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Mack was standing over me when I woke up. I might have thought that was a coincidence, except I registered the sore patch that told me they’d stuck me, again, and this time it was probably to wake me up faster.
I took a minute to focus, probably registering his scent before I recognized his face.
“You did good,” he said, and I blinked.
“So, I get paid?” I asked, and a small smile flashed across his face, vanishing as fast as it had come.
“Odyssey pays you,” he said, “but we made sure you got your bonuses.”
I felt my face fall.
“Crew’s cut?” I figured there had to be one, even though I wasn’t privy to the information.
He quirked an eyebrow.
“Crew got their cut,” he said.
“Aren’t I crew?” Even to my ears, that had a touch of pleading.
Mack sighed, and looked down at me.
“What do you want credits for?” he asked, and I blushed before I could stop.
It was the first time I’d seen that Mack could put two and two together faster than I did, and he was scary accurate. The fact he had that many brains wasn’t something I’d wanted to confirm.
“You want an account separate from your Odyssey one,” he said, and I nodded, wished I hadn’t.
My chest hurt. My head hurt. My whole face hurt.
I swallowed, winced, and slowly sat up. At least Mack backed up to give me room. That part hadn’t been guaranteed. Looking around, I could see I wasn’t in my own room. I slid over the edge and found the floor... on my feet... which also hadn’t been guaranteed.
“Why do I feel so sick?” I asked, as Mack backed up another couple of steps.
He didn’t answer, although the doctor did.
“Because the stimulant we gave you is playing havoc with your system, while it gets rid of the sedative.”
I almost stopped to ask when they’d given me another sedative, but I didn’t really want to know.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Closet’s that way,” and I indicated the door, not liking the way the doctor was blocking it.
“You’re in the way doc,” I said, when I reached him, and he still hadn’t moved. He just looked at me.
“And what are you going to do about it?” he asked, giving me just a glimpse of the paths he’d put behind him.
Have to admit, I did stop, then.
“Doc,” I said, heard the question in that one word and figured my sub-conscious might have a point. Now, it was my turn to back up a step.
“I’m not done, yet,” he said, and took a step toward me.
I looked from him to Mack, and backed up another step. Mack just shrugged.
“I’d do what he says; he’s not too impressed with us.”
With us, hey? I started smirking. Funny to see Mack in just as much shit as I was, just for a change.
“You need to go sit down,” the doc said, and I turned back to him. “Now.”
And he indicated a chair by the bed I’d woken up in. Well, at least he didn’t want me to go lie back down, ’cos that sure as shit wasn’t happening. I must have hesitated just a minute too long, though, because he reached over and tapped me on the side, just up under the arm.
That really hurt, and the world wavered, just the tiniest little bit, which is when Mack decided I might need rescuing. He came over and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, putting himself between me and the doc, as he steered me over to a chair.
“You, too, Mack,” the doc said, indicating the other chair, and Mack gave a deep sigh.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Doc’s not the only one mad at us,” Mack said, and I turned toward him, just as the doc came and drew up a chair opposite.
“You need to take your shirt off,” he said, and I glanced at him, then across at Mack.
“He won’t look.”
Mack moved so his back was to me, so I ditched the shirt.
“Breathe in.”
“So, who’d—”
“And zip it.”
I zipped it, and let the doc get on with his exam. He was pretty thorough, and he wasn’t happy at the end.
“Mack,” he said, and it was an order, but I wasn’t ready to be engulfed by Mack’s arms, and pinned, as the doc hit me with another shot.
When he was done, he turned to Mack.
“You, I don’t need to see,” he said, getting up to leave “and she needs two minutes before warp.”
“Two minutes?” That was Tens over the comms. “I don’t know if I can hold them off that long.”
I got it. Two minutes was a long time in any combat, be it between ships, or between folk.
“What’s going on?”
“Odyssey don’t want us to leave the system.”
“Why?”
“They want a debrief,” Mack said, and the doc paused by the door, the look on his face pure askance. Mack made a sound of just as pure frustration. “Fine! They want to run you with their own implant.”
“But that wasn’t part of the deal,” I said, and heard the panic I couldn’t keep out of my voice.
“I told them that. They said they’d changed their minds.”
“But Delight—”
“Delight’s in regen, right now. She can’t help us. She’s part of the reason why they want their own hardware on board.”
“On board me, you mean.”
“Nope. On board my ship.”
Ah, well, that explained it. I figured if it was just me, they’d have probably handed me over already. Mack read the look on my face, and shook his head.
“Not after the deal we signed,” he said. “Our ship, our crew, our training, our equipment.”
Strange how I heard ‘my’ every time he said ‘our’.
“And the consequences be damned,” the doc added, but I couldn’t work out if he approved, or not.
He glanced at his watch.
“One minute.”
“I got about half that, doc,” Tens said, over the radio. “Less if they crest the horizon sooner.”
“Horizon?”
“Tens got Case to put us behind a moon,” Mack explained, then glanced at the doc.
“Get us out there, Case. Warp as soon as you’ve got the distance, and the tractor be damned. Doc?”
“She should make it,” he said, and then he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
“Lie down,” he said, looking over at me. “You, too, Mack. This won’t be pleasant.”
He didn’t say more, just lay down on the floor, himself, so I followed suit, feeling a sudden surge of vibration thunder through the ship.
“How long did they say Delight would be under?” Mack asked.
“They didn’t,” the doc told him, “but I saw the report. She’ll be out a month, while she grows bits back.”
She would? While she what?
Now, why did I get the impression this was particularly bad news?
Oh, right. Because it was. Mack’s cussing was a dead giveaway.
“Well, that’s not exactly how I’d have put it,” the doc said, as the ship stretched around us, and his words went wonky in my ears. “But the sentiment’s there.”
Oh, yeah, sure. The sentiment. I felt my body pulled six ways to Sunday, heard someone screaming from behind gritted teeth. Yeah. That would be me. I should survive? I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
It wasn’t a lot of comfort to hear Mack and the doc making the same kind of sounds right alongside me. Goddamnitall to hell and the stars and back! Was this what it was like for the rest of the crew?
The sense of being stretched went away, and I heard Mack speak.
“Bounce it,” he ordered, and I wished I knew that didn’t mean what I thought it did.
Neither Tens nor Case said anything, but the ship jolted around us, and Mack gasped.
“Lord,” the doc murmured. “That is goin’ ta leave a mark.”
It was? And then, pain slewed through me, and I screamed. So did the doc. And Mack. When we hit the next pocket of calm, he could barely speak.
“Twice mo—” he started, but Case got it, and things got kinda gnarly after that.
I couldn’t tell if we were being pulled, pushed, twisted or crushed, although maybe it was all of those at once, and I just didn’t know it. When it finally stopped, I felt like a wet dishcloth. Even Tens sounded wrung out, satisfied, but wrung out.
“Follow that, you bastards,” he said. “Case, Comms is yours... Ah, fuck!” and the comm went dead.
I wasn’t sure if we’d been meant to be privy to that, but I didn’t care. I was just content to lie on the floor, and not move, and I was content to do that for maybe the next century. So, too, it seemed, were the doc and Mack. I was just starting to hope we were safe, when four figures blurred and flickered into existence around us, and I heard Mack echo Tens.
This couldn’t be good, right? But I couldn’t bring myself to move, and neither Mack, nor the doc, shifted a muscle.
“Booj par!” one of the figures snapped, and I groaned, recognizing the phrase from the last time I’d been looking down the barrel of someone else’s gun.
Booj par, right? Like we could have moved if we’d even wanted.
“Marl,” Mack said, but his greeting was not a happy one.
The voice that came over the intercom sounded more pleased than I’d like.
“Got your ship, Mack.”
“Uh huh,” Mack said, and pushed himself up on his elbows.
The nearest figure raised a boot and slammed it into his chest, knocking him back to the floor, and pinning him there. The disembodied Marl spoke again.
“Easy, boys. Let’s let them live, for now.”
Well, that made me breathe a bit easier. Alive huh? I closed my eyes, opened them again when I felt the static of another teleport arrival.
“Mack?” Marl’s voice. No reply. I opened my eyes.
“Mack?” Marl again, and this time he kept going. “What the hell did you do to yourself?”
“Hard-burn warp.”
I saw Marl turn his head to look at the doc and me. I also noted Tens standing beside him, a strange crewman at his back, a gun in his ribs. Marl ignored me.
“On the floor?” he asked.
“No... no time,” Mack said, and I knew he meant there’d been no time for us to get to something better for making that kind of jump, but he kept on. “F... four jumps.”
And Marl gave a bark of laughter.
“Four? Truly Mack? Who did you piss off so much you’d risk four burners like that?”
Mack coughed, and I wondered if he couldn’t answer, or just didn’t want to. I made a note not to tell Marl anything, checked my implant. It was live, and would look that way to anyone scanning it. I found the trigger I’d used the second time I’d gone down to visit Bastien, flicked it so that the implant would show as dead weight.
One of the other figures made a small sound of surprise and turned toward me.
“You,” she said, nudging me with the toe of her boot. “What did you do?”
I looked up at her, trying to focus on her face, not liking the hard edges I saw to her mouth and eyes. We were in some shit, right? Whoever this Marl was, he didn’t like Mack, and his crew were veterans at whatever it was they did. She nudged me, again.
“Your implant just died. What did you do?”
Mack gave a coughing laugh, and I rolled my eyes, catching his cue. My body might be wet-noodle useless, but my brain was lighting up on all circuits.
“Yeah, laugh it up, big boy,” I said. “It’s your fucking junk in my skull.”
I turned my gaze toward the woman.
“Damn thing keeps shutting down. Was getting a pre-op check with the doc when things went south.” I tried to turn my head so I could see Mack, and raised my voice. “Next time your pilot goes crazy, I say we shoot him.”
“Don’t worry,” Mack said, and his voice was rough with the same kind of exhaustion I felt running through my system. “I aim to.”
Marl tutted.
“What did you do to upset poor Tens?” he asked. “The two of you are such good friends.”
The way Marl said it, that wasn’t something I’d stake my life on.
“I wonder what he’d say to hear you talking like that.”
“I’d say he needs to get off his fat ass and do his own piloting,” Tens said, “given what Case just pulled to get him out of Bastien’s claws.”
Marl moved so he stood between Mack and me, and then he crouched down beside me, and took my chin between the thumb and forefinger of one hand.
“Way I saw it,” he said, “you weren’t the only one gotten out of Bastien’s claws. I wonder what the old boy would pay to get them back.”
And I didn’t have to fake the fear that ran through me.
“You pay me a share, and I’ll comm him for you,” Tens said, and Marl got to his feet and shot Tens in the gut.
I couldn’t suppress a short cry of horror as Tens folded. I tried to get up, but the tech gal standing over me was quicker. Her boot caught me in the center of the chest and crushed me back to the floor.
To my right, I heard Mack move, and then abruptly stop. Twisting my head, I saw that he was holding himself as motionless as he could, the muzzle of Marl’s Blazer pressed tight up under his chin.
“I’m not stupid, Mack. My crew have been pulling files since we boarded. Looks like Odyssey would pay a lot to get you and her in their hands.” Marl studied him carefully, but Mack wasn’t listening.
“Tens,” he said, and I saw Marl glance over at the fallen comms man.
“Let me help,” Doc Oskar said, breaking the silence. “We can put him in regen.”
Marl gave a hoot of amusement.
“You have a tank on board?” he asked, and I heard desperation in Mack’s voice, when he replied.
“Please, Marl.”
I could hear Tens breathing fast against the pain.
“I’ll come to the table.”
“No, Mack!” The response from Tens was instantaneous, but Mack ignored him.
“We’ll negotiate.”
Whatever that meant, it was enough for Marl. Staring up at him, I saw him nod to the two men who had stood silently by, while the others had dealt with Mack and me. He glanced over at the tech girl, and tilted his chin in the doc’s direction.
“Four burners,” he said. “Help him do what he needs.”
She bounced her boot against my chest, but took her foot away, and turned to help the doc. If I hadn’t still been feeling flattened, I might have tried to do something stupid, but I was feeling flattened, and I was worried about Tens. I just lay where I was, and watched the tech help Doc to his feet, while her two colleagues slung their weapons and lifted Tens from the floor.
He yelped, but that, in itself was a miracle.
When they’d left, I watched as Marl moved over to the wall opposite.
“On your feet, Mack. You, too, Cutter.”
Cutter, huh? So, the man knew my name. I wondered if he knew anything else about me, and then decided it didn’t matter. What he knew, he knew. It was what we were going to do next that would decide what mattered or not.
