Blaedergil's Host

by C. M. Simpson

  “You need Delight on deck,” he said.

  I knew what Mack wanted to say, even though he was in no fit state to say it. Hell, it was exactly the same thing I wanted to say: No. Fucking. Way.

  “You need her,” Pritchard told us. “First, because Odyssey will have all your hides if she’s still locked up down when they get here—and, believe me, they are coming—and, secondly, because she’s been on this station before, and you,” he said, addressing me directly, “need her with you, if you’re going to survive going through the ducts.”

  He paused, and we both stared at him.

  “Actually, you’re going to need her if you’re going to get into the ducts, or through the maintenance hatches, or did you think she’d visited in an official capacity?”

  Now that he mentioned it...

  I ran the station’s security files, trying to match Delight’s face to the records they had for visitors. Pritchard tilted his head, and shot another glance towards me.

  “Two years, two standard months, three days, four hours and thirty-seven minutes ago, to be precise.”

  I followed his time frame, and couldn’t find a record for anyone matching Delight’s description entering the station... not via the usual routes, anyway. What I did find was a small glitch in the security footage where Delight’s face came up as a partial match for a maintenance worker that ducked into a corridor and completely vanished—from the scans, and from the station records.

  I wondered how long the stuff in Pritchard’s dart would take to wear off, and felt Mack shift beneath me. Well, of course Mack would recover before I did. Of course, he would.

  “He has more body mass than you do,” Pritchard said, and I finally understood that he was reading my mind, and was probably in my implant, along with everybody else.

  I wondered why I couldn’t see him there, and he let his presence become clear. I sighed, feeling my muscles start to tingle as feeling returned. I should be mortified, or outraged, or something, but I just didn’t care. I didn’t even feel numb. Was it bad that I was starting to accept the chance I would never have another private thought, ever, again?

  Was it?

  I sighed, trying to shift my weight off Mack’s chest, and feeling Mack’s hands on my shoulders as he lifted me to one side.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t just put you in the pod beside hers?”

  Pritchard didn’t move. He continued to lounge against the door to my room.

  “Because you need both me and Delight on our feet, and on your side,” he said, simply. “We’ve already gone out on quite the limb to keep Cutter, here, from a breath-takingly short-lived trip amongst the stars—and she’s not out of the woods, yet.”

  They had? And I wasn’t? And why the fuck did they care, anyway?

  Pritchard must have caught all, or part of that thought, because he turned his head towards me, and finally pushed himself off the door frame.

  “Because the two of you are not so different,” he said, and then turned his attention to Mack. “What do you say we get Delight to join your meeting in the caf, and we get down to business?”

  I stared at him, not quite able to accept what he’d said. Delight and I weren’t so different? The Hells we weren’t! He caught that thought.

  “You’d be surprised,” he murmured, but his attention was mostly on Mack, and what he might do next.

  Mack was studying him, intently, giving him the sort of stare that a big cat might give a snake it torn between walking past, or smacking. And Pritchard waited, not tense, not relaxed, but somewhere between the two, making it clear he’d accept whatever Mack brought, but he wouldn’t just lie down and take it.

  “You risked a lot,” Mack finally said, “darting me on my own ship.” He held out the dart he’d plucked from his side. “Cutter will take you to the caf. I’ll fetch Delight.”

  Pritchard nodded, releasing a quietly held breath as he unlocked my door, and let Mack move past him, and through it. Mack stopped as he came alongside the man, and Pritchard tensed.

  “She only gets one chance, Pritchard. She shoots me again, and I will end her.”

  Pritchard went still, his whole body quiet as he studied Mack’s face.

  Probably probing Mack’s implant, as well, I thought, but Pritchard gave nothing away, and I watched as he moved back from the door and gestured for Mack to go before him. As Mack stepped past, Pritchard looked to me.

  “Are you coming?” he asked, and held out his hand.

  I thought about not taking it, and then decided it would be quicker if I did.

  “How many spare pockets do you have?” he asked, helping me to my feet—and I knew he was referring to the suit.

  “A few. Why?”

  “Because you’re going to need more gear,” he told me, and I remembered who would have been riding shot-gun when Delight boarded the station. Of course, he’d known what she needed.

  “Anything I don’t need?” I asked, and we both knew I was referring to what I already carried.

  Pritchard shook his head.

  “Nope. Some you picked, Delight could have done with on the last round. Others address the changes I saw on the schematics.”

  “But not all of them.”

  “No. Not all. We’ll discuss it with Tens.”

  He let go of my hand and we headed for the door. I wondered just how long it would take Mack to pull Delight out of stasis, and how well she’d take it. She’d been pretty angry the last time they’d met.

  “She’ll still be pretty mad,” Pritchard told me, “but she’ll be okay.”

  We came to a cross passage, and Pritchard stopped, rather than continue towards the caf. I stopped beside him.

  “What?”

  “This airlock thing,” he said, and I frowned, but he kept going. “How much trouble is it going to be?”

  “Why?”

  “Because the plan’s not going to work if you can’t move through one without freezing up.”

  “I figure I’ll be okay, as long as I’m going in.”

  “Uh huh. And what if you have to come out?” he asked, and I felt a chill run through my chest.

  I pushed it away, and made myself meet his gaze.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He reached out and grabbed my good hand in a grip a tight as iron.

  “Want to test the theory?”

  I tried to pull my hand away.

  “Not right now, I don’t. Tens is waiting.”

  The needler appeared so fast, I didn’t know what to say.

  “I wasn’t making a suggestion.”

  I tried, again, to pull free.

  “I said... Not. Right. Now!” and I punctuated each of the last three words with a movement of my own. ‘Not’ saw me wrap my metal hand over the muzzle of the needler, pull the weapon from Pritchard’s grasp, and throw the weapon away. ‘Right’ and ‘Now’ accompanied the two punches I threw at his face.

  The first one connected with his cheek. The second one missed his face and slammed into his shoulder.

  “Cutter!”

  Well, those tones were familiar.

  “Pritchard!”

  Come to think of it, so were those.

  “Leave him alone!” came out simultaneously with, “Let her go!”

  Well, shit! Pritchard and I turned as one to look towards the voices, and I don’t think either of us were surprised to see Mack and Delight hurrying towards us. I guess Mack hadn’t taken as long as I thought he would to let her out of her box. We waited until they’d reached us, and that was when I registered that Pritchard was still holding my hand.

  I tried to yank it out of his grasp, but he refused to let it go. Both Mack and Delight caught the movement, and looked at us.

  “What is going on here?” Mack asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, just as Pritchard answered, “She doesn’t want to check her ability to cope with airlocks.”

  I shot him a look that promised retribution, but Mack stepped in.

&nbs
p; “Tens is going to be irritated if we let another pot of coffee go cold,” he said, stepping between us and laying an arm across my shoulders. “It’s not something we can replenish on the station.”

  I caught the stubborn set to Pritchard’s jaw, and watched it soften as Delight laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Coffee first,” she said, firmly, and he subsided. I missed whatever passed between them next, as Mack started towards the caf, taking me with him.

  “Still causing trouble?” he asked, but his tone was light, so I didn’t dignify it with an answer.

  We were met by slow clapping as we entered the caf, and Tens was standing beside the doorway to Mack’s private dining room.

  “It’s about time,” he said. “Case says you need to get your shit together, and let her know if you need any fancy flying done on the approach. By which she means you’ve got about ten minutes, or it won’t happen.”

  I looked at Delight, and then at Pritchard.

  “You’re more familiar with the station approaches,” I said. “Do we need Case to do any fancy flying?”

  “Depends on the berth,” Delight said, and Tens highlighted where we’d been assigned to dock. “Sweet. In that case, we’re good. We’ll do a bit of a belly crawl, and then come up to the hatch.”

  She turned to me, highlighting the hatch we’d need if we took the furthest lab on the list.

  “Suit you, Cutter?”

  I looked at the map, noted the hatch and store room she was suggesting, and looked for anything that might provide an alternative. In the end, it was pretty clear.

  “It’ll do,” I said, “but what if it isn’t there?”

  Delight cocked her head and smiled.

  “I was hoping you’d have a suggestion for that,” she said, and I wondered what game she was playing.

  “A diplomatic one,” she said, and I rolled my eyes.

  Implant. Compromised. What-the-fuck-ever.

  I ran a quick route through the ducts, and then patched into the security cams for the outer level.

  “You know what?” I said. “I think that lab’s a red herring.”

  I felt Mack sit up and start paying attention, so I stuck the footage from the three labs side by side. The lab on the inside of the corridor, was empty, save for two scientists, and a row of pods. The lab opposite it, had more pods, but a half dozen more scientists at three different tables running parallel on either side of the pods. The lower lab had a single pod, two scientists working opposite each other at screens set on the desks placed back-to-back beside it, and nothing like the equipment we’d seen in the other labs.

  “For a lab working on a cure, that one’s seriously understaffed,” I said.

  “And under-equipped,” Pritchard added.

  “At least you’re dressed the part,” Mack said. “Those civvies will blend right in, if you decide to take the elevator up, and use the corridors.”

  He had a point. Corridors and elevator would be quicker than returning for an EVA to the hatch we’d identified as the closest access point to the upper labs, and they’d be much, much quicker than using the ventilation shafts.

  “Safer, too,” Delight concurred, and I wondered why she said that.

  I found out when she took us on a run-through of her previous experience in the ducts.

  “That has to be illegal!”

  “Not on Costral.”

  “But it’s a space station. Someone could get hurt!”

  “I think that’s the general idea.”

  “What happens to the maintenance workers?”

  “They have remotes to turn it off.”

  “And what if they don’t work?”

  “They only lose one or two a year.”

  I stared at the visual she’d provided, and could understand why. If I saw one of those things coming at me through the ducts, I just might forget how to use the remote, too—or maybe drop the damn thing out of sheer fright—and that was in addition to the movement sensors, heat sensors, laser points, and gas traps. In fact, I was real glad Delight was coming along to take point in the vents.

  “I should be making you go first, as a training exercise,” she said, and looked towards Mack as he shifted his weight in his chair, “but Mack says I’m better equipped, and he’d like me to prove why he was bothering to keep me around.”

  That last was delivered with a twist of the mouth that made it look like she’d eaten something sour, and I wondered what else Mack had said to gain the admission.

  “You don’t want to know,” came softly into my head, and I couldn’t help but glance at him.

  Tens was smirking, again, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t helping the situation any, and I tried real hard to keep that thought to myself. I was going to be relying on Delight to keep me alive, and I really didn’t want her any more pissed off with me than she already was.

  “Good luck with that.” Tens, again, and I glared at him.

  “We going yet?” I asked.

  Mack leaned back in his seat, and sipped his coffee, but his eyes had that faraway look that said he was talking to Case. At least, that’s what I thought he was doing. I couldn’t hear a thing, and, for a moment, I envied him the privacy.

  He must have caught the edge of my thoughts, because his eyes flickered in my direction, but he didn’t say a word to address it. Whatever he thought about the situation he’d put me in, he wasn’t sharing. Delight watched the exchange from beside me, but was equally quiet, and Pritchard? Pritchard just sat back sipping the tea, he’d ordered, and keeping an eye on us all.

  You woulda thought he was the only responsible adult in the room.

  And raised eyebrows at that thought, didn’t win him any brownie points, either. They meant he was still reading me through my implant, and I still didn’t appreciate it. Whatever.

  I waited for Mack’s verdict.

  “Case says we dock in ten.”

  Delight slapped me on the shoulder, and stood up.

  “Time to go, kiddo,” she said, and headed for the door.

  She glanced back at Pritchard, but he just raised his cup in her general direction like he was making a toast, and didn’t budge an inch. Delight hesitated, but he ignored her, closing his eyes to better appreciate his next sip of tea, so she rolled her eyes and stamped her way out the door. I didn’t bother looking at any of them as I followed.

  It wouldn’t make any difference, and Delight wouldn’t appreciate the delay.

  “Darn tootin’,” she muttered, as she hurried down the corridors to her quarters.

  I didn’t wait for an invitation, but followed her inside, not even flinching when she closed the door behind us.

  “You got everything?” she asked, and I named six items Pritchard had suggested that I didn’t have.

  She flounced over to the drawers beneath her wardrobe, and pulled them out... and I sooo wasn’t going to tell Mack what she was keeping in there. Delight gave the briefest of grins as she caught the thought, but she didn’t slow down.

  She pulled out a body-suit, and a similar set of civilian clothes to the ones I’d chosen.

  “Good choice, by the way,” she said, dragging out a combat suit that might have been the twin of mine.

  “What?” she said, “Mack didn’t give me time to prep before the meeting, so I’ve got to do it now.”

  I didn’t say anything, but wondered exactly how late she’d been planning on leaving it.

  She didn’t bother answering that, but stripped down, and started pulling the body sock on.

  “Armor,” she said. “If I’m going point, I might need it.”

  I nodded, trying to look anywhere else but at her. She ignored my discomfort and kept going, making small talk as she went.

  “You should get Mack to get you some. Kind of missions he sends you on, you need it.”

  I wondered why she cared, but I agreed. Between the little trip into Ghoul’s catacombs and the last run to Costral, body armor sounded like a nice addition... and a par
achute. Yeah, after that last jaunt off the roof of Blaedergil’s mansion, a parachute would do just fine. Who knows how many other heights I was going to be leaping off in the hopes Tens and his team could catch me.

  “Chute would get in the way of the grab, and be a pain in the ass when they brought you on board,” she said, “not to mention make you easier to find for the hostiles.”

  As opposed to being a splat mark on the sidewalk? I wondered, but I didn’t say it. Delight had moved to being dressed, and was now stowing her gear in the pockets and pouches on her suit.

  “Those EVA suits are going to be a bitch to retrieve,” she said, and she raised it like she was talking about the weather. Small talk, right? But she had a point.

  “I’ll mention it to Mack,” I said.

  “How do you think he’ll feel about losing them?” Delight asked, and I stared at her.

  She held up a vial that held a coalescing swarm of grey.

  “Nanites,” she said. “Dust chompers. Short-lived but effective. We sprinkle enough of them on the suits once we’re out of them, and no-one will be able to tell where they came from. Keeps Mack and the ship in the clear.”

  I turned the idea over in my head, weighing the chance of Mack being able to retrieve the suits, against the risk they posed if they were traced back to the Shady Marie. I knew scrapping the suits would be the best option, but they weren’t mine to scrap, and I really didn’t have time to go check with Mack. I was just about to tell her to go ahead, when Mack intervened.

  “Nan them,” came from Mack, and I wasn’t too pleased to realize him and Tens were still inside my head.

  “What? You thought we’d leave you alone with her?” Tens wanted to know, and Delight pouted.

  “They don’t leave you alone for a second, do they?”

  I shrugged.

  “Would you?”

  She cracked another short-lived smile.

  “Not in a million years, short stuff. Come on. Time we went.”

  24—Werewolf Diplomacy