“Be glad that’s all I do,” I told her, remembering how Tyler had needed a whole room to himself during training. That boy, you put him in a sim, and his entire body went along for the ride. You had to make sure he was unarmed, or that nothing was loaded, or he made one hell of a mess. It only took one sim for us to discover how he worked, and we never forgot.
“What?”
Because Mack and Delight were both looking at me, and I realized that I had sounded exactly as tired as I felt.
“You need a break,” Mack said, and I opened my mouth to argue, but he didn’t let me get a word in, “or Doc is going to kill me.”
That shut me up. Doc wouldn’t just kill Mack; he’d kill us both—and I didn’t want to find out how he planned to use the sharp-and-pointies in his clinic to make me regret ever crossing him. I was happy knowing he would... Okay, happy probably wasn’t the word to describe it, but just knowing he would do exactly as he said was enough.
“Let’s go eat.”
15—Incursion
We made planet-fall late the next day, and Doc still wasn’t happy with me going along.
“Remember what I said about not letting her get thrown around,” he said to Mack, and then turned to me. “No overdoing it.”
He handed me a wrist band.
“Keep it on. It monitors how you’re doing. I don’t like it, and I’ll get the teleport team to pull you out, early.”
I glanced at Mack, wondering if I could hack the monitor, and he gave the slightest twitch of his head that said I’d damned well better not.
“I got you, Cutter,” came Tens in my head, and I hoped to all the stars that he’d shielded that from the Doc.
“Don’t make me come up there.”
I snickered.
Obviously not. Either that, or Doc had used some of his own tricks to follow Tens’ communications. I sensed consternation from the comms tech, and knew that how Doc had managed to hack his link was going to distract him until he’d solved it.
“Not now, Tens,” Mack snapped, his voice jolting through our heads. “Doc. Get off the line, or you and I are going to have a problem.”
I was surprised to feel it when Doc left my head, not so surprised to feel the monitoring band tighten around my good wrist. It sent a frisson of fear shuddering through me, and I hoped to all the heavens that it wasn’t rigged to explode.
That thought made Mack momentarily freeze.
“Doc?”
“I’m not you, Mack.”
Well. Ouch!
“Shut it, Cutter.”
We took a final check of our weapons and equipment, me stuffing more ammunition and energy clips in the handy pockets my latest combat outfit came with, as I wondered how long this one would last... and then I spotted several slim tubes of explosive sitting to one side of Mack’s equipment.
“Can I have some of those?”
He gave me a puzzled glance.
“You know how to use it?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Odyssey-trained, remember?”
“They cover that in Basics?”
His surprise brought a smirk to my lips.
“Not exactly,” and Delight gave an irritated huff.
“Don’t tell him,” she added, turning to me. “I don’t want to know.”
And I remembered that the skinny boomers hadn’t been part of the Basics curriculum that we’d been given. I blushed, horrified to realize I’d nearly given away a secret shared in confidence. Mack, of course, was immediately interested, but Delight was surprisingly resistant to the idea of discovering exactly who had revealed the how-tos, or when it had occurred.
Well. That was a connection worth checking.
“Don’t you dare,” Delight said. “That’s a secret, you’re not supposed to remember.”
It took me a moment to realize that neither Tens, nor Mack were reacting to her embarrassment, or her threat.
“They can’t hear me, sweetie,” she said, “and that’s a secret, too.”
Goddamnitall to the stars and beyond!
And Delight laughed.
Mack looked from one to the other of us, and back, and then he handed me a small pouch of the sticks, and picked up his pack.
“I don’t wanta know,” he said.
Smart man, that—and Delight agreed.
I prepped the Blazer for firing, reassured by the fact that Mack was doing the same thing, beside me. At least we were agreed on not taking anything for granted. Tens might be sure the landing site was safe, but scans could be fooled, as we’d proven several times over—and neither I nor Mack were taking the chance.
We stepped up onto the platform, and Mack moved so we were angled slightly away from each other, our arms touching. When he was happy with our positioning, he had Tens run one more scan of the area, and then gave the teleport team the signal to send us down.
I’m not fond of teleportation. It always feels like I’ve left an important part of myself behind, or that I’ve ceased to exist for just a second—and it’s hard holding back the images of what could happen if the system went wrong. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I had a mission to focus on.
We landed in the courtyard, just as we planned. The team even managed to tick two boxes on our wish-list: they didn’t land us dead center, where we’d be easily seen, and they managed to put us down on the one side not yet lit by the morning sun.
Did I mention we were going in just after sunrise?
Mack figured that was when folk would be at their sleepiest.
I had pointed out that Blaedergil had left his servants behind, and that servants were most likely early risers. After all, none of them would want to get caught sleeping in when they’d been meant to start a shift. If the man got his jollies out of killing his wives every night, then I shuddered to think what he might do to a servant who overslept.
Mack had argued that, with Blaedergil gone, the servants might take the opportunity to catch up on the sleep they’d been missing with all the screams echoing through the house. Had to admit, the man made a good point.
I shoved those thoughts right out of my head, as the world swirled back into focus. Man, I hoped they’d put all the bits back in the right places. There was no time to check; I just had to focus on the mission, and hope.
It also didn’t help that we weren’t the only ones arriving in the courtyard. There was a strange shuttle coming in almost on top of us. It made me really glad the teleport team had put us to one side of the courtyard. There was no way we’d have been missed, if we’d been out in the middle.
“Well, fuck me si—”
“Later!” Mack snapped, grabbing me with one hand as he piss-bolted for the nearest door.
I didn’t need the extra encouragement, although the quick start was a help. There was no way in all the heavens, I wanted to be in that courtyard when Household Security arrived to see who’d come without knocking.
I figured it could only be the Lord of Skymander, arriving early, and wondered how the fuck Tens had missed it coming in.
“You’d be surprised,” and I thought Tens sounded rather calm for having missed something so major.
“Let’s just say, I want to meet their techs.”
I just bet he did.
I followed Mack through a side-door, glad that the blueprints Tens had hacked out of the house computers were accurate.
“Yeah, you can thank me later... or, better yet, just shut the hell up and quit your bitching.”
Well, that told me!
I stopped and started to deal with the door, but Tens kicked me along.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Now. Run!”
We ran.
The last place I’d seen Treivani had been outside the door to my room, her arm threaded possessively through Blaedergil’s crooked elbow, her eyes unbelievably grateful that I was there. I still hadn’t worked out what that meant, just couldn’t understand what she possibly had to be happy about—unless it was because she was fin
ally getting free of Blaedergil himself, because that would have made me happy, too.
I’d last heard Treivani three floors up. She’d been screaming, but that was from giving birth, and not because of anything Blaedergil was doing to her. I hoped the birth had gone to plan, and that she and the baby were doing well.
It crossed my mind that I still didn’t know what happened to the children. I mean, I understood it wasn’t good if they were boys, but I’d never asked what happened if they were girls. I shrugged the thought away. Maybe it really was better if I didn’t know.
We ran through the narrow corridors that Tens said were the servants’ exclusive domain, bypassing the elevators, and not looking back. Tens hadn’t told us if he’d hacked the shuttle’s feeds. Nor had he confirmed, whose shuttle it was. For all we knew, the Blaedergil we’d killed had been a clone, and the real one had come out of hiding.
“Don’t even go there.” Mack sounded like he wanted to deny the thought outright, but didn’t quite dare.
I wondered what the chances were that the shuttle that had almost come in on top us was an incarnation of the old master of the house, rather than the Skymander lord.
“Skymander would be preferable.”
“Well, then, it’s your lucky day.”
“Delight?”
“I’ll meet you on the upper floor. Porters put us down just inside the wall, at the back of the kitchens.”
That was both good and bad. I figured that by ‘us’ Delight was referring to herself and Pritchard, and not anyone else from Odyssey. As far as I knew there hadn’t been any other Odyssey personnel aboard Mack’s ship—although I had been unconscious for a lot of the time I’d been back there, and hadn’t ventured far, when I had been conscious.
“There are no other Odyssey staff on board my ship,” Mack said. “Now, focus. We’re almost there.”
I’d run three flights? Already? Man, I was fitter than I thought... or more distracted.
“Take your pick,” Mack told me, slowing the pace, so we could take the last few stairs more quietly.
When we got to the door leading out into the corridor proper, I realized I hadn’t even thought to hack the security feed to see what lay ahead.
“Already done,” said Tens, and the feeds were there for me to access.
I have to admit, this was a lot better than when I had been down in Ghoul’s complex. Down there, I’d had to do it all myself—and I hadn’t even had Mack to rely on for security.
“Lucky you,” Mack muttered, “cos I would have smacked you upside the head several times over for not getting that shit out of the way fast enough,” and I realized Tens was having trouble with the door.
“What’s gone wrong?”
“Skymander,” Tens replied. “He’s there, and he’s locking the place down, so he can go find his bride.”
“Well, at least we know she’s here.”
“And he wants the kid, too, so you really need to shift your asses.”
“Right.”
I stepped up to the door, and Mack turned so he could cover both directions of the staircase with the Blazer. To my surprise, the door was all new tech under cover of the brass casings and fittings of a much older age. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said Blaedergil had a problem trusting his servants.
Oh, wait, I did know better. Blaedergil did have a problem trusting his servants, because Blaedergil had been a sick, sadistic bastard. I was guessing that not even the servants had been immune from his predilections, figured there had to be nights when killing just his bride wasn’t enough, and felt very sorry for a servant class trapped into service to just one house.
Magnus 19 wasn’t big on looking after its people, what with being a world specializing in the dead, and all.
I pushed the class politics to one side, and pulled the tool kit I’d learned to carry while down in the Ghoul’s complex. Once I could talk to the security system, I was able to get it to open no problems at all. From below us came the sound of a door slamming open, and a multitude of booted steps coming into the stairwell.
“Make it fast,” Mack said, and Tens gave us a snap visual of a half dozen armored soldiers starting up the stairs.
I patched Tens into the security system, and wondered if he could jam all the doors and lock the team behind us in the stairwell. He was chuckling evilly, as Mack and I eased the door closed in an effort to keep our presence in the stairwell a secret.
I wondered what access the Skymander lord had to the security feeds, and figured Tens would have that sorted if he was able to sort it all.
“Done,” Tens assured me, “but I don’t know how long for, so get going.”
Mack and I obliged.
“Which direction were the screams coming from?” he asked, and his words took me straight back to the night I had left my room to find Melari.
For a moment, I was almost overwhelmed by remembered terror. I shook my head to clear it, and reminded myself that Mack was here with me, that Mack would make sure I got out of here alive, that Blaedergil was no longer around to see to my death every night... or to engineer anyone else’s.
I sneered at myself.
Yeah? And what about the Skymander? He authorized Blaedergil’s activities, so he can’t be any better.
“Which way?” and Mack’s voice broke through the nightmare and the fear.
I lifted my head and looked up and down the corridor, momentarily lost until I recognized one of the plants flowering in a niche beside a doorway.
“That way,” I said. “I came into the corridor over there, and the screams came from there.”
“Then that’s where we need to look.”
Behind us the door shook, and voices were raised in consternation. I shot Mack a glance that must have said it all, because he started running in the direction I said I’d heard the screaming. It made me wonder if they’d keep a nursery on the same level, or if the babies weren’t disturbed by the noise.
Mack’s footsteps faltered, and he came to an abrupt halt.
“Tens. Numbnuts has had another brilliant idea.”
“Roger that. Caught it and am checking now.”
Numbnuts? But I didn’t have any—
“Fine. Nonuts, then.”
Well, and a fine fuck you to you, too, Mack.
“Go two more floors up, and hang right, then get to the end of the corridor and hang a left. Looks like a nursery-style layout.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Nah. I’m sure. Security feeds confirm it.”
Behind us, the door shook, again. Mack and I exchanged glances, and headed for the same stairs I’d taken the last time I’d been here. Have to admit, while I didn’t want to think about that, I was also glad I was familiar with this part of the layout.
I decided the chances that Skymander’s men had gotten ahead of us were slim. Judging from the racket in the stairwell, and the fact they were behind us, I gathered they were doing the same thing Mack and I were, and searching for Treivani—except they didn’t have the advantage of having been here... oh, shit.
“Tens. Are there records of any Skymander visiting previously?”
Both Tens and Mack made an interesting chorus of swears, as Tens momentarily vanished from our heads, and Mack and I ran for the stairs. I’d decided to take the risk that Skymander hadn’t gone on ahead of us, that he hadn’t set a hunting pack on our heels on purpose, and that he might not have taken the elevators we’d shunned to the very floor he needed.
“Yeah,” Mack panted, “and unicorns are real and crap fairy floss, while pissing lemonade.”
“Fuck you,” and I sounded just as short of breath as he did.
He ignored me, and started up the second flight of stairs. I didn’t hear the sound of anyone searching on this floor, which either meant that this Skymander didn’t need to search, or that his men hadn’t reached this floor yet.
Hey, I could live in hope, right?
We reached the floor we needed, witho
ut incident, and spun right, running as fast as our suddenly wobbly legs would take us. I’d thought I was fit, but it was looking like I’d need a lot more time in the gym to be even close.
16—One Blown Mission
Neither Mack, nor I made it much further. We were belting towards the corner, just as fast as we could go, when the doors along the corridor’s edges began to open.
“Go back!” Tens roared in our ears. “Get to the roof!”
I wanted to argue, but I recognized some of the figures coming out of the doors—and no way in all the worlds did I want a single one of them to get within spitting distance, let alone touch range. Somehow, Skymander and his people had gotten far enough ahead of us to free the women in Blaedergil’s upper floors, and put them down here.
“They fucked with the security footage.” Tens was explaining, as we ran.
Well, of course, they had.
“Skymander knew about us taking Blaedergil. He knows we delivered Blaedergil’s body to the Corovans. The only way I can think of that happening is if Lord Corovan told him.”
“I’ll deal with him, later,” Mack said, and his voice was a cross between a growl and a struggle to breathe.
Laughing didn’t even cross my mind. I was in exactly the same boat as he was. Get to the roof Tens had said. Fuck! I’d be lucky if I made it to the next floor, let alone past the next three.
I hadn’t known exactly how true my words were, until I saw movement on the floor above.
“Mack!”
“I see it.”
He was firing before he’d finished speaking, and I tried not feel sorry, as I watched the women above us start to drop.
“Move, Cutter!” he roared, and I did my best to obey.
We scrambled up to the next level, and I shot a glance at the balconies outside the windows. They were starting to look downright inviting. We’d only have to shoot our way out onto them...or bull our way through a hundred meters of diseased and highly infectious victims of Blaedergil’s experimentation.
That last thing? That sooo wasn’t happening, but neither was running another flight of stairs. They were already above us, and moving to cut us off. If we wanted to make it up to the next level, we had to make each shot count. I slowed my pace to take one step, aim and fire, and then go the next step.
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