Blaedergil's Host by C.M. Simpson (reading well .TXT) 📕

“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