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I hurried. Two minutes later, I was dressed right down to a new pair of combat boots that looked more like evening fashion without the discomfort. Snazzy, but I wasn’t going to tell Mack just how much I liked them. Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a shuttle staring at Mack in disbelief.
“You want me to do what?”
“I thought it was pretty clear.”
“Yeah, but.”
“So why ask? Just get to it.”
I glanced from him to the shuttle’s door. There was a jolt and shudder as we hit atmo, and then a bit of turbulence. We dropped through it fast enough, and then the side door slid open. Mack glanced over at it, and then back at me.
“Well, off you go, then.”
I’da said I felt butterflies, but they were all caught up in the sheets of ice coating my innards. I swallowed. Hard. And made myself stand up.
I got two steps closer to the door, and then I stopped and turned to face him.
“What?” Mack asked.
“I’ve never jumped before,” I said, and he swore.
So much for a no-swearing policy.
“Tens.” His voice echoed through my implant.
“I got it, boss.”
“Good.”
Mack got out of his seat, and came to stand in front of me.
“You need to jump.”
I backed up a step.
“You need to jump and count to twenty, and then you need to activate your chute.”
I glanced back at the door, saw clouds and a tiny, tiny landscape, and shook my head.
Mack took another step toward me.
“Out,” he said, and there was more threat in that one word than anything more descriptive.
“Time’s getting short,” Tens said. “You a pro, or not?”
And that, more than anything got me moving. Of course, I was a pro. Of course, I was. I turned about and took three decisive steps toward the edge of the shuttle bay, and then I jumped.
“Count.” Tens, in my head, as my mind jolted to a horrified halt, and he gave me a number. “Four, two three. Five, two three...”
That helped, although not much.
“Five, two, three,” I shouted, the wind taking the words the minute they hit air. “Six, two, three; seven, two three; eight...”
I kept counting, even while the rest of my head was screaming. I had no time for screaming. I knew that. I got to twenty, and realized I had to do something, couldn’t remember, and looked down at the harness in a panic. Tens swore, and the chute deployed.
“You need more practice,” he said.
“Yuh think?” I managed, grateful my mental voice didn’t have to rely on shaky vocal cords, extra thankful that neither he, nor Mack could see the tears of relief leaking out of my eyes.
“Bend your knees.”
I bent, stumbling forward on landing, and then the first bullet whistled over my head, the crack of it being fired, coming seconds after.
What the fuck?
“Run!”
I ran, heading for the nearest cover I could see. Right up until the chute pulled me off my feet.
Funny how Tens and Mack had the same vocabulary.
“Hit the release.”
The release? The... I fumbled at the harness, heard footsteps approach, before stopping in front of me, and then looked up, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“Oh fuck.”
To be fair, it was a pretty big gun to be looking down the wrong end of.
“Yeah,” Tens agreed.
“We’ll get back to you with a Plan B,” came from Mack
And then they went off air, leaving me to deal with the very angry, so-not-supposed-to-be-there guys with guns.
“Lev!”
I stared. Mission hadn’t exactly covered language, since I hadn’t exactly come down here to socialize.
“Lev!” and, this time, the command was accompanied by a definite upward shift of the gun barrel.
“Sure,” I said, risking a glance down at the harness I was still wearing.
Dude-with-gun said something impatient and probably rude, reached past his weapon, and grabbed the shoulder harness to pull me to my feet.
“Man! Keep your hair on!” I said, still trying to work out what I needed to hit to get the harness to release.
“Lev le marn!”
I looked up at the guy, seeing as he seemed to be shouting at me.
“Lev le marn!”
Again, the gun barrel jerked up in short moves.
“Get your hands up.”
Since when could Mack speak... whatever this was.
“Right. Yeah. Thanks for that.”
But I did as I was told, this time looking past the weapon to its handler. At least one of us knew what he was trying to say. By now, there was more than one of him. I tried to ignore the way the chute dragged at my shoulders, and studied the guys in front of me.
Guys and girls. Oops. My bad.
I made sure to scan them all, hoping that Mack and Tens could see what I was seeing. Four of them held back, but a second one came to stand alongside the one pointing the gun, and I saw movement at the edge of my vision that told me there were more.
The new guy looked at me, and snapped out another order I didn’t understand.
“Marn syur tet.”
“Hands on head.”
I complied.
“You know I don’t understand a word these guys are saying, right?” I muttered, and saw the new guy’s eyes widen.
“Which is why I’m translating.”
“So, when I tell them, later, I don’t understand, they’re not going to believe me,” I murmured, keeping my voice really low, and trying not to move my lips. I hoped the new guy hadn’t caught what I was saying, but I saw him frown, and I had a bad feeling he might have caught every word.
“Would you rather be shot?”
“Nope.” I tried saying that last one with my mouth closed, not taking my eyes off the dudes in front.
They weren’t much to look at, but, then, Odyssey had taught me not to judge anyone by their looks. Some of the instructors they’d brought in hadn’t looked like anything much at all, and then they’d started teaching.
I learned to be more wary of the dude with the average build, and the nothing-special looks, than of anyone who drew the eye. And they all had this look, like the new guy, like Mack... or Ax, now I thought about it.
Really. I think I’d have preferred the new guy to be holding the gun. The one doing the gun-holding looked a little green to me. He looked like he might actually shoot me by mistake. I tried to divide my attention between the two. When the new guy tilted his head at the group of four and whistled, I turned my head to see who he’d called.
“Booj pa!” said the guy with gun, so I froze, hoping I’d guessed right, ’cos, man, I’d be telling me to stand still, too... and then I’d be shooting me, if I didn’t.
I stayed as still as I could, with my head still turned so I could see who’d answered the new guy’s summons. Guess I knew who was in charge of this not-so-chicken-shit outfit.
It was not comforting to see him answered by a girl weighed down with a bunch of technical equipment.
“Oh shit,” Tens said, and my implant went quiet.
Oh shit? I thought. That’s the best you can do?
But, even to me, the implant seemed strangely unresponsive. It was like having a part of my brain suddenly turn itself off. Listening to the head guy rattle off a request in whatever weird language they were speaking, I hadn’t a clue about what was going to happen next.
“Great time to stop translating, guys!” but I knew the comment went nowhere.
I watched as the girl came up to the leader, and then the head guy spoke again. The guy with the big gun backed up a couple of steps, but his aim didn’t waver. I risked glancing from him to the leader, and letting my uncertainty show.
“Shyur jenoo.”
I stared, and he made a downwards movement with his hand. I followed the gesture, and he repeated it. Repeated the order, too.
“Shyur! Jenoo!”
“Sure wish I knew what you wanted,” I said, cocking my head.
He glared at me, and I stared back. As glares went, this one wasn’t as bad as one of Mack’s, and nowhere near as frightening as one of Agent Delight’s. He crossed the distance between us, grabbed me by the bicep, and pulled downwards, as he slammed a boot behind my knees.
“Shyur! Jenoo!”
“Well, crap. Why didn’t you just say so?” I asked, and that was when he brought a fist down on the catch releasing the harness.
I was pretty glad to feel the weight of that drop away from my shoulders, not so glad, when the guy settled to his knees beside me and jammed a pistol in my ribs.
“Hey!”
Somehow, I managed to remember to keep my hands on my head, remembered to stay still as another trooper came in to take them down and cuff them behind my back, didn’t make a sound when I was hauled to my feet. At which point, the tech came over and ran a wand over me, paying close attention to my head.
I listened to the whines and squawks coming off her equipment, and noted the change in tone when it went over the implant. That was going to cause me some problems.
“Holy fuck, Mack. What sort of shit did you land me in, this time?” I asked, but I got no response, and I didn’t know whether to be glad or really disappointed. After all, it wasn’t the first time I’d been let down. Pretty sure I’d get over it.
I eyed the weaponry carried by the men and women around me, and amended that last thought.
Maybe, I’d get over it, if they let me live. Maybe...
Head Dude let go of my arm, and tapped me on the shoulder, gesturing that I should follow him. At least, that’s what his hand gesture said. His words? Well, I couldn’t be sure.
“Mersweevay!”
“Sure,” I muttered, choosing to obey his hand signal. “Whatever you say.”
He was grinning as he turned away, like he was in on a joke I had no hope of understanding.
“Smart ass.”
I thought I caught a hitch in his stride, but then he kept moving. So much for swearing being a universal language. And that was when I began to wonder why they weren’t responding to simple Galactic Basic. I mean, Galbas was about as universal as cussing, wasn’t it?
I’d come in on a hill-side meadow. From there I was supposed to have had a ten kay hike through the edge of a small estate, to something that looked like a cross between a small mansion and a single-story, corporate lair. With these guys, it was a brisk walk to the edge of the meadow, where there was a bit of a track, and then they began to jog.
I might have drawn the line at that, except the head guy turned back, and came alongside me. Taking a firm hold of my arm, he said, “Jog!”, and kept up the pace, dragging me along with him. I might have protested, except I didn’t want to fall over.
“Byen fee!” he said, sounding pleased. I might have been happy to hear him happy, except he said it in the same way you might praise a dog, or some other pet that was doing what you wanted. Instead of feeling happy, I wanted to smack him.
I might have tried, too, except my hands weren’t free. ‘Byen fee,’ indeed.
When I got back to the ship, Mack was going to hear about this!
I wanted very badly to ask where we were going, but I figured I’d find out soon enough. I also really wanted to be anywhere else except here, and I didn’t see how that was going to happen. Why wasn’t Mack teleporting me out of here?
For that matter, why hadn’t he told me exactly what I was going for, when I landed? So far, he’d fed me the barest bits of information—and those only just before I needed them. Like having to jump out of the shuttle. Like needing to get to the manse on foot, because everything coming onto the grounds was checked, but there didn’t seem to be any patrols between the perimeter and the house.
Like shut-up-don’t-ask-how-a-chute-won’t-be-noticed... it was almost like he’d wanted me to get caught. Was that it? Had he planned for me to be captured before I reached the main buildings? And why?
Why the chute without checking to see if I’d ever jumped? Why send me down with barely any equipment? Why no weapons? Had Mack changed his mind? Decided to dump me on some unknown world, and tell Odyssey he’d lost me in an op gone wrong? Was that it? That was it?
I stopped. Dead. Losing my footing and hitting the ground hard on my knees.
“Mack! You scum-sucking, star-hugging, ass-covering, mouth-breeding, donkey-shitting, sun-splitting, motherfucking bastard!”
I might have started punching the ground, right then and there, except my hands were still firmly bound behind my back, and someone still had a very firm grip on my arm. Utter, gob-smacked silence filled the air around me, but I didn’t care. I was so sick of nothing ever going right. Just...
And that’s when someone started laughing.
Great. Fucking fantastic. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, and then opened them again, turning my head to glare at the man beside me.
“What!”
And the head dude stopped laughing, and pulled me to my feet.
“Very creative,” he said, all traces of amusement gone. “Very original. Now, run!”
And he dragged me back into a jog.
I didn’t want to jog, but then I didn’t want to be where I was, either, which just goes to show you can’t have anything you want—not even on a good day. Which this, most certainly, was not.
