Our lips touched, and I felt his hands moving over me, even as mine were seeking how to free his shirt from its moorings. Half-turned to the view, we both caught sight of it at the same time—a flash of light, angling up from the planet.
And, just like that, the moment was gone.
“Tens!” Mack was roaring in my head, even as I dragged him down, accessing the Marie’s controls and activating the deck’s extra shielding as I did so.
We hit the floor, and Mack rolled over me, pinning me to the floor, just as Rohan fired in our defense.
“Incoming!” he shouted, and Mack and I swore in chorus.
Honestly, it might have been funny, if either of us had been wearing suits, or if the shields had fully closed. I elbowed him, and looked towards the emergency lockers. Tens had locked the door and there weren’t nobody coming for us. We were going to have to deal with this, ourselves.
Catching my thought, Mack lifted enough for me to flip, and crawl out from under him, and together we scuttled across the floor to the locker set into the opposite wall. It wasn’t hard to open. I hacked it, and Mack pulled two suits clear.
I had a brief and funny vision of what we must look like, each trying to wriggle into a suit as we lay side by side. Mack caught it, and snorted.
“Yeah. Real funny, Cutter.”
But neither of us were laughing when the Rohan took out the next missile at a proximity that buckled the shields and sent the first hint of a crack running through the window.
“Crap.”
Well, that was one way to put it.
“You have another?”
“It’s a motherfucking inconvenience, and we need to go kick someone’s ass for throwing that shit in our direction.”
“Smart ass.”
I didn’t bother gracing that with an answer, but slunk over to the door, and poked it with the implant. Yup. Tens had locked us in but good.
“Tens!”
“Kinda busy, Cutter.”
“Door, asshole.”
“One kiss, and you think you rule the world.”
And it was Mack’s turn to interrupt.
“Don’t even go there, shit-for-brains.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
“Nice to know,” but the door popped open at that moment, and stayed long enough for us to roll through, before sealing shut behind us.
Seconds later, there was a soft boom, and the light above the door started strobing orange. I guessed that meant there’d be no observation deck for a while. Mack hauled himself to his feet, and started running for the control room.
“Get your shit, and meet me in the teleport center!” was tossed back over his shoulder, as he vanished around a corner. “Get mine, too!”
Well damn! There was just no arguing with the man when he was like this. My heart leapt with excitement, and I bolted in the other direction, down a couple of decks and half the length of the ship. Stepyan’s stand-in had our gear sitting on the counter. Mine was laid out so I could tool up right then and there, and Mack’s was in a duffle right beside it.
“Now, Cutter!” rumbled through my implant, and I rolled my eyes, stuffing the latest Glazer into its holster, before wrapping my hand around the duffle’s handles and dragging it off the counter.
“Gotta run!” I said, by way of goodbye and hauled the duffle over my shoulder as I jogged for the door.
Mack met me half way to the center, and opened the bag as he fell in beside me. I guess the man really was in a hurry, because he started hauling out kit as we ran, stuffing it into holsters and belt pouches, and slinging extra harnesses over his shoulders as he went.
By the time we got to the center, the bag was empty. I tossed it towards the control bench as we jogged over to the teleport station and found ourselves a square.
Tens didn’t need to be told to hit it; he just did—and we materialized in a shudder of silver, to the sound of hard slugs rattling into the wall nearest our heads. Mack and I rolled, splitting up and going two ways to put something between us and the unexpected shooters.
Well, fuck me sideways! The boys could at least have warned us we were coming into a hot zone. And Tens’s response to that thought was as sarcastic as they came.
“What? You couldn’t work it out for yourself?”
“Don’t make me come back there and get you.”
“Like you could ever. Mack, that’s the advance party. You take them out, and you’ve got a chance of holding the station.”
More rounds whistled past us, impacting the walls behind which we hid.
“How many?”
It was a good question, and I was already hacking my way into the station’s security system. I figured it wasn’t going to be manned, and I wasn’t subtle.
“Why don’t you use a fire-axe, next time?” Rohan snarked, slipping through my implant, followed by Cascade’s bounding presence. “Here, you focus on shooting, and I’ll get the doors.”
“You are such a gentleman,” I snapped, but I was already pulling my head out of the station’s systems, and getting it back in the game.
To be honest, I don’t know what we would have done, if Case and Stepyan hadn’t returned from their little hunting trip. One minute, Mack was pinned down, and being forced slowly back down a side corridor, and I was wondering just how long it would be before the partition I’d ducked behind would cease stopping bullets, and start letting them through and into me.
It was not a nice thought.
I turned my head, trying to find another piece of cover to get behind, but this was the landing lounge, the place where people came to wait for a passenger car down the bean-stalk to the planetary surface. All around me was an open space dotted with rows of lounges and low tables. There was a counter not far from the entrance to the passenger cars, and there were tall windows that would have
