29—Free For All
The wolf towering over me didn’t stand a chance.
Mack materialized right beside him and then shot him at point blank range, before shifting the muzzle of his blaster up to take out the stunned patrol that had been moving in from the opposite direction. He didn’t stop firing, and I scooped up the fallen wolf’s weapon and joined him, targeting the ones on the same side of the corridor as I was and walking my fire inward.
We ended a dozen of them before the sound of running boots alerted us to more coming at us from the other end.
“Well, fuck me, but that was inconvenient!”
“Just take them out,” Mack ordered. “We have to reach the crew quarters.”
We did?
“Cutter!” Mack shouted, as I did exactly what he’d suggested.
I darted back and grabbed two of the blasters dropped by my opponents. I slung one, and tucked the other in tight against my left side, while wielding the sword with my right.
This was gonna be fun.
“Well, shit on a short stick,” Mack cursed, and his blaster roared at the same time as mine did.
I’m not sure where his rounds went, but mine cleared the corridor of another six wolves, before I made a rapid one-eighty and raced past Mack to the emergency slide.
Rohan must have managed to stay out of sight and out of mind—as well as in the machine, because the panel slid aside before I could shoot it out of the way.
“You keep bein’ useful like that, boy, and I might just forget what you just did,” Mack told him.
“It’d be nice,” Rohan suggested, and then his voice turned panicky. “Please hurry. I can’t...”
He didn’t need to finish that thought. I could see what was happening to Tens, and it wasn’t pretty.
Man was laughing fit to bust, though...and I figured that was a good alternative to screaming, which was pretty much the only alternative.
“Open it,” a black-furred lupar growled, using a paw against Tens’ chest to pin him to the wall.
Tens managed another gasping chuckle and shook his head. I noticed he was looking at the floor, too, but whether that was so he didn’t give us away, or because he no longer had the strength to lift his chin, I don’t know.
Either way, I fired three quick shots into the lupar’s side, and then another two into the heads of the two wolves who’d been standing behind him trying to rewire the door to the cubs’ compartment.
Tens dropped to the floor, his laughter turning to coughing as he spat blood onto the floor.
“Rohan, we need in! Cutter, protect the cubs!”
At Mack’s words, the doors cracked just wide enough for me to get through, and I bounced through. It looked like the stims were doing their usual job of making me as susceptible as hell to suggestions.
Right then, I didn’t care. I needed to find the captain’s cub—and I needed to do it before the Rennet’s World wolves guessed which compartment they needed to teleport into.
There were already some on the other side of the door, and I took them down without thinking. I saw armored furry—and shot same.
Let me tell you, the smell of singed fur wasn’t something I wanted to repeat any time soon. Somewhere in the back of my comms, I heard Mack asking Rohan to get him back up—and Rohan telling him Case and Stepyan were coming over with the wolves.
Our wolves. The ones who’d hired us.
“The ones you’re not allowed to shoot,” Mack told me succinctly, and then saw the four in front of me.
Part of my brain knew what he meant, but the part most affected by the stims had just been told there were wolves it wasn’t allowed to shoot, so I lowered my blaster.
“Damnitall, Cutter. Shoot those four! Shoot them! Shoot them!”
I sure as shit wished he would make up his mind...but my head unlocked and my hands obeyed and I took them out while they were still turning to look at me.
Rohan whistled. “Dayum. Whatever Doc put in that stuff, it’s made her fast!”
“How fast?” Doc was back on line. His voice sounded ragged, but he was still breathing, and I felt a part of myself, unknot.
“She just outdrew and put down four lupar before they could turn.” Rohan sounded breathless.
“Damn,” Doc replied. “She’s running out of juice.”
I was? I did a mental check and discovered the doc might be right. Well, fuck.
“Keep going, Cutter,” Mack told me. “Keep those cubs safe, the humans, too. Got me?”
“Got you!” I responded, heading through the final door separating me from the cubs and kids.
I found them standing in a circle. The cubs forming a ring around the humans...or the humans that would let them, anyway.
Several small humans had their hands wrapped around the grips of weapons too big for them, and they weren’t backing down.
I’d arrived too late, but someone had thought to give the kids teleport protection. The only way the Rennet’s World wolves were going to take them out of here was if they could remove the inhibiting bracelets from their wrists.
...And the only way that was going to happen was if they could get near them, first.
“It won’t take them long to work it out.” Tens’ voice was an unwelcome rattle in my head. “Take out the Rennet’s World wolves. Keep the children safe. Don’t let them be taken.”
Taken. I got it. Only way I could guarantee hitting a Rennet’s World squaddie and not touching the kids was if I used the sword or shot them in the head.
The two things couldn’t be mutually exclusive, right?
“Cutter...” Mack was starting to sound tired.
I wondered if he needed some milk and cookies, or maybe a sleeping buddy. Ooh, a sleeping buddy... I bet we could—
“CUTTER!” came in five shades of mortified from four different directions, but before I could respond to it, they all said one thing: “Get the Rennet’s World wolves.”
The stim pack might have been wearing off, but
