“Made any sense of the data, yet?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“I’m going to try an exfiltration search,” I said. “See if you’ve been hacked and just haven’t found it yet—and then I’m going to see if there’s any evidence of an inside job.”
“As much as I don’t like the idea one of my people would do that…” Abby said, and sighed.
It was a very human sigh.
“Do what you can,” she said, and I went back to it.
The next time I came out of the data, she hit me with an unexpected wrinkle.
“Mack’s late.”
I checked the time in my implant, checked the date… checked, again.
How had I lost track of that much time?
“I kept you busy.”
Well, that much was true.
“He’s a day over. Maybe you overestimated him.”
“Not Mack and Tens. They should have been here a half day under the initial estimate—less once Rohan joined the hunt.”
Rohan had what?
“That boy has adopted you as his particular responsibility,” and, damn me, if Abby didn’t sound amused to Hell and back.
He had? Dammit! All I’d done was give him a puppy… okay, I’d given him the opportunity to find a puppy for himself.
“That’s not why he’s adopted you, and you know it.”
I did. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“You really should own that, you know.”
I should? What. Own up to the fact the boy had taken it on himself to stand between me and Delight, Tens and Mack? That wasn’t my responsibility. That had been a choice he’d made all by himself.
“And it’s not one you discouraged.”
“I was hardly in any shape to.”
“Very well, then. I’ll grant you that.”
She would? Why, how very generous of her. Like she even had a choice.
“Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”
First, how old was she anyway? And, second, when had I ever given her the impression I was anywhere near being a lady?
“Oh, look, Cutter, we’re about to enter warp.”
As dirty tricks went, that one was pretty special. I had enough time to think ‘What?’, and then got flattened to the deck. Way to lose an argument, Abs.
“Who said I’d lost?” she asked, and bounced through a second jump point.
Honestly, if I could have scraped two words together I’d probably have said something she wouldn’t have been able to ignore.
“Lucky you. I’ve found us the Shady Marie.”
She had?
4—Boy, Dog, Wolves
The Marie hung in orbit around Lichcomb’s World, and we could see at a glance that she was in trouble. The four bright dots coming in hard from the planet below were military grade, and they were hailing as they came.
“Shady Marie stand down. Put your weapons on hold. We are going to board.”
Rohan’s defiant near-adult pseudo-bass came as a surprise.
“Like Hell, you are. Case!”
And Abby and I watched as the Marie’s engines flared.
Flared and died.
And… Well, Rohan’s vocabulary of swears had expanded since I’d first noticed his limited range of fucks.
“Wow,” I managed, listening to Case laughing so hard she had to be falling out of her chair. “Just. Wow. I wonder where he learned that!”
“Hmmm. I don’t.” Abby didn’t sound amused, and neither did the voice hailing from the incoming shuttles.
“Insults to our parentage will not reactivate your drives, Marie. Now put your mother on.”
Rohan’s response was immediate, and held an all too familiar tone.
“I’m sorry, shit-for-brains, mother can’t make it to the comms, right now. You’ll just have to kiss my ass.”
“Oh. That’s not good.”
“You’re telling me,” Abby said. “Those mercs are going to have him for breakfast.”
“Mack will be upset if the Marie gets dented. Rohan doesn’t know what he’s playing with.”
“No, he really doesn’t,” and something in Abby’s tone made me take a closer look at the shuttles.
“Tell me they’re not.”
“Wish I could, sweetie, but I think he upset them.”
Upset wasn’t quite the word I’d have used, but Abs was right. The four drop-ships had gone weapons hot, and they hadn’t slowed down.
“Stand your crew down, cub. This isn’t meant to be a kill mission.”
Well, that was good to know.
“Cub,” Abby said, as though that explained everything, and maybe it did. “Their leader’s a wolf.”
“Wolf?”
“Yeah, you know, wolf. Like the wolves of Lunar One, or the hunt clans four systems over.”
“No, sorry. You are talking four-legged dog-things that hunt in packs, right?”
“No, sweetie. I’m talking werewolves.”
Well, fuck. Not more shapeshifters. Weren’t the arach enough for a single universe?
“You ever read much myth and legend?”
I thought back to my childhood, tried to remember the times before dad had left, and tried harder not to remember the times that came after. My answer came out harder than expected.
“No.”
“Sweetie, I’m not trying to pry.”
“Sorry,” but I didn’t sound it. My nightmares hadn’t started with me stowing away on Lochyer’s Transport. Lockyer’s had just given them new shades of meaning. I shivered, pushing down the rising gorge of revulsion. “Talk to me, Abs.”
“About the wolves?”
“Anything, but yeah. Start with the wolves.”
The shuttle comms broke across us.
“Shady Marie, clear and open your docking bays for boarding.”
“Later,” Abby said, as Rohan cussed out the Marie’s malfunctioning weapons systems.
“Best do as they ask, Rohan.” At least Case was trying to be reasonable. “Mack will want us to stay alive. He can’t come get us, if we’re not.”
Rohan was silent, but he must have agreed, because Case issued the stand-down order over the open comms.
“Weapons teams, stand down.”
It was followed by Rohan’s next order, taken straight from Mack’s playbook.
“All crew to their pods. All crew to their pods. Emergency stasis procedures are in process. All crew to pods.”
“Little rat learns fast,” I muttered, remembering that Rohan had been aboard the last two times the Shady Marie had been in trouble.
“All crew to their pods. All crew to their pods. Emergency stasis procedures are in process. All crew to pods. You, too, Case. I’ll stand by to meet them. No-one else needs to suffer.”
The shuttles stayed ominously silent, but they continued to approach—faster now the Marie’s weapons were off-line. Abby showed me the scan. Marie was
