I loved these gloves, especially when someone dropped the image of what those bumps just below my fingertips meant. Oh, Hells, yeah! This time I didn’t need to connect so precisely; the right finger pressure as my fist connected was all it took to send a short electrical charge jolting right through him.
“Stun the rest.”
I looked around for Delight, figured I might as well drop her, too, if she was standing, saw her balled up on the floor, and caught the image she sent me of the Wolf command centre. I also caught the merry havoc Cascade was making of their comms systems on his way through. Apparently, he’d found an email about me that mentioned Rohan, the boss, and ‘the other boss’.
“Go get ’em,” I told him, and he was gone, but the programmers were working up a storm to try and shut him down…and I couldn’t have that.
I went hunting for the comms centre—and decided that Delight could maybe stay around a little bit longer since she was feeding the directions into my implant. Pritchard, though…
Why was Pritchard’s image sliding into Derevo’s?
“No time,” Delight said, and I ran the length of the corridor just as doors were opening and wolves starting to emerge from office spaces.
Ooh—that one looked like an armory! And Delight’s cry of denial was not enough to stop me from turning into it and finding something with a lot more kick than a stunner. Somewhere in the back of my head, someone groaned.
“Now, you’ve gone and done it, Dee. You need to remind her she’s on an orbital.”
“Yeah,” and I had the impression Delight was coming to tell me that in person.
Now, tell me why wouldn’t I want to shoot the A-Level auto-cannon on an orbital?
Images slammed into my implant, and I put the overpowered hand cannon back down… Oh. Breathing.
And maybe decompression.
Yeah. Okay.
I grabbed several stun grenades, instead, and threw one into the corridor before heading out through the door after it. Things were looking sticky for Cascade by the time I reached the communications centre. After I got through with that place… well, things were looking a bit sticky pretty much everywhere except inside the net where Cascade was chasing down the email destination.
I was half tempted to follow him, but Delight yelled, and I ducked in time to avoid the first burst from a Blazer. Well, seems someone didn’t get the memo about not using blasters on an orbital. I ducked and covered scrambling to move behind a couple of consoles. Took me a minute to figure out I probably shouldn’t stick my head up, so I just pitched the next stun grenade over the top, and then tucked in tight behind the minimal shelter of the console.
Well, hot damn, that might not have been my best ever idea…
Still, the yelp from the other side of the counter was short-lived and followed by silence. I wondered what else I needed to go find and take out before Odyssey arrived. It took Delight three goes before I could fully understand what she was suggesting.
“Hey, Trouble. Wanna go for a walk?”
Cascade ignored her, but given he was taking himself for his own walk, that was logical. Dog was on a mission to find out where Mack and the boys had been taken to. Come to think of it—
“Cutter!” Delight’s voice jolted me out of my train of thought.
“What?”
“You coming or not? We got us an asshole to detain. Remember?”
An asshole?
“Costoganzi!”
Oh. That asshole. Well, why hadn’t she said so in the first place?
I stuck my head up from behind the console, and saw her standing in the doorway to the comms centre, a look of faint distaste on her face. She made a show of looking around the room, before she spoke again.
“You are one helluva blunt instrument, girl. You ready for a romp outside?”
A romp? Always! Outside? As in…
“Don’t look at me that way, Cutter. This time you get to wear a suit.”
And I watched as Pritchard handed her one. She held it up, waving it in my direction.
“See?”
That was mine? Well, cool. Let’s go then.
I’m not sure what the time lapse was between me thinking anything and then making it happen. My guess was that it wasn’t long, because I was half into the suit before I’d realized I’d crossed the room—and all the way in, while Delight was still taking hers from Pritchard.
Man made a great delivery boy.
“If you weren’t going to hate the world when that stuff wears off, I might try and make you sorry you thought that.”
He would?
“Nope. Not this time, girl. You gonna let me check your straps and make sure you can still get to your guns and big bag of boom?”
I... Well, sure, since he’d asked so nicely.
He said nothing as he checked the suit was properly secured. He even kept out of my head. I was curious about that. What was wrong with him?
“Don’t even think about it,” he said. “Come on. Let me show you where the airlock is. Delight can check my stuff when she gets there, okay?”
Huh? Sure. Let’s go get this guy.
“Delight, you give her anything else, ever again, and I’m gonna kick your tail.”
I stared at him, wondering why he was so mad. They’d needed help clearing the wolf deck, hadn’t they?
Pritchard caught the thought, and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Sure, kid. We needed the help,” he said, and then he laid his arm across my back and took me to where the airlock was.
I baulked in the doorway, suspicion returning in a flood.
He took his arm away.
“Don’t sweat it, kid. I’m going in first, see?”
Delight arrived, glared at me, and stepped into the small chamber right beside him.
“You coming, or not, sweetheart. ’Cos we ain’t got all day.”
They
