Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  I froze, felt my eyebrows rise.

  Mack had agreed to retrieve me?

  Delight’s grin took on a nasty edge.

  “It was a race. If he got to you before Tyson could get you back to the station, you got a chance at having him back as a supervisor—provided you earn enough credits to recover his and Tyson’s retrieval fees inside the next three months.”

  I didn’t want to know what would have happened if Mack hadn’t gotten to me in time, but I did want to know how much time I had left. Delight had anticipated the question.

  “You’ll find an invoice on the terminal—and the countdown.”

  She turned, as though to leave, and then turned back.

  “You’ve got to pass your training, as well as earn your way back into the Advanced program.”

  I wanted to ask her ‘or else what’, but I didn’t dare. She told me anyway.

  “You fuck this up, Cutter—and there’s an airlock with your name on it.”

  I felt my face go pale, and wanted to tell her just how much I didn’t believe her, that I knew Odyssey’s reputation was not the image she was showing me. There was a lot I wanted to say to prove she was full of shit, but I didn’t dare.

  Twelve months I’d been running with Mack. I’d gotten to see an awful lot in that time, and that included the look in a killer’s eyes. Delight had that look, and I didn’t want to call her on the airlock. Whether or not she was bullshitting about them spacing me, Odyssey wasn’t going to let me go. Not until I’d jumped through all their hoops.

  I swallowed down every response I might be tempted to make, and managed the only one that might rate anywhere near acceptable.

  “Understood.”

  She cocked her head to one side, and then nodded.

  It wasn’t really a shock, when she teleported out.

  3—Back With Mack

  I worked myself dizzy, finishing the lessons, and then pushing through another three simple assignments that would cover the cost of one of the training courses. When I slept, it was neither deep nor peaceful; it was hard to believe I’d be able to earn enough to cover the costs listed, let alone ever catch up. Well, I guessed that was something I was just going to have to work on.

  By the end of the first week, I’d covered the costs of my basic necessities, and training had resumed—only this time, I was aware of just how much each lesson was costing me, so I made them count.

  “Again,” I demanded, when my trainers were ready to call it a day.

  “Again,” I said, trying to pick myself up from the mat.

  “Not again,” Gelf said, and watched as I tried to coordinate hands and feet into something that worked—tried and failed.

  I hadn’t even been able to protest, when he’d turned and picked me up, before tossing me over his shoulder, and carrying me back to my room.

  “Again.”

  Took close to six months, but it got to a point where they were itching to let me out of the training center, and that was when I got to see Mack, again. Delight was right there with him, but she seemed pretty pleased, enough that you’d have thought she’d gotten me to the meeting on her own.

  I did my best to ignore her, when Mack spoke.

  “You ready to come back on board?”

  I nodded, switching my glance between the two of them, partly because I couldn’t quite believe I might get back to the Shady Marie, and partly because I was terrified Delight would change her mind. Before I went, though...

  “You retrieved me.”

  Mack tilted his head to one side, and then shrugged.

  “Your point?”

  “You didn’t think to let me know I was still on contract?”

  “You hadn’t been told it had ended.”

  I looked at Delight.

  “I get the impression Odyssey wouldn’t tell me when that sucker was up, even when the time came. Fuckers will probably just auto-renew it.”

  Delight smiled that tight little smile that told me I might be right—and then she fixed it.

  “I’ll have them send you an invoice and timer, along with a copy of your contract,” she said. “You’ll need to give permission for them to be updated once a month.”

  “Fine,” I said, then remembered to add. “Thank you.”

  “Anything else?” Mack asked, and I felt six months’ worth of pent-up anger rise inside my chest.

  Delight must have caught something in my expression, because she stepped back, and let me swing. She was smirking as Mack caught my fist, and pulled me in close. His grip didn’t ease, as he raised the auto-injector he’d hidden in his other hand, and activated it against my shoulder.

  Bastard.

  I hate needles.

  When I woke up, I was on my own. I was also tucked into bed, and wasn’t that just a treat. To my relief, I was still clothed. I pushed back the blankets, and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. Mack was through the door, and standing in front of me before I could try standing on my own.

  Convenient of him. I pushed off the bed, and my knees buckled as soon as my feet touched the floor.

  “Hey, easy there,” he said, reaching out to steady me.

  I couldn’t help it. I should have helped it, but I couldn’t; I was still mad at him. I used his hand under my arm, as leverage, and got my feet under me enough to drive upwards, delivering a fist to his gut as hard as I could.

  At least, that’s what I was trying to do...

  Mack just lifted me, and then straightened his arms. It was the closest match for a netball throw I’d ever seen, and I hit the wall on the opposite side of the bed with enough force to drive the air from my lungs. He caught me on the rebound, using my fall to propel me into the floor, and then setting a knee in the center of my back.

  I got my hands down in time to stop my face cracking into the deck, but that was it.

  “You are a piece of work,” he said, and I felt his weight settle over me, “so let me introduce a few ground rules. You listening?”

  I nodded, breathing hard, my hands stinging from the force of meeting the floor.

  “You want to slug me, you wait until the mission’s complete. Any dispute we have, we take it to the mats. Remember?”

  The mats? I groaned, and rested my forehead on the floor. I remembered the mats. Mack had handed my ass to me, the last time. That time, I’d disobeyed a direct order, and the incident was used to illustrate a point to another new passenger.

  Fat lot of good that had done him. Bendigo had turned out to need a lot more discipline than a couple of rounds on the mats. There really was only one answer to Mack’s question—and it had to be as smart-ass as I could make it.

  “No one’s taking me on any mat,” I told him, trying to sound as belligerent as I’d ever managed.

  “The gym mats,” he said, exasperation running through his tones. “For sparring, you idiot. Stars above, why anyone would want to try and bed you is beyond me!”

  “Hey!”

  “Nice to see Odyssey haven’t beaten the smart ass completely out of you—and that’s good, because that brings me to point two. You’re back on my ship.”

  He reached down and took hold of my right wrist, using the grip to pull my arm out from under my head, and then pinning it under his shin.

  “This means you do as I tell you to, and you talk to me, if you have a problem.”

  He took my left wrist, deftly hitting the nerve point to turn my arm numb below the elbow. Then he took it and pinned that beneath his left shin. After that, he leant down so his mouth was close to my ear.

  “I have orders to walk you out an airlock if you don’t live up to expectations.”

  I froze. The airlock, again? And he did? I felt him lift off me, and then the weight of his boot in the middle of my back, as I started to turn over.

  “And now we have that out of our systems, you and I have an assignment. Delight says it’s just your style.”

  He lifted his foot off my back, and moved to stand in front of my he
ad.

  I raised my face enough to watch, and saw him extend his hand.

  “If you’re finished pissing about,” he said, “there’s a briefing to attend.”

  A briefing, huh?

  I got up slowly. One thing was for certain, the adrenaline from our little spat had driven the last effects of the drug out of my system. Taking his hand, I resisted the urge to use it for support while I slugged him in the face. Instead, I let him help me up.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do, either. I didn’t like being bullied—by him, or by the organisation that had insisted on keeping me. I cleared my throat, let go of his hand, and made a show of straightening my clothes.

  He watched, and I swear he was amused.

  “So,” I said, when I found my voice, again—and worked out how to keep it steady, “what do you need me for?”

  4—The Mission

  “No,” I said, ten minutes later. “A thousand times, no. Walk me out an airlock. Shoot me now, but this?”—and here I gestured wildly at the screen—“This is not happening.”

  “Come on, Cutter.”

  Mack took a step towards me.

  “No,” I said, and took a step back.

  I stroked my right hand down my left arm, then my left hand down my right arm, and backed up another step. I might have said my guts were churning, but they weren’t; they’d turned to ice. I was going to vomit ice-chunks all over Mack’s nice clean floor, if I couldn’t calm down.

  Fan-fucking-tastic.

  “I can’t do this,” and I despised the quiver that ran through my voice. “Not this.”

  And I backed up the two steps I needed to get me to the door. Heavens knew where I thought I was going to run to. I slapped the panel meant to open the door. Nothing happened. I danced back a step, giving the panel another smart smack as I did so.

  Still it didn’t open.

  “Goddamnitall!” I shouted, and Mack was on me.

  He pounced, sliding in sideways and scooping me into the circle of his arms. I turned and faced his chest, and he wrapped me tighter.

  “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

  He didn’t try to do anything, just held me tight, until I wound down.

  “You can do this,” he said, holding me still. “You can, and you will.”

  Why the Hell he should care was beyond me, but he didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything. Of course, he didn’t let me go, either. I just stood there, registering two things: first, that he had bent forward to grab me; the second, that he was incredibly warm... and strong... and far too aware of the tricks I’d need to break free.

  When I hadn’t said anything for over a minute, he sighed, and straightened up.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go over it, again.”

  I tried to kick free, but his arms tightened, crushing the breath out of me, so I let myself go limp.

  “Right,” he said, carrying me back to the table, and carefully settling me in a chair beside his own. “Take a good long look at the map. Tell me how many ways there are to get in.”

  I knew what he was doing, but I went along, anyway. You never knew; I might find an alternative to what they were suggesting. At the end of an hour, even I had to admit there really was no other way in.

  By the end of an hour, I also had to admit that there wasn’t anyone else.

  I slumped in the chair, and rested my head against my right hand, leaving the left on the table in front of me.

  “So, you agree, then?” Mack said, and I sighed.

  I wanted to disagree. I very badly wanted to disagree. There was no way in Hades I wanted this job. Not in all the worlds.

  “Isn’t there anybody else?” Even to myself, I sounded tired.

  Mack draped an arm around my shoulders, and I let him. In anyone else, I would have thought it a play, but Mack had made it pretty clear he wasn’t that way inclined.

  “We could find someone else,” he admitted, “but you’re the one who needs to pay off a massive training debt, and there’s a pretty hefty bonus attached to this job.”

  That was news to me.

  “How big a bonus?” I asked, then added, “And how much of it is mine?”

  Mack named a sum that would take out half the training debt in one fell swoop, and I have to admit I was pretty tempted.

  “But...” I said.

  “So, you’ll do it, right?” he said, and it wasn’t really a question.

  I felt his arm tighten around my shoulders, and turned my head. It was all the time he gave me, pulling the slim-bladed dagger from its sheath under the table, and plunging it into my chest before I could do more.

  I wanted to scream, but there wasn’t time. I wrapped my hands around the hilt, as he swung me up out of the chair and carried me out the door. Even then, I couldn’t quite process what he’d done. As we hit the corridor, I realized he hadn’t told me just how much of that amazing sum was mine.

  All of it, I decided, or I was going to make his life hell.

  If I survived.

  I’ll give him credit: he had it all planned. The medics met him in the corridor, the stasis pod already prepped. I was still awake when they closed the lid, but I was pretty sure I imagined the look of desperate concern on Mack’s face, just before the world went away.

  5—Blaedergil

  They say on Magnus 19, only the dead live. I wondered if that was true, or if there was something more sinister going on, and then I amended my thoughts. Of course, there was something more sinister going on. If there hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been called in to deal with it. Or Mack wouldn’t have been.

  So, it was something dire enough that the company hadn’t wanted to have its name connected with it. I wondered just how widely my contract with them was promulgated. Mack would be a cut-out, and I was in disgrace. I guess the hole I’d dug by trying to leave was deeper than I’d realized.

  My chest burnt like liquid fire, and it hurt to breathe.

  Damnitall, Mack! There were reasons I hadn’t wanted the role I’d been chosen for. A dagger through the heart on my first mission back? Yeah, they weren’t paying me enough. That sort of shit could kill a girl. And I don’t mean almost. I mean stone-cold dead...forever.

  Which brought me to Magnus 19. This was not the place for a living person. This was the place for the dead, and the lost, and the forgotten. This was the place they brought those who had not long to live, or who wanted to live longer when their bodies could not. This was not the place for me.

  But it was the place in which our target had made himself a home.

  And a refuge.

  For Blaedergil fed the economy of Magnus 19 with his demands, and had built himself a fortress of minds and souls in the middle of a landscape of pine forest and plains. Even if we’d asked for his extradition, the people of Magnus 19 would not have given him to us. And Odyssey had tried.

  Hence the need for a cut-out. Nothing from Odyssey could get anywhere close. Mack was in disgrace, and there were rumors Odyssey wanted to space me as an example to other recalcitrant recruits. I guess nothing works quite so well as the truth.

  Or, at least, the almost-truth...

  “The Plague Master is ours,” the rulers of Magnus 19 had told Odyssey when they’d gone knocking, “and we have granted him refuge.”

  What they should have said was that he fed their unholy industry of death and the undying, and that they’d starve without him.

  “Please,” I whispered, when I came to, “let me be alive.”

  As if my words were a magical command, I saw a figure move beyond the glass, and that was when I realized I would live.

  A regen tank?

  On a world of death?

  I stretched out a hand, intending to touch my fingertips to the glass, only to find I could not lift my hand away from my side.

  What was happening?

  I tried again, this time with the other hand. Again, my hand was stopped short. I took
a deep breath, trying not to panic, and then took another breath as the man beyond the glass came into focus.

  “So, you’re the one,” he said.

  I tried to look over my shoulder, twisting my head, first one way, and then the other.

  “Are you a doctor?”

  I glanced down at my chest, noticing a neat patch of stitching.

  The man laughed.

  “No,” he said, and I recoiled.

  “Who are you then?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I shook my head. I remembered the dagger, Mack’s look of concern—and why had that been, again?—but there were gaps. Holes in my memory that shouldn’t have been there. For his part, the man looked puzzled.

  “Are you sure?”

  I shook my head. I should be sure. There was a large portion of my head that was screaming I should know more. I watched as my visitor placed his hands on the glass.

  “How are you feeling?”

  I checked, doing a mental inventory, and then I nodded.

  “Okay.”

  “No pain?”

  As if I was going to tell him that.

  “Should there be?”

  “Not before our wedding night,” he said, and smirked.

  A wedding night. I did remember something about that. I also remembered very much not wanting one. Now, why was that?

  I watched, as he looked at me through the glass, really looked, like he was inspecting a piece of meat, or a shirt, or a beast he’d just purchased. And my nakedness started to bother me.

  “Who are you?” I asked, and he raised his eyes to my face.

  “You don’t remember?”

  I shook my head. If I wasn’t submerged in liquid, my throat would probably be dry.

  “You truly don’t remember?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  “No. I truly don’t.”

  And he stepped back from the glass, looking almost put out.

  “I am Blaedergil,” he said, as though it should mean something. “Surely they told you who was saving your life?”

  I nodded.

  “They did,” I said, “but I can’t remember.”