It was no surprise to find myself in another airlock, but at least I could figure out what this one was for, even before the honey drained away through the mesh-grilled floor. My lungs were near to bursting when I was finally able to take a long, gasping breath of air, and think about looking around.
The bugs hadn’t stripped the night-vision goggles off my head when they dropped me in the vat, so my eyes are clear, but all I could see was a honey-colored blur. I pulled the goggles from head, and looked at my rescuer—and my heart almost stopped.
“Thank...” My gratitude stopped, too, and fear numbed my tongue.
Well for fuck’s sake! Of all the shitty days I could possibly have, this one had turned out to be one of shittiest.
“What’s going on, Cutter?”
The wolf standing in hybrid form in front of me, didn’t look any better for being coated in honey. The fur on its head was slicked down, and it pulled a set of goggles away from its eyes, before starting to peel itself out of the dive-suit it was wearing. It caught me staring, and curled its lip, and I remembered to break eye contact.
Of course, that made me look down, just as it bent and pulled its legs and feet clear of the suit, which wasn’t so bad until it straightened up. I blushed, turning quickly so I was facing a little bit away, and it grinned, running clawed fingers over a keypad set in the wall.
I waited for the door to open, but it didn’t. Instead, a small drawer slid out of the wall and it dropped its suit inside. When the drawer closed again, it looked over at me, and I backed up a step. I might be coated in honey, and sticky as hell, but there was no way I was ditching my clothes.
The wolf’s jaw dropped in a very wolfish smirk, and it tapped another combination into the wall, and then stood clear. I was still wondering what it was waiting for, when we were hit by a wall of warm, and slightly sudsy water.
The honey melted under the onslaught, and I figured it was partly due to water temperature and mostly due to chemicals, but it was a relief to feel it slide off my skin and flow through the grill beneath us. My boots were soaked, and my feet felt like they were squelching, but I didn’t want to go barefoot into a wolf lair, any more than I wanted to walk through one naked, so I kept them on.
When the water stopped, I brushed damp strands of hair out of my face, and looked over at the wolf. He grinned, and then shook. Water sprayed off him, and I bounded back another two steps and into a wall.
“You motherfucking bastard!” was out before I could catch it, and the wolf snapped his gaze in my direction, all traces of amusement gone from his face.
“How would you know?” he asked, his voice rippling with gutturals and traced in fur. I didn’t know how to take it, when he added, “You’re not a parent.”
There was a low whistle in my head, and Tens said, “You’re in some deep shit, now,” which I really didn’t need to hear.
I stared at the wolf, again, and only just remembered to lower my head and not look him directly in the eye. I had a tunnel full of honey on the other side of an airlock door, and no desire to get to know it any better than I already did. I stood there, staring at a point just below the wolf’s jaw-line, as he glared at me, and I waited.
After a minute, I lifted my head enough to see his face, and caught the wrinkle of his nose. From the look of it, he was scenting something foul, and I hope it wasn’t me. Why I should care, I don’t know, but I did.
“Why are you here?” he asked, and I forgot about not looking him in the eye.
I hadn’t registered it before, but I did now. The damned thing was speaking Galbas, as in, how folk spoke in the present, rather than some ancient wolf dialect that died back when the Wolf Wars were fought. I raised my head and stared.
This time, the wolf ignored the direct look, laughing as he punched the exit code and signaled for me to follow.
Since when did isolated descendants of an ancient war know modern Standard Inter-Gal?
“You want to know why we’re here?” he asked, and I nodded. “Well, you go first.”
Tension ran through my head, as Mack, Tens, and Case waited for me to answer. I’ll give them this, though. Not a single one of them tried to tell me what to say.
17— A History of Wolves
When I didn’t answer, the wolf took a few steps more out of the airlock, and I followed, watching as the door closed. When it had sealed shut, again, some of the tension ran out of me. Of course, it could have just been the water, which was now forming a puddle on the floor around my feet, but the wolf didn’t think so.
“Enclosed spaces?” he asked, guessing wrong. “Your captain must not be very bright to send you down here.”
“I work quite well in tunnels,” I said, and stopped, in case I was revealing more than I should.
“What were you doing here?” it repeated.
This time, I answered. “Captain contracted me out to Barangail to retrieve a bracelet.”
The wolf cocked its head. “Go on.”
“Bracelet turned out to be a slave bracelet, and I offered to help remove it, in return for the rebels letting me live.”
The wolf curled his lip.
“Not bad,” he said, and his body shuddered with the unsettling ripple that most shifters went through when changing form.
I took a step away from him, but didn’t take my eyes off him.
Lupar, right? They had a hybrid form, a human form, and some could even look like a real wolf—you know, the kind with four feet and a fluffy tail. This one went from hybrid to human in a fast-flowing movement that had me cussing when I saw the final result.
“Sonuvabitch! Varian! You scared the living crap out of me.”
The rebel leader arched an eyebrow. His lips curved into a small smile, and he cocked his head. A chill ran through me, as the smile faded from his face.
“I should still scare the living crap out of you,” he said. “I am lupar, and you are prey.”
That stopped me. I was nothing’s prey. I lifted my head and straightened my spine.
“Fuck,” Tens muttered, in the implant where Varian couldn’t hear.
“Cutter...” Mack’s voice had a warning ring to it.
I ignored them both.
Varian snarled, but it didn’t sound right coming out of a human throat, and I had to bite back the urge to laugh. I might be all kinds of stupid, but that particular variety, I wasn’t. I did the safest thing I could think of; I changed the subject.
“Your turn. What are you doing down here.” I gestured at the smooth, ship-like corridors around me. “And in this?”
To my surprise, he answered.
“We were here guarding a lupar research team. The team paid Barangail for access to the tunnels and the gorge, providing him with one of the finest concubines we’ve yet trained, and he let us have access to this part of the caverns.”
“You found the wreck,” I said, and Varian gave me a look that mixed curiosity with satisfaction.
“We found the wreck,” he confirmed.
I continued, filling in the gaps as I went.
“And Celia is the concubine you sold Barangail. Did you re-call her?”
“Celia has a mind of her own, as Barangail was warned. He assured us he knew how to handle his women, and promptly mishandled her enough that she devised her own escape. By that stage, we’d discovered the wreck and the rebellion. We refurbished the first, and infiltrated the second. This planet could do with a change of management.”
From the way he said it, I didn’t think the wolf was referring to the overthrow of a few lords and the establishment of the kind of government the rebels had in mind. I tried to keep the realization off my face, but Varian’s lips quirked upwards, and I knew I’d failed. I backed up a second step, and glanced down the corridor.
I couldn’t go back the way I’d come, but I could try to find an external hatch and make it out into the caverns.
“Or I could teleport your ass out of there,” Tens muttered, and I shook my head.
> “No,” I said, keeping the words firmly between my teeth. “Let’s play this out a little further, and see where it leads. Either way, Odyssey is gonna wanta know about things, and we’ll need to give them as much intel as we can gather.”
Whatever he’d thought of my expression, Varian turned away.
“Come,” he said, his tone reminding me of pack leaders I’d come across before.
I pushed aside the resentment at being treated like a raw pup, and followed, surprised, too, that he hadn’t put me in cuffs, or threatened me with reprisal if I tried to escape. That was very out of character for a wolf.
I followed after him, turning my head to take in as much of the ship as I could. Mack and Delight would both want to be pulling memories out of my head so they could go wandering through them later. They called it making the most of a resource; I called it lazy intelligence gathering.
Before either Mack or Tens could respond to that, I made an observation of my own.
“I don’t think we’re getting anything out of this little debacle,” I said. “The wolves have your ship, Barangail is screwing everyone six ways to stardust, and the arach are about to make life complicated. I’d call this little trip a bust, boss”
“Not entirely,” Mack said, but he sounded down. “Odyssey still pay a bounty for information on arach incursions, and I’m pretty sure they’ll pay one to know the lupar are playing so far from home.”
I was about to respond to that, when Varian grabbed my arm and shook me—and I realized I’d disappeared into my head, and completely missed our arrival outside a large, wide door.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and he gave a growl of frustration.
“I said, you will be very respectful to my captain,” he told me, obviously repeating the instruction. “I do not want to be explaining to your Hammer and your Arc why you are missing your throat.”
I swallowed and gave him a wide-eyed stare, pulling myself together as he morphed from man to lupar, and opened the door.
“Come,” he said, and there was the tiniest hint of a bite to his words.
I went, walking in to the middle of a large office, and resisting the urge to give him the middle finger. As I entered, I took in the luxurious pile of the carpet, a desk made of polished ant carapace, and the ship-style shelves and cabinets lining the walls.
“Stay,” Varian ordered, and crossed to one of the cabinets.
I stopped and waited, daring a peek at the wolf behind the desk from beneath lowered lashes, as Varian fussed with the cabinet. A low rumble from behind the desk drew my attention, and I turned a little more to face the wolf seated there. I guess he wasn’t used to being ignored in his own domain.
Well, sucked to be him, then, didn’t it?
Varian finished whatever he was doing in the cabinet and crossed back over the carpet. I resisted the urge to take a look at him, and flicked a glance up at the wolf captain. As I did, I discovered that it actually sucked to be me.
Varian had kept moving when he’d gotten to me, reaching out to snap a collar around my neck and seal it closed.
“What the f...”
A low growl reminded me where I was, and I stopped, looking up to take a good look at the wolf behind the desk. The captain—and he was regarding me with the coldest look of assessment I’d had in a long time.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and I wondered that he wasn’t privy to the conversation I’d already had with Varian. I turned and looked at the rebel-leading wolf-man, and his captain wasn’t impressed.
“Answer my question!” barked out with enough force to make me jump.
I swallowed down a knot of nerves, and felt Mack inside my head. This time, he was looking through my eyes, and listening with my ears, pulling the data straight from my senses and the implant record—and I was pretty damned sure he was transferring them straight to a screen, too, goddammit!
I didn’t have time protest. I’d spent too long in my head, and Varian nudged me.
“You were asked a question.”
Again, that perfect Gal, and I realized the captain was speaking it, too. Inside my head, I could feel Mack holding his breath, and couldn’t resist the spike of mischief that ran through me. Before Mack, or Tens, or Rohan could do anything to stop me, I gave the wolf captain my answer.
“I wondered what the beaches were like this time of year.”
Yeah. Now, Mack wanted to kill me... or maybe just wring my neck. It was hard to tell, but the man was pissed. I guessed there was another three rounds on the mats in my very near future, and the thought made me smirk.
Given the wolf captain didn’t know I was smirking at the captain inside my head, and not him, that was probably a mistake. I focused.
Oh, yeah. That was a mistake.
I’d already known these things could move like greased lightning, but going from sitting behind an office desk to leaping clear over it with enough momentum to put me into a wall? That was new.
I peeled myself off the wall, my head ringing, and my eyes just a touch blurry. The wet combat armor hadn’t done much to cushion the impact, either. Things moved in my chest that I was pretty sure should have still been pinned down, and I did my best to hide that from the angry seven or eight feet of wolf that had come to stand two feet in front of me.
It’s hard to look up at someone, while keeping your chin down, harder still to avoid looking them in the eye. I managed to stand on my own two feet, and not fall over, and somehow fumbled my way through the rest.
Memories of Rovan wandered through my head, and I pulled myself together. This was not Rovan, and I was not going to offer him my throat in submission.
“Good to hear,” Mack murmured.
“You might not have a choice,” Case said.
“Didn’t you have a mission to go on?” I snarled back.
“Working on it.’ Tens, cutting in before Case or Stepyan could reply.
“Work faster,” I snapped, and, whether it was the pain, or fatigue from swimming through a river of ant honey, I don’t know, but I said that last bit out loud.
The long-clawed hand that picked me up by the throat and pinned me to the wall at wolf eye height jolted me back out of my head, and I realized something really had come adrift in my chest.
It shifted, and I gasped.
The wolf captain curled his lip, and I focused on his fangs rather than look him in the eye.
Looking him in the eye when he was this pissed-off with me... Not a good idea.
“Pissing him off in the first place. Not a good idea.”
Thanks, Mack.
What was it with all the captains in my life?
“And what are you going to do about it?” I asked, this time keeping my mouth shut.
That last bit wasn’t hard, because I was gritting my teeth against the pain, and keeping my lips pressed tight together to avoid making a sound. At least I wasn’t in any danger of offering the big bastard my throat...not while his hand was wrapped around it, at least.
He lifted me off the wall and shook me, and I realized I’d closed my eyes. When I hit the wall, again, I yelped, all thoughts of staying silent gone from my head. Stars, I really hoped he didn’t do that, again.
“What are you doing here?” he repeated, and the growl at the edge of his words went bone deep.
Fuck.
“I came down here to retrieve a bracelet,” I said, and was shaken again. “Bastard!”
This time, the growl engulfed me, and I froze, eyes wide and staring. I’m not sure what would have happened next, if Mack’s voice coming through the speakers hadn’t caught his attention, and caused him to snap his head around, searching for the source.
“We were looking for the wreckage in which you’ve made your home.”
And since when did Mack know formaleze like that?
“You’d be surprised, girl.”
I would, but I was jealous of the way he could carry on a conversation via the implant, while still speaking through the comm
s.
“You’ll get over it,” he told me, as his voice rang through, again. “I am Hunt Master Mackenzie Star—and that is my Outlier.”
Well, fuck me. Just how much of the last wolf incident had Mack pulled out of my head? But this time it was Tens who answered.
“All of it.”
“When?”
“You spent a lot of time in the tank.”
This was true, but...
“We downloaded the files.”
Fuck! “That was private.”
“Sweetheart, nothing’s ever that private.”
Obviously, but Mack was still talking and I wanted to hear what he was saying.
“...relinquish our claim on the wreck, in return for our Runner.”
Was that another wolf term?
“Yup.” I ignored Tens, trying to keep focused on the conversation between the current captains in my life.
“Girl, I’d better be the only captain in your life.”
Tens snickered, and Mack went back to his conversation with the wolf. I felt my face heat briefly, and then go back to being cold. That was probably shock setting in...or maybe it was just the after-effects of being dripping wet in a cooler environment after the warmth of the tunnels. That would be preferable.
I dangled, feeling my own weight pulling on whatever had come adrift in my chest, and resisting the urge to go to sleep and let the big dogs handle things. The wolf’s next reply meant the conversation had my undivided attention.
“She was disrespectful.”
“She is always disrespectful.”
Thanks, Mack, but Mack hadn’t finished.
“That is a matter for me to handle.”
Uh huh. Well, too bad. I figured he’d had to wait until my ribs heal, first, but the wolf hadn’t finished.
“As a breeding female, she would make a prime trade, and we went to some trouble to save her life for just that purpose.”
I might have protested at that, but I was too tired, and too sore, and that grip on my throat was just a tad too tight. I focused on breathing—and tried to work out just how much damage I could do, if I landed a boot in the big guy’s gut.
Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 Page 15