Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

by C. M. Simpson

  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.”

  9—A Suspicious Meal

  Our host led the way down broad corridors of a polished white stone I couldn’t identify. I thought about leaping into the closest database to find out what it was called, only to have Mack call me back.

  “Why don’t you check the menu?” he suggested, and my stomach thought that was a great idea.

  No sooner had the seed been planted, than I was leaping into the system to do exactly that.

  “And keep an eye out for trouble, but don’t do anything.”

  Huh. Was he sure I should go looking for trouble?

  Mack sighed.

  “Dinner first.”

  Dinner. Oh. Yes, right.

  I rifled through the database, found the link to the kitchen, and headed on over to the terminal to which the chefs were referring. There was an interesting section there on soporifics, with Mack’s and my weights calculated in for dosage. There was also a list of the ingredients that would go a long way to masking the taste.

  I kept an eye on Barangail and his team, as I followed them down the corridor—and I did it, while erasing the soporifics and their related dishes from the display screen. Some of those things were temperature sensitive; I wondered where he kept them.

  “Focus, Cutter.”

  I huffed out a sigh, but I did as I was told, concentrating on erasing the data from the system, and tweaking the menu to something we should be able to eat without needing a medical team, after. All the while, I glared at Barangail, until four of his protection detail dropped back to walk beside and behind me.

  “Now, look what you’ve done,” Mack grumbled. “You’ve gone and made these nice men nervous.”

  I had? The thought made me grin. Nervous was good. They should be nervous.

  The one nearest me, glanced down at my face, and took a step away from my side.

  Like that would do him any good.

  “Cutter.”

  “Yes, Mack?”

  “You need to let Rohan back into your head.”

  I so did not.

  “Please.”

  Please? Really? That was almost sweet.

  “Don’t make me come in there.”

  Where? In my implant? Like he could if I decided not to let him.

  “So, what’s for dinner?”

  And I told him, aware of shock stiffening Barangail’s spine, as I described every dish to the last ingredient. It took me, until we’d reached the dining room, and was enough to keep my wandering mind from getting us into trouble. When I’d finished, Barangail sighed.

  “I was hoping to keep some of that a surprise,” he said, and sounded so dejected I might have felt sorry for him, except I didn’t.

  He’d been planning on drugging us and knocking us out over dinner, and I didn’t like being lied to.

  “Oh, yeah?” I challenged, and then continued before Mack could stop me. “Which part? The actual dishes, or the amount of hypomelantin you intended to put in the sorbet? You know, so it could build on the effects of the kazveriform you were going to put in the gravy and inject into the steak, and we won’t go anywhere near how much glorrin is in the soup.”

  I looked at Mack. The soup had been simmering on the stove, when I’d been tinkering with the recipes on-screen.

  “Actually, we should skip the soup.”

  Mack was staring at me, both eyebrows rai
sed high enough to hit his hairline.

  “What?”

  He looked from me to Barangail, eyebrows still raised.

  “You what?” he asked, but his tone was more mild than outraged.

  Barangail walked through the dining room door, and stopped—and we stopped with him. A steward hovered nearby, as though he’d been waiting for our arrival. As Barangail entered, he’d stepped forward. When Barangail answered Mack, the steward stepped back, hurriedly erasing a look of sheer puzzlement from his face.

  “I wanted to be sure of your services,” Barangail said, making it sound like it was perfectly reasonable to be drugging his contractors to make sure they’d work for him. “I wanted you to stick around.”

  Like that made it any better.

  Leaving Mack to digest this piece of information, he started walking, again, moving to the head of the table, the steward hovering in his wake. His team moved with him, except for the six men moving with Mack and me. They followed us, as we stepped across the dining room’s threshold.

  No sooner had we entered, than we noticed more staff waiting just inside. They approached immediately, with ‘This way, sir’ for Mack, and ‘Follow me, ma’am,’ for me. The greeting made me grimace. They didn’t know me very well. Nevertheless, we followed, and were soon seated at the table.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about being sat opposite Mack, instead of beside him, but I didn’t argue. For his part, Mack didn’t seem too happy with the arrangement, either. But he didn’t protest. I followed his lead, and let my personal waiter, tuck me into my chair.

  As soon as we were settled, with napkins on our laps, and our personal minders arrayed along the wall behind us, the door to the kitchens opened. I knew they were the doors to the kitchens, because I still had the floorplans for the complex running through my head.

  Mack caught that thought and pulled a face, shaking his head like I’d spoken out loud.

  I reran the last minute in my head, and found I hadn’t. Couldn’t figure out what was bothering Mack so much about me having the blueprints to Barangail’s home in my head. We might need them, right?