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Mack was standing on the other side of the regen tank when I woke up. My chest still hurt, and my vision was a little blurry, but I was conscious enough that his next words made sense.
“I’m chucking in some nanites,” he said. “They want us to deliver Blaedergil, and the girl, by nine bells Costral time, tomorrow.”
Costral? But we were nowhere near the place.
“I know,” Mack’s voice came clearly through the implant. “We go to warp in ten.”
He hit a button on the control panel, and a stream of grey entered the tank.
“They won’t hurt you,” he said, when I flinched away from the moving mass. “Stay still.”
I stayed, imagining I could feel the penetration of a multitude of tiny machines burrowing their way through my skin.
“Nine,” came Tens voice over the intercom.
And Mack ran for the door.
Did you know you can’t tell the difference between warp travel and normal travel if you’re stuck in a regen tank for the duration? Yeah, well, you can’t. This might actually be a small mercy. You can, however, feel it when millions of tiny machines get inside your cells and start making alterations to damaged tissue.
Honestly. You can. It’s like a vibration running through bone and muscle, or an itch that you’re never going to be able to scratch. I was awake, right up until I started to try making it stop, and then the tank’s sensors picked up my distress, and I wasn’t awake anymore.
Mack was on the other side of the glass when I came to.
“You done, yet?” he asked, and I glared at him.
He smirked, and crossed to read the sensors.
“Yep, you’re done,” he said. “I’ll send the med-techs in to get you out. You’ve got about an hour to get ready.”
An hour? I was going to be in on the delivery? Fantastic! Maybe I could get myself reassigned.
Mack scotched that thought, when he came back to collect me from the medical bay.
He snapped a cuff, which felt like elasticized metal, around my wrist.
“You need to stay close,” he said, as I looked at the cuff, and then looked up at him. “This round of training is on me. You stay within two meters of me, and you get to keep your hand.”
I what?
“You get to keep your hand,” he said, and I wondered how he had read my mind.
“The implant,” he said, catching that thought, as well. “We’re linked, remember?”
I blinked, and looked up into his face, not trusting my voice to speak. And he smiled.
When we got back up to the ship that was something else I was going to get him to change. He caught that thought, too, of course.
“We’ll discuss it.”
“On the mats.” This time, I managed to find my voice.
Mack grinned.
“Not unless you feel like hitting me, again.”
Hells yes! Now, I felt like hitting him. He raised an eyebrow at me, but I shook my head.
“Let’s try talking this one, through,” I said, and ignored his look of feigned surprise, “and we can also discuss how we’re going to split the bonus, while we’re at it.”
“Teleport crew gets a chunk for getting you out,” he said. “Without them there’d be no retrieval—and then there’re comms and navigation.”
It caught me by surprise, but it made sense. Outside of Tens, Rohan and Doc, I hadn’t met a lot of the Shady Marie’s crew, and a ship like this wouldn’t run itself. That made sense. Before either of us could follow this up, a crewman came into the room. The look of relief on his face, when he saw we were ready, was almost comical.
“They’re waiting,” he said, and Mack offered me his arm.
“You ready for this?” he asked, and I nodded, ignoring the part of my mind that told me he was darn sure I wasn’t.
It was a delivery. How hard could it be?
And that was when I discovered just how many things could go south, all at once—and how fast.
The trip down the beanstalk from station to planet, was followed by a quick ride to the meeting place, and went without a hitch. I was beginning to breathe more easily, as the personal shuttle pulled up by the memorial to something called Shelock’s War. The man on the statue had to be Shelock, and there was a plaque on the plinth on which he stood.
At any other time, I might have gone and read what it said. Today, I stuck close to Mack, as he supervised the unloading of the girl’s stasis box, the body bag carrying Blaedergil’s remains, and a small medical kit that, I was assured, carried the cure for the disease that had had been used to infect the girl and her people.
Blaedergil had specialized in a very specific type of blackmail—a highly contagious one, one that ensured entire worlds fed his twisted pleasures. This mission had seen him take his last planet hostage. It was something Mack and I should have been proud of, but I sensed nothing but apprehension coming through the implant.
What had Mack seen that was making him feel like this?
He didn’t answer, not a word, not a hint, and I sharpened my gaze on our surroundings. Something here was not right. Mack sensed it, maybe even saw it, but I had been as oblivious as a lamb being led to slaughter. I caught sight of the problem, just as Mack guided the stasis pod into the open space in front of the statue.
“Gun! Gun! Gun!” I shouted, and shoved Mack towards one of the trees bordering the path.
The bullet meant for him caught me, instead. Well, of course it did. It hit me in the back and punched through the body armor. I stumbled, and would have hit the ground, if Mack hadn’t wound an arm around me, and dragged me with him into the shelter of the trees.
This was where the teleport was supposed to wrap around us, and take us to the safety of the ship. Surely, it was, I thought, but Mack kept dragging me through the trees to where we’d left the shuttle parked by the verge. I glanced back towards the pod, and saw it was being taken off the path and around the other side of Shelock’s monument.
The bag was being dragged after it. I guess they still wanted to make sure Blaedergil was dead, even if they didn’t intend to pay up on their promised bonus. We made it to the side of the shuttle, and that’s when things went from bad to worse. I felt Mack jerk, and he spun us both around to face the way we’d come.
“Damn,” I breathed, aware of the burning numbness spreading from my back through my torso.
“Lock ‘em down,” Mack growled, “and send the team. We’re both hit.”
Hit? I thought. We’ll be lucky if they don’t blow the car!
I was rewarded by Mack glancing down at me.
“You have a nasty turn of mind,” he said.
I shrugged. No matter what he’d thought, my turn of mind hadn’t been nasty enough to see this coming.
I wrapped an arm around Mack’s waist, and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.
“We need to get away from the car,” I said, and he grunted an affirmative.
Somewhere in my implant, I could hear Doc Oskar shouting that we both needed to sit our asses down and wait for him to get there. Pretty sure, we both started laughing at that, but it hurt too much, and the world was refusing to stay steady.
I leant hard on Mack, and he leant on me. We must have looked like a pair of drunks. Drunks who’d been in a serious fight at the bar.
We hit the low, stone wall encircling the park, and fell over it. The blast from the car hit us like a very large, hot fist in the back, and threw us further than we’d been about to fall. Landing was a bitch, but at least Mack hit the ground not too far away.
I tried to gather my scattered thoughts, but I wasn’t having much luck.
“I need a regen tank,” I muttered, and hoped I could get to one in time.
That wasn’t looking promising. Costral was a rural world. From what I’d seen, the beanstalk was their only concession to off-world trade. I lay where I’d fallen, all too aware of Mack sprawled a few feet distant. Sirens sounded in the distance, but I could hear footsteps from somewhere nearby.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to get to my hands and knees. The pressure of the band around my wrist was a concern, although I was having trouble remembering why. I did know that I needed to be a hell of a lot closer to Mack before I felt safe—and that wasn’t because he was in any condition to protect me. It was because of the fancy, flashing bracelet.
I got my hands under me, and tried to convince my legs to work. There was pain, but I managed to get onto my knees, and push close enough to hit the ground at Mack’s side.
“This is bad,” I said, curling up next to him.
He coughed an agreement, and the arm closest me twitched.
Great.
Man chose now to go weak on me.
I heard him cough, again, and realized he was laughing.
“Smart arse,” but his voice was weak, even inside my head.
Hurry up, Doc, I thought, and closed my eyes.
And then I opened them, again, although it was a fight.
Something had moved amongst the trees, and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t my eyes playing tricks. The Stars knew the rest of the world was doing funny things. Maybe I had just imagined it. Maybe it was my entire head playing tricks. The voice that followed that thought seemed real enough.
“Well, must be our lucky day,” it said, as a shadow fell across me.
The toe of a boot nudged me in the ribs, and I gasped. Mack must have copped the same treatment, because he groaned, shortly after. The shadow grew darker, and wider, and I figured I really was seeing three sets of legs. I stared at them, and then tried to turn my head, so I could see the rest of the people I hoped were attached.
One of them saved me the trouble, stooping to take a better look at my face.
“They’re alive.”
Well, Hells, yes, we were! What were they? Blind?
“Like I said, lucky.”
“They need medical.”
I rolled my eyes, felt Mack tense, and knew one of us needed to find the words to warn them.
“Hand,” I said, trying to get their attention, but they didn’t get it.
Warmth swept down around us as another vehicle arrived. I wanted to sit up. I even tried to talk, but I couldn’t get my body to obey me. I tried to speak, but my tongue wouldn’t cooperate, and my throat locked up.
Shadows moved at the edge of my vision, and the silver side of a med box drifted past. It was followed by a second box, which was set down beside it. I watched as the legs came back into view, and another face looked down into mine.
“We’re going to put you in a stasis box,” said the first voice I’d heard, and I swallowed hard, trying to get my voice to work, even as my brain scrambled to judge the distance between the nearest box and Mack.
“No,” I tried, but I felt more tired than the day seemed to warrant.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” the voice said, and I wanted to say something sarcastic in return.
Still couldn’t get my voice to obey.
The face lifted away, and I felt hands under my shoulders, and around my legs.
No! I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t make a sound, had to fight to keep my eyes open.
Mack’s hand twitched, his arm shaking as though he was trying to raise it, and I knew he was making a grab for me, even as he failed to move an inch. One of the men lifting me noticed, and laughed.
“You’ll be together, soon enough,” he said, and it was more mockery than comfort—which was what made the sudden flare of light at my wrist, and shattering pain that followed, almost funny.
I might have laughed, if I hadn’t blacked out completely.
