The Transporter's Favor

by C. M. Simpson

  “Smart ass!”

  And what did she mean about me not having a cutting torch? I’d picked up a Blazer 54. Now I just had to remember if it operated in a vacuum or not.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  Delight? Again? Since when did she have enough spare time to get inside my head?

  “Since Mack would kill me if I let you get dead on his behalf.”

  Since when was I doing this for Mack? It was Delight who needed Costoganzi alive. If she’d left it to me, I would have used one of the concussion grenades I’d filched from the Star Shadow armory to….

  Oh.

  “Pilot of the Seliman’s Pride, this is Invading Force One. Open your hatch, please.”

  It was easy to patch through the orbital’s comms systems. After all, the EVA suit was hooked into its emergency frequencies; I just had to ride the wave in reverse.

  “Seliman’s Pride open your hatch.”

  I waited, gave the Pride’s pilot three heartbeats to respond, and then slowly worked my way aft.

  “Pretty sure you want to fly this thing, right?” I asked, not bothering to nominate who I was speaking to.

  “Cutter!”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “It’s your stim pack, you tell me.”

  “Fuck. Cutter. Stand down. Stand down.”

  I ignored them, and found the tail jets—and I was real glad Pritchard hadn’t checked the exact content of the bag of grenades he’d slung over my shoulder when he’d checked I could reach all my gear. Not all of those babies were stunners.

  “Pilot, this is your last warning,” I said, using my implant to switch off the feeds Delight and Pritchard were using to try and talk me down. I really didn’t have time for joking around. Whatever Delight had hit me with was starting to wear off, and I needed to be inside sooner, rather than later, because I was going to need a nap.

  Sure wish she’d thought to give me a spare one of those stim-things. Pritch was right about me not liking the after-effects. I pushed away the first wave of nausea, to pull one of the concussion grenades out of the bag, and made a show of sizing up the rear-jets.

  “You wouldn’t…” My guess is that was the pilot.

  I pulled a second grenade from the pack.

  “Wanta find out the hard way?”

  “But they’re saying… They’re telling you….”

  “Are you talking to the folks who can’t get through to me on the comms?” I asked, and pulled myself into the exhaust port.

  Man, I really hoped he didn’t think of firing up the engine. If he did that, I was marshmallow on a stick, but nowhere near as sweet. I made a show of checking the grenade, contemplating just how long I’d need on the timer in order to have a ghost of a chance of hauling ass out of there before it went off. I prayed he wouldn’t push me to the point where I actually had to do what I was threatening to do.

  “You are suicidal!”

  “Nope. Just hyped up on some combat stims, a bunch of nans, and a powerful need to sleep.”

  “I’m cycling the aft airlock, now.”

  The aft airlock?

  “Just go… Here,” and he gave me a link into the ship’s systems.

  I grabbed it and studied it. I’m thinking it was meant to be a link that showed me the way to the aft hatch, but then he obviously didn’t know who he was dealing with, because I took that sucker and I locked it wide open, and then I sent my head through it, found the mechanism for the shuttle-bay doors and locked them tight closed.

  I also found the sub-system controlling the ship’s reactor and took it offline, and then shut down the life support so they had to evacuate.

  And I’d thought the pilot was such a nice young man—the language he was using by the time I’d finished with that little sequence was eye-opening, even for me. I was looking for something else to screw with, when light flared about me and the comms officer on board the Wanderer used the loud-hailer over the suit’s comms.

  For a minute I wondered how they’d gotten access, and then I remembered that Delight’s hacking team were on board…and had obviously run out of things to do.

  “Spread ’em and freeze, Cutter. You know the drill.”

  Not this drill I didn’t, but I had a fairly good idea of what the officer might want, so I inched my way out of the vent and leant into the hull, being careful to keep the grenades tucked, one in each hand as I stretched my hands over my head. I was pretty sure they weren’t activated. When it came to my feet, I hit a snag, especially when I started drifting away from the hull.

  Crap.

  “Don’t move, Cutter.”

  Don’t move? Who was she trying to kid?

  I wasn’t moving, but the motionless part of me? Yeah, she sure as shit was drifting and probably not in a good way. I wondered exactly what would happen if… Which was as far as I got before I ran into a fully armored Marine.

  First thing he did was take my bag of grenades, including the two in my hands, and then he hooked a tether to my EVA suit. After that, he grabbed me by the back of the suit and dragged me up and away from the station to where the Wanderer was waiting. It was nice he let me keep my guns—I guess I wasn’t in that much trouble, then.

  The energy I’d been feeling when I was in the Star Shadow’s control centre surged and fell in a wave, and I wondered where Cascade was. If I’d lost the damn dog to the Star Shadows’ system Rohan would be devastated.

  “Dog’s fine, Cutter,” and Delight was in my head, again.

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said.

  “Just keep it together a little bit longer, kiddo.”

  “Still want to kick my ass?” Pritchard teased, and I thought about giving him the mental finger, but fatigue was dragging at my limbs.

  “Just tell me the dog’s okay.”

  “He’s fine, Cutter.”

  “And did he get the location?”

  “What location, girl?”

  Like Delight even had to ask.

  “Don’t make me come up there…”

  “Like you ever had a choice,” which looked to be fairly true, as the Marine guided us into an airlock and cycled the hatch closed after us.

  He set me up against a wall, and then held up one of the grenades.

  “Tell me you weren’t going to use this.”

  I looked at him, so he pushed it.

  “Tell me that you weren’t really going to pull the pin and dump these in the ship’s exhaust vents if he hadn’t complied.”

  I just kept looking at him—and I didn’t say a word.

  I mean, I really wanted to tell him that he was one hundred percent correct, and that I’d never have tossed a grenade into the vulnerable, unshielded engine exhaust of a ship locked in a docking bay. I really did…but I couldn’t be sure. I hadn’t thought the plan that far through. I’d just believed the pilot would choose to live, and do exactly as I’d asked him.

  “Well, shag me sideways and three ways to morning,” he said, stowing the grenade back in the bag. “Delight, I take it back. She’s not like you. She bloody well is you.”

  “Hey!”

  I’m pretty sure we both disagreed with him on that point, but the airlock cycled, and gravity returned to my world, pushing me down onto the floor with a pretty heavy bump. The Marine stooped down and hauled me to my feet, before helping me out of the EVA suit.

  “Come on, Cutter. There are a few people who want a word with you.”

  There were?

  I vaguely recalled what I’d just finished doing—at Delight’s request, no less, okay, more or less—and figured the man was right. There probably were a bunch of people who wanted a word with me…or, at the very least, a piece or three out of my hide.

  “Well, fuck me,” I said, trying not to lean on the power-armored tank that had lent me his arm.

  “Sure as shit hope that’s not an offer, girl, because I’m taken,” he said, “and Delight doesn’t share.” />
  That was waaay more information than I needed. Seriously!

  22—Interlude

  It took me most of the long walk to the conference room aboard the Wanderer to realize that I was in no condition to take anybody on—and I didn’t relinquish my hold on the big fella’s arm until he’d tucked me into a seat right beside Delight.

  “Nice job, sweetheart,” she said, by way of greeting. “You nearly got us banned from this station, as well.”

  I looked at her, too tired to do anything more than blink. It had been her idea to fill me full of nan-powered stims…again—which she had to have known was a really bad idea given the effect they’d had on me the last time.

  “Did we get him?” I asked, because I wanted to know, and that seemed to be the safest way of avoiding a fight.

  “Yeah, we got him. He didn’t even make the yacht.”

  He hadn’t? And she’d left me juggling grenades near an exhaust system! She could have told me sooner.

  Delight scowled at me.

  “I was a little busy liaising with the station—and they weren’t very happy with us, at the time.”

  “We still aren’t happy with you,” said the man sitting across the table from us, and I realized that the shapes I’d registered coming in were real.

  “What did you think they were?” Delight asked, in the privacy of the implant. “Imaginary?”

  I rolled my eyes, and made myself pay attention. I was in no condition for another fight, but…

  “Stand down, Cutter. This is a meeting to discuss fines and reparation, and why we shouldn’t let them put you in a very small cell for a very long time.”

  It was?

  Normally, I would have left, at this point, but I was just a bit tired. The Marine beside me, set his helmet on the table beside him, the sound drawing my attention. He was cute, too, under all that armor—and vaguely, unsettlingly familiar.

  A soft ‘uh oh’ echoed inside my head, and Pritchard was there, reaching out to remove a couple of files. Unfortunately for him, Cascade was there, too, and he wasn’t letting Pritchard near them.

  “Ungrateful mutt,” Pritchard grumbled, trying to dance around him. “Who gives you treats?”

  Treat? but Cascade looked at me.

  “Just as soon as I can, boy,” I promised, and flicked open the nearest data cluster Pritch had been trying to remove.

  “Grab her!” Delight’s cry echoed through my head, just as my reality twisted.

  “Should have removed them a while ago,” floated after, followed by, “Haven’t had time.”

  And none of that was the hardest thing to wrap my mind around. I recognized the cute Marine in spite of his power armor. He was Sasha’s boyfriend. Sasha. Who was also Delight. For a few seconds of overlays fought with memory, and then rolled into a tangled ball as the memories merged and sorted themselves into a timeline that I hadn’t properly recalled.

  Well, now I did.

  Not sure why Pritchard thought I needed to be grabbed. It’s not like he was really… My stomach lurched, and I grabbed hold of the nausea and pushed it down. Reputations could be created, too; they didn’t have to be real. My mind swirled, and I dove into the file, pulling it apart and collating it back together in a form my brain could understand and accept.

  I might never look at Pritchard the same way, again—not after seeing him pull his Derevo persona around himself like a second skin—but I’d deal. Delight on the other hand… Well, when I thought about it, there wasn’t a lot separating her from Sasha. It’s not like she had to change much.

  “Hey!” but she was smiling, and I slowly surfaced to discover I’d been sitting at the table, not staring off into space as I’d thought, but staring through the very space in which the orbital’s representative was sitting.

  He was staring back—and looking very uncomfortable. The stars knew what the look on my face must have been like. I could only hope I hadn’t given offense—although who was I to kid myself. Of course, I’d given offense!

  “Ease up, Cutter. You haven’t been out of it, that long.” Pritchard nudged the assemblage I’d made of the files and my memories. “Nice job, by the way.”

  I felt my lips twitch at the compliment, and chose to focus on the orbital’s rep.

  “This meeting,” I said. “I take it you had something you wanted to say.”

  Delight elbowed me in the ribs, and the Marine sighed, taking the reins of the conversation before the representative could reply.

  “Forgive us, Stationmaster; it has been a very long day, and Cutter is worried about her colleagues.”

  “Ah, yes. These allies you claimed were kidnapped by the Star Shadows.”

  Delight rested her hand on my thigh, digging her fingertips into the muscle just above the knee. I ignored her, and waited for the stationmaster to continue. When I did not interrupt, he did.

  “The reports we received were that the crew of the Shady Marie were wanted because they blew Repair Dock Five at Rigel’s Banter.”

  I was tired, the stims finally relinquishing their hold, and I was pretty sure I was about to pass out, soon. At least, I hoped I was about to pass out, because I didn’t want to start throwing up as bad as I thought I might need to. I squashed the nausea back down, and slapped the rep with a couple of hastily cobbled together chunks of memory.

  The wolves boarding the ship, from files I’d pulled out of the Marie’s data banks, us off-loading the wolves, Mack surrendering through the blurry glass of a shuttle cockpit, wolf Marines materializing in the hangar, Case’s discovery of the ship being locked down, the contract—the seven suns blasted contract—illegally issued…

  Delight stopped me, before I added more.

  “He gets the picture,” she said, hitting cancel on the next post—and the rep across from us looked relieved.

  I frowned. I didn’t want him to get the picture; I wanted him to get all the pictures. You know? Every. Single. One.

  The rep was quick to fill the silence.

  “We may have been hasty,” he said, but I didn’t really care.

  I pushed back from the table and stood up, only now registering that Cascade was sitting between Pritchard and Delight. I didn’t have time for words; I was just hoping to get out of the room before I disgraced myself. Pritchard hadn’t been wrong when he’d said I’d hate the world when the stims wore off.

  At least I got out the door, before I chucked my cookies. Mind you, the door hadn’t closed before I was doubled over and heaving so it wasn’t the perfect exit.

  “Are you sure she’s okay?” drifted out of the door behind me, but Delight’s response was cut off as it closed.

  I might have been mistaken, but she’d sounded like she was reassuring the orbital’s commander that I was perfectly fine, which just had to be wrong, because any fool with half an eye could see I was anything but. As if she could still hear me, Delight was in my head.

  “We found Mack,” she said, like I should care while hurling every single item in my stomach into the corridor… the working-warship-busy corridor.

  “Sorry, Wanderer, Siobhan. Sorry.”

  The ship’s response was oddly comforting.

  “You’re not the one who needs to be sorry,” she said, her tones pissed-off precise. “Now, go study the files. I’ll get this cleaned up.”

  The files? What… Oh. Hey, these were really good.

  “Cascade fetched them.”

  “Cascade is a very good boy!”

  “Wuff.”

  He was also a very lucky boy, because these things looked like he’d ripped them out of a Star Shadow server, and those weren’t easy to access.

  I read through the correspondence between Sharovan’s three conspirators and the wolves, noting when the messages stopped, and the source of the last missive from the security company employees. That one was different.

  I pulled it open, and went through it.

  “Beckett needs to se
e this.”

  With that in mind, I copied the Sharovan-Wolf emails into a file for the investigator. He’d need those for evidence of their complicity, and to prove the rest of Sharovan remained unaware—the conspirators had added the difficulty of keeping their company unaware to their price. That should keep Odyssey on side with the Sharovan subsidiary, regardless of what the parent company had been up to.

  That final letter also made one other thing clear— the wolves had set up a meeting with the Sharovan employees, and the employees had not returned from it. Simon had been left behind to keep tabs on the office while they were out. My guess was that, if he hadn’t died, he would have disappeared, as well.

  Maybe the shots that had taken him out hadn’t been so accidental after all. Highlighting the name of the asteroid mining company that had been the meeting’s host, I set it aside for further research. Somewhere, a very distant physical me had stopped throwing up, and was kneeling motionless in front of a disgraceful lake, and, right now, I was going to leave her there, because the second I returned I’d start again.

  I pushed back into the files. Maybe there were advantages to losing track of your physical surroundings when you were in the cyber realm.

  The next file surprised me. It wasn’t a Star Shadow file. It was direct from Rohan. And Mack. And Tens. And it contained a link I could use to trace them. Several links, in fact. With multiple redundancies built in.

  “Cutter. Keep my crew safe—or make sure they stay that way, if you’re coming after me yourself. We both know there’s no point in telling you not to, but my people come first. Get this message to Odyssey. Tell them Captain Andreus Mackenzie Star requests that the company, Odyssey, formerly known as Oberon, fulfils its alliance obligations to him and the crew of the Shady Marie. And then tell Delight she still owes me, and give her this link.”

  The link was gone before I had time to go looking for Delight. Apparently, that girl could make nice with a pissed-off starship, chair a meeting with an irritated orbital chief, and ride shotgun in my head.

  “Amongst other things,” she added, and was gone.