“Nice to see nothing changes,” Mack muttered. “Girl’s still got more attitude than is good for her.”
And I could feel him wondering why he’d told me.
Well, sucks to be you, I thought, and felt the box crack open the tiniest, tiniest bit, and sucks to be me, too.
“You’ll live, girl. We’ll sort it when this is done,” was as tight a private comm as Mack could make it, and he was gone before I could say something both of us would regret.
If anyone in the conference room had been privy to what had passed between us, none of them had a comment to give. I’d gone four steps in, before I’d registered just how many people were already there. Whether it was by design, or by accident, the team I’d trained with had assembled either side of the door, and it wasn’t until I was past them that I realized there were other faces beyond their ranks.
I stopped. Crowds don’t bother me. Small spaces don’t bother me. Crowds and small spaces, however…. Yeah. Not a good combination. Mack stopped behind me, and I got the sudden impression that he didn’t like the number of people in the room, either. He laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Ease up, Cutter. They’re not going to bite.”
He had a point. I looked for Delight—and she started speaking as soon as she saw she had our attention.
“Cutter—Scarpil has your gear. Yours, too, Mack.”
We turned as one, and Scarpil slid two duffels towards us.
“To make sure there’s no fighting,” he said, as if he knew either of us well enough to make the call—and then I realized he’d been looking directly at me, and figured he might have a point, because I really would fight to get my share of the toys.
Mack and I tooled up in silence, while Delight assigned the teams.
“Six and Four are clearing the habs,” she said. “We needed an early start and Wanderer is teleporting them as each one’s locked down. Once they’re done, everyone will need to be ready for a quick flick onto one of them if things go bad. Six and Four will begin evac as soon as Two and Three have secured the Banter and locked down her repair bays. We’re going to use the Shady’s tactics of storing folk on the repair docks until retrieval has arrived. Sugarsides, Limelight, Dreamstar and Mitan’s Hammer are expediting transit to reach us—and passenger compensation will be in order when we pull them out of stasis.”
She shrugged.
“It can’t be helped. Melerom and his valet will make an appearance, if we need them.”
I caught the thought that they’d make an appearance, even if we didn’t, and wondered who they were.
Delight scowled at me, and I threw her a smile. Now, she knew how I felt when she got into my head all unbidden. Before she could say anything, however, Wanderer interrupted.
“Mr. Costoganzi has escaped on schedule, Agent—and the lupar were suitably accommodating once they had verified his survival; they are not impressed with your theatrics. The Dasojin craft reports that Mr. Bennett is undetected, and standing by.”
“Thank you, Wanderer.”
Delight tilted her head, and my stomach sank—even though I knew it was going to happen, even though I knew it needed to happen.
“Fuck it all,” I said, as Mack reached over and grabbed me, and Pritchard stepped out from behind Scarpil, auto-injector in hand. “That shit had better work a bit faster, this time, because we’re gonna need it.”
The sting had a bit more punch to it than I remembered, and I wondered if they’d tweaked it again.
“How else do we make it work faster?” Delight demanded, even as I felt Pritchard step away.
Mack held me a bit longer than required, but I couldn’t work out if that was because he needed to, or he figured he wasn’t going to get another excuse for a while. Whatever, right? I just leant my head into his chest, and waited until he decided I wasn’t going to slug him. Given how much the man was in my head, that took a good while longer than it should have.
“Quit your bitching,” he murmured, as Delight continued with her briefing.
“Teams One and Five are on stand-by, until we discover where the Dasojin craft are being kept. At that point, we will be providing support for their extraction. This mission has full teleportation coverage, but it may not be enough, so be prepared to improvise. Questions?”
“What if the Dasojins are being held on a wolf base?”
And we all turned to look at Rohan. He was sitting beside Tens, Cascade’s head on his lap.
“And I thought you had a nasty turn of mind,” Mack murmured.
Rohan looked over at him, and shrugged.
“Point,” Delight said. “If the wolves have our Dasojins, they have been warned that we will protect our allies.”
She raised her hand.
“Having said that, however, I don’t want any more damage done to their facility than we need in order to extract our allies, and our ‘escaped’ prisoner. I don’t want to be fighting a war with the lupar at the same time as we have the arach coming after us. That’s a bit of a stretch, even for us, and we’ll need to negotiate a peace with them when we’re done. Do no more damage than you need to, and do none where possible. Try not to kill them. If you are captured, we will come for you. Am I understood?”
Her question was met with a soft growl of acceptance, and I felt it raise goosebumps on my arms. Even Mack gave a low-voiced rumble of assent, which made me want to know what made him so at home with the chorus. He ignored the thought, but I decided I’d follow it up later. The man had to talk to me eventually.
“No, he doesn’t,” whispered through the implant, and I scowled.
Delight ignored the pair
