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From what I could tell, negotiations were going well, when Delight intervened. She appeared at the back of the room to one side of Sandoval, a small, carefully swaddled bundle in her arms, a Blazer protruding from beneath it. Pritchard was nowhere to be seen.
“Delight!” Mack roared, even as Sandoval and Treivani turned to see what had drawn our attention. “Stand down—and give that child back to its mother!”
At the sound of his voice, Delight turned her head, and looked at the screen. The grin she gave us was as feral as any I’d ever seen.
“I’d rather not,” she said, and moved swiftly so that she was standing slightly to the side in front of Sandoval and his bride.
“You two,” she snarled, and I flinched at the fury in her tone, “have caused me more trouble than your lives are worth.”
“Delight!” Mack said, and the screens went dead. “Well, fuck me twenty times to Sunday! Tens!”
“I’ve got you.”
I wanted to ask Tens what he meant, but his hands moved swiftly across the controls in front of him, and silver light enveloped me.
“Well, fuck me,” I managed.
Mack’s voice greeted me as the light dissipated from around us.
“You are combat trained, aren’t you Cutter?”
I nodded, turning my head to take in my new surroundings. I did not want to know how Tens had calculated the coordinates for that little stunt, but I was really glad he’d gotten them right. We’d materialized in the room opposite Delight.
“It was easy. I tracked the signal for the ship’s coordinates, and then tracked the source to the right deck.”
“Shut. Up. I don’t want to know.”
And I truly didn’t. I had other things to occupy my attention. Getting under cover, for instance, so I didn’t get my ass shot off. Delight had this snap-shooting thing down pat. I’d thank Mack for the body armor, later.
“Excuse us,” Mack said to Sandoval. “We’ll be off your ship shortly.”
Somehow, I doubted that, but I wasn’t going to argue. If the man said we’d be off the ship, shortly, then that’s what we’d be doing. I had no doubt that Tens was preparing the teleport, as we spoke.
“Delight,” Mack said. “You need to come with us.”
She scowled at him.
“You have no idea—” she began, but Mack cut her off.
“And you can fill me in when we get back to the ship. Now, give the lady back her baby.”
“But—”
“I’d do it, Catriona,” Pritchard advised, and I startled, because his voice had come from right behind me.
I didn’t think, just reacted, sidestepping and turning to take him in. He waited, watching as I came round to face him, and then he let me take the gun from his fingers.
“Tens?” I said, but a faint silver glow was growing around Pritchard, and I knew Tens had already picked him up.
I took Pritchard’s gun and stepped back around so I could see what was happening with Delight and Sandoval. Mack had moved, interposing himself between Delight and her targets, and Sandoval had quietly slid off the arm of the couch, and taken his first step around its end.
“Stop,” I said, and both he and Treivani glanced towards me. They froze, as I levelled Pritchard’s stolen weapon at them. Sandoval started to smirk, but, before I could work out why, Mack spoke.
“Drop the gun,” he said, and I heard a clatter. “Now, give me the child.”
I kept my eyes on the lord and his lady, but was aware of Delight stepping forward, and of the tiny adjustment Mack made to his stance as the child was handed over. The muffled sound of a smaller weapon going off came as a sudden and unpleasant surprise.
“Now,” Mack groaned, and I saw silver surround the Odyssey agent as she was whisked away.
Mack waited until she had vanished completely, before coming slowly around to face Sandoval and Treivani. His face was pale, and beads of sweat had started to form on his forehead, but he indicated the child held in the crook of his arm, and took a step forward.
“Your child,” he said, and she was off the couch and taking her baby from his grasp before I could react.
To my surprise, Sandoval followed her, pulling her into the curve of one arm as he looked at Mack.
“Thank you,” he said, and Mack nodded.
“Now,” he whispered, and Tens wrapped the teleport around both of us, and pulled us back to the command center.
When we arrived, Mack wrapped his arms tightly across his stomach, and staggered over to his console. He sank into the chair, and, before either Tens or I could ask him what was wrong, he’d activated its stasis capability, and enclosed himself in a pod.
Tens swore, and I saw the gun in Delight’s hand. She caught the expressions on our faces and twisted her mouth into the facsimile of a smile that came and went in a flash. I brought Pritchard’s gun up, and trained it on her, returning her expression, as I glared.
“You have a cabin,” Tens said. “Go there.”
And Delight laughed.
“You’re sending me to my room?” she asked, in disbelief, but Tens refused to be drawn.
“And we’re billing Odyssey with the cost of your retrieval, Mack’s medical expenses, and the cost of the inconvenience of Mack being down.”
Delight opened her mouth to argue, but Tens wasn’t finished. He looked at Pritchard.
“You might want to get her out of here, before she adds anything else.”
Pritchard looked at Delight.
“You shot him?”
She shrugged.
“Your point?”
Pritchard didn’t answer, he just wrapped his hand under her bicep and moved her towards the command center door. When she brought her arm back into his gut, he pulled her across in front of his chest, and wrapped an arm around her throat, putting her out in seconds. When she’d stopped struggling, he scooped her up into his arms, and continued to the door.
“She’ll be fine, when she wakes up,” he said. “If you wouldn’t mind locking the doors to our quarters once we’re inside?”
“Done,” Tens agreed.
Pritchard dipped his head in acknowledgement, and walked out, taking Delight with him.
“You know that thing still has its safety on, right?” Tens asked me, when the door had closed behind Pritchard.
“Hell, I don’t even know what this thing is,” I told him, “but Pritchard handed it to me, instead of shooting me in the head with it, so I guess I’m grateful.”
“You’re lucky Pritchard was with her,” Tens said. “Things could have gone south in a very bad way, if he hadn’t been.”
As he spoke, the view screen went live, and Sandoval came into view. Treivani wasn’t in sight, and Sandoval was alone.
“Tell me why I should let any of you live,” he said, and I heard suppressed fury in his tone.
“Since Mack took a shot for you,” Tens replied, “and since he stood in front of Delight’s gun, and since Mack got your wife her child back, unharmed.”
An alarm sounded on my console, and I ran towards it. As I reached it and slid into my seat, the air shuddered at various points around the command center.
“Oh, nice job,” Tens said, and turned to me, even as his hands moved like lightning over his console. “Stay very, very still.”
On the screen, Sandoval smiled, and it was as cold as any smile I’d seen from Delight. He didn’t say anything, though, just watched as his men materialized in the command center, and brought their weapons to bear.
“Hands!”
“Show me hands!”
The shouts rattled around us, and I lifted my hands away from the console, but not before checking that Delight and Pritchard were well and truly locked in their cabins—and then I added a layer of security to the one that Tens had already laid down, and looped the security feeds to their cabins so they’d show empty no matter how long they ran.
“Nice.” Tens said, but his presence was brief, and he was sitting just as still as I was, when he lifted his hands.
I swiped the console in front of me, locking it down tight, before I raised my hands, and held them up near my shoulders. A brief glance at Sandoval showed that he hadn’t moved, even though his eyes had followed every move Tens and I were making. It was hard to split my attention between him and the men moving purposefully to the consoles around the command center.
I watched as one walked towards the security console. He stopped when he was a couple of paces away.
“Get up,” he said, but I shook my head.
He frowned, and glanced at Sandoval. Sandoval nodded, and the trooper levelled his gun.
“Move.”
I was about to refuse, again, when Tens spoke.
“Move, Cutter.”
His order was followed by Sandoval’s next comment.
“You can’t negotiate when you’re dead.”
“Move, Cutter,” Tens repeated, this time in my head, and I obeyed, standing slowly, and moving to one side so the trooper could occupy my seat.
“You’re taking the ship?” Tens asked?
“We need to negotiate,” Sandoval said, “and your ship is dead in the water. My men will run up the drives and we’ll move it into port.”
There was a port? I glanced over at Tens, glad to see the same question flit briefly across his face.
Sandoval looked from one to the other of us, obviously enjoying our confusion.
“You didn’t know?” he asked, and we shook our heads.
“Truly?”
And we shook our heads, again. He frowned, managing to look truly puzzled.
“Your pilot flew you right to my doorstep,” Sandoval said, and I felt my jaw drop. “What? She didn’t mean to?”
“What she was doing isn’t an exact science,” Tens said. “It makes us hard to track, but it’s virtually impossible to navigate.”
Sandoval’s expression turned to mild disbelief.
“How do you not end up in a sun? Or smeared across a moon?”
“There are safeguards,” Tens explained. “We just put on as much speed as we can as we hit the warp point, and then do a second warp straight after taking a random course heading. Theory is that the warp points are usually in clear space, and the safeguards won’t let us collide.”
The mild disbelief turned to absolute disbelief.
“That’s insane.”
“We won’t tell Case you said that.”
“And you didn’t know the warp point you chose was the exit point I needed to take to get home?”
Tens seemed to sag.
“No,” he said, sounding tired.
Well, I thought, at least that explains how they found us so fast. They hadn’t even had to look—and Case just hadn’t randomized enough.
Tens shot me a look that said he’d caught that thought and disagreed, and then he turned towards to the command console that Mack usually occupied.
“Please don’t,” he said, looking at the trooper standing near Mack’s seat, and getting ready to reverse the stasis cycle so he could take the chair. “He was shot.”
“Shot?” Sandoval was curious.
“Delight lost her temper when she handed over the child.”
Sandoval’s gaze sharpened.
“This Delight. Do you have her?”
Tens shook his head, lying so smoothly, I almost believed him.
“We sent her to the nearest Odyssey ship. We didn’t want her aboard.”
“Hmm. Understandable. Where are your crew?”
“We put them into stasis before we warped. Those kinds of jumps; they’re not safe to do outside a pod.”
Sandoval gave a short huff of laughter.
“We’ll leave them in stasis. What about your engineers? You shut down your drives after you saw my ship.”
“They’re standing by.”
“Tell them to stand down,” Sandoval said. “I would like to continue our negotiations when Mack has been treated. I’d rather not jeopardize those by shooting his crew.”
Tens looked to the man who’d seated himself behind his console.
“May I?” he asked, and the man nodded.
It didn’t take Tens long to send the message. Once he had, the man at my console looked at me.
“Unlock it,” he said, but I shook my head.
“You don’t need live weapons.”
“I do need to see your security feeds.”
I shook my head.
“No, you don’t,” I argued, but Sandoval didn’t agree.
“Unlock the feeds,” he said.
The trooper pushed the seat back, so I could reach the console, and I did as I’d been asked, isolating Delight and Pritchard’s rooms from the system, and hoping Sandoval’s goons would be gone before they thought they needed to go looking.
He checked what I’d done, and nodded.
“There are people in Medical,” he said, and Tens hastened to explain.
“We had injured. They’re being treated.”
“Lock them down,” Sandoval instructed, and Tens spoke, again.
“I need to get Mack to Medical,” he said. “He needs regen.”
“We’ll see to him,” Sandoval said, and the air around Mack’s pod rippled.
It was little more than a heat-wave shimmer, but when the air had steadied once more, the pod was gone.
“But—” Tens started, and Sandoval held up his hand.
“You and the girl will be joining him as guests on the cruiser,” he said. “Kindly put down your weapons.”
I didn’t move. I’d put the unfamiliar weapon down to operate the console, and it was still where I’d left it. Tens, on the other hand, took several minutes to disarm himself, and was then thoroughly checked by the two troopers who had stationed themselves between his console, and the command console. When they were done with him, they moved to me, and did the same.
“All clear,” and, for the fourth time that day, I was pulled apart, and reconstructed elsewhere.
I can’t say it was an improvement. Sandoval’s teleport team was just as good as the one Mack had on board. I ended up in a different room to Tens, and without access to my implant. I mean, it was there, but inoperable. I poked it a couple of times, and then set about exploring my new quarters: bare walls, bare floor, enough room to stretch out in...
I tried the first logical place for a control pad, and opened a small panel that fitted seamlessly into the wall. At least the buttons were clearly marked: bed, san, shower, food replicator. Nothing to indicate an intercom.
I poked them all, and surveyed the results.
“Huh,” I said, wondering if Sandoval was listening in, or if we just weren’t that important. “I guess this is what the naughty corner looks like.”
I sighed, but that’s as far as I got, because everything got sucked back into the walls, and I could hear it being locked again. Sandoval’s voice drowned out my second sigh.
“Wrong,” he said, and the walls of the room contracted around me, until I was standing in a space that was three-feet square. “This is what the naughty corner looks like.”
I froze, but the walls expanded to their previous settings, and Sandoval continued.
“However, as you have yet to be naughty, so to speak, you can have this configuration. My apologies for the entertainment, but Odyssey’s training files indicate you are able to exploit equipment more complex than that provided—and we don’t want a repeat of what happened when we tried to accommodate Delight in something less spartan.”
I sighed, and glared in the direction his voice was coming from, but I didn’t say a word. Not even a thank you. I figured it would be better if I got some rest, while I could. No doubt Mack would have a busy schedule, when he woke up. I wondered what Tens was doing, and then decided it didn’t matter.
I hit the shower, reluctantly changing back into my combat gear, rather than running the risk of getting caught wearing nothing but the dressing gown I found hanging on the wall. Run of luck I’d had? I wasn’t betting the odds that wouldn’t happen. If Sandoval felt disappointed, he didn’t show it.
In fact, he didn’t show anything. He remained ominously quiet, and I hoped he hadn’t found a reason to pay Tens and Mack any more attention than he was paying me—except maybe Mack, because, in Mack’s case, I hoped Sandoval was making sure Mack got the medical treatment he needed. With that thought in my head, I lay down and closed my eyes, wishing I had the Zakrava, or Blazer, or something else close to hand.
