Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

by C. M. Simpson

  Man didn’t say anything, either. He just set about the two of us with the stick, until he had us backed up and separated, and then he jabbed Mack in the gut for good measure.

  “No. Rough-housing. In. The. Clinic!”

  Wow, so that was Doc looked like when he was really pissed off. I raised my hands as he turned towards me, flinching when the end of the stick struck the wall beside my head.

  “And don’t think I don’t know who started it.”

  “He started it...” I muttered, and he belted me in the fleshy part of the thigh with the stick—which wasn’t what hurt the most.

  Damn! He must have that thing set as high as he could make it. Made me wonder how Mack was still standing, because I sure as shit wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t had the wall to prop up on.

  “Now, get out of my med center,” Doc growled, standing clear of our path to the door.

  I pushed off the wall before he could ask again, and Mack did the same. He reached out and snagged my arm pretty darn quick, too, the strength of his grip daring me to try and break loose. I didn’t even try—not until we’d left the Doc’s domain, and not even then.

  Being naked in a room of your own, with someone you’re used to being naked in front of is a whole world of difference to walking naked down the corridor of your ship and fielding startled glances and cat-calls from your crewmates. Not that there were many of the latter.

  One look at Mack’s face, and most of the crew found a point somewhere in the direction they were going, and hurried towards it, their eyes not shifting from their goal. Looks like Mack didn’t hire the stupid—or, if he did, they didn’t stay very long. I was still very relieved when we hit my cabin, not so relieved when Mack insisted of walking me in.

  “You put her back in a tank before the mission, Mack, and you’ll be in one right alongside.” Doc’s voice came from inside both our heads, and he still didn’t sound very happy.

  I looked at Mack, and he looked back.

  “Thanks for that,” he said. “Last thing I need is a pissed-off Doc to deal with.”

  Like it was my fault!

  “You tellin’ me it ain’t?” Doc, again, and he still wasn’t happy.

  I closed my eyes, and counted to ten. When I opened them, again, Mack was still there.

  “You ready for training?” he asked, and I looked down at my bare skin.

  “Do I look like I’m ready?”

  “You want a kaff and breakfast?” he asked, and I took a breath.

  Kaff and breakfast, huh? That was one way to bribe me, I guess.

  “You beat me in two rounds, we’ll take a break and eat.”

  And there was the Mack I knew and loved, giving with one hand and taking with the other.

  “More like slapping you upside the head with the other,” he muttered, and pointed in the direction of my closet. “You need to get dressed.”

  I hesitated, my head still not quite all there.

  “Unless you want to do a training session in the nude...” he suggested. “You know how the crew like to watch...”

  Well, Hells yes, I did know, and there was no way in all the Stars I wanted to be sparring with Mack in the nude. Apart from the fact it would be downright embarrassing, it would also put me at a huge disadvantage.

  Without my boots, I could land as many kicks as I wanted, and he was just going to keep laughing at me—and without the body armor, I’d probably end up back in Medical, and both of us would be on more than Doc’s shit list.

  I wondered if he even had a list for people who were already on the shit list.

  “You better believe it, girl,” was not comforting.

  I took another glance at Mack, and headed for my closet. There was no way I wanted to be on Doc’s ‘more than shit’ list. Hell, I didn’t even like having him this mad at me. The thought that he might actually be capable of being even more angry was almost scary.

  “Almost?” Mack challenged. “Only almost?”

  “You mean you’re actually scared?” I taunted.

  “Like you’re not,” he retorted, and I hated that he could see he had a point.

  I was just a bit frightened of Doc right now.

  Rather than admit out loud what we both knew, I turned and opened the closet door.

  “What happened to my boots?” I asked, and Mack sighed.

  “They were ruined.”

  “You threw them out?” and I half-turned my head to stare at him.

  He backed up half a pace, raising his hands to shoulder height.

  “Nuh uh. I put them down in stores to dry. Stepyan said he’d take a look at them and see if they could be salvaged.”

  I held his eyes for a second longer, and then pulled one of my other pairs out of the bottom drawer. Behind me, I heard Mack breathe a very quiet sigh of relief. Man knew just how much I loved my boots.

  “Ways to a girl’s heart...” he muttered, and I wasn’t sure if he’d actually meant me to hear it.

  He neither confirmed, nor denied it, so I let it lie, and dragged out a body stocking, some under-armor, and one of the three sets of combat armor hanging in front of me.

  “You sure you got enough?” Mack asked, as I added underwear to the pile.

  “That’s none of your goddamned business!” I snapped.

  Just because I was making nice, didn’t mean my head had stopped hurting. I headed into the san unit to scrub the feel of the regen fluid off my skin. Mack gave an exaggerated sigh, and sat down in the chair by the alcove where my desk was folded away.

  “And stay off my computer,” I said, shutting the door behind me.

  “You and whose army, girl?” rumbled through my head, and I took shelter in the simple act of turning on the water, and getting it to the right temperature.

  I knew it was going to be pulled back up through the filters for another couple of washes, but it didn’t matter. Joys of ship-board life, right? That’s what made dirt-side so much fun—real showers. It was just a pity that I didn’t usually get the time to enjoy them.

  Usually I was too busy running, or shooting, or fighting, or just trying not to get myself killed for that.

  “Boo hoo.”

  I sighed, and finished up, dried myself off and pulled on my combat gear. I’d had about enough of Mack’s shit. It really was time to kick his ass.

  19—Back in Training

  “You and whose army, girl?” he asked, smirking as I emerged from the san.

  I headed for the door, pulled it open. I’d brushed my teeth, too, but my mouth still tasted like shit. Two rounds and kaff sounded like a great idea to me. It ended up being two hours, with Mack proving just how out of shape I was, and me landing on my ass more times than I cared to count.

  “Enough,” Mack said, when I went down on the last round.

  “Like Hell!” I muttered.

  It had been meant to be a shout, but a mutter was the best I could do. I was dripping with sweat, and my muscles had turned to jelly, but I was determined to... dammit! I couldn’t move my arms to get my elbows under me, let alone get back on my feet.

  I tried a half-hearted leg sweep in the vague direction of where he was standing, and couldn’t get my leg to shift. Mack came and stood over me.

  “Let’s call it a day, there,” he said, and I was about to argue, when he added, “I think I promised you a kaff, and some breakfast.”

  “Haven’t knocked you on your ass, yet,” I murmured, but all I wanted to do was sleep.

  “Not without eating, you don’t!” Doc’s voice snapped through both our heads, making us jump. “You’ll eat, and then you’ll sleep, and training is over until oh-eight-hundred, tomorrow, after breakfast.”

  Seriously?

  I stared at Mack, and was relieved to see he was just as surprised by Doc’s order as I was.

  “We’d better do as he says,” Mack told me, and stretched out his hand.

  I stared at it for a moment, and then reached up to grab it—or that was what I was meant to d
o. I got my hand off the floor, and just couldn’t raise it any higher.

  “I am as weak as piss,” I said. “Doc, what’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing a good feed, and a good eighteen hours won’t go a long way to mending.”

  “What the Hell?”

  “You push your system that hard, Cutter, something’s going ta give. Do as you’re told, and you’ll be back to your usual obnoxious self in a couple of days.”

  “I don’t have a couple of days, Doc.”

  “Kiddo, you’ve got until the end of the week. Mack, make sure she goes to bed once she’s fed.”

  Mack fixed me with a stern glare.

  “I’ll tuck her in, myself.”

  I huffed out a sigh, and struggled up onto my elbows. I was beat, and my body didn’t want to cooperate, but I got that far, and then sat up, and only then did I let Mack haul me to my feet. Before I could move away, he’d tucked his arm around me, and turned for the edge of the mat. Weird just how right that felt.

  “Weird?” Mack asked. “Feels like you belong there, to me.”

  Nice of him to say so. I guess he’d finished being the responsible captain, then, and was back to being boyfriend Mack.

  “Boyfriend, girl?” And his arm tightened. “Nah, this is more than that.”

  It was?

  I felt my heart give a happy skip, and decided I could get used to the idea. Maybe next time I skipped off the ship, he could come with me. That gave him pause.

  “You thinkin’ of running away, again?” and sadness softened his voice.

  I scowled.

  “Is it running if I drag your sorry ass with me?”

  I sensed confusion, as though he didn’t quite know what to make of that, but he gave me the best reply he knew how.

  “I don’t know,” he said, and changed the subject as we reached the cafeteria. “Just how hungry are you?”

  Truth was, I wasn’t feeling all that hungry, but, before I could answer, Doc pushed through some minimums, and I sighed.

  “How about that hungry?” I asked, and Mack guided me through to the small chamber off the main cafeteria that served as the captain’s mess.

  “Tens? You and the boy joining us for lunch?” Mack asked, and Tens came back, bright and sharp.

  “Not today, captain. We’re in the middle of something. We’ll eat later. You and the missus can have a romantic meal for two, for a change.”

  Romantic, huh? Well, sure, if you liked it when your girl fell asleep in the soup. Mack set me in the seat just off to his left, the one furthest from the door and closest to him. It had started out as a way of keeping me in reach, and become a bit of a tradition. Right now, I didn’t care.

  I slid into the seat, and propped my elbows on the table, before resting my head in my hands. I was even too tired to give Tens a hard time. Which reminded me...

  “Just where in the Stars do you get missus from?”

  But Tens didn’t reply. Mack, on the other hand.

  “Would it bother you?”

  “What?”

  “Being the captain’s wife?”

  “I...uh...”

  Uncertainty sluiced through my gut, like ice. It was one thing to accept I wanted to partner with Mack, quite another to wear the title.

  He sighed.

  “I’ll let you sleep on it,” he said, and I shot him a sharp glance.

  “Alone,” he added. “Very much alone.”

  The look on his face made me smile, and I managed to snark up a retort.

  “You better,” I said, “or Doc is gonna have your hide.”

  “I’m still gonna tuck you in,” and he sounded like he was sulking.

  I looked down at the table, then over at the door.

  “Someone said something about kaff,” I said, “or were you just talking through your ass.”

  “I could just make you go get it yourself...”

  I took my chin out of my hands, and set my palms against the edge of the table, getting ready to push back my chair, but Doc’s voice intervened.

  “She crashes before she eats, Mack, and I’m holding you personally responsible.”

  Mack gave me a startled look.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Thirty minutes, maybe less.”

  “I’ll be back,” and, with that, he was gone.

  “What do you mean ‘thirty minutes”, Doc?” I asked.

  There was a long silence, and then Doc answered.

  “I mean you’ve got maybe thirty minutes before your body decides it’s going to sleep and there’ll be nothing you can do about it.”

  Uh, huh.

  “Great.”

  “So you better eat fast when Mack comes back.”

  I had?

  “Yes, you had, because I can always kick your tail when you wake up.”

  He could?

  “Or stick you with an I.V. and get the nutrients into you that way.”

  “I’ll eat,” I said, and really hoped Mack hurried the Hell up.

  He did, and I ate like I was on standby and the Drop Master was about to kick in my door and boot my ass to a shuttle. The kaff should have helped, but it didn’t, and I barely made it through the plates Mack lined up in front of me before my eyes started to droop.

  “I’m not making it back to my bunk alone, am I?”

  “Shut up and eat, or Doc will have both our hides.”

  I shut up and ate, and pushed the plate away just as I felt the world start to spin.

  “Mack?”

  “I got you.”

  Sure, he did.

  20—It’s All About the Mission

  Turns out, Mack really did have me—and not in any carnal sense of the word. I woke up, in my bunk, alone, with a clearer head than I’d started out with the day before. I opened my eyes, and stared at the ceiling, and then shifted over onto my side.

  “You talk in your sleep,” Mack said, “and you’re as argumentative when you’re asleep as you are when you’re awake.”

  “I am?”

  It was news to me, although not as important as the realization that followed.

  “You watched me when I was asleep?”

  He shrugged, but his face colored just the tiniest bit.

  “I was worried.”

  I sat up, pushing back the covers and pleased to find I was still wearing the body stocking, even if someone had removed my combat armor and boots. That wasn’t the most concerning thing, though.

  “Did you get any sleep, yourself?”

  His eyes cut away from me, and I waited for the inevitable lie. To my surprise, it didn’t come.

  “Doc sent me to bed, threatened to put me under for a solid twelve if I didn’t get there myself.”

  “And did you go?”

  “Hells yes, I went. You saw how mad that man was. No one crosses Doc when he gets like that.”

  No-one?

  I could think of at least three on the crew who might, four if I counted Rohan, but I didn’t think he’d be quite that dumb... Oh, wait. He was just a kid.

  “Thanks a lot, Cutter, and I love you, too.”

  I wondered what Mack would make of that.

  “He knows it’s not that kind of love,” the kid quipped back, and I had to remind myself the boy wasn’t the twelve-year-old I’d rescued off Bendigo’s ship; he was coming up to his eighteenth.

  And who’da thought the little shit would live that long?

  “Hey!”

  “When you two have quite finished!”

  Mack was very much not entertained, so I got my ass out of bed and headed for the san.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” Mack said, “or you’ll be skipping breakfast.”

  I waited for Doc to contradict him, but that worthy stayed silent, and I wondered if he, too, had finally gone to bed.

  “Don’t bet on it,” Mack said. “He’s probably just biding his time.”

  And weren’t those just the right words to haunt me, as I got clean, changed,
and headed out to where Mack was still waiting.

  “You gonna change?” I asked, taking in the fatigues he was wearing.

  “These are clean on this morning,” he retorted. “You’re not the only one with multiple sets of the same thing.”

  I wasn’t, huh, but Mack wasn’t standing around waiting for me to make another smart-ass crack.

  “Food,” he said, “and then a couple of runs through the practice range.”

  “You got a map?” I asked, since we usually saved configuring the range until after we had a vague idea of what we were going into.

  “Not yet, but Tens did some research on the kind of complex, we can expect to find on Rennet’s World, and he wants the boy to get some practice in. Something about information being valuable, and how a bit of cross-training didn’t do anyone any harm.”

  That was news to me. Until that moment, I’d thought Tens was happy to have an apprentice.

  “He is, but he didn’t do all his training on board a ship,” Mack said, “and he thinks working with you will give the boy some of the side skills he picked up along the way when he was doing other things.”

  Other things, huh? Looked like there was a bit more to Tens that I needed to uncover.

  “No, you don’t, girl. You just need to leave Tens be, and make sure the boy learns what he needs to know in order to survive in your world, too.”

  Given the boy already knew a darn sight more than I had known when I’d entered the world of Odyssey and Delight, I thought he already had a pretty good start.

  “And it’s our job to make sure that start continues,” Mack said, and there was a finality in his tone that told me Captain Mack was firmly in charge. “You bet your ass, he is. Now get dressed.”

  I got dressed—and made sure I did it in record time. There was something about this job that was bothering Mack, and he wasn’t sharing what. I figured I’d broach that with him while we ate. There was something about the job that was bothering me, too.

  “We’re doing the job,” Mack said, as we sat down to breakfast, and that was the last he’d allow on the subject until we’d eaten.

  Again, Doc had provided a minimum. This time, though, I was hungry, and had no trouble eating over it.