Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  He grinned, and came at me again.

  “We have a regen tank on board.”

  This time, I moved my feet, and managed to get out of the way of the next hit. There was a sharp pain in my chest, but I tried to ignore it. I had no idea what rules he was playing by, but I got the feeling they weren’t going to be fair. Regen tank, indeed!

  A dagger through the heart hadn’t been enough?

  “You know there’s a limit on how many times I can grow things back.”

  The man had reach, height, and weight on me—and I already knew he had a lot more fighting time under his belt, too. What the hell was he playing at? I left the ground before his next leg sweep could take me off my feet, and then ducked another round house. Regen tank, hey? If I was really trying to hurt him, what would I do?

  His voice interrupted me, as I was trying to think.

  “You’re nowhere near the limit.”

  Smart ass!

  I moved in, threw two swift jabs and darted back out again, but the pain in my chest was getting worse, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

  “Give it up, girl,” Mack said. “You are way outclassed.”

  And I decided, then and there, I was giving nothing away. The arrogant sonuvabitch wanted to win? Well, he was just going to have to do it under his own steam. I was going to make him work for it... at least, that was the plan.

  We didn’t make three rounds. Mack either got bored, or decided to take pity on me, because he took less than a round to put me down. The pain in my chest blossomed into full-blown agony as he landed a second blow, and I felt blood bubble into my throat—and then I caught a fist in the face, and was out for the count.

  Bastard.

  8—The Hiccup

  Mack was standing on the other side of the regen tank when I woke up. My chest still hurt, and my vision was a little blurry, but I was conscious enough that his next words made sense.

  “I’m chucking in some nanites,” he said. “They want us to deliver Blaedergil, and the girl, by nine bells Costral time, tomorrow.”

  Costral? But we were nowhere near the place.

  “I know,” Mack’s voice came clearly through the implant. “We go to warp in ten.”

  He hit a button on the control panel, and a stream of grey entered the tank.

  “They won’t hurt you,” he said, when I flinched away from the moving mass. “Stay still.”

  I stayed, imagining I could feel the penetration of a multitude of tiny machines burrowing their way through my skin.

  “Nine,” came Tens voice over the intercom.

  And Mack ran for the door.

  Did you know you can’t tell the difference between warp travel and normal travel if you’re stuck in a regen tank for the duration? Yeah, well, you can’t. This might actually be a small mercy. You can, however, feel it when millions of tiny machines get inside your cells and start making alterations to damaged tissue.

  Honestly. You can. It’s like a vibration running through bone and muscle, or an itch that you’re never going to be able to scratch. I was awake, right up until I started to try making it stop, and then the tank’s sensors picked up my distress, and I wasn’t awake anymore.

  Mack was on the other side of the glass when I came to.

  “You done, yet?” he asked, and I glared at him.

  He smirked, and crossed to read the sensors.

  “Yep, you’re done,” he said. “I’ll send the med-techs in to get you out. You’ve got about an hour to get ready.”

  An hour? I was going to be in on the delivery? Fantastic! Maybe I could get myself reassigned.

  Mack scotched that thought, when he came back to collect me from the medical bay.

  He snapped a cuff, which felt like elasticized metal, around my wrist.

  “You need to stay close,” he said, as I looked at the cuff, and then looked up at him. “This round of training is on me. You stay within two meters of me, and you get to keep your hand.”

  I what?

  “You get to keep your hand,” he said, and I wondered how he had read my mind.

  “The implant,” he said, catching that thought, as well. “We’re linked, remember?”

  I blinked, and looked up into his face, not trusting my voice to speak. And he smiled.

  When we got back up to the ship that was something else I was going to get him to change. He caught that thought, too, of course.

  “We’ll discuss it.”

  “On the mats.” This time, I managed to find my voice.

  Mack grinned.

  “Not unless you feel like hitting me, again.”

  Hells yes! Now, I felt like hitting him. He raised an eyebrow at me, but I shook my head.

  “Let’s try talking this one, through,” I said, and ignored his look of feigned surprise, “and we can also discuss how we’re going to split the bonus, while we’re at it.”

  “Teleport crew gets a chunk for getting you out,” he said. “Without them there’d be no retrieval—and then there’re comms and navigation.”

  It caught me by surprise, but it made sense. Outside of Tens, Rohan and Doc, I hadn’t met a lot of the Shady Marie’s crew, and a ship like this wouldn’t run itself. That made sense. Before either of us could follow this up, a crewman came into the room. The look of relief on his face, when he saw we were ready, was almost comical.

  “They’re waiting,” he said, and Mack offered me his arm.

  “You ready for this?” he asked, and I nodded, ignoring the part of my mind that told me he was darn sure I wasn’t.

  It was a delivery. How hard could it be?

  And that was when I discovered just how many things could go south, all at once—and how fast.

  The trip down the beanstalk from station to planet, was followed by a quick ride to the meeting place, and went without a hitch. I was beginning to breathe more easily, as the personal shuttle pulled up by the memorial to something called Shelock’s War. The man on the statue had to be Shelock, and there was a plaque on the plinth on which he stood.

  At any other time, I might have gone and read what it said. Today, I stuck close to Mack, as he supervised the unloading of the girl’s stasis box, the body bag carrying Blaedergil’s remains, and a small medical kit that, I was assured, carried the cure for the disease that had had been used to infect the girl and her people.

  Blaedergil had specialized in a very specific type of blackmail—a highly contagious one, one that ensured entire worlds fed his twisted pleasures. This mission had seen him take his last planet hostage. It was something Mack and I should have been proud of, but I sensed nothing but apprehension coming through the implant.

  What had Mack seen that was making him feel like this?

  He didn’t answer, not a word, not a hint, and I sharpened my gaze on our surroundings. Something here was not right. Mack sensed it, maybe even saw it, but I had been as oblivious as a lamb being led to slaughter. I caught sight of the problem, just as Mack guided the stasis pod into the open space in front of the statue.

  “Gun! Gun! Gun!” I shouted, and shoved Mack towards one of the trees bordering the path.

  The bullet meant for him caught me, instead. Well, of course it did. It hit me in the back and punched through the body armor. I stumbled, and would have hit the ground, if Mack hadn’t wound an arm around me, and dragged me with him into the shelter of the trees.

  This was where the teleport was supposed to wrap around us, and take us to the safety of the ship. Surely, it was, I thought, but Mack kept dragging me through the trees to where we’d left the shuttle parked by the verge. I glanced back towards the pod, and saw it was being taken off the path and around the other side of Shelock’s monument.

  The bag was being dragged after it. I guess they still wanted to make sure Blaedergil was dead, even if they didn’t intend to pay up on their promised bonus. We made it to the side of the shuttle, and that’s when things went from bad to worse. I felt Mack jerk, and he spun us both around to face the
way we’d come.

  “Damn,” I breathed, aware of the burning numbness spreading from my back through my torso.

  “Lock ‘em down,” Mack growled, “and send the team. We’re both hit.”

  Hit? I thought. We’ll be lucky if they don’t blow the car!

  I was rewarded by Mack glancing down at me.

  “You have a nasty turn of mind,” he said.

  I shrugged. No matter what he’d thought, my turn of mind hadn’t been nasty enough to see this coming.

  I wrapped an arm around Mack’s waist, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  “We need to get away from the car,” I said, and he grunted an affirmative.

  Somewhere in my implant, I could hear Doc Oskar shouting that we both needed to sit our asses down and wait for him to get there. Pretty sure, we both started laughing at that, but it hurt too much, and the world was refusing to stay steady.

  I leant hard on Mack, and he leant on me. We must have looked like a pair of drunks. Drunks who’d been in a serious fight at the bar.

  We hit the low, stone wall encircling the park, and fell over it. The blast from the car hit us like a very large, hot fist in the back, and threw us further than we’d been about to fall. Landing was a bitch, but at least Mack hit the ground not too far away.

  I tried to gather my scattered thoughts, but I wasn’t having much luck.

  “I need a regen tank,” I muttered, and hoped I could get to one in time.

  That wasn’t looking promising. Costral was a rural world. From what I’d seen, the beanstalk was their only concession to off-world trade. I lay where I’d fallen, all too aware of Mack sprawled a few feet distant. Sirens sounded in the distance, but I could hear footsteps from somewhere nearby.

  Taking a deep breath, I tried to get to my hands and knees. The pressure of the band around my wrist was a concern, although I was having trouble remembering why. I did know that I needed to be a hell of a lot closer to Mack before I felt safe—and that wasn’t because he was in any condition to protect me. It was because of the fancy, flashing bracelet.

  I got my hands under me, and tried to convince my legs to work. There was pain, but I managed to get onto my knees, and push close enough to hit the ground at Mack’s side.

  “This is bad,” I said, curling up next to him.

  He coughed an agreement, and the arm closest me twitched.

  Great.

  Man chose now to go weak on me.

  I heard him cough, again, and realized he was laughing.

  “Smart arse,” but his voice was weak, even inside my head.

  Hurry up, Doc, I thought, and closed my eyes.

  And then I opened them, again, although it was a fight.

  Something had moved amongst the trees, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t my eyes playing tricks. The Stars knew the rest of the world was doing funny things. Maybe I had just imagined it. Maybe it was my entire head playing tricks. The voice that followed that thought seemed real enough.

  “Well, must be our lucky day,” it said, as a shadow fell across me.

  The toe of a boot nudged me in the ribs, and I gasped. Mack must have copped the same treatment, because he groaned, shortly after. The shadow grew darker, and wider, and I figured I really was seeing three sets of legs. I stared at them, and then tried to turn my head, so I could see the rest of the people I hoped were attached.

  One of them saved me the trouble, stooping to take a better look at my face.

  “They’re alive.”

  Well, Hells, yes, we were! What were they? Blind?

  “Like I said, lucky.”

  “They need medical.”

  I rolled my eyes, felt Mack tense, and knew one of us needed to find the words to warn them.

  “Hand,” I said, trying to get their attention, but they didn’t get it.

  Warmth swept down around us as another vehicle arrived. I wanted to sit up. I even tried to talk, but I couldn’t get my body to obey me. I tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn’t cooperate, and my throat locked up.

  Shadows moved at the edge of my vision, and the silver side of a med box drifted past. It was followed by a second box, which was set down beside it. I watched as the legs came back into view, and another face looked down into mine.

  “We’re going to put you in a stasis box,” said the first voice I’d heard, and I swallowed hard, trying to get my voice to work, even as my brain scrambled to judge the distance between the nearest box and Mack.

  “No,” I tried, but I felt more tired than the day seemed to warrant.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” the voice said, and I wanted to say something sarcastic in return.

  Still couldn’t get my voice to obey.

  The face lifted away, and I felt hands under my shoulders, and around my legs.

  No! I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t make a sound, had to fight to keep my eyes open.

  Mack’s hand twitched, his arm shaking as though he was trying to raise it, and I knew he was making a grab for me, even as he failed to move an inch. One of the men lifting me noticed, and laughed.

  “You’ll be together, soon enough,” he said, and it was more mockery than comfort—which was what made the sudden flare of light at my wrist, and shattering pain that followed, almost funny.

  I might have laughed, if I hadn’t blacked out completely.

  9—Hard Negotiations

  The clansmen weren’t amused—or so I discovered when I woke up.

  Personally, I’d been hoping to see Doc... or Mack. Where was Mack? I twisted my head, taking in the almost comforting familiarity of the med-box walls. Even so, I needed out.

  Why did I hurt so much?

  “Mack?”

  The seals hissed, as the med-box opened, and a vaguely familiar face looked in. It wasn’t Mack’s.

  “You’re awake.”

  “No, I’m dreaming, and you’re a fucking nightmare,” I retorted, unable to explain why I didn’t like him.

  He scowled.

  “Get out,” he snapped, and I laughed.

  Damn. My chest hurt, and I wasn’t getting anywhere, let alone ‘out’.

  “You and whose army?” I challenged, and then watched as the med-box morphed around me.

  So much for this being a rural world with limited technology.

  It made me wish I’d had time to do a bit of reading, before we’d gone on our “oh-so-simple” delivery run.

  “Where’s Mack?” I asked, pushing into a sitting position, and sliding down onto the floor, as soon as the sides folded down.

  Or, at least, that’s what I’d meant to do. I got the sitting up part okay, and swung my legs over the side, but I stopped when my left hand hit the mattress. My fingers touched the sheet, but something was wrong. Something felt wrong. Actually, I’m not sure ‘felt’ is the right word for it. I glanced down, and then I froze, gripping the edge of the bed as the room dipped and swirled, and I closed my eyes.

  The man didn’t move an inch. He didn’t answer me, either. He just stood there, and waited, watching as I opened my eyes, and looked at the hand on the end of my arm. When I’d adjusted to the sight of it, I looked up at his face, and then back down at the five metal digits I’d clenched around the sheet. I wondered what would happen if I punched Mack with this... and then I remembered, and turned back to my silent companion.

  “Where’s Mack?”

  “You’re not going to ask what happened to your hand?” he asked, and I closed my eyes, again, swallowing hard against the fast-rising bile.

  “Mack,” I repeated, gritting my teeth, and ordering my stomach to keep its contents right where they were. “Where is he?”

  When he did not reply, I opened my eyes, and looked up at him.

  This time, though, he was not alone. A doctor, dressed in the simple whites of doctors the universe over stood beside him—and I decided that this was not going to fly.

  “Mack,” I said. “Where is Mack? The man I was with. My boss.”r />
  I looked from one of them to the other, and then back again. When they did not respond, I pushed myself off the edge of the bed, and let my feet hit the floor. That almost ended in disaster.

  I stumbled forward, and ended up running into the man who had woken me. He hesitated, obviously considering the idea of letting me fall, but I reached up and grabbed his shoulder with my unfamiliar hand, and gripped it tight to steady myself—and then I squeezed, the vibration of bones shifting beneath my fingers running up my arm.

  I laid my other hand on his other shoulder and forced my body to straighten up.

  “Mack,” I repeated, and watched his mouth open in pain.

  Beside him, the doctor’s mouth dropped open, mirroring his master’s shock, as horror wrote itself across his face.

  “Let go.”

  As an order delivered by someone hurting that much, it wasn’t bad. I managed a grin, and gripped tighter. The sharp punch of pain in my gut came as a complete surprise, and my knees folded. I tried to hold on, but I just couldn’t.

  “Put her back in a tank, and speed up the process,” said the man who’d greeted me, “and make sure her boss is restrained when I visit. That attitude has to come from somewhere.”

  I was still smiling, when they put me under. Maybe I’d get some answers when I woke up, next time. Yeah... and maybe Mack would be there, and I’d be back on board the Marie, and Doc Oskar would be doing his very best impression of being upset.

  One out of three was more than I had any right to expect.

  “Mack,” I said, when I was awake, and free of the tank, once more, and I took a very shaky step towards him.

  “Easy there,” he said, when movement alerted me to the others in the room.

  “Easy,” he repeated, taking the towel from the approaching medic’s hands, and passing it to me, before guiding me over to the san unit at one side of the tank.

  He turned to me.

  “Clean up, and get dressed. I’m sure these ‘gentlemen’, won’t mind waiting.”

  That last sentence was directed more to the well-dressed men standing on the opposite side of the room, than to me. I’d like to say that having a metal hand took me by surprise, again, but it didn’t. Somewhere in my sleep, my brain had assimilated the facts, and decided it could handle having a new hand as opposed to not having one, at all. Maybe Mack would let me upgrade it.