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“We need you to go back in,” Mack said.
He was sitting on a chair by my bed, and I wondered how long he’d been there. I also wondered why he didn’t seem to have anything better to do.
“Don’t you have a ship to run?” I asked.
“How do you feel?” he asked, by way of reply, and I stretched, experimentally, and then sat up.
“How long was I out?”
The doc’s voice answered me from the door, sounding just as annoyed as he had when he’d put me to sleep.
“Not as long as I said you needed to be! How do you feel?”
“I... I feel okay.”
“More than you deserve,” the doc said, and walked out again.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He doesn’t think you should be going.”
“Going where?”
Mack gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Don’t you listen? Back. Some of the strike team got left behind.”
Back? I’d tucked my knees to my chest, and wrapped my arms around my legs, before I’d registered what I was doing.
“Bastien?”
I watched as Mack’s expression closed.
“I’m going in with you.”
Like that made any difference. However, if there was one thing I’d learned from the last mission, it was that ‘no’ was probably not an option. I tried to push the fear aside, with a different question.
“Are we jumping?”
Mack paused, and looked at me.
“Do you want to?” His voice was vaguely hopeful, but I shook my head.
“I don’t want to go back,” slipped out before I could stop it, and I watched his expression harden.
Now, there was the Mack I’d come to know and loathe. I unhooked my arms from around my knees, and slid off the bed, which is what med-boxes shifted into when you let the sides down. I didn’t say anything, just went to the closet compartment, and looked for a suit exactly like the one I’d been issued before.
There wasn’t one, but there was something with what looked like a light form of body armor. I pulled it out.
“This?”
Mack’s lips twitched.
“That.” he said.
“And I get to go armed, this time?”
His lips curled into the barest hint of a smile.
“You get to go armed.”
“What else do I have to do?”
“You need to hack the internal computer system, and get the data out. All of it, if you can, or as much of it as you’re able, otherwise... and you need to locate where they’re holding the Odyssey operatives.”
This last was added in a bit of a rush, and I couldn’t help staring.
“You what?”
Mack’s return stare was cool and assessing.
“You heard.”
I felt my heart sink to the pit of my stomach. Something must have gone very badly wrong for us to have to go back.
“What happened?”
“Bastien was waiting.”
I let my hands drop to my sides, felt my cheeks grow numb as the blood drained from my face.
“What do you mean?”
“You were something new. He had protocols in place for new.”
“Drammon?”
Mack shook his head, and I felt a little sick. I remembered what Bastien had said he was going to do with Drammon.
“Did he...” I swallowed hard, tried again. “Is Drammon still alive?”
Mack nodded, but his face was tight, all trace of that little smile fled.
“But he probably wishes he wasn’t.”
I just bet he did. I didn’t bother arguing. I just stripped out of the comfortable gear I’d woken up in, and started climbing into the suit, stopped when Mack gave an amused snort.
“You forgot your underwear.”
And so I had. I felt my face heat, as I blushed red as red could be, but I reached into the closet and found the right drawer. This time the underwear resembled a close-fitting leotard with long legs and sleeves.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, holding it up.
“More body armor,” he said.
I stared at it, the doubt clearly written on my face. I’m not sure how long I would have stood there and stared at it, except that Tens interrupted.
“The clock is ticking,” he said, and Mack frowned, getting to his feet.
“Hurry up,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the hangar.”
“You’ll what?”
“What’s the problem? You’re not going to try and run on me, again, are you?”
“No.” I stepped out of the outerwear I’d started to put on, and shimmied into the underwear.
When I looked up, Mack was already heading toward the door. I swear, the guy wasn’t human. He hadn’t even stopped to look. Tens, not so much.
“Get a wriggle on,” he said, “and turn a little to the left.”
Mack looked up at the ceiling.
“Tens,” he said. “Get to work. I want real-time scans of what’s happening inside the complex.”
I heard Tens gulp.
“You sure you want that, boss?”
“No,” and Mack’s voice was creaky, although with what, I couldn’t be sure, “but we’ll need it. Make sure the recordings are clear. We need to nail this bastard.”
Tens didn’t sound convinced.
“And I want it broadcast live,” Mack said, “because if he takes us out, down there, he’ll probably take the ship, as well. Broadband it. I want it known.”
“You’ll lose your anonymity.”
“If we live, I’ll let Odyssey take care of it,” Mack said. “Pretty sure ours won’t be the first deaths they’ve faked.”
“Who says they’ll fake it?” Tens muttered, but he cut the comm link, and I guessed he was doing what Mack wanted.
I shimmied into the rest of the outfit, and hoped the promised weapons were aboard the shuttle. I’d qualified on most of what I wanted for this mission, figured I could pick up what I needed to know in order to be able to operate the rest. I headed for the shuttle bay, and then discovered we weren’t riding down in the shuttle.
“That’s probably the first thing we’re going to lose,” he said. “Tens will remote-pilot it. I can’t afford to lose any of my crew.”
I read between the lines to ‘don’t want to lose any of my crew’ and began to understand what Tens had said about Mack picking up strays. I wondered if Mack would help me fake my next death, but I still wasn’t sure he was a step up from Odyssey, or a step down. I also couldn’t work out where his loyalties lay. I mean, he’d burned me once, because I’d stolen money from someone I hadn’t known was his client. And Odyssey seemed to be a pretty big client, too.
Next time, I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
Which brought me right back to the present. How much did I trust Mack? Well, I guessed, looking at the thin sliver of a craft he’d attached to the bottom of the shuttle, enough to travel down with him in that. Re-entry was going to be a bitch.
He shimmied forward in the pilot’s seat, and motioned for me to get behind him.
“Weapons are in that locker,” he said. “Check your implant. Tracer for it is in there. Don’t lose it, whatever you do. It’s o-dark-hundred down there, and we won’t have a lot of time to look for it.”
I checked the implant, pinged the locker stowed alongside the seat, felt it ping back, and tapped Mack on the shoulder.
“Got it.”
“Yeah,” Tens voice whispered in my head, “right up until Bastien jams it.”
“Do your job, Tens,” Mack rumbled, and I realized my implant was a party line.
Great. Just great.
But the shuttle lifted, and the hangar doors opened to space, and Tens flew us right back down to where I didn’t want to go. The ride was even bumpier than before, but we detached easily enough, and I watched the shuttle fly away from us, as we dropped ever-faster earthward. Man, I hoped this thing could fly.
“Shutup,” Mack said, and his mental voice sounded strained.
“Yeah. What he said,” Tens added, and then cursed, just before his link dropped out.
“Tens?” I didn’t like exactly how worried Mack sounded. Liked it even less when there was a sudden flare of light from the direction in which the shuttle had disappeared.
“Hang tight,” Mack said, and pushed the tiny craft into a steep dive.
Seconds later we were caught and buffeted by the shock-wave of the shuttle’s destruction.
“I hate it when I’m right,” Mack muttered, and I wanted to argue that he loved it, but I didn’t quite dare.
Bastien had taken out the shuttle. Tens had broken contact for a reason. I wondered if I could damp my implant, hoped Bastien had only gotten as much out of it as Tens and Mack thought he had, but didn’t want to bet my life on it. Literally. Inside my head, I explored what I could find, and then found the mechanism Tens had used to make the implant appear dormant to Bastien’s scans.
Hoping I wasn’t about to put it off-line permanently, I flicked it, and felt Mack relax, just a fraction.
“Good girl,” he said. “Very good.”
And I was reminded of Bastien’s ‘Byen fee’. Dammit! I was not a dog!
For a moment, I was torn between giving Mack a good clout upside the head, or ignoring him, but he was flying, and it was never a good idea to beat up the pilot, while he was flying. I chose to ignore him, instead, and focused on finding out what was in the pockets of my latest outfit.
I was as excited as a kid on Family Day by the time Mack set us down behind a small complex of sheds behind the main building.
“What’s in there?” I asked, indicating the nearest shed, as we unfolded ourselves from the tiny craft.
Mack looked at me, and I blushed.
“That’s what you brought me along for, huh?”
He nodded, reaching under the seat to pull out a couple of snub-nosed pistols, while I grabbed the weapons locker, and headed for the shed. Mack glanced back at the craft we’d flown in on, and nodded. I glanced back to see what he was nodding at, and saw the tiny vehicle disappear.
“Visual displacement,” he said.
“A blend?”
Mack nodded.
“What have you got?”
I moved over to the control panel beside the door, reaching into one of the pouches at my waist. Unlike the last mission, I’d come properly equipped. The pouch contained a small data-box, and the connectors I’d need to make a hard connection, if I couldn’t make a wireless one. It worked kinda the same way as the data-mine I’d used back at the pharmaceutical plant, only different.
For this, I had to activate the implant. I could only hope Bastien and his techs weren’t waiting for me to try. I really had to rely on the shuttle’s explosion to keep their minds elsewhere, or on the Odyssey team taking out whatever Bastien used for security scans.
“Two seconds,” I murmured, as Mack sidled up to me.
“Make it one, and make it quick, and pray there’s no-one on the other side of the door,” he said, opening the lockbox and pulling weapons out of it. I felt extra weight added to the belt at my waist, and a strap draped over my shoulders as I worked. And then I felt him shifting beside me, as he stowed more weapons around himself.
“You sure you got enough?” I asked, getting the door open, and leading the way inside.
“You’d better hope so,” he said, nudging the box behind a crate by the door.
Fan-fucking-tastic. I focused on business.
“What do you need?”
“Find a terminal. Find a way into the vault under this complex. We can’t use the way we went in last time. Delight’s crew blew that sucker all to hell.”
Great. I scanned the shed, noted stacked crates and pallets, and hoped there was an office toward the front. Deliveries had to be recorded, right? Workers had to clock on and off, yeah? And I was betting good ol’ Bastien didn’t allow just anyone into his little home-away-from-home.
“Before, or after, they got in?”
“After.” Mack’s voice sounded strained. “Soon as they figured they’d just waltzed themselves into a trap.”
Yeah, well, I guess that made sense.
“So, what makes you think there’s another entrance?”
“Because Bastien’s a rat, and those critters always have a bolt-hole. We have to find it first.”
“What makes you think he hasn’t used it already?”
“Tens.”
I didn’t like the way the comms stayed quiet, wished Tens would come on-line and confirm he was okay, couldn’t quite fathom why he stayed silent.
“Okaaay,” I said, hoping my tone would tell Mack he hadn’t really answered the question.
I was about to step around a stack of crates, when Mack grabbed me by the shoulder, and pulled me hard up against him, as he squeezed himself into a niche between the stacks. I pressed my lips together, pushing down the urge to shout, as we watched a forklift purr softly past.
Well, that was going to make life interesting.
“Try patching into the system from here.” Mack’s voice in my ear.
“Kay.”
I didn’t like it, but I liked the idea of running a gauntlet of forklifts even less. I went wireless.
It took me a little longer than I liked, but I did it, and found the floorplans Bastien had hidden behind a second firewall in a partitioned drive. It didn’t take me long to begin siphoning files. Honestly, it would have been faster to just copy the drives... if that had been an option, but there were protections against that. I wormed my way past them, and then worked out how to wriggle the files through the gap without activating the security protocols.
Those suckers looked spiky, and I didn’t want them coming after me. It was just too bad I couldn’t find another place to store the files outside my implant.
“This is what I pay you for,” Mack said. “Send me the layout.”
“What about Tens?” I asked, but Mack signaled the negative, turning us about in the narrow gap he’d found and pushing me further into it.
“Just me,” he said. “Tens will make contact, when he’s sure he can get a clean signal. Don’t try to reach him.”
“Got it.”
“Stay here,” Mack said, moving to the edge of the gap, and he dragged a box across in front of me, before I could protest. “This is what I pay me for.”
This is what he what?
Well, of all the macho bullshit I’d ever heard in all my life!
“Get the files,” Mack said, “then get your ass back into the ship, and stay there. Tens will fly you out, as soon as it’s clear.”
“But what about you?”
“You leave me to worry about me,” Mack said. “Just do what you’re paid for.”
What I was paid for, huh? I didn’t bother trying to remind him that he didn’t pay my wages, that Odyssey paid my wages, and that they might have a different view on what my duties were. I caught the look on his face that said he either guessed, or knew, exactly what I was thinking, and didn’t agree, so I sighed.
“Fine,” I said. “You’re the boss.”
And I kept my thoughts deliberately quiet on exactly what I thought of him heading downstairs to deal with Bastien alone.
