“Shoot him again, and I’m going to space you when you get back on board.”
Again, with the airlock?
Mind you, she sounded serious, this time. I holstered the Glazer, and then caught sight of the stasis pod in the crew quarters.
“Help me put him in,” I said to Rohan, tilting my head in the direction of the pod.
“You sure that’s not overkill?”
“It’ll make me feel better about leaving him alone aboard Abs when we head out to rescue the others.”
“Good point,” he said, and we stuffed the treacherous son-of-a-bitch into the stasis pod, and made sure he was well and truly under, before locking it so it needed manual manipulation from the outside to open.
“Happy now?” Abs asked, and we both grinned, Cascade bouncing happily beside us. “Good, because this next bit isn’t going to be anywhere near as much fun.”
“… and you’ll get silent shares in all of Selimen’s Holdings,” Delight was saying when I came back out of my skull, “for your part in securing the evidence and the criminal. Deal?”
“Done and sealed,” Mack responded, and I wondered what I’d missed. The bit I’d caught, sounded pretty darned good. I caught Mack’s thought that he could afford to repair and upgrade the Shady as well as pay crew bonuses out of his share, and I realized I was still high on stims.
Well, damn. I hope these things didn’t run out before the job was done. I was gonna be in a world of hurt if they did.
“I will hurry,” Abby assured me. “We will try to have you out before that happens. You need to drop the teleport shields. I need to insert the four of you in four different places. I have located my siblings and their shells, but they are scattered.”
Her voice hitched, as she spoke, but she didn’t give me time to dwell on what that might mean.
“Wanderer will port in reinforcements as soon as you’ve opened up the space, but there may be a delay. Teams One and Five have been seconded; the mining crews are in need.”
For a minute I disagreed that they could be in more need than we were, but then I remembered the shifts they’d been working, and the fact the program had been stepped up. They probably were in more need than us.
“In the meantime, some of Team One will be able to join you, as soon as we work out where they are most needed.”
It was something, and I wasn’t going to complain.
Abby got us in close, using the asteroids for cover to hide us from the hidden base’s scans. Just because we’d stopped any alert reaching it from the main base, didn’t mean the base couldn’t detect us for itself, and we needed to be on board before that happened. When she was as close as she could manage, Abby ran a scan of her own.
“Confirming locations,” she began, then continued. “Locations are inaccurate. The information has yet to be updated.”
There was silence, as she highlighted sections in the schematics she’d downloaded into our heads…and adjusted them to match new structural additions to the base itself.
“Those furry bastards have been busy as Hell,” Mack said, tracing the extent of their expansion. “Wonder what they’ve got planned for this sector.”
“No idea,” Rohan said, “but maybe Odyssey will take on a partner in the mining business to boost security. It’s what I’d do.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, just not one we had time to dwell on. Abs had confirmed where the hulls were being kept, and decided who was going after what.
“They’ve separated the HMTs from their shells,” she said, “and isolated them. For the first three, that is not a problem, but the fourth is some distance from the rest, and his ship form is in a repair hangar near where his mind is being held. Cutter, I will assign you cover from Team One. You will need to be fast to get my brother back to where he belongs, and you will need to have some tact, when you deal with him.”
At which point I got an inkling why I was being assigned that particular task.
Well, fuck me.
“No, not you,” Abby said, her voice, sad, “but you need to be kind, and not let my brother destroy anything.”
I looked over at Rohan, and saw he’d followed the conversation, his face still, his mind silent, and not a skerrick of emotion visible on any wavelength. Cascade stood between us, just as silent and still, as though waiting.
“Easy, Cas. Boy will be okay,” I said, and Rohan nodded.
“Any insight?” I asked, but he shook his head, and his eyes clouded.
“It will be different,” he said, “and you’re a girl. Right now, that would be better. Maybe…”
Well, okaay, then.
“I’ll have that shield down for you, soon,” I said, and dove back into the system.
This time, Rohan came with me. He didn’t say anything, but he worked beside me to lock the teleport shields off, and then take them out of the system completely.
“That’ll fix them,” he said. “They can’t reactivate what they can’t find. Let’s go see what Abs has cooked up.”
We surfaced, and Abs was waiting.
“Delight’s not coming,” she said. “There’s a lot they need to tie up on Rigel’s Banter, and Odyssey has cut its orders. It’s not exactly something she can ignore. She says she’ll come if she’s needed, that she’s not likely to miss anything given the connection she has inside Cutter’s head.”
Mack snorted, and I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t like any of us needed to be reminded of Delight’s pernicious and persistent access. Whatever. It wasn’t like I could change it, now… or that I would if I could. Maybe later, but not right now.
“Hermes is the fourth they have taken,” Abby said. “And the youngest of my brothers. There will be room for one passenger, but no more. The rest of you will need retrieval. And you will need to be careful. They have taken him to one of the busier areas of the station for decanting and reconditioning. It is the reconditioning that is not going so well for anyone—and why he has yet to be transferred to the cell blocks with the others.”
“Can you contact them? Let them know we are coming?” Mack asked.
“No,” and Abby sounded sad. “They have been taken from their original shells and isolated from external comms. I do not know how they have survived, unless they have been given other, less powerful shells. I hope this is the case, or they will need more time and assistance to recover than any of us would like to contemplate.”
What she wasn’t saying was that an HMT was human, and none of us did well in isolation, that some of us didn’t come back all in one piece, and that an HMT used to being in the body of a ship… Well, they wouldn’t be able to go back into one of those unless they were certified sound and sane. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if one of them was denied the chance to return to their chosen shell, didn’t want to think about what could happen to me, if the wolves decided they needed a tame retrieval artist, or…anything else.
Because who knew where a slave might end up?
“Exactly,” Abby said. “Tens, you need to isolate and lock down the cell blocks. Secure them from the inside, and the guards won’t have reinforcements. The three of you working together should be able to subdue what’s already inside, and get my siblings out of their cells. After that, you just need to make it to these three storage areas.”
I looked. The cells and the storage areas were close to each other, each connected with docking bays for larger ships, no doubt meant to carry the cargo away, or bring more in for storage prior to transfer. The storage areas where the ship shells were being kept amounted to miniature docking bays in, and of, themselves. It was possible to lock the entire area down and stop reinforcements from reaching the areas inside. My guess is that the wolves relied on the hostile nature of the asteroid field, and their own base guarding the entrance of the Vameran jump point to keep thieves away. They hadn’t really set themselves up to prevent boarding.
Unless there was something we’d missed…
I looked but I couldn’t see it. It made me feel better that Abby, Rohan and Tens looked with me, and none of them could see anything, either. Looked like the boys would have a slightly easier run of it.
“Which is why you’re going in with back-up,” Abby said. “Delight made a pact with the wolves about allies. Any of her team get caught, and she can negotiate them back out.”
“You hope,” Rohan said, and his words, though quiet, were as bitter as vacuum’s bite.
32—The Dasojin Retrieval
Abby hit Delight up, one more time, only to find she was tied down at the station for the next two hours, and that most of Team One had been seconded away. She’d be at least an hour, and we needed to cope. We also needed to ‘shift our asses’ and ‘get it done’.
“Well,” Abs said, in a huff. “That’s inconvenient.”
“Yeah, but we can cause our own distractions,” I said, and caught the looks of surprise from the boys. “What? Odyssey-trained, remember?”
“And the rest,” Mack muttered, which only made me wonder exactly how much he’d rifled through my head.
“Shut it!” I snapped, and brought up the station schematics on Abby’s forward view. “Let’s assume the wolves have noticed the comms have gone quiet from their main base.”
I held up a hand to still a protest from Tens.
“Let’s just assume we’re not as clever as we think we are, and there was some kind of real-time warning that went out there. Let’s assume they’re kinda waiting for us to appear.”
“In which case we need Delight’s team, more than we know,” Mack muttered, and Tens nodded.
I shook my head.
“We need their fuzzy little lupar heads otherwise occupied,” I said, and Rohan snorted.
“Nothing short of life or death…” he began, and I smiled, lighting up four sections on the map.
“Life support, san units, gravity, comms, and emergency pods.” I looked at the map for a second longer, and then lit up a fifth section. “Teleport. We’re going to play with every single one. They’re about to have a station-wide systems crash.”
“They’re bloody well gonna know we’re coming,” Mack grumbled, but his eyes were alight with interest as he studied the map. “Let’s lock ’em in their cabins, while we’re at it. Should slow them down.”
“Not by much,” Rohan said, but the look he wore was borderline evil and mischief.
“Delight says we can’t kill any of them,” Abby reminded us, and I pouted at her.
Rohan didn’t look too impressed, either.
Abby stood firm.
“You either promise to toe that line, or I lock you all in your heads and wait for Delight to come get my folk.”
Given just how badly Abby wanted her people out of there, who was I to mess with that?
“Deal,” I said. “Now help me tweak this.”
It took us a half hour before we were happy with the plan. Abby ran through the station’s repair logs and discovered where there had been recent activity in the areas we wanted to hit—and then she highlighted a couple of just-completed adjustments to the hangar compartments.
“Nice,” Rohan murmured, his voice filled with glee, and we went to work.
The wolves had upped their security in the short time between when we’d been in their system, and this time. That was handy, too. Sending in a virus to that interrupted data input between the interface and the system kept their techs looking one way, while valves in sewerage systems failed, or reversed, station-wide, and power fluctuations ran rampant.
Consternation showed on the commander’s face as he discovered the emergency shift was locked in its quarters, and then the doors in other sectors began to jam. We watched the station crew scurry, using their security feeds, while all they saw on their screens was intermittent static.
“Teleport’s off-line,” Rohan said, a half hour in, “and they’re trying to discover what happened to their teleport shields.” He snickered. “Yeah, boys. Good luck with that.”
I don’t know what he’d done, but it was chaos down there. I pulled myself out of the system, so I could talk to Abby.
“We’re about ready,” I said. “You got control of the locks and gravity in the sections we need?”
“Oh, Honey. Do I ever.”
“When you’re ready, Abby,” Mack said. “Send us in, and let Delight know we’re going in, and that the target status is pissed.”
He looked over at me, and sent me a quick snap of the living quarters. Wolves in breathers, dodging clusters of waste, as they tried to operate doors manually.
“Nothing like kicking over the ants’ nest before we go inside, hey, Cutter?”
I gave him the finger, just as Abs teleported him out. It was almost funny. She sent Tens, next, followed by Rohan and Cascade. I waited until after she’d finished, before I spoke.
“Abs,” I said. “Don’t send the team with me straight away. I might have a better chance of getting in unnoticed without four hulking great space Marines in tow.”
“You might also get your tail shot off, before anyone can help you,” she snapped.
“Just… Can you put them on stand-by? If it goes south, send them in to wherever you think best, but let me at least try getting to him on my own.”
“Fine,” and it was the best HMT shrug a space ship could manage. “On your head, but I’m passing what’s left of you over to Mack, if he gets tetchy.”
I grinned. Tetchy wasn’t how Mack was going to be when he found out, which only made me wonder how he wasn’t roaring through my head, already.
“He’s a little busy,” Abby said, “The wolves decided they needed a small contingent of guards inside the cells, and had them stationed there before the boys locked everyone else out.”
Again, I got the sense of a shrug, and then she continued.
“It’s nothing they can’t handle. And I didn’t want them distracted, so I blocked them out of your implant, when I saw you waiting for them to leave before you started talking.”
She had?
My grin got wider.
“Thanks, Abs!”
“I’ve got your back,” she said, and surrounded me in silver. “Just don’t get yourself killed.”
Like I would, ever.
Abs set me down just inside the room the scans said we might find Hermes in.
“Oh, fuck. Send in the Marines!” was all I had time to think, as the two wolves lifted their heads, distracted from what they were doing by my arrival. It wasn’t enough. I had no idea where the fuck that sort of thing got useful in making an HMT more cooperative, but it made me mad as Hell.
“You hairy sons of bitches wanted to tango?” I shouted, unslinging the two stun batons, I’d been given instead of blades, and I didn’t wait for an answer. I might not be able to kill these bastards, but I was gonna make them bleed, blunt sticks or no.
They let go of the woman they were holding, shoving her so that she stumbled back into the wall behind them, and slid down to the floor. As they did, I landed twin strikes against lower ribs, changed to an overhand smash, and swung out again, keeping both sticks moving and hitting everywhere I could reach. I sure as shit hoped Abs got the team here in short order because one wolf warrior was a big ask, regardless of whether his pants were on or off—and there were two right in front of me. So much for getting in without being noticed. My main concern was Hermes, but the wolves had to go first—and they had to go before any of the wolves in the other compartments came to help them, because the door had been open when I’d arrived, and I wasn’t being quiet.
“And lock the goddamn doors!”
I was shouting, roaring out the order without a care for who the fuck could hear. Lightning flashed through my blood, fizzing with the same intensity of the lightning that brightened the corridor outside the room, and then two Glazer shots zipped past, perfectly timed to miss me as I danced back, wondering when I’d thought it was a good
idea to start whaling into two lupar warriors at once.
“Cutter, get the girl. Cutter!”
It was kind of a relief to realize both wolves had dropped when the stun bolts had hit them. Disappointing, but good. I looked towards the woman sitting, rag-doll-style, against the wall.
“Up!” I said.
“That’s not gentle!” Rohan’s reprimand slammed through our link, and I wondered where he’d found the time.
“Since my HMT is in a box and the guards are down. Like you said: we got the easy part. Now, be nice!”
Be nice. Right. Because that was so easy with Delight’s little cocktail racing through my blood. I turned to the woman, moving between the bodies of her two tormentors and resisting the urge to kick them while they were down.
I held out my hand.
“You need to get up,” I said. “We’re here to get you back to your ship.”
“My ship?” the woman’s eyes brightened, and then she realized the boys were behind me, and she blushed.
“Ignore them,” I said, and gestured to the body. “Construct, right? Not real flesh and blood?”
Hermes nodded.
“It can still feel everything,” Abby said, and fury vibrated through her tones.
Well, fuck.
I looked down at Hermes, wondering why he hadn’t taken my hand.
“Let me help you up.”
Hermes shook the body’s head.
“Can’t get it to move. They locked me out of everything but the ability to feel.”
I wanted to ask him why, and didn’t need Rohan’s or Abby’s horrified ‘no’ to stop. Before I could say anything else, one of the team interrupted.
“We got incoming. We’re going to hold the corridor, but you need to move, Ma’am.”
Ma’am? When the fuck…
“Since we said so,” Scarpil said, his voice in my ear, as he slid past me, and lifted the body containing Hermes from the ground.
Hermes screamed, but that was all he could do. Scarpil tightened his grip on the shell, and clamped his lips together, but his eyes demanded I do something, as Hermes panicked, helplessly in his arms.
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