The Transporter's Favor

by C. M. Simpson

  “Because I don’t know who our opponents are—and I don’t want you blasting something I might need to talk to later. Now, about this little problem you have with airlocks.”

  And I was on my feet and looking for something to shoot, again… with my empty blaster. Idiot.

  “I can handle them when I’m in a suit.”

  “But they still give you nightmares, every night.”

  That much was true.

  Well beyond the fact Odyssey had been planning on spacing me, if I didn’t agree with being their employee, I’d had a smuggler stuff me into one, because I’d refused to give up my room.

  I’d kept my room, thought I’d neutered that particular monster, especially after I’d managed to go through them successfully, since—and then the nightmares had started…

  Even now, I was breathing fast and trying to defend myself against a ship. A ship of all things!

  “Abs… please.”

  “Tell you what, you step into that airlock over there. If you manage five minutes, without freaking out, I won’t ask you to do it again.”

  A door to the right of the cockpit lit up, and I froze, but it didn’t open. I stared at, not able to move a muscle. Abby was not impressed.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Abs…”

  “You either move yourself there, or I put you there. I’ll give you an hour.”

  Well, fuck.

  “The airlock won’t hurt you, Cutter. I won’t hurt you, okay?”

  And she didn’t sound like she’d take no for an answer.

  “We don’t have time for this—” I started, and Abby cut me off with a savagery I hadn’t thought possible in an AI.

  “No! I don’t have time for this. I need to know you’ll handle it when you hit the next one without a suit…” Her voice softened. “… and that you’ll trust me.”

  So, it was more a matter of trusting her than overcoming my fear, was it? Well, I could handle that. I stood up, and crossed to the lock, hammering my hand down on the opening panel. Abby stayed silent, as the door opened in front of me—which was when I discovered just how close I was to not handling it.

  The confines behind that door were both smaller and much larger than I had imagined they’d be. I rested my forearm along the doorframe and hung my head.

  “Give me a minute.”

  And Abby stayed as quiet as a mouse. As far as I could tell, I was the only person on the ship—except I knew that was impossible. Abby was hardwired in. She was all around me, was the ship itself. Abby was the airlock.

  Abby was the airlock.

  I could do this—and I stepped across the threshold and into the lock, itself.

  The door stayed open. Waiting. Letting me just stand there, while my heart raced, and every muscle got ready to run. Abby’s voice made me jump.

  “You need to close the door, Cutter.”

  I nodded.

  Right. The door. Needed closing. Because the outer door wouldn’t open until the inner door was shut.

  I stayed facing the outer door, and Abby stayed perfectly quiet. If she’d been human, she’d have been standing statue-still, on the other side of the airlock, letting me work it out for myself. Without taking my eyes off the door in front of me, I stretched back, and touched the control panel.

  I so didn’t want to do what came next.

  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could. I kept my fingers on the panel, and took a deep breath, reminding myself this was Abby and she needed me, so she’d keep me safe. Abby. Safe. Well, she always had been, in the past.

  Before I could get past that thought, I tapped the button that would close the inner door.

  Oh, Stars, Abby. Don’t betray me, now.

  And, if she heard that, she didn’t say a word. I spread my fingers so my hand was straddling the controls, rather than poised above them, couldn’t quite bring myself to let go.

  “Five minutes, right, Abs?” I said, more to remind myself than the ship. “Five minutes.”

  And I let go of the control panel and made myself stand on my own.

  Five minutes is a very long time.

  Abby opened the door at the end of it.

  “You’ll do better next time, Cutter.”

  “But…”

  “Are you going to tell me you weren’t freaking out?”

  I sighed. Damn ship could read my vitals. I might have looked okay standing there and staring at the floor, but my body had been freaking out, big time. I figured it was best to change the subject.

  “Since I’m up, what’s for breakfast.”

  To be honest, I was wondering what she had in store for me for the rest of the day. I wasn’t sure just how much of this desensitization I could take. Doc could go suck it—and when I got back to the Marie I was going to tell him so.

  “I’m sure he’ll find that very entertaining.”

  For a computer, Abby had the art of sarcasm down pat.

  “I wasn’t always a computer,” she said, and I wondered who she’d sassed enough to feel like killing her. “Very funny.”

  But she didn’t sound amused.

  I dug through the records for the rest of the day—except for two hard rounds on the exercise equipment stored behind another bulkhead.

  “Can’t have you getting fat,” Abby quipped.

  “What about sloppy and out of practice?”

  “Good point. You’ll just have to do kata until Mack turns up.”

  “How long?”

  “My guess? Two more days.”

  Her guess? Wasn’t she keeping an eye on him?

  “No. He got very defensive when you were taken. The man has a temper that’s even worse than yours.”

  I smiled at the thought.

  “Now, tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Tens is not happy.”

  “When is Tens ever happy?”

  “He has his moments.”

  He did? And now I wanted to know more.

  “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”

  Tens and the AI? I tried to figure out how that might work and Abby hit me with a short, sharp blast of sound that all but jolted me out of the chair—an AI’s idea of a slap upside the head, I guess.

  “Get your head back in the game.”

  Right. Sure. Like I had anything else to do.

  3—The Hunt Begins

  I pulled all the files to do with Septu, and then I pulled all the files to do with all the worlds he’d ever worked on, and linked them with all the jobs Dasojin had ever done on any of them. There were links and overlaps, but nothing that made the kind of pattern I was looking for. I ran the files of the potential enemies Dasojin had dealt with in their own hunt for Septu’s kidnappers.

  Man, I really hoped he hadn’t been mistaken for a normal hull and broken down for parts.

  “He’d have let them know, before they destroyed his shell.”

  Let them know what?

  “Let them know he was a Human-Mind Transfer. We are highly valued. Whoever took him will either have known what he was, or they’ll be looking to upscale their market.”

  “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  “I know the market, dear. They’ll take steps to contain him, and then they’ll use him for whatever purpose pays the best.”

  “Right.”

  I started a search on markets for slightly-used HMTs, and then I isolated a part of my implant so I could access the dark side of the intergalactic net.

  “Anything breaks out of here, you need to hit me hard with something to wipe it,” I told Abby.

  “But that might wipe your implant.”

  “Better the implant than letting anything into your systems.”

  “I’ll make a back-up.”

  Now, why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “You’re good, dear, but you’re only human.”

  Yeah, thanks Abs. Thanks a lot.

 
She didn’t reply to that, but she made the back-up and then she settled back to keep an eye on what I was doing. I figured it was better doing what I was doing with an over watch than without one, and moved in to see what I could see. It was an education on the darker side of the sentient psyche—and no surprise to discover the arach mingling with the foolish and unsuspecting.

  I did my best to ignore them, and chased down black-market ship dealers, traffickers in sentients and the unwilling, and chop shops that dealt in spare parts for pretty much anything—living of or dead. That made me blink, and back out, carefully. Nausea roiled through my gut, and I pushed away memories of Lockyer’s Transport and the very close shave I’d had.

  I guess there was at least one thing I should be grateful to Odyssey for.

  I backed further out, couldn’t face going back in, so I closed my eyes, and closed the connection, cutting it as I returned to the implant.

  “Well, that was educational,” Abby said, watching me organize the data.

  “Oh, yeah. That was a barrel of laughs.”

  “Looks like you have plenty of nightmare fodder, right there.”

  “Abs…”

  “Don’t worry. None of that requires desensitization. In fact, I’d be worried if it didn’t give you nightmares.”

  Well, that was a relief.

  “You got your breath back?” she asked, when I was done sorting the data, and I wondered just how many potential clients she’d identified from that initial foray. “Let’s just say I can afford to buy a black-market AI if I need to—and that’s if just half of the folk I’ve sent offers out to accept… even with the charity jobs that are going to run alongside.”

  Abby did charity?

  “It’s part of Dasojin’s charter. Sometimes good folk get caught up in things that aren’t their fault—and they can’t afford to pay their way out. We try to fix that when we can.”

  From the way she said it, that sounded personal.

  “And not just for me,” she said. “Now, shift your tushy and get to digging. I have deals to make and hearts to break.”

  Her tone of voice suggested she wasn’t looking forward to the last part… or, perhaps, she was.

  “Some hearts need breaking, child,” and I heard steel, “and not all of them survive the process.”

  I hadn’t known Dasojin had a vigilante arm.

  “We have a new patron,” she said. “He pays well, but he’s very demanding. I’ll pass him some of what you uncovered for assessment.”

  And, now, I understood she’d been riding with me in my foray into the underbelly of the universe’s darkness.

  “It’s not something I’d let you do alone, dear.”

  And, why the fuck not?

  “Not every nightmare has to be faced in isolation.”

  I wondered who’d be keeping over watch while she acted as my bodyguard.

  “You’re not the only one who can isolate their systems,” she said, “and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  Well, then. I took a deep breath, and rebuilt my entry to the worst the galaxy had to offer.

  I searched every crawl space and cavern I could reach, before Abby pulled me out to eat, and then I went for a long, hard run in the sim. It didn’t work, though. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, that something out there had decided I was prey.

  “We might have a problem,” I told Abby, as I sanned off the sweat and tried to scrub away the clinging feel of dark deeds and evil.

  “Oh, yes…”

  “I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Lay it out, hun.”

  “I feel like something’s hunting me, maybe hunting us.”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  It made me feel better. She hadn’t laughed, and she hadn’t called me crazy. She hadn’t even said I was being paranoid.

  “Sweetie, there is no such thing as paranoid, just warnings from our subconscious. I remember what it was like to be human.”

  She did? And I’d thought it was a long time ago.

  “It was, but there are some things you just don’t forget.”

  I’d take her word on that. It wasn’t something I wanted to find out for myself.

  “We all have choices, hun. That’s one I pray you never have to face.”

  Well, okay, then.

  I stepped out of the san, and came face to face with an arach warrior.

  Sure, he was in human form, all slender and grey-skinned, eyes dark with hunger—and me without a stitch on, without my blaster, and the door too far away. I slammed into the wall behind me with all the force of a sudden reverse, and then lashed out with a fist, a knee, and a bare foot, as he followed. I was still fighting when he vanished—and I was shouting, wordless fear and outrage mingled.

  “Goddammit, Abby!” I said, when I realized what she’d done.

  “I’d call that a colossal fail,” she said, as I slid down the wall, and sat on the floor of the san.

  “And I’d call you a colossal b—”

  Sound slammed into my skull, cutting off the words. Abby’s voice followed.

  “Uh-uh. There’ll be none of that, sweetie. You need to get enough of a grip on yourself to take stock first, and then react. That’s all I’m asking.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, didn’t dare speak. I was trembling all over, my hands shaking so hard I almost dropped the towel—twice! Something told me the next two days were going to be full of times Abby and I didn’t quite agree.

  “Oh, sweetie. I’d hug you if I could.”

  “You keep your grubby paws off me,” I snarled, “and I won’t try to ding every panel in your guest cabin.”

  I think Abs took that as a challenge… or she’d been planning on continuing with her idea of a desensitization program no matter what I said. That could have been it, too. Either way, she kept with the spiders and arach until I did nothing more than flinch, and cuss her out for pulling another practical joke. After that, she got me to go back in the airlock.

  Well, damn she was persistent.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “You need to be more in control than this, or I won’t be able to use you.”

  Use me for what? was a question I didn’t want to ask—and one that she chose not to answer.

  “Better,” she said, when she told me my five minutes were up, and I was able to operate the inner lock on my own.

  Better? I was half tempted to open the outer lock, instead. Almost anything to make it stop.

  Except I didn’t think she’d let me—and I wasn’t ready to call it quits. Although, there were days…

  I shook the darkness away, and stepped into the cabin proper.

  “Made any sense of the data, yet?” she asked, and I shook my head.

  “I’m going to try an exfiltration search,” I said. “See if you’ve been hacked and just haven’t found it yet—and then I’m going to see if there’s any evidence of an inside job.”

  “As much as I don’t like the idea one of my people would do that…” Abby said, and sighed.

  It was a very human sigh.

  “Do what you can,” she said, and I went back to it.

  The next time I came out of the data, she hit me with an unexpected wrinkle.

  “Mack’s late.”

  I checked the time in my implant, checked the date… checked, again.

  How had I lost track of that much time?

  “I kept you busy.”

  Well, that much was true.

  “He’s a day over. Maybe you overestimated him.”

  “Not Mack and Tens. They should have been here a half day under the initial estimate—less once Rohan joined the hunt.”

  Rohan had what?

  “That boy has adopted you as his particular responsibility,” and, damn me, if Abby didn’t sound amused to Hell and back.

  He had? Dammit! All I’d done was give him a puppy… okay, I’d given
him the opportunity to find a puppy for himself.

  “That’s not why he’s adopted you, and you know it.”

  I did. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  “You really should own that, you know.”

  I should? What. Own up to the fact the boy had taken it on himself to stand between me and Delight, Tens and Mack? That wasn’t my responsibility. That had been a choice he’d made all by himself.

  “And it’s not one you discouraged.”

  “I was hardly in any shape to.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll grant you that.”

  She would? Why, how very generous of her. Like she even had a choice.

  “Don’t get smart with me, young lady.”

  First, how old was she anyway? And, second, when had I ever given her the impression I was anywhere near being a lady?

  “Oh, look, Cutter, we’re about to enter warp.”

  As dirty tricks went, that one was pretty special. I had enough time to think ‘What?’, and then got flattened to the deck. Way to lose an argument, Abs.

  “Who said I’d lost?” she asked, and bounced through a second jump point.

  Honestly, if I could have scraped two words together I’d probably have said something she wouldn’t have been able to ignore.

  “Lucky you. I’ve found us the Shady Marie.”

  She had?

  4—Boy, Dog, Wolves

  The Marie hung in orbit around Lichcomb’s World, and we could see at a glance that she was in trouble. The four bright dots coming in hard from the planet below were military grade, and they were hailing as they came.

  “Shady Marie stand down. Put your weapons on hold. We are going to board.”

  Rohan’s defiant near-adult pseudo-bass came as a surprise.

  “Like Hell, you are. Case!”

  And Abby and I watched as the Marie’s engines flared.

  Flared and died.

  And… Well, Rohan’s vocabulary of swears had expanded since I’d first noticed his limited range of fucks.

  “Wow,” I managed, listening to Case laughing so hard she had to be falling out of her chair. “Just. Wow. I wonder where he learned that!”

  “Hmmm. I don’t.” Abby didn’t sound amused, and neither did the voice hailing from the incoming shuttles.