack meant by ‘them’, I just broadcast that to Barangail, all the men he had in the elevator, anyone monitoring the security system, and the two arach listening in my head.
“Enough,” Mack said, and I stopped.
I also realized I was responding a whole lot better to his voice, and decided he’d probably put something in the nans inside the pack to make me more susceptible.
“No.” Mack’s rejection of the idea was immediate. “You’re doing all that by yourself.”
I was? Well, since when was that ever a good decision for me to make?
“Since I keep your ass alive, if you listen to me.”
Oh. Well, if he put it that way...
I noticed Barangail staring at me, and realized that sometime during the replay I’d turned beneath Mack’s arms so I was facing out. I briefly wondered if I needed to kick every ass in the elevator, and was suddenly aware of just how little time had passed since the doors had opened and Mack had juiced me. Before I could go any further than that, Mack asked me another question.
“You hungry?”
Well, now that he mentioned it...
“Stay with me.”
Okaaay, but.... I hesitated, listening as he spoke again. This time, it was to Barangail.
“I believe we had business to discuss...and there was something about a meal?”
He kept his voice friendly and calm, and I couldn’t see the need for all the weapons Barangail’s escort were pointing in our direction. We were even letting them get their principal out of the elevator, first. How was that threatening?
Barangail had gone a few shades paler than he’d been when he’d greeted us from the top of the stairs. He almost looked like he might be regretting inviting us to visit. I wondered what else he might be hiding...
“Stay with me, Cutter.”
But...
“Dinner will be
