The Transporter's Favor

by C. M. Simpson

“From what I just saw, the wait will be worth it.”

  She reached into my head, and tapped Abby on the shoulder.

  “I’ll want a copy of those files,” she said. “All of them.”

  “Just let me sort through them, first,” Abs said, but Delight shook her head.

  “You pass them over as soon as I give you a path.”

  “Fine.”

  Abby sounded put out, but that was the cost of leveraging Odyssey’s help, and she knew it. How were we to know they’d be paying such close attention?

  “You should have,” Pritchard murmured, and I knew he was right.

  “I promised Cascade a treat,” I said, looking down at the dog.

  The big brute switched his head, looking from me to Pritchard.

  “Looks like it’s time for me to pay up.”

  Cascade’s tail waved briefly from side to side, and Pritchard handed me a pie similar to the ones the dog had stolen from my plate.

  “I was following that conversation,” he said, as I let Cascade vacuum the treat out of my hand. “It seemed a foolhardy promise to me, given you didn’t know where the caf was.”

  I shared a look with the dog, and he shared me a brief schematic showing me the way to the Wanderer’s mess hall.

  “I’d have found it,” I said, and Pritchard gave me a look of disgust.

  “You are banned from having one of these,” he said, pointing at the dog. “You get into enough trouble as it is.”

  I scratched Cascade behind the ears.

  “It’s okay, boy. We’ll talk to Mack, won’t we?”

  The dog licked my hand, his tail wagging happily.

  Beckett cleared his throat.

  “I’d like a copy of those files, too, Abby. If I may… I have investigations to conduct.”

  “Certainly, Agent Beckett. You may come aboard my shell to study them uninterrupted.”

  “I… Thank you, Abeona.”

  I turned to Delight.

  “Has Abby sent you Costoganzi’s location, yet?”

  “She has,” Delight confirmed. “We are under way.”

  19—Cascade’s Gift

  Costoganzi’s location was not all we had unearthed. Cascade was a lot more tenacious than we’d thought—and he was excited to have new places to play. One minute, he was trying to steal tidbits from the table, and the next minute he was crashed out on the floor…except he was no more crashed out than any other dog that had ever jumped a fence—and he had the same sense of etiquette.

  Which was, none at all.

  He licked the pilot—from inside her implant, which gave us all a bumpy ride, until Delight chased him out of the woman’s skull, and dragged him back to his body. Wanderer compensated, and laid down a few doggy anti-intrusion measures, but I think she was more amused than annoyed, since most of those measures looked like animated chew toys.

  That didn’t solve the problem of what the beast did when he discovered a new implant to explore. Delight was seriously unimpressed.

  “Cutter! Control this mutt or I’m putting him in Isolation.”

  Isolation? As in the cell they’d kept me in the last time they’d brought me back and made me work for them? Well, at least she wasn’t threatening to walk him out an airlock.

  “That’s something special we keep aside just for you,” she said, and I’d reached across and pulled Pritchard’s pistol and aimed before any of us had time to think.

  Delight watched me, and if she had any real fear I’d fire, she didn’t show it. Pritchard was already beside me, wrapping his hand over the Glazer and pushing it down before taking it out of my hands.

  “Easy, Cutter. We’re all friends, here.”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I cast him a sideways glance.

  Uh huh. Odyssey, right?

  Cascade stood up and shook, and came over to wedge himself between us. I knelt beside him and draped an arm over his back, looking into his grey-brown eyes when he turned his head towards me.

  “Cas, you have to stay out of the ship’s systems, and out of other people’s heads. It’s not polite.”

  He whined, bumping his head against my thigh, his mental paws scratching at my implant and begging permission to enter. His digital image looked for all the world like he was carrying something in his mouth. I glanced over at Delight.

  “You wanta check this out in one of the isolation cells?”

  She nodded, and led the way.

  Cascade whined, again, puzzled that I wouldn’t accept his gift.

  “Give it a minute, Cas. We need to take that somewhere safe.”

  Oh. Safe. He understood that.

  He trotted along beside me, and waited until we were all sitting on the floor in one of the sparse, but shielded isolation cells. I sure as shit hoped Delight would let me out of it, again.

  Cascade didn’t give me time to dwell on it, but came and sat next to me, leaning into my side. I’d no sooner tucked an arm around him and leant my head back against a wall, than he was inside my implant and dropping his peace offering on the floor. It wriggled and curled, spreading several long, spiny tendrils out around it, and bringing Cascade snarling to his feet.

  He darted in, snapping and pouncing, and the tendrils withdrew. They wrapped themselves around the tiny file, threatening to crush it, and Cascade lifted his leg.

  “Oh! No! Cas! Cas!” but my protests were in vain, and whatever was in his digital urine had the desired effect.

  The strands melted away, and the file opened.

  “Well, well, well,” Delight told him. “I ought to put you on the pay roll.”

  Cascade wagged his tail—both digitally and in the real—but I glared at her. We both remembered what had happened the last time she’d tried to put me on the payroll. She sighed.

  “Really, Cutter? You can’t just let bygones be bygones?”

  And I shook my head. Bygones, my ass! Once Odyssey got its hooks into you, it weren’t never letting go. We both knew that.

  “Keep your grubby mitts off the dog.”

  “Live free, right? Make your own decisions, and all that rot?” Delight snarked, and she sounded so bitter, I wondered when she’d had this conversation before…and with whom.

  “None of your goddamn business.”

  She reached over and scratched Cascade’s head.

  “You are one hell of a dog!”

  He wagged his tail, again, and looked hopeful.

  “Sure, boy. Once we get through this, Uncle Pritchard will find you a treat.”

  Uncle Pritchard?

  I opened my eyes to see just how her keeper was taking that designation.

  Yup. Raised eyebrows and a faint look of disbelief.

  I giggled. Uncle Pritch.

  “Shut it, Cutter,” but his reprimand was mild, and he seemed more flattered than upset.

  “Don’t make me come over there.”

  The man was sitting against the wall opposite.

  Whatever.

  I laid a hand around Cascade’s shoulders and pulled him tight against me.

  “You are a good boy,” I said, pushing all thought of digital pee right out of my head.

  Bad? he wanted to know and I thought about the way the dark lines of arach code had crept into my implant.

  “No, Cas. Good.”

  He gave a happy doggy sigh, and went to sleep while the three of us crowded around the file he’d brought.

  “I wonder when he fetched this,” Delight murmured, and we both glimpsed a memory of him snatching up things that bounced and ran between his paws. There must have been a hole in the side of the server at Costoganzi’s final location. “Ah.”

  She was filing it away for her Hack Team, and I didn’t care. Thanks to Askavor’s tuition, I could handle arach coding, but that didn’t mean I wanted to.

  “He’s going down,” Delight said, a few minutes, later, and I had to agree.

  The wolves
weren’t the only ones Costoganzi had dealings with. His companies also provided some of the shells behind which the arach operated and hid. They provided a way onto vulnerable worlds, and then disguised the true nature of what the traders, there, were dealing with, until it was too late. I wondered just how many worlds Costoganzi’s corporations had helped go dark, and how many more were at risk.

  “We’ll chase it, Cutter—and I’ll write a bonus into the contract for this.” Delight hesitated. “One which Case will have no difficulty approving.”

  Well, it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one tired of all the contractual dickering.

  “The only problem we have, now, is him,” Delight added, pointing to Cascade. “We can’t have him roaming through strange systems without supervision. He might pull something he shouldn’t, or get into trouble we can’t pull him out of.”

  “He needs a leash,” Pritchard added.

  “A mind tether?” I asked, uneasy at the thought of what else Cascade might have encountered coming out of a small hole in an otherwise secure system.

  “Something like that.”

  “I’d ask Tens or Rohan, but they’re not here.”

  I looked at the file in Delight’s mental hands.

  “I wonder if there’s a way to find out where the wolves are holding them.”

  All I can say is that it was a good thing we were in an isolation room, because Digital Cascade sat up and wanted to show me. He tried bouncing out through my implant and into the galactic net, but crashed into a solid wall of denial. Picking himself up, and shaking himself off, he began a digital walk around the room, sniffing at the barrier, and peeing into its corners. When nothing he did created an opening, he returned to his sleeping body, and slid back inside.

  “Definitely a tether,” Pritchard said, and slid a loop of code around Cascade’s mental construct, which he anchored to a firmly placed eyebolt in my implant.

  The effect was instantaneous. Cascade sat up, and shook his head. The code tightened. Cascade pawed at it with his forepaws, and scratched at it with his hind legs, fussing and fighting as it clung to him. The physical dog beside me, whimpered in his sleep.

  “Relax, Cas,” I told him, stroking his head. “We’ll go hunting later. First, we have to catch a very bad man, and I need you to stay with me.”

  He sat up and looked at me, and I couldn’t help smiling.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I promise. Stay with me, okay?”

  “Wuff.”

  Delight gave a heavy sigh, and got to her feet.

  “Time to go, Cutter. I’m not taking you on an operation equipped like that.”

  Like what? I looked down at the ship suit, my bare feet, and the complete absence of weapons. It was easy to yank her chain.

  “What do you mean?”

  I watched as she pursed her lips, and then let them tilt up in a small smile. She gestured at me with an open hand.

  “I mean, we could let you come dressed the way you are. Pretend we’re making a delivery to Costoganzi in person.”

  “Says one of the most infamous Odyssey agents known.”

  I tried for light-hearted, but fear rippled through me. Delivery to Costoganzi would only raise questions as to how she’d known he was the one behind the contract. Delivery to a Star Shadow outpost, on the other hand would get us onto the station with Cas close enough to get into the systems, and the rest of us close enough to follow where he went.

  Delight pushed off the wall she’d been leaning against, her movement catching my attention—and my heart sank. Well, crap.

  “I like you, Cutter,” Delight said, “Mack’s right. You have a twisted mind, but that is a damn good idea,” and she laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled.

  She spared a glance for Cascade. “And, look, we’ve even managed to get a hold of the dog. Who’da thought?”

  Well, double the crap.

  Pritchard groaned.

  “We are so not…”

  Delight gave him a look filled with bright mischief.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, laying her other hand on Pritchard’s shoulder. “Yes, Pritchard. We so very much are.”

  She glanced over at me.

  “Of course, she looks far too clean and…”

  “Undented?” I supplied, surging to my feet, and delivering a swift, hard jab to her gut.

  Her smile grew wider, going from mischief to feral in a blink.

  “Grab the dog, Pritch,” I said, and followed the first jab with another solid hit to her solar plexus. “We’re gonna need to make this look good. I think I have a reputation for being difficult.”

  He stepped over, grunting as he scooped Cascade off the floor, before the dog fully realized a fight had started.

  “I think I owe the big fella a treat,” he said, and carried Cascade out of the room, shutting the door and sealing us in.

  Delight gave it ten seconds for the seals to take hold, locking Cascade out of my head—and then her grip on my shoulder tightened, and she stepped forward. The two fast hits to my middle were sheer revenge, and I twisted sideways, breaking her hold, and trying to put some distance between us. She followed—and the smile on her face might have been disconcerting, if I hadn’t known the one I was wearing mirrored it.

  “How much trouble you going to be, Cutter?”

  I darted in, tried a strike to the ribs, and had it blocked.

  “You’re gonna have to take me down for real. Only way they’ll believe it.”

  Her smile disappeared.

  “I thought you hated regen tanks.”

  I caught her with a solid kick to the thigh, and then tried a punch to the head.

  “How bad do we need for Cas to get into their feeds?”

  Her next hit got through, and I tasted blood as light danced through my head. I blocked the one after that, side-stepped the leg sweep, but couldn’t quite coordinate a return attack.

  “You’re slower than I thought, kiddo.”

  “You’re faster,” and I ducked under her next swing, closed in tight, and tried winding her, again.

  She turned, blocking my next two strikes with a downward sweep of her arm, and then turned back with a palm strike. I lifted my head, but it caught my shoulder, and she changed the attack, closing her hand in a tight grip and pulling down, as she brought her knee up.

  Well. That kinda hurt.

  Things got worse after it.

  I think I got another two, maybe three good hits in, but Delight had done this a hell of a lot more than I had, and it showed.

  “Do I need to break anything?” she asked, when she had me pinned, face-down on the floor.

  I tried a negative, but only managed a mumble that tasted like iron and bile.

  She poked a pressure point that turned one arm into a useless mass of pins and needles, cuffed my hands behind my back, and got off me.

  “Give it a minute,” she said, and I nodded without lifting my head from the floor.

  Pretty sure I was gonna need a lot more than a minute. I tried to ask her how long it would be before we reached wherever it was that Costoganzi had made his home, but I couldn’t get the words to form. Delight pulled the question out of my implant, instead.

  “Two days,” she said, “and you’ll be spending them in a shuttle with me, Pritchard and the dog.”

  Great.

  “I’ll have the ship come in about three hours behind us. Maybe make it look like they were following and hoping to intercept before we hit the station. It’ll give the story more cred.”

  Yup. That it would.

  I heard her feet move, and tensed, waiting for the next blow to land. Instead, she walked past me, stopping as she reached the door.

  “Keevers was right. You’d have made a good Odyssey agent.”

  I settled for giving her the mental finger, and heard her laugh as she walked out, shutting the door behind her. I really didn’t want to move, right now. Or think. Even thinki
ng hurt.

  20—Sasha and Derevo

  I still hadn’t moved, when the door opened, and Delight, Pritchard and Cascade returned. The dog’s reaction was instantaneous. He whined and ran over to me, sniffing at my hairline and giving me anxious licks around my ears and what bits of face he could reach.

  And then he turned and put himself between me and Delight, a savage snarl rippling up from his chest. I turned my head, and tried to reach out and wrap a hand around his forepaw, only to discover I was cuffed. I managed to snag his doggy snout, instead, when he nuzzled my hand.

  “Is ’kay, Cas. I asked her to.”

  That got a puzzled half-yelp, half-whimper out of him—a kind of doggy ‘what the fuck’?—so I explained.

  “We need to go see the Wolves. They need to think I am prey.”

  I don’t know how much he understood, but I showed him images of Wolves, and of Delight handing me over. Maybe not my best choice, but…whatever, right? He rumbled out another growl, and I stroked my fingers along his nose, waiting until he went quiet.

  “We have to be prey to make them prey,” and I imagined Pritchard and Delight turning on our receivers once we were close enough.

  He sat down, his back to me, but still between me and Delight.

  “Really?” she said, and Cascade thumped his tail.

  Treat?

  “Seriously?”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. It was such a Rohan thing for the dog to do. I turned my head so I could see what Delight did next. As far I figured it, she’d better give the dog his treat.

  “Laugh it up, short stuff,” she said, but she held out a hand to Pritchard, who passed her a small meat pie, which she then palmed to Cas. “There. Treat. Now, let me get her up so we’re not later than we already are.”

  And Cas moved out of Delight’s way. I don’t think he even noticed when Pritchard reached into my implant and transferred the tether from my head to his own. Pritchard noticed me watching him.

  “The Wolves will look,” he said. “There’s always at least one psi.”

  I was going into a Wolf centre. As a prisoner. And there’d be psi?

  “Yup,” Pritchard said.

  “Pretty much,” Delight echoed, stepping around Cascade to drag me to my feet.