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

Carafakt Gorge to the orbital overhead. Mack squeezed the arm I’d tucked through his elbow tight against his side, and laid his hand over mine. I think he was trying to warn me not to laugh.

That was hard, but the tension in his fingers made it easier.

Sure thing, big man, I thought, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin.

“You don’t behave, and I’ll toss you over the Gorge, myself,” he said—in my implant, where our waiting escort couldn’t hear. “Now, smile, and pretend you’re a lady.”

Now, I really did want to kick him. I’d never been mistaken for a lady in my life.

Tens snorted, his voice coming through loud and clear in my head. “So, why start now?”

“Tens!”

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t impressed. Mack sounded pretty irate. Tens cut the link, still snickering.

“Don’t make me come up there.”

“You don’t have the time, boss. They’re getting impatient.”

He was right. The man standing at the front of the rest of the squad, had cleared his throat, and taken a step forward, his foot resting on the other end of the umbilical connected to the station. Mack made a show of running his fingers over the front of his very smart, very austere captain’s uniform, and I wondered when any captain had worn a light layer of armor to a formal dinner...or dressed like he was going to war, instead of a social occasion.

“You’d be surprised,” Mack murmured, but his mouth was still, and his eyes were roving over the waiting guards. “These boys might look pretty, but they’re tooled to the hilt, and they’ve been in fights, before. Don’t start anything.”

I think he meant ‘Please, don’t start anything’, but I didn’t push it. I figured I wouldn’t start anything, but if someone else got the ball rolling, then I would sure as shit finish it.

“Just don’t be the instigator.”

Damn. Man knew me far too well.

We headed down through the umbilical, with me doing my very best not to think about just how close the vacuum was. I’d gotten my fear of airlocks down to a controllable level, but it had morphed into a nagging anxiety whenever vacuum was in touching distance, and I hadn’t worked out how to fix it, yet.

Mack patted my hand.

“You’ll get it,” he said, and I knew he meant overcoming the fear, and not anything else.

It wasn’t a comment I wanted to answer, but I really hoped he was right, because I had my doubts.

“And we’re on,” he said, sending the quiet reminder through my implant that he wasn’t the only one present.

I raised my head, doing my best to look—how had Case put it—aloof and mysterious... “or at least like you’re bored out of your skull.”

I liked Case. Aloof, I could do; mysterious? Not so much. Bored? Well, I’d specialized in that at high school—and didn’t that seem like a lifetime away?

“You also need to look like that man is the center of your universe,” Case had told me, indicating Mack, “and not to move like you’re a combat operative looking for a fight.”

That last one wasn’t going to be easy, but—man!—Case had packed a hell of a lot of training into the forty-eight hours we’d had. She’d also lined up the files I needed on Barangail, and fed them into my implant so they played when I slept.

I hadn’t slept very well.

Barangail was a friend of Case and Step’s target. The planet was a feudal basket case, and we were heading right down into the middle of a world where slavery and indentured servitude were a way of life. I wondered just how many of the natives would ask for a ticket off this place, and worried how either Mack and I were going to handle having to leave so many folk behind in such a very bad place.

“It won’t be for much longer,” Case had told me. “Who’d you think paid for the hit?”

And they’d pay with an artefact. It made me hope we weren’t about to go stealing their nest egg. Mack didn’t respond to that thought, either, and I wondered if it bothered him.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” was not a comforting thought, but it was followed by a much more vocalized, “Captain Targil, thank you for coming to meet us.”

Which was not what he’d said when he’d heard Barangail was sending an escort. As a matter of fact, it was about as far from ‘Well, that’s a pain in the ass,’ and ‘What the fuck does he think we need a babysitter for,’ as you could get. Again, he squeezed my elbow against his side, so I looked up, giving Targil my best blank stare, followed by the merest hint of a smile. Having caught the captain’s eye, I tilted my chin to look up at Mack, and let my smile widen.

This time it was Case who commented.

“Way to give a guy the wrong impression,” she said.

I’d forgotten she was watching on the security scans.

“Thanks, Case,” I told her, and my mind-tone sounded anything but grateful.

“Don’t get me wrong, kid. that was a classic Bored-Lady-of-the-House look. The man is going to keep an eye on you to make sure you don’t go and seduce any of his men, and he’s not going to let you anywhere near himself. Good work.”

Oh, well, that put a different light on things.

Cool.

“You are trouble on a stick.” As usual, Mack was not impressed.

He was right, though; I was trouble on a stick. Targil hadn’t noticed the exchange, or anything that might indicate we weren’t paying him as much attention as we should. Or he had, and it either didn’t bother him, or he wasn’t letting it show.

“You are most welcome, Captain Star. Lord Barangail wished to make sure you reached his home safely.”

Mack stopped, arching an eyebrow, turning his attention on the man—and completely ignoring we were at the edge of the umbilical, two steps onto the concourse with the ship and open space behind