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If Barangail was frustrated by our refusal to speak of our last encounter with the arach, he didn’t show it—and neither Mack nor I wanted to tell him exactly what had happened until we knew whether he was a willing accomplice or unwitting victim. As it was, he’d shown no hint of wanting to either leave his trading partners, or of being wary of them—and we couldn’t risk him carrying tales.
Fortunately, he accepted our reluctance on the matter, and led us up the stairs and into the mansion proper.
To my surprise, the entry hall was more an internal training hall for his soldiers, and I wondered what purpose it served. Most of the ruling types I’d ever encountered used their massive foyers to intimidate with wealth. This was the first time I’d ever seen one used to show military power.
A broad walk way led between barriers through which we could see his men practicing their close-combat and shooting skills. Another, glass-walled partition separated us from a weapons workshop, and the one opposite it looked like a lab working something experimental. Even I couldn’t help being impressed.
Mack took it all in, walking beside me, but not touching. I was both disappointed and relieved. Relieved because I still wanted to hit something, and it could just as well have been him as anything else, and disappointed, because I’d been secretly enjoying the excuse to touch.
“You are a sad, sad individual,” Tens told me, and I felt my face color.
Not. His. Business.
He snickered, but he didn’t say anything else. Mack reached over and took my hand, and I felt my color deepen. His hand tightened around mine, a reminder to get a grip, so I focused on what was happening around us.
The weapons shop and developmental lab signaled the end of the walkway, and Barangail stopped before a large set of double doors.
“Elevator,” he said. “The surface is not ideal from a security perspective.”
A minute later, I saw what he meant.
The elevator doors slid open, and I couldn’t suppress a gasp. Mack let go of my hand, and draped his arm around my shoulders. To anyone looking on, it might have looked like he was offering comfort, but I knew better. The damn man was making sure he had a good hold of me, in case I decided to run.
I might have been mad about that, but it was a good thing he did—the damned elevator was another confined space that reminded me of an airlock. Granted, it would have been a really big airlock, but the similarity was there, nonetheless. I don’t’ know if it was the stim pack, or what, but stepping through those doors was hitting all the flight or fight buttons I had.
“Easy, girl. I’m here.”
Like that would do any good.
“And I’m here, too.”
Yeah, thanks, Rohan—and the little shit laughed.
I got enough of a grip to step through under my own steam, and Mack and I moved to stand on the opposite side of the elevator to where Barangail was settling in with his escort. I noticed how there were at least two men between us, and wondered what he was afraid of.
“You didn’t see your face when Rohan was stopping you go after the king. Even I was worried.”
I was about to reply to that, but the elevator doors slid shut, and the meaning of the lord’s quip about security became clear. Rohan, Tens, and Case disappeared from my head with the sound of the door seals closing. I raised my head, and Mack turned me in towards his chest.
“Easy, Cutter.”
And I swore if he said that, one more time, I was going to slug him—and, this time, Rohan wasn’t going to be there to stop me. Mack’s arms tightened across my back, but Barangail was speaking, and Mack didn’t say a word.
“What’s wrong with her, this time? It can’t be heights.”
Which gave me an idea of just how closely we’d been monitored on the trip down to his estate. I wondered whose technology he’d been using. Did he have the place wired up himself, or had he used his new friends to get the kind of access that would allow him to tap into the surveillance systems on a public structure? Or maybe he just had a hacking team, like Odyssey’s Delight.
Of all of those possibilities, only the second idea bothered me, because that suggested the arach weren’t all that new on the friendship scale of things—and, if they weren’t new, then just how far along had their plans for Alpha Nine progressed?
“Not heights,” Mack agreed, and left it at that, making it hard for Barangail to pry without being obvious.
Right now, I wished I could see his lordship’s face, because I was willing to bet just how curious he felt would be written all over it. It was hard to do that with my head buried against Mack’s chest. By the same token, not being able to see the elevator walls around me meant I wasn’t reminded of a... other things.
It also meant I wasn’t able to watch the floor counter as we descended, and that made the journey to the mansion proper seem interminably long.
“Hang in there.”
It was an improvement on being soothed like some fractious beast. That startled an abrupt laugh out of Mack, and I felt him looking down at me.
“If the boot fits.”
I rolled my eyes.
Sure. Whatever, Mack, but I kept that reply firmly behind my lips, even without Rohan’s help, and waited for the elevator to stop.
“How far down are we going?” Mack asked, and it was Barangail’s turn to be evasive.
“Deep enough to avoid the passive scans.”
I wondered how that worked for him, given he’d placed a really big marker right above it. Mack’s arms tightened, and it wasn’t for comfort. I did my best to pretend I hadn’t noticed. Barangail wasn’t so polite.
“Is she okay?” he asked, and the elevator car shuddered.
Mack’s grip around my shoulders became like iron.
“She’s fine,” Mack said, and I didn’t move.
Again, without Rohan’s help. Maybe the stims were starting to wear off.
“I hope not,” sounded in my head, but it was only Mack; the other three didn’t say a word, their connections hanging strangely loose.
The elevator stopped, and Mack held me tight and still, the resistance of his arms as I tried to turn, reminding me that I couldn’t go bolting out of the large, dangling box, and into the comparative safety of the Barangail’s halls. Mack’s next words showed that illusion for what it was.
“We don’t how infested this place is. Stick with me.”
Good point. Pity he was such a smart ass.
“Hey!”
Yeah. Whatever, big man.
“You have no idea.”
And I blushed like a school girl, forcing myself to focus on what I could hear happening around me. I wondered if Case had managed to hack her way into the security system, yet, because a set of eyes on the rooms around us, would be really nice, about now. Hell, a view of the rooms around us, would have been good to have to study on the trip down, because I was pretty sure things had changed since my last visit.
“You bet they have,” came through the implant in a voice I didn’t want to hear, and I wondered when Tens was going to install security measures that worked against arach.
“I doubt there is a security measure in all the worlds that can protect your head from a psi.”
Well, fuck me, but the eight-legged bastard might just have a point.
“Stop teasing the wildlife,” Mack said, and I didn’t know whether to laugh, or tell him to go fuck himself.
I also didn’t point out that ‘wildlife’ wasn’t the best way for him to win friends and influence people. Maybe the stim pack wasn’t wearing off, after all.
“Give it time,” and, with that parting remark, the arach king was gone, letting me feel the absence of his presence in my mind.
It made me wonder how I’d missed him arriving. It also made me look for any more, and it was no surprise to find the arach team leader crouching quietly in a corner of my conscience.
“Hi there!” I said, highlighting its presence for Mack.
The damn thing hissed at me, but it didn’t leave.
“We’re really gonna have to find a way to fix that,” Mack said.
Yeah, good luck with that.
I figured if we hadn’t found a cure since the last time we’d encountered the arach, it might be a flaw in human design, rather than anything we could mend. We just hadn’t run into these bastards enough for the naturally resistant to survive and procreate.
“And those who are, we weed out first,” was not a response I wanted to hear, as the king slid back into my head.
I guess he figured that, since I’d rumbled his assistant, he might as well come back, and stay. No flies on his little black butt.
“No flies, anywhere,” he quipped back, and shot me a memory of him tearing the wings of a wasp, the man-sized creature screaming as he did.
In the memory, he was shouting at it to change, and the vespis was refusing. The memory shut out as I admired the creature’s resistance, and I caught the king’s thought that it might not have been the best memory to show.
“Resistance is useless, huh?” I teased, and he snarled.
Mack cleared his throat, and I drifted back to an awareness of my surroundings.
Damn! The stims really “were” wearing off.
“Don’t worry, Cutter. I’ve got you.”
In the seconds it took me to work out what he meant, he’d unwrapped one arm from around me, pulled the emergency pack, he’d kept in one of his jacket pockets, opened it with his teeth, and hit me with a second shot.
“What the fuck!” I shouted, out loud, and realized we were the center of Barangail’s attention.
That didn’t bother Mack, though; he had a point to make.
“Remember what you were like the first time Delight hit you with a cocktail?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Well, this one’s just as bad.”
But I didn’t want this one to be just as bad. I wanted to be calm, and in control, and not some hair-triggered, spontaneous weapon of mass destruction.
“And master hacker,” Mack added. “Don’t forget master hacker.”
Well, how could I forget... but Mack wasn’t finished.
“Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the ship could connect with our implants? And if Barangail would share access to his security system?”
“No, I don’t think...” Barangail started, but that was as far as he got, because Mack was right, and whatever was in the little concoction he’d put in that stim was fast.
Mack the Bastard, Mack the Madman, Mack the I’m-going-to-kick-the-everloving—
“Where’s the Shady Marie, Cutter? Find it!”
And that was all it took. I was out of my head and looking for a way to connect with Barangail’s system through the wireless system that hung all around us. When I couldn’t get into that, I grabbed hold of the king’s psi connection and raced it down it, skating through the implant running the length of the creature’s cephalothorax—and who knew they’d had any implant at all?
Resisting the urge to take a closer look at it, I roared through the connection, and into the open terminal in front of him. As I did, things kicked up a gear.
Usually, I can’t see what’s happening outside my head, when I’m inside it using the implant. Call it a major disability, call it a hell of a defect, call it whatever the fuck you want, but it’s there. Stick me with a stim pack, and everything becomes clear, both inside and out. As in, I can fight like a mad thing, and hack like a beast, and I’m aware of every minute of it.
Of course, coming down is a bitch. Coming down off a double whammy like Mack had just hit me with? Now, that was going to be a real delight. And speaking of Delight, I really needed to borrow the Shady’s comms.
“Tens!”
Up to that point, I hadn’t realized I’d hacked a connection to the ship, shut down the blocker to our implant and external comms, and pretty much achieved everything Mack had wound me up to do. I’d also remembered we had an agreement with Odyssey when it came to the spiders. I wondered where the closest ship was...
“Cutter.” Now, who was that? “Cutter, Mack needs you.”
He did?
Oh. He did—and, sure, I’d been aware of him moving his hands so he had one on each of my shoulders, and I’d been aware of him shaking me in an attempt to get my attention. I’d just been ignoring him. Now, I turned away from the Shady’s scans, said ‘hi’ to Rohan and kicked him out of my head, so he couldn’t control anything I couldn’t lock down, and paid attention to what was happening in the real.
Mack was looking down into my eyes, but he wasn’t smiling.
Now, why was that?
“What?”
“Show them what happened the last time you were juiced like this.”
“Okay.”
So, I did, replaying the entire battle scene from the village incursion where I’d killed five arach in the cobwebbed home of another spider species, followed by the battle in the presidential palace on K’Kavor where I’d killed quite a few more.
And, since I didn’t know what Mack meant by ‘them’, I just broadcast that to Barangail, all the men he had in the elevator, anyone monitoring the security system, and the two arach listening in my head.
“Enough,” Mack said, and I stopped.
I also realized I was responding a whole lot better to his voice, and decided he’d probably put something in the nans inside the pack to make me more susceptible.
“No.” Mack’s rejection of the idea was immediate. “You’re doing all that by yourself.”
I was? Well, since when was that ever a good decision for me to make?
“Since I keep your ass alive, if you listen to me.”
Oh. Well, if he put it that way...
I noticed Barangail staring at me, and realized that sometime during the replay I’d turned beneath Mack’s arms so I was facing out. I briefly wondered if I needed to kick every ass in the elevator, and was suddenly aware of just how little time had passed since the doors had opened and Mack had juiced me. Before I could go any further than that, Mack asked me another question.
“You hungry?”
Well, now that he mentioned it...
“Stay with me.”
Okaaay, but.... I hesitated, listening as he spoke again. This time, it was to Barangail.
“I believe we had business to discuss...and there was something about a meal?”
He kept his voice friendly and calm, and I couldn’t see the need for all the weapons Barangail’s escort were pointing in our direction. We were even letting them get their principal out of the elevator, first. How was that threatening?
Barangail had gone a few shades paler than he’d been when he’d greeted us from the top of the stairs. He almost looked like he might be regretting inviting us to visit. I wondered what else he might be hiding...
“Stay with me, Cutter.”
But...
“Dinner will be served soon.”
And I was starving. I stopped, leaving the more secure systems I’d noticed well alone. Mack sighed, but I couldn’t work out if it was with relief, or not. Rohan ducked back into my head, but this time I saw him, and threw him right back out again. No way was the little rat getting control of my limbs, again.
“What did you give her?” Barangail asked, and he was staring at me like I’d sprouted another head.
Mack just looked at him.
“Stim pack,” he said. “The one from the ambush was wearing off, and she gets grouchy when she’s in pain.”
True. I did. And right now I didn’t hurt at all. And it felt good. I could probably run for...
“Not right now, you can’t,” Mack said. “Right now, our host is taking us to dinner and we don’t want to offend him.”
He said all that out loud, and I suspected it was more for Barangail’s benefit than mine. Fortunately, his lordship seemed to get the hint.
“This way,” he said, and his men backed away from us, making sure some between us and their principle.
Barangail was silent for a moment, and then he asked, “How long does it last?”
And Mack bared his teeth. I’m thinking it was meant to be taken as a smile, but I wasn’t fooled. I’d seen Mack smile, and I’d seen him bare his teeth. The two things were as different as when Cascade did them. The difference just wasn’t as obvious.
“This one?” Mack asked. “I’m not sure; it’s new.”
And I rolled my eyes. Man was experimenting on me? Again?
Barangail gave me a dubious look, and turned away.
“Just keep her under control,” he said, and I wondered what him or any of his men could do, if Mack didn’t. Fortunately, Barangail wasn’t privy to that thought. “Dinner is this way.”
