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The next five days were spent in constant preparation—and Delight gate-crashed our weapons races. To my surprise, we occasionally beat her, although I was considerably poorer by the end of the week than I had been at the beginning. Mack was unsympathetic.
“Again,” he said, when I’d been cleaned out for the seventh round in a row, and I complied.
Doc had stopped by to watch us. My guess is that he wanted to deliver the results of my latest scan, but Mack made him wait until the tenth round was done. By then I’d won back half of my losses. Not too bad. Delight was disgusted.
“I’m getting slow,” she muttered.
“You’re getting old,” Pritchard said, and promptly pocketed the last round.
“Mats,” Delight demanded, and Pritchard rolled his eyes, as he stood up from the table.
“Anyone ever told you that you’re a sore loser?” he asked, on his way out the door.
“Nobody dares,” Delight retorted, as they disappeared from view. “Except you.”
The rest of us, just watched them go, and then Doc gave me the all clear for normal range practice.
“I’d like to see how she goes in mock combat,” he added, “but I don’t want to risk putting her out of action for the mission.”
“Does she have to go?” Tens asked, and both he and Doc looked expectantly at Mack.
I looked, too, but I was starting to feel like I was invisible.
“Corovan expects it,” Mack answered. “We haven’t told him we’ve destroyed his mine. Right now, he thinks he has us right where he wants us. I’d like to keep it that way, for a bit longer.”
“Will it be more dangerous, if she doesn’t go?” Doc wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “I’d rather not risk it. Also, it hides some of what we can do from him. If he doesn’t know we can deal with that level of tech, then he won’t try anything more difficult the next time. It reduces the risk for all of us, and I don’t want him coming after the ship.”
That made sense. I remembered the last time someone had gotten their hands on the ship... or, rather, personnel from the ship. It made me wonder how Rohan was, but I didn’t have time to ask. I added it to the list of things I had to do when I got back. Right now, I was just happy if the Shady Marie, and its people, remained out of enemy hands.
“I’m fine with going,” I said, before Doc could raise a protest.
He half-turned, raising one eyebrow, and eyeing me with consternation. I explained before he could ask why.
“I don’t want anything to happen to the people here. Couldn’t live with it.”
I could feel my face going red, and picked a spot on Doc’s shirt to stare at. It was better than staring at his face. Mack came to my rescue.
“That’s settled then,” he said. “She goes.”
And there was a finality in his tone that told me he was glad to be able to close the argument. Doc looked from him to me, and then looked away.
“On both your heads, then,” he said, and walked slowly out the door.
I watched him go, aware of just how still Mack and Tens were standing. When the door closed behind Doc, we turned to face each other.
“Well,” Mack said, pushing away from the table. “Let’s go over it, one more time.”
So, we did. This time the plan was devastatingly simple, and I wondered why we hadn’t tried it the first time.
“Last time, we were trying to be subtle,” Mack told me. “This time round, we don’t care who we piss off.”
Oh. Well. Good, then.
“So, I’m not about die?” I asked, and Mack grinned, although it was more a baring of teeth than a smile.
“Not unless you argue with me,” he said, “and then I just might not be able to help myself.”
I glared at him, but Tens made a point of showing us the balconies, and we had to listen. After all, those suckers were the only way out we were going to have, if things blew six ways to Sunday while were still on the lower levels. I didn’t like the look of them, but Tens didn’t care.
When he was done making sure we knew how to get out onto them, he rose from his seat.
“I need to keep an eye on the data feeds,” he said. “See if anything comes up before we hit the porters in the morning.”
Porters?
Oh. Right. We were teleporting in, gonna set ourselves up a little landing bay right in the middle of Blaedergil’s back yard. I wondered what security measures he had against that.
“None,” Tens replied, reminding me that my mind had ceased to be my own, and that I tended to think direct to my implant which was currently open to any of the three who chose to keep half an eye on what went on in there. “There used to be some kind of dog, but Delight made a call, and now there isn’t.”
I didn’t want to know how Delight had pulled that off, but given I didn’t want to get bitten, I decided to just be grateful.
“Fine,” I said. “And how do we know the authorities aren’t going to detect us?”
Mack wrinkled his lip.
“We don’t, but Delight has arranged a diversion that should keep them busy for a while... and we’ve prepared something for when Skymander comes to visit.”
Tens frowned at him.
“Even so, you’ll need to be fast.”
Which was when I remembered that he was staying with the ship, that it was just Mack and me, who were going planetside—and Delight, although she wasn’t going into Blaedergil’s complex with us. She and Pritchard had to attend to other business.
As I thought about that, I remembered one of the questions I’d forgotten to ask.
“What happens to the children?” I asked, and caught Mack’s blank stare. “You know. The children that Blaedergil’s brides give birth to.”
“Ah. Those children.”
Mack’s expression grew bleak, and he pushed away from the table.
“We don’t know. We think they get sent to Skymander’s world, but we can’t be sure. The little bits we’ve gleaned about Skymander, is that inheritance descends through the male, which means that male heirs not born to a Skymander lord are considered illegitimate nobodies at best, and potential threats to the real heirs at worst. What Blaedergil did with his offspring, we do not know.”
I frowned.
“We need to find out,” I said, by which I meant that I needed to know, but Mack seemed to get it.
“Odyssey have put a team on it,” he said, and I felt a part of me relax.
As much as I disagreed with what they had done with me, I knew they were thorough, and I wanted... No. I needed to whatever information could be found. For once Mack seemed to understand, and he chose not to argue with me.
“I’ll have Delight pass on what she can,” he said, and then lifted his head to stare into space.
I’d seen that look before; it meant he was communicating direct via implant. It worried me that he didn’t look happy.
“One of Skymander’s lords just left the planet,” he said, when I thought the conversation was starting to go a little long. “I’ll have Tens put you in the loop.”
No sooner had he spoken, than the link to Tens went live in my head, and the files began to flow. I knew my face had taken on that same blank expression Mack’s had had a moment ago. For all I knew his face still had the same blank expression. It’s not like we weren’t receiving the same stuff, right now.
I reached out through the implant, and checked the locking mechanisms on the door to the conference room. I felt Tens following what I was doing, although how he was finding the time when he was watching the Skymander, and pulling the files as fast as he was pulling them, I didn’t know—and right now, I didn’t want to know. I was too busy reading about one Lord Sandoval Skymander.
He might not have been the biggest asshole in the universe, but the more I read, the more I counted him among them. There was a part of me that wanted him to arrive while Mack and I were still at Blaedergil’s, just so we’d have an excuse to rid the universe of his ass.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I could feel Mack agreeing. It was strange to realize that we had a common vision—and one that we probably wouldn’t be able to fulfil. It frustrated the hell out of us. I don’t know about Mack, but I swore I’d take any opportunity I could to take Skymander out.
Prince or not, the man had to die.
“Keep reading, Cutter.” Mack’s voice cut through my thoughts, and snapped me back to the content of the file.
I gave myself a mental shake, and focused. There was always a chance I would be able to find something in this file that would help me bring the Skymander down.
“You do that, Cutter.”
I didn’t bother rolling my eyes at Mack. I just focused on the words scrolling through my implant. I was still focused when I had a horrible, horrible thought. Pulling up the maps Tens had provided of the rear courtyard we were being ported into, I made an overlay of the shuttle pad at the nearest port.
“Sonuvabitch,” echoed through my skull, as Mack and Tens saw the problem.
Yeah. Cos that courtyard was just the right size. Right?
And who was to say that the Skymander lord would come into the starport like any ordinary person who chose to answer to a planetary government?
“You have a nasty turn of mind.”
Well, well. Delight had joined the party.
“I like it.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment.
“Suck it up, princess.”
Yeah?
“Don’t start, Cutter.” Mack.
Fine.
I went back to my files, and let the big kids chow down on the latest curly twist I’d thrown them. It was almost fun to see them so bent out of shape.
“Yeah, laugh it up, kiddo.” Tens.
I ignored him, too, choosing to run through the plan we’d discussed, once more, and pulling in choice bits of the new files for comparison. It made me wonder where the initial information had come from.
Tens swore, and disappeared from my head.
I couldn’t help it; I snickered.
And Mack gave me a clip upside the head.
“Ow!”
And he was immediately worried he might have actually caused some damage.
He had a point. I checked the implant, searched for pain, or anything else that might mean things were starting to go wrong—breathed a sigh of relief when I found nothing, and felt Mack relax as well.
“Keep reading—and don’t tell Doc.”
We settled back into reviewing the files, recreating the journey from the ground floor to the upper levels from the security feeds the ship had taken from my first implant during Melari’s retrieval. I don’t know when Mack joined me running through the corridors I’d remade in my mind.
“Good idea,” he said when we reached the top, for the third time, weaving our way between the cages, and dodging the diseased hands reaching for us as we went.
“Stop,” he said, when we reached the other side. “It’s time to eat—and then Doc needs to check your implant, again.”
I hadn’t realized I was tired, until he’d interrupted me, but, once I pulled myself from the files, I felt exhausted.
“You know you twitch when you run those scenarios.”
Delight had re-joined us.
“Be glad that’s all I do,” I told her, remembering how Tyler had needed a whole room to himself during training. That boy, you put him in a sim, and his entire body went along for the ride. You had to make sure he was unarmed, or that nothing was loaded, or he made one hell of a mess. It only took one sim for us to discover how he worked, and we never forgot.
“What?”
Because Mack and Delight were both looking at me, and I realized that I had sounded exactly as tired as I felt.
“You need a break,” Mack said, and I opened my mouth to argue, but he didn’t let me get a word in, “or Doc is going to kill me.”
That shut me up. Doc wouldn’t just kill Mack; he’d kill us both—and I didn’t want to find out how he planned to use the sharp-and-pointies in his clinic to make me regret ever crossing him. I was happy knowing he would... Okay, happy probably wasn’t the word to describe it, but just knowing he would do exactly as he said was enough.
“Let’s go eat.”
