Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 by C.M. Simpson (top ebook reader txt) 📕

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.

“You throw up on Stepyan’s training range, and he’s going to have you in there with a toothbrush and nail file for a month.”

“How’s he gonna know?”

“Man’s got his own direct feed from the range cams.”

“I could fix that.”

“Let’s not go there.”

Fine. I guess if I’d thought Tens was touchy about having his system hacked—and by his system, he meant the entirety of the Shady Marie—I shoulda know Stepyan was ten times as sensitive about anyone playing with his security. You know, him being an assassin and all.

I picked up my kaff, and changed the subject.

“This isn’t a deal we should keep.”

From the look on Mack’s face, that wasn’t anything he’d expected to come out of my mouth.

“I gave my word. To a wolf. We’re keeping it.”

“I don’t think—”

But that was as far as I got. Mack was in my head, and dumping files into my implant like he was the front-end-loader of information. Worse than that, he’d set them to open on landing, and I was sucked inside my head as I tried to keep up with the data flow. It was like drowning, but not. I struggled to sort the input and absorb it, horrified and angered by what I found.

I didn’t even notice when the files stopped coming, or register the fact