“Is it a problem?”
“Only if you’re a Star Shadow.”
I stared at Mack, a hard lump forming in my throat.
“We’re not supposed to kill them.”
He smiled back. It wasn’t a particularly nice smile.
“We won’t be killing them.”
I glared at him.
“We’re not supposed to get them killed, either.”
“We won’t. We’ll just keep ourselves real quiet about what’s going into that hangar. Tens, see if you can get us a slot, as soon as we’re in hailing range. Case, how fast can you get us there?”
“It’s four days’ flight time,” Case said, “unless I skip through Vameran’s Arc, and pull an extra jump through Kodestes. Doing that, I can cut it to a day, a day and a half tops.”
I ran the names, altered the path as she suggested, wondered why the hell she needed a navigator, anyway—and why I hadn’t come up with the alternative, myself. It wasn’t hard to work it out, when the data came back.
“You have got to be shitting me.”
Mack had been staring off into space. The look he cast in my direction was sheer mischief. I hadn’t seen that look, before. It suited him.
Tens snorted, and I blushed.
What-thehell-ever.
I looked back to Mack, and watched as the mischief was replaced by a faraway look that said he was running the numbers and the odds. For several heartbeats, silence reigned throughout the control centre. Finally, he refocused on Case, and nodded.
“Do it.”
Case looked at me.
“This is where you earn your keep, Cutter. How fast can you replot a course?”
I looked at her, eyes wide, and then looked down at the information crowding the console in front of me.
“Fast enough,” I said, “but I’ll need to concentrate.”
“We’ll slave our boards. I’ll take the alternatives as fast as you put them in. You see a safe path, don’t hesitate. Give it to me direct.”
She turned back to Mack.
“Captain, you and Tens should be in your pods.”
Mack shook his head, Tens mirroring the movement.
“Nope, I’ll monitor our cargo, and Tens will make sure your systems stay clean.”
Abby cleared her throat, and we all froze.
“How about I do the navigation, and Cutter keeps the shielding where we need it?”
I waited, pretty sure Abs had a good reason for ousting me out of the job.
“I’m faster,” she said. “HMT, remember?”
Human Mind Transfer from brain to circuitry—and she piloted and navigated herself around the universe. She was right. She was faster, and more experienced than I could ever be. Mack saw it, too, but I registered when he dipped into my head and saw I’d be okay about it.
“Done. Abs talk to Case. Cutter—you got the shields?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“When you’re ready, Case.”
I cleared my boards of everything except what I could dig up about the Vameran’s Arc-Kodestes flight path, and found every horror story and recommendation made against it. Not helpful. I dug deeper, until I came across the survey reports that put Vameran’s Arc squarely in the middle of no-go territory, and at the edge of the Star Shadow’s realm. Kodestes was one system in, but it gave us a clean jump to Rigel’s Banter. If we took the jump from Vameran’s direct, we probably wouldn’t make it out of the asteroid belt.
Of course, jumping into Kodestes had a small chance of drawing wolf attention—and that was if the wolves hadn’t been looking for us already. I wondered how long I’d been in the tank, where the wolves had been planning on taking the Shady Marie, and how long they’d been planning on taking to get there. If they’d been expected, someone might have already have logged them as missing.
It made sense of why Mack would take the risk.
“Now,” Case said, and the Marie shuddered under a rapid increase of power. “Warp in five…”
I glanced at the board, adjusted the shields, and hoped that Abby had it handled.
“You bet your life, I do,” she said, and then added, “Oh, wait; you are.”
Not funny, Abs.
She didn’t reply, and I got the impression that even HMTs had their limits. I wondered exactly how close Abby was to hers. When she didn’t answer that, I was pretty sure it was a lot closer than any of us would have liked. Made me glad it was her and not me.
We popped out of warp like a cork out of a bottle and Case began a not-so-elegant dance through the debris littering Vameran’s Arc. At that point, I found I didn’t have any time to wonder, or worry, or fear. Some of the rocks floating through our space were almighty large. I shuffled shields like a pro, and then decided it would be even better if some of the bigger pieces didn’t hit us at all—at least, not at the size they were.
Abs wasn’t the only one who could multi-task.
I blew the first serious threat away, just as the shields shrieked a warning. After that, I set about keeping our space as clear as I could.
“That’s gonna draw attention,” Mack muttered, but he didn’t tell me to stop.
“Quit your bitchin’!” was all I had time for as I spun the guns to take the next big rock out of our sky.
“Warp in Three, Two…”
I’d never been so glad to feel the hard twist of sliding between systems, or the wrench of forces that bent me along with the ship.
“And, again.”
Well, damn. She did that too often, and I was going to stop being glad… maybe even go to downright ungrateful.
“Quit your bitchin’….” Mack managed, and Tens snorted.
Yeah, laugh it up smart boy.
“Tens, we get pinged?”
“Not a bit, boss. Everything stayed as quiet as the grave.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. The grave was almost where we’d ended up, and the sense of urgency it gave this repair trip sent a tram-load of butterflies rampaging through my gut. Big ones. Wearing combat number nines, and not a one of them in step.
“Rigel’s Banter, this is Shady Marie. Rigel’s Banter this is the Shady Marie, come in, over.”
“Shady Marie, this is Rigel’s Banter. State your business.”
“We’re at
