Bad? he wanted to know and I thought about the way the dark lines of arach code had crept into my implant.
“No, Cas. Good.”
He gave a happy doggy sigh, and went to sleep while the three of us crowded around the file he’d brought.
“I wonder when he fetched this,” Delight murmured, and we both glimpsed a memory of him snatching up things that bounced and ran between his paws. There must have been a hole in the side of the server at Costoganzi’s final location. “Ah.”
She was filing it away for her Hack Team, and I didn’t care. Thanks to Askavor’s tuition, I could handle arach coding, but that didn’t mean I wanted to.
“He’s going down,” Delight said, a few minutes, later, and I had to agree.
The wolves weren’t the only ones Costoganzi had dealings with. His companies also provided some of the shells behind which the arach operated and hid. They provided a way onto vulnerable worlds, and then disguised the true nature of what the traders, there, were dealing with, until it was too late. I wondered just how many worlds Costoganzi’s corporations had helped go dark, and how many more were at risk.
“We’ll chase it, Cutter—and I’ll write a bonus into the contract for this.” Delight hesitated. “One which Case will have no difficulty approving.”
Well, it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one tired of all the contractual dickering.
“The only problem we have, now, is him,” Delight added, pointing to Cascade. “We can’t have him roaming through strange systems without supervision. He might pull something he shouldn’t, or get into trouble we can’t pull him out of.”
“He needs a leash,” Pritchard added.
“A mind tether?” I asked, uneasy at the thought of what else Cascade might have encountered coming out of a small hole in an otherwise secure system.
“Something like that.”
“I’d ask Tens or Rohan, but they’re not here.”
I looked at the file in Delight’s mental hands.
“I wonder if there’s a way to find out where the wolves are holding them.”
All I can say is that it was a good thing we were in an isolation room, because Digital Cascade sat up and wanted to show me. He tried bouncing out through my implant and into the galactic net, but crashed into a solid wall of denial. Picking himself up, and shaking himself off, he began a digital walk around the room, sniffing at the barrier, and peeing into its corners. When nothing he did created an opening, he returned to his sleeping body, and slid back inside.
“Definitely a tether,” Pritchard said, and slid a loop of code around Cascade’s mental construct, which he anchored to a firmly placed eyebolt in my implant.
The effect was instantaneous. Cascade sat up, and shook his head. The code tightened. Cascade pawed at it with his forepaws, and scratched at it with his hind legs, fussing and fighting as it clung to him. The physical dog beside me, whimpered in his sleep.
“Relax, Cas,” I told him, stroking his head. “We’ll go hunting later. First, we have to catch a very bad man, and I need you to stay with me.”
He sat up and looked at me, and I couldn’t help smiling.
“Yes,” I told him. “I promise. Stay with me, okay?”
“Wuff.”
Delight gave a heavy sigh, and got to her feet.
“Time to go, Cutter. I’m not taking you on an operation equipped like that.”
Like what? I looked down at the ship suit, my bare feet, and the complete absence of weapons. It was easy to yank her chain.
“What do you mean?”
I watched as she pursed her lips, and then let them tilt up in a small smile. She gestured at me with an open hand.
“I mean, we could let you come dressed the way you are. Pretend we’re making a delivery to Costoganzi in person.”
“Says one of the most infamous Odyssey agents known.”
I tried for light-hearted, but fear rippled through me. Delivery to Costoganzi would only raise questions as to how she’d known he was the one behind the contract. Delivery to a Star Shadow outpost, on the other hand would get us onto the station with Cas close enough to get into the systems, and the rest of us close enough to follow where he went.
Delight pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against, her movement catching my attention—and my heart sank. Well, crap.
“I like you, Cutter,” Delight said, “Mack’s right. You have a twisted mind, but that is a damn good idea,” and she laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled.
She spared a glance for Cascade. “And, look, we’ve even managed to get a hold of the dog. Who’da thought?”
Well, double the crap.
Pritchard groaned.
“We are so not…”
Delight gave him a look filled with bright mischief.
“Oh, yes,” she said, laying her other hand on Pritchard’s shoulder. “Yes, Pritchard. We so very much are.”
She glanced over at me.
“Of course, she looks far too clean and…”
“Undented?” I supplied, surging to my feet, and delivering a swift, hard jab to her gut.
Her smile grew wider, going from mischief to feral in a blink.
“Grab the dog, Pritch,” I said, and followed the first jab with another solid hit to her solar plexus. “We’re gonna need to make this look good. I think I have a reputation for being difficult.”
He stepped over, grunting as he scooped Cascade off the floor, before the dog fully realized a fight had started.
“I think I owe the big fella a treat,” he said, and carried Cascade out of the room, shutting the door and sealing us in.
Delight gave it ten seconds for the seals to take hold, locking Cascade out of my head—and then her grip on my shoulder tightened, and she stepped forward. The two fast hits to my middle were sheer revenge, and I twisted sideways, breaking her hold, and trying to put some distance between us. She followed—and the smile on her face might have been disconcerting, if I hadn’t known the one I was wearing mirrored it.
“How much trouble you going to
