Made me wonder when Cascade had ever come across one, but Delight didn’t know.
“You’ll have to ask Rohan,” she said, “…or the wolves.”
The wolves?
Actually, that seemed more than likely. After all, what would one of the greatest hunting races of the system keep as pets, except for deadly little hunters, and I wondered if Cascade had actually met one, or if he’d only seen a memory in some wolf’s head.
“No time, Cutter,” Pritchard said, arriving late in my skull, but diving straight back out after the dog. “We have to try and keep up.”
The man had a point.
I bounced through the entry point after him, not caring that Delight might have wanted to go next. Cas was my responsibility—and I wanted to see Mack again.
“That’s sweet enough to make me wanta puke.” Delight’s words echoed briefly through my mind, but I ignored it.
I had more important things to do.
Whatever Delight had given Cascade to use for virtual scent worked like a charm. The dog took us off the orbital, and through a catering company’s data base, before surfacing in an auction house, and just as quickly bugging out. That last? I caught sight of the firewall and encryption running on that thing, and was wondering how to follow the big guy in, when he reappeared and rolled into the caterer’s systems, again.
It took me a little longer to realize the significance of the company, and then I worked it out.
“Those sneaky sonsa…”
“Yeah.”
Delight didn’t sound too impressed, either.
Dog didn’t give us much more time than that to dwell on what we’d come to realize. He wormed his way into the systems belonging to the caterer’s headquarters, and then into its business agreements, and then into its inventory.
“Nice!”
Couldn’t say I agreed with her, there, but I was pretty happy to find the boys—alive and each in one piece—even if I couldn’t reach their implants.
“Isolation cells,” Delight muttered, helping Pritchard grab Cascade before the dog tried to break the barrier between him and his boy.
“Time to be going back, boy,” Pritchard told him, and Cas growled. “We’ll get your boy, and we’ll let you come, but not now.”
Cascade growled again, and I thought he was going to unleash those teeth on Pritchard’s arm, when Pritchard tried one more tack.
“Treat?”
“Treat?” That was definitely one of Cascade’s favorite words.
The dog turned himself around, barely giving Pritchard enough time for a quickly thrown, “Hold on,” before he was bounding back the way we’d come.
I made a grab for Delight, just as she reached out and tried to snag Pritchard as he zipped by. We both missed. Abby tut-tutted as she reappeared from a short reconnaissance of the isolation cells.
“Can’t get into them without waking up the whole system,” she said, holding out virtual hands, “and we really don’t want to do that.”
I figured I’d ask her for details, later. Right now, I wanted to get the hell out of the caterer’s system and back to the Wanderer. Abby heaved a mock sigh, and offered her hands, again.
“I’ll take you back,” she said. “It’ll be quicker, and I can make sure you’re not followed.”
To my surprise, Delight didn’t argue. She just reached out and took Abby’s hand, and then grabbed me and hauled me over to where I could do the same. I glanced back at the surveillance feed showing Mack pacing restlessly in his cell. Man was shirtless, and wearing a pair of shorts barely adequate for modesty. He looked like a caged lion.
I felt Abby take a good virtual grip on me, and then we moved. I can’t say it was exactly like being teleported—the absence of light was a dead giveaway—but it was darn close. Abs swam the systems like she was born to it, even though I knew she’d been human once.
“Not so much with the once,” she replied. “Transfer does not mean you lose your humanity; it only means you lose your first shell.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but she wasn’t quite done.
“It’s better than losing your life.”
Good to know, I thought, and hoped I’d never be in a position to have to make that choice. Abby gave the equivalent of a virtual snort.
“Hon, the line of work you’re in, you’re not likely to have the choice.”
Yeah. Thanks, Abs.
She and Delight left the implant as soon as they reached it, and I was grateful, taking a little longer to get my bearings and then surface. What I really wanted to do, now, was to take a closer look at that catering company, because it fell into the same category as the Odyssey cruise-line front, and let the wolves go a whole lot of places, no questions asked, that they might not otherwise be able to access.
“You done in there?”
Delight’s voice was not a welcome intrusion, but I decided I’d better come out of my head and check on Cascade. There was no telling what mischief the big beast had gotten up to in pursuit of the promised treat.
I opened my eyes to see him sitting next to Pritchard, his head on the man’s lap, crumbs scattered around his muzzle.
“We’ve hit a glitch with the station,” he said, and Delight turned towards him.
“What sort of a glitch?”
“They’re demanding we tell them the real reason Odyssey wants to pay a visit to their neck of the woods—and that’s a direct quote, by the way.”
“And?”
“And they won’t let anyone go planetside.”
Delight’s eyes narrowed.
“They say why?”
“They said Odyssey’s law enforcement role in other parts of the galaxy mean that it would be unsafe for Odyssey crew and customers to take leave on the planet.”
I watched Delight’s lips give an ironic twist.
“Understandable,” she said. “What about the orbital?”
“No more than twenty crew per shift, and they need to travel in uniform and in trios. That’s the station’s request.”
Delight snorted.
“It makes our people easier to trace and keep track of. I’ll give them points for smarts, even if it makes our lives difficult.”
“That’s not all,” Pritchard said, and Cascade lifted
