Her voice hitched, as she spoke, but she didn’t give me time to dwell on what that might mean.
“Wanderer will port in reinforcements as soon as you’ve opened up the space, but there may be a delay. Teams One and Five have been seconded; the mining crews are in need.”
For a minute I disagreed that they could be in more need than we were, but then I remembered the shifts they’d been working, and the fact the program had been stepped up. They probably were in more need than us.
“In the meantime, some of Team One will be able to join you, as soon as we work out where they are most needed.”
It was something, and I wasn’t going to complain.
Abby got us in close, using the asteroids for cover to hide us from the hidden base’s scans. Just because we’d stopped any alert reaching it from the main base, didn’t mean the base couldn’t detect us for itself, and we needed to be on board before that happened. When she was as close as she could manage, Abby ran a scan of her own.
“Confirming locations,” she began, then continued. “Locations are inaccurate. The information has yet to be updated.”
There was silence, as she highlighted sections in the schematics she’d downloaded into our heads…and adjusted them to match new structural additions to the base itself.
“Those furry bastards have been busy as Hell,” Mack said, tracing the extent of their expansion. “Wonder what they’ve got planned for this sector.”
“No idea,” Rohan said, “but maybe Odyssey will take on a partner in the mining business to boost security. It’s what I’d do.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, just not one we had time to dwell on. Abs had confirmed where the hulls were being kept, and decided who was going after what.
“They’ve separated the HMTs from their shells,” she said, “and isolated them. For the first three, that is not a problem, but the fourth is some distance from the rest, and his ship form is in a repair hangar near where his mind is being held. Cutter, I will assign you cover from Team One. You will need to be fast to get my brother back to where he belongs, and you will need to have some tact, when you deal with him.”
At which point I got an inkling why I was being assigned that particular task.
Well, fuck me.
“No, not you,” Abby said, her voice, sad, “but you need to be kind, and not let my brother destroy anything.”
I looked over at Rohan, and saw he’d followed the conversation, his face still, his mind silent, and not a skerrick of emotion visible on any wavelength. Cascade stood between us, just as silent and still, as though waiting.
“Easy, Cas. Boy will be okay,” I said, and Rohan nodded.
“Any insight?” I asked, but he shook his head, and his eyes clouded.
“It will be different,” he said, “and you’re a girl. Right now, that would be better. Maybe…”
Well, okaay, then.
“I’ll have that shield down for you, soon,” I said, and dove back into the system.
This time, Rohan came with me. He didn’t say anything, but he worked beside me to lock the teleport shields off, and then take them out of the system completely.
“That’ll fix them,” he said. “They can’t reactivate what they can’t find. Let’s go see what Abs has cooked up.”
We surfaced, and Abs was waiting.
“Delight’s not coming,” she said. “There’s a lot they need to tie up on Rigel’s Banter, and Odyssey has cut its orders. It’s not exactly something she can ignore. She says she’ll come if she’s needed, that she’s not likely to miss anything given the connection she has inside Cutter’s head.”
Mack snorted, and I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like any of us needed to be reminded of Delight’s pernicious and persistent access. Whatever. It wasn’t like I could change it, now… or that I would if I could. Maybe later, but not right now.
“Hermes is the fourth they have taken,” Abby said. “And the youngest of my brothers. There will be room for one passenger, but no more. The rest of you will need retrieval. And you will need to be careful. They have taken him to one of the busier areas of the station for decanting and reconditioning. It is the reconditioning that is not going so well for anyone—and why he has yet to be transferred to the cell blocks with the others.”
“Can you contact them? Let them know we are coming?” Mack asked.
“No,” and Abby sounded sad. “They have been taken from their original shells and isolated from external comms. I do not know how they have survived, unless they have been given other, less powerful shells. I hope this is the case, or they will need more time and assistance to recover than any of us would like to contemplate.”
What she wasn’t saying was that an HMT was human, and none of us did well in isolation, that some of us didn’t come back all in one piece, and that an HMT used to being in the body of a ship… Well, they wouldn’t be able to go back into one of those unless they were certified sound and sane. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if one of them was denied the chance to return to their chosen shell, didn’t want to think about what could happen to me, if the wolves decided they needed a tame retrieval artist, or…anything else.
Because who knew where a slave might end up?
“Exactly,” Abby said. “Tens, you need to isolate and lock down the cell blocks. Secure them from the inside, and the guards won’t have reinforcements. The three of you working together should be able to subdue what’s already inside, and get my siblings out of their cells. After that, you just need to make it to these three storage areas.”
I
