Turns out he’d spoken the absolute truth. When I woke up, the pain was gone, although I could feel the lingering itch of nanites across my skin, and was floating in the sodden grasp of another regen tank. Mack stood on the other side of the tank wall, staring at me, and then all the way through. Wherever he was, it wasn’t here. Worry creased his face, until he saw my eyes were open, and then a brief smile lit his expression.
“You’re back!” he said, sounding happier than I would have thought possible. Color rose to his cheeks, and he glanced around to see who else might have heard him. Seeing we were alone cleared his throat. “Good. We’ve got work to do.”
Well, of course we did.
“We’ll take it out of your fee,” Delight said, and I realized she’d come in, as silent as a ghost. Sneaky bitch.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Mack said, reaching out and laying a large, broad hand on her shoulder. “Injuries incurred in the interests of the operation are the employer’s responsibility.”
Delight narrowed her eyes, and Mack raised his eyebrows.
“Or are you going to say that letting the arach onto the dropship was in Odyssey’s best interest for this world?”
“We hadn’t contracted you, then,” Delight said, but Mack shook his head.
“You contracted us the minute you had us help you secure that station and involved us in negotiations for establishing Iron Hands.”
“And I thought that was Queen Tekravzary,” Delight countered.
Mack smiled.
“Other contracts that are not counter to your interests are not relevant, provided we are available when you call.”
“If you don’t mind,” said the voice I’d heard before I’d been drugged under, “the only thing of current interest is this patient returning to operations, and you are both underfoot.”
Mack and Delight moved to continue their dickering, eventually leaving the medical team to extract me from the tank and do a post-operative check while they adjourned to a small conference room not far away.
“Thierry will take you,” the doc said, when I was checked, dried and dressed.
He handed me a folded sheet of paper.
“You’re cleared for operations.”
Thierry was tall, built like a bean-pole, and dark-eyed with a shock of sandy-hair that didn’t look like it had ever lost a battle with a comb. She didn’t say a word for the entire short trip to where Mack and Delight were putting the finishing touches on yet another contract.
Delight dismissed her with a nod, and then turned to me.
“How d’you feel, Cutter?”
“Better,” I said, and it was true.
I no longer felt light-headed, or like a walking mass of pain. I looked to Mack, feeling energy riffle through me.
“Where to next, boss?”
He glanced over at Delight.
“Shuttle bay?”
“Shuttle bay,” she agreed, and I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of not having my atoms ripped to shreds and slammed back together, again—well, at least not for the rest of the day.
“How’s Askavor?” I asked, and Delight smiled.
“The reason we’re taking the shuttle down,” she said, “is because they don’t have a regen tank on K’Kavor, let alone one big enough to tank up a weaver or a vespis. This war goes as nasty as we think it will, and we’re going to need tanks—and the teams trained to use them.”
“And this warrants a shuttle, because…”
“It’s a very big shuttle,” Delight said, and wouldn’t be drawn.
It was, indeed, a “very big shuttle”—and I hadn’t known what sort of operations Delight was on, couldn’t think of any that needed heavy lift capability. Whatever it was, it required regen tanks to be distributed to frontier worlds that needed them. It also needed the technicians to operate them, and the engineers to install them… and that meant they had the engineers to reconfigure them, too. Apparently, not all the worlds they were visiting were human.
“Why do you want to know?” Delight demanded.
I shrugged. “Just curious,” I told her.
“Cutter…” Mack warned, and I sighed.
“Fine.”
Delight just gazed at me a little longer, so I gazed back.
“Oh, give it a break!” Mack said. “We have too much shit to do for you two to get into a pissing contest.”
Delight snapped her head towards him, pursing her lips, before turning away.
“We’re ready,” she said, and the hatch closed behind us.
Those aboard glanced towards us, but looked, just as quickly away. That suited me just fine. I followed Mack on, and took the seat he indicated. He slid in after me, and turned to Delight.
“Where do you want us to go next?”
“As you said, our interests coincide with the queen’s, and she has you tied up tighter than you know. Helping her solve the incursion is in our interests. Do that until we need you.”
“Done,” and Mack leant back in the seat and closed his eyes.
It was another old soldier trick. I puzzled over that as the shuttle dropped into open space, and then I settled myself beside him. Those old soldiers had a point. Sleep was never guaranteed. Come night, we might be called out on yet another task.
“Shut it, Cutter.”
Fine. Whatever.
I closed my eyes, and didn’t bother opening them, again, until we touched down. Delight, for a change, didn’t say a word. She led the way out of the shuttle, greeting the queen, and then moving on to the settlement’s representative.
“Where do you want these?” she asked, and did not seem happy with his answer.
“There is nothing in the colony that can take them, but we can store them over here, while your engineers tell us what is needed.”
Mack and I watched Delight deliver her news to the crew, and then accompany the medical staff to the shuttle.
“We need to set up at least one for Askavor,” she said. “We can always move it later. You will find us space.”
While I wanted to know how that conversation turned out, the queen had beckoned, and Mack tapped me on the shoulder as he moved to answer her summons.
“Come,” she said, as we came alongside. “While Odyssey tends to our needs, your skills are required elsewhere. Are you equipped?”
And I remembered that we had been diverted before I could collect my gear from the ship. I felt my face color with embarrassment.
“No, your Majesty. I am sorry.”
“T’Kit will take you to the armory.” She paused. “You and Mack both. We will reconvene at the drop-ship. Rohan will pilot.”
Tens had been listening through my implant.
“Tell her we’ll be ready,” he said.
I opened my mouth to relay his message, but the queen inclined her head.
“Thank you, Cutter. Tell him we will be there shortly.”
“Got it,” Tens said, before I could do as she asked, and I felt more like a chat room, than a relay station.
It didn’t help to hear them both chuckle at that.
“Come on, Cutter,” Mack said, “before we’re too slow to join the party.”
I kept a tight grip on my thoughts, and followed T’Kit as she took us across the compound.
Kitting up was easy. There were Blazers and there were blades. There were even a couple of Brahms 89s, but no Zakravas, and definitely no Glazers. I took what I could, and then picked up a short, heavy-bladed knife, as a second weapon. Mack watched me.
“You sure you have enough?”
I thought about what I had faced in the holding cell on the arach ship, and shivered.
“Nope, but I’ll make it count.”
T’Kit caught the surface memory of arach coming along the ceiling of the cell, of arach half-morphed between human and spider, the arach under the shuttle coming straight at me. She paused, as though caught between saying nothing, and
trying to say something that would make me feel better.
“That is all the queen asks,” she said, taking extra magazines and chargers for her own pack.
“This place got first aid kits?” I asked, thinking how useful one of those would have been in encounters past.
“There.”
I picked up two. I might not be able to use stim packs or adrenaline, but I could sure as shit handle bandages and wound glue. I made a note to stock up on skin-seal patches the next time I was on the ship, and Mack quirked an eyebrow.
“Doc catches you raiding his medical supplies, and he’ll make you regret it.”
“I’ll ask,” I said. “Doc’s a reasonable man.”
The look on Mack’s face said that might not extend to handing out his medical supplies, but I didn’t pursue it. I was pretty sure Doc and I would come to some kind of understanding. Mack just picked up his own med kit, stuffed a few more charge packs into his pockets, and turned to T’Kit.
“We’re done,” he said.
The walk back to the drop-ship was done in double-quick time. In fact, if I hadn’t known any better, I’d have said T’Kit was in a hurry.
“We do not want company,” she said. “This is a weaver colony, and the queen wants to see if there are those who might be saved.”
She paused.
“We are not so sure your Agent Delight would be open to the idea.”
Mack snorted, and I couldn’t suppress a smile. Pretty sure Delight would be pissed if she knew.
“Damn right,” the agent said, “but they have a point. Good luck.”
T’Kit didn’t slow the pace, and we jogged across the landing field and onto the ship, envying her the use of her wings. The ramp closed and the ship lifted before we made our seats.
“What’s the hurry?” Mack wanted to know.
“They picked up shuttles on the scanners, just after the arach attack on the airfield,” the queen said. “I fear for the safety of the settlement—and for what the arach may have done prior to evacuation.”
“Are you sure it is an evacuation?”
“We are not sure. We suspect there will be infiltrators in the human settlements, even after the rest of the arach seem to have left. We will need assistance with that, too, but, first, we must save those we can in the weaver colonies.”
I wanted to know what made her so certain that there would be weavers who needed saving, but she did not explain. Instead, she uttered a single, demanding chitter, and the drop-ship picked up speed. This time, the ship flew, straight and fast, into the hills. The pilot appeared to know exactly where we needed to go, and I figured the vespis hadn’t wasted any time while their queen was in space.
While we’d been clearing the ship and the station, her ground teams had been searching for the arach who had already hidden themselves on world.
“Indeed,” she said. “You will fight beside T’Kit, and Mack will fight to the left of me.”
There was a stir of wings as she made this pronouncement, but they settled at a flick of her antenna, and the hum that accompanied it died. Suddenly, she turned back to the front, reaching out take hold of handgrips attached to the bulkheads leading to the cockpit.
“Brace!” Her cry echoed through our heads, and a dark, bitter scent touched our nostrils.
“A warning,” T’Kit translated, indicating the scent. “You will learn to note it.”
She took a firm grip of the handholds nearest her just as the ship slipped to one side, and then jolted the other way, descending abruptly and swaying from side to side. I braced between the seat and the wall, and Mack braced against me.
Man weighed a ton!
“You calling me fat?” he asked, and even his internal voice sounded like it was gritting its teeth.
“If the boot fits,” I retorted, and he gave me a startled look.
Before he could respond, however, the drop-ship landed. It hit hard and the pilot blew the doors, leaving us exposed to whatever might be waiting in ambush outside.
“Go! Go! Go!” sounded in my head, but all my ears could hear was buzzing, the thrum of two dozen wings, while my nostrils filled with the sharp scent of citrus.
“Hurry!” T’Kit said, and I bolted after her, jumping the two meters to the ground, while Mack shot off after the queen.
I had no idea where we were, or where we were going, until a map flashed into my head.
“We are taking the outer buildings,” T’Kit said, but she didn’t sound happy. The queen would be leading her team into the tunnels behind the buildings clustered at the edge of the river, and T’Kit would not be with her.
She wasn’t the only vespis bodyguard to be given the duty of securing the perimeter; there were three others. Each had been assigned a team of slightly smaller wasps, colored in the oranges and yellows of soldiers or workers.
“We are all soldiers for the queen,” T’Kit said, when she caught the thought. “We might have other specialties, and bodyguards tend to have none of those, but when the hives are endangered, we all fight for them.”
I wondered if this extended to the humans and weavers, but didn’t ask. It was hard enough to focus on running through the scrubby undergrowth and around the trunks of towering trees without trying to carry on a conversation. Besides, we needed to keep an eye out for traps and ambushes. It was hard to believe the arach would have left the place undefended.
“You’d be surprised,” T’Kit said, and I found something else that needed an answer.
“What sort of settlement is this?”
“It was a weaver habitation,” T’Kit told me. “We do not allow humans outside the space set aside for them… although that will now change. They have lived in peace, long enough.”
By which I took it that the queen thought it safe enough to integrate.
“No, but it is now necessary, and the process cannot be as gradual as we had planned.”
“Why?”
“The arach will invade. If we meet them divided, we will become their cattle.”
Well, that couldn’t be good.
The first of the buildings came into sight, and all conversation ceased. T’Kit flattened her antenna out to either side, and the wasps flying with her settled to the ground. At her signal, I moved up alongside her. She indicated the buildings before us.
“You will go ahead,” T’Kit said, “and scout the nearest.”
Before I could feel as though I’d been singled out, she ordered the two nearest wasps to take the buildings on either side, and then divided her forces between the three.
“At the first sign of trouble, we will come,” she told us. “Now, go!”
24—Into the Processing Plant
I went, crouching low and scurrying quickly through the scrub, before stopping to ensure that nothing was looking through the windows facing my cover. The wasps flew into the air and out of sight amidst the leaves, and, for a moment, I envied them their ability to fly. They would come in over the buildings, and not have to worry about being spotted from a window.
It was strange, though. These structures looked almost like human dwellings—and T’Kit had said this was a weaver colony, and beyond where humans were allowed to settle. Why would the weavers live in human structures?
“Exactly,” T’Kit said. “There is something ‘not right’ here.”
Beyond the presence of the arach, I thought, and decided the path ahead was clear enough for me to take it. I came out from behind the leafy greenness, just as the wasps started descending, and that was when I realized they had one distinct disadvantage… I could hear them—and, if I could hear them, then anyone in those dwellings could, too. We’d be expected.
I hurried forward, hardly daring to breathe, until I was crouched against the wall beneath the nearest window. This building looked more like a warehouse than a dwelling. The next one over, did not. It had a veranda, running all the way around it, a roof that looked like it was made of plascret
e slates, and windows at the height you’d expect for a bunk house… or hotel.
What would either of those be doing in a weaver settlement?
“Another excellent question,” T’Kit said.
“What sort of village was this?”
“Your meaning?”
“Their livelihood. How did they make it?”
“They were fishermen. The building you are about to enter is a processing and storage center for their catch.”
It was? It didn’t look like a processing center. I shrugged that thought away. The weavers were spiders; they probably had a very different way of doing things. I raised my head, listening for any sounds of movement coming from inside. It was still daylight.
Did this mean the weavers were still fishing, or would they be at work, here?
“That is what we must determine,” T’Kit said. “I believe there should be activity within.”
By that, I understood that she did not mean arach.
“No.”
Point taken.
I made my way back along the building towards its rear. It was odd that a processing center would not be right on the river, but one building back where the catch would be harder to deliver—very odd that a human style dwelling would be set with such broad verandas overlooking the water. That was more akin to a resort, than anything else. Perhaps there was a swimming pool on the other side where I couldn’t see it.
“No, but there might be one inside.”
Well, that answered that, then.
Not wanting to go through the front door, if I could help it, I moved my way back along the warehouse, looking for another entrance. If there were human-style buildings in the settlement, it wasn’t unreasonable to assume there might be human-style exits in them. It also wasn’t unreasonable to assume that the weavers knew the humans were present, and had allowed it.
What if both species had been relying on the vespis not checking on everyone—or not recognizing a human structure when they saw one, or even accepting some bullshit explanation for one? What if these weavers had allowed the wrong kind of human to come into their settlement, and what I was looking at was something that didn’t support a fishing village at all? What if, in fact, the real weaver fishing village was a bit further downstream, and just lent workers to the humans running this place so everything looked...
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