The Transporter's Favor

by C. M. Simpson

  “Hold on,” I said, sliding the jack from its pouch. If I could at least open the interface between Hermes and Abs, he might calm down. Hell, if I could block the links into the human shell he’d been forced into, maybe that would help, too.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, Cutter, do it fast. We can give you another minute, two tops.”

  I slid over to Hermes, and slid my fingers through the shell’s hair. The wolves’ base shuddered, but I had no time to ask what it was. I had to focus on getting Hermes through this with as much of his mind intact as I could salvage.

  It helped if I thought of the HMT and the woman’s body as two different things. One mattered; the other one we were going to be able to unplug him from. That thing was little more than an oversized doll, anyway. Disturbingly real, but a plastec construct, nonetheless. I remembered what the wolves had been doing to it when I arrived and cringed. Sonsa… sonsa…

  “Focus, Cutter,” and I heard compassion in Mack’s tones.

  “You out?”

  “Plugged Septu into his shell, and he blasted the doors to the storage bay no problems. Boy, dog and Tens are flying free, as well. Doesn’t feel like we’ve earned our keep.”

  “You will,” Abs said. “Cutter’s mired in the usual amount of shit, and the Odyssey team are about to be overrun. Get plugged in, kiddo. I’ll do the rest.”

  Since when was I anyone’s ‘kiddo’? But there wasn’t any time to think about it as I found the port in the shell’s skull, and slid the jack home.

  “You can unjack; I’ll take it from here,” Abby told me, seconds later. “You and Scarpil need to get Hermes back to his real shell. He’ll be fine when he’s home.”

  A brief sob from the shell in Scarpil’s arms seemed to contradict that, but I took Abby at her word, and unplugged, pushing the big teamster in front of me.

  “I’ll cover you,” I said, and he looked upset. “I can’t carry the shell; it’s too heavy. You can get Hermes safely back to the ship shell he should be in, and I’ll plug him in. I’ll cover you.”

  “Five,” came through the door, and Scarpil turned, carrying Hermes across to the door on the other side of the room in a few swift strides.

  “Four.” I followed, drawing the Glazers from their holsters and cursing Delight’s admonition.

  “Three.”

  I saw why the team was counting down.

  The wolves had them in a pincer movement, and were closing.

  “Two,” and they fired another round into the incoming warriors, before letting their Glazers fall, and reaching for their stun batons.

  At least Delight’s orders counted for all. Poor comfort that it was.

  One caught me watching, and waved me away.

  ‘One!’ The others shouted, even as I heard him shout, ‘Go! Go! Go!’

  I went, tearing after Scarpil’s rapidly disappearing back, and remembering I hadn’t fed the big guy the map of where he had to go.

  “Already done,” Abs said. “Now, move your ass!”

  Wow—and I was pretty sure Abby didn’t swear often… maybe my memory was amiss. Who the fuck knew what Delight’s mix was doing to my head?

  “Not as much as I’m going to do to the rest of you, if you don’t get going,” Mack growled. “Don’t make me come get you.”

  Like he even could. Man had his own HMT to deliver.

  I took the point, though, snapping off enough Glazer shots to lighten the opposition coming at the Odyssey team, and hoping they could make the break, before I turned and ran headlong in Scarpil’s wake. The team were doing what they did best, and I had no right to second guess their decision. If they said Delight would come get them out, Delight would come get them out; I had no doubts about that.

  And Hermes was the priority.

  I caught up with Scarpil as he turned for the hangar where Hermes’s ship shell was locked down. I also caught up with him in time to shoot the first wolf tech that thought it might be a good idea to step in his way. I took the second one out, too, and started laughing.

  This was just like training.

  Yeah. I knew this.

  My sole job was to make sure the package reached its destination, and Scarpil was playing courier. I pinged his implant, and he laughed, too.

  “Damn straight we can do this.”

  And that was when the fun began.

  Ever been on a shooting range where the targets move, and you’ve got a split second to decide whether or not to shoot the hostage? Yeah? Well, this time there were no hostages—and the targets we dropped were all armed. It was kinda like gathering candy. I was thinking I might come to love wolf ships, if this was the kind of shoot ’em up we could have when we boarded.

  “That’s the stim-pack talking,” Tens cut in.

  Passion killer.

  But I kept going, scooping up a new weapon and remembering to flick it to stun before shooting it dry. Scarpil ran like a line-backer in that galaxy-wide plague—football. He carried the female shell tucked close to his chest, doing his best to shelter the HMT settled inside the skull space. Made me wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to just take off the head and—

  “No!” came through in five shades of horrified denial, and I shrugged.

  What did I know about HMTs and shell connections, anyway?

  There was no answer to that, and we didn’t need one.

  Scarpil bolted out into the open space of what turned out to be a repair hangar, and I ran through just behind him, taking down two wolves before they could follow us in. Abby shut the doors behind us, and then set to closing everything around the perimeter of the open space. That still left plenty of targets.

  “Go!” I shouted. “Get him to the shell. I’ll hold them while you get him plugged in.”

  “Not my area!” Scarpil shouted back, but Abby was shouting, and Hermes was talking, too.

  A self-contained bolt of light flared around the door I’d come through, and I realized we were deep in it. The door hit the deck, its edges glowing, and I knew we had maybe twenty seconds before the sides of the hole cooled enough for whatever had cut it to get through.

  “No time to change, Scarpil. Go! Don’t fuck the mission!”

  He went.

  Don’t fuck the mission.

  Should have known that would have some currency with Delight’s people.

  “I’ll switch when he’s in safe,” Scarpil said, “or the mission won’t be the only thing needs to be unfucked.”

  Sure thing, big guy, I thought.

  “Incoming,” Abby warned. “Odyssey’s people are awaiting alternative extraction, and you have wolf security coming in hot.”

  Well, fuck me.

  “Not likely, Hon.”

  “Ready?” Scarpil asked, and I realized he’d made it into Hermes’s ship shell.

  I slammed the shell door closed, and had Abby override the locks.

  “Tell him what to do, Abs.”

  “Cutter!”

  Scarpil was not a happy man.

  “Suck it up, princess!”

  “You and me, we gonna talk.”

  “Yeah, sure thing, big guy. Just get the HMT back into his shell before this mission is more fucked than it already is.”

  I half-waited for a response to that, but Abs poked me.

  “He’s got it, kiddo. Now, you need to find yourself another ride out.”

  Wait. I shouldn’t go full bore rattle with the wolves coming through the door?

  “You can’t breathe vacuum, hon, and Hermes is going to make one Hell of a hole getting out of here. Get your tooshie into something more secure.”

  It crossed my mind that the wolves couldn’t breathe vacuum, either—and that Abs might have something up her sleeve so that she didn’t break the ‘no kill’ rule she’d chosen to enforce. At least, I hoped she did.

  The wolves were starting to fan out from the door, and I didn’t like the way they were setting to come at m
e from two sides. I took out the ones on the outermost wings, scanning for somewhere that might give me an out. Given I’d had Abs lock down the other entrances into the hangar, going deeper into the station wasn’t an option.

  If Hermes was transferred quickly enough, I wouldn’t have time—and I didn’t want to create another way into the space he was currently occupying, in case he couldn’t get out.

  “Hermes will be fine,” Abby reassured me. “He’s just making sure everything works, before he decides what to do next.”

  I turned my head, so I could see the Dasojin shell, and noticed a trio of wolves sneaking along one wall towards him. Couldn’t have that, now, could we?

  “Hey you fur-licking, pussies!” I shouted.

  “Yeah! You! You motherless sons of bitches!” I added, when they looked over at me. “What’s the matter? Scared of a little femskin like me?”

  Abby whistled.

  “Where you find these terms, is beyond me,” she said, and I didn’t want to admit that I’d made that last one up all by myself.

  “What’s the matter, bitches? Got no man parts in your britches?” and I cupped my crotch, like I had more balls than the rest of them put together. “Looks like I’ve got plenty to spare. Why don’t you come get some?”

  Well, that seemed to do it.

  Their lips curled back into snarls, their displeasure rumbling across the hangar towards me.

  Maybe I’d over done that….

  “Yuh think?”

  And wasn’t Mack just the last person I’d wanted to have that image of me in his head. Damn.

  The growls from the trio over by Hermes’s shell weren’t the only ones coming at me, either. I’d taken my eyes off the line of wolves curling its way around the other side. Crap.

  I backed up, trying to get a whole lot closer to the shuttle, and saw the body of a technician I’d downed earlier. With any luck, he’d have something more than screwdrivers at his waistline, because I think the last weapon I’d taken was running low.

  To test that theory, I fired at the closest wolves, noting the bolts fizzle out before they reached their targets as the charge died. The leader gave a gleeful yip and trotted closer. He stopped when I pulled the technician’s Glazer from its holster. With any luck, this one would have a full charge. If I was careful, I might even be able to account for all of them…

  With any luck.

  Never say that on a battlefield. I was cussing ten seconds later, when a snap shot took the damn thing out of my hands, leaving it a smoking wreck on the hangar floor. I’d kept backing up, as I was priming it, and now I stopped, my butt hard up against the shuttle’s side, my calf brushing a toolbox left closed beside landing gear.

  Oh. Good. It was about time my fortunes changed.

  …or not.

  The shuttle’s hatch was closed, and locked. Normally this wasn’t a problem for me, except the damn shuttle was dead. As in completely powered down. As in totally off-line, not a system showing in the green, yellow, amber or red, or any shade before, after or in between. I glanced up to see the wolves coming in.

  They were moving slow, as though they were stalking a particularly deadly or unpredictable prey… or maybe because they’d decided to capture me alive and sell me to a buyer they thought they’d already found. I watched one lift his muzzle from a small scan pad in his hand, look at me, and then look back down at the scan pad, again.

  Yup. That would be it. Of all the scum-sucking, steaming shit piles in the universe, I had to end up on this one.

  “Pups would have value, too,” muttered another wolf, glancing over at the pad, and the first wolf raised its head, and then looked back at me, adding, “with the right sire.”

  Pups? Oh. Hell to the Hells, no!

  I looked around for something I could use as a weapon. Nothing in reach, and nothing in a place that the wolves wouldn’t catch me before I could get to it. I kept my eyes on the warriors, and kicked open the toolbox with the toe of my boot. Guess this one had been used to deal with the landing gear, huh? Loved the size of those wrenches.

  The wolves thought that was funny as hell, and formed a tight semi-circle around me. At least they seemed to have forgotten Hermes and Scarpil sitting quietly on the other side of the hangar. Judging from the lights going on in the cockpit, the Dasojin ship was about ready to make a break for it.

  I noted the guns along the edges of his wings, and wondered if they were loaded, figured it was a fifty-fifty chance that the wolves hadn’t processed him that far. Well, that was going to suck.

  Last I’d heard, decompression was a right bitch.

  And then Hermes turned, so he was facing me, and I guessed he was out of ammo, after all.

  “Abs…” I began, getting ready to tell her to open the hangar bay doors.

  “Not gonna happen, Hon. You got incoming. Focus on the wolves, and try not to get dented in the next few.”

  Well, now, there was a challenge, if ever I’d heard one.

  Of course, not getting dented meant I couldn’t take the fight to the wolves before the stim pack wore off, and I could feel myself fading at the edges—which would have been fine, if we’d been a little bit faster. Damn fine. But it was damned inconvenient, now, when I needed the buzz to stick around a little bit longer.

  I reached down and picked up the two biggest, heaviest wrenches I could see and was preparing to make taking me down as expensive as possible, when more shapes slipped in through the door behind the wolves. I was figuring it was a darn shame they didn’t have anything made of silver alloy in there, when a second door blew off its hinges, and the rest of Team One came thundering through.

  When the wolves turned to see who’d come to join the party, I tucked one of the wrenches under my arm, and scooped up a half-dozen screwdrivers. They’d hurt like a bitch and maybe I’d get a wolf to back off while it healed. Of course, odds were all I’d achieve was one very pissed-off puppy, but, hey, anything was worth a try, right?

  Right?

  I think I was just damned lucky I didn’t have to find out. Team One had come with prejudice, and not even a wolf gets up from a blaster burn that wide. So much for Delight’s ‘Don’t kill anything’ request. The guys came in hard and fast, and with the sole aim of getting the rest of their people back, along with one ammo-less Dasojin HMT ship. I’d heard the term ‘off the leash’ before, but seeing it was something entirely different.

  I don’t think they even gave me time to hit the floor. Or maybe they knew the stim pack had run its course and I was as useful as fossil fuel in a star drive. I just stood and stared, wrenches hanging from my hands, all too aware of the locked-up shuttle just behind me.

  I didn’t even know how to feel when the last wolf fell, and a dozen weapons turned my way. I’m just thankful I remembered to drop my wrenches and raise my hands. Delight’s crew weren’t known for their restraint.

  I was still holding my hands over my head when the teleport silver faded from around me.

  “Pretty sure, you can take a break, Cutter,” Tens’ voice greeted me from behind one of the consoles of the Wanderer’s teleportation centre, and I lowered my hands, took a breath, and said the first thing that came into my head.

  “I’ll be in the san. Mack knows where it is.”

  The minute the words were out of my mouth, I felt my face blush hot. Tens sniggered.

  “Oh, sure—and is that invitation open to anybody, or just Mack?”

  I didn’t dignify that with an answer, as I stalked towards the door.

  Abby’s treatments aside, I don’t think I’d lost any of the horrors populating my nightmares, but I sure as shit had added another one. And it was big and hairy and my, oh my, what big teeth it had…

  I shivered, palming the door open with one hand and resisting the urge to wrap my arms tight across my chest. The next few nights were going to be rough… No pun intended.

  Behind me, came the gleam of another incoming teleport,
but I ignored it as the door opened in front of me.

  “Cutter!” Mack’s voice rang out, just as I hit the hall.

  I flipped him off and tweaked the door closed behind me.

  He knew damned well where I’d be—and he’d better not try following.

  We’d saved the ships, fulfilled the contracts, kept his crew safe, and even managed to make Odyssey happy. What more could the bloody man want? Which, of course, was when the post-enhancement crash hit, and my world wavered, and my knees gave way.

  Mack caught me before I hit the floor, tucking my arm across his shoulders.

  “Come on, girl.” He slid into my head as he lifted me off the floor. “I hear we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  Sure, Mack, I thought, closing my eyes and starting to drift. Catching up. Later. Maybe…

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard him sigh, thought he spoke.

  “You’re not getting out of it, that way. I’m still going to be here when you wake up.”

  Yeah, Mack. Sure. Whatever you say.

  But I was happy, and I couldn’t work out why.

  Author’s Notes

  It’s early December as I write this, and I’m working to make sure this book is up and available for pre-order. Summer has well and truly come to Australia, but the weather seems to be very confused with today being very hot before giving way to storms, and tomorrow returning to autumn/winter temperatures.

  I’m staying indoors…which is a good thing, as I have a full day of writing scheduled. I’m excited to be working on a new science fiction series even as I get this one ready for market. The Lunar Wolves grew out several short stories I wrote a while back, but this is the first time they’ve had a novel…and now a series. I’m looking forward to introducing them to you.

  Thank you for reading this far, and for coming with me on this journey. I truly appreciate your company.

  If you want to see more of me, you can find more news of my work, or follow me as I create more stories at any one of the following locations: