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

started the next round of training, I’d been in debt, again, and who knew how long it would take to put the credit together to pay that out? The last spate of missions we’d had, they had to be an aberration, right?

I mean, that’s not a tempo any company can hope to keep pace with, right? Too much wear and tear on its agents. Too much of a drain on equipment and resources, not to mention that every single mission seemed to unearth yet another problem. The last few weeks had been like playing with a many-headed hydra full of trouble. Wasn’t hard to figure out that that couldn’t last. Knowing my luck, I’d be stuck in a quiet patch after this, and the debt would return to the monumental heights it had reached before.

I wasn’t ever getting out from under. It made me want to weep. To be so close to freedom, and yet so very, very far away. I didn’t want to pass up the chance, but I didn’t want to... I don’t know. I mean, what would Mack do, anyway? It wasn’t like he’d toss me out the nearest airlock. Cold-blooded murder wasn’t quite his style.

And therein lay the dilemma. I didn’t want to owe Mack—not in the same way I owed Odyssey. I wanted to choose my own path. I wanted... I sighed. I couldn’t win, either way, and I was just going to have to knuckle under, and do as Odyssey bid. It wasn’t like I could hold them off until I got to the next port. Delight’s email was very explicit regarding when the payment was due, and when the next payment could be made.

I sighed, again.

I could always run again. Sure, I’d be a lot poorer, but at least it was within reach.

“You’d be a lot deader, too.” Mack’s voice rolled over me, and I jolted out of my seat and two steps away from it before I got a hold of myself.

He was leaning on the doorframe to my cabin, having opened the door without me noticing. I just stood and stared at him. I mean, what the fuck was there to say?

“You could try asking me for a job,” he suggested. “Pay and conditions are reasonable.”

“I didn’t think... I didn’t...”

“Truth is, you’re so used to help not being there, you just don’t bother to ask, anymore.”

He was almost right.

Truth was I was so used to not having help, to having to do everything on my own, that any assistance, no matter how well intended completely overwhelmed me, and I never knew what to do with any help I got—or the appropriate way to say thanks.

“That’s really sad, Cutter.”

“Shut up, Tens.” Mack and I formed a chorus, but Tens was not subdued.

“You make a lovely couple, by the way.”

This time I let Mack answer.

“Don’t make me come up there.”

Tens snickered, but the comms went silent, and Mack turned back to me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure that was any better.

“Well?” Mack said, and I did what I did best.

“So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have any vacancies on crew?”

Mack looked at me, and then smirked.

“I have a great position in Bio,” he said. “The recycling tanks need constant cleaning.”

It wasn’t exactly the offer I was expecting, and I stared. The smirk faded from Mack’s face.

“That was a joke, Cutter. I always have vacancies for folk like you.”

“Like me?”

And the smirk came back.

“Shit-for-brains troublemakers.”

“Well, if you put it like that...” I said, and couldn’t help asking, “Is there a contract?”

“Do you want one?”

I didn’t know, so I didn’t answer, but Mack waved me towards the computer.

“Give Odyssey their money, before your time runs out. Chance like this doesn’t come along very often.”

“But I won’t be able to pay you,” I whispered, and he scowled.

“Pay me for what?”

“For the room, ammunition... you know.”

“I pay for what we use on missions,” Mack said. “That way I have veto rights on what you can take along.”

Oh. Well, that made sense. Mack made most control freaks look easy going.

“Hey!”

“And accommodation?”

“It’s part of the running cost of this kind of ship,” he said. “I pick my personnel, house them, transport them, and feed them. It’s part of the price of making sure they’re available when I need them to be.”

“What if they want leave?”

“They ask,” Mack said. “If I can afford to spare them, they get a break.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah, Cutter. Just like that. I’m not as much of a control freak as I seem.”

“What if they don’t come back?”

“Then I retrieve them.”

So much for him not being a control freak.

“Even if they don’t want to return?”

“In that case, I leave them until I can’t do without them.”

“But you’ll still go find them.”

“Yes, Cutter, each and every time.”

Author’s Notes

Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host was meant to be the first book in this series...but when I got to writing it, it turned out there was a whole novel that came before it, so I wrote that first and discovered where Cutter actually came from. You know, before the flash fiction that created her, Mack and a goodly portion of their crazy universe.

As in, all of it.

Although I didn’t know the pieces were linked together at the time most of them were written. You’d have thought that made it didn’t, and when some of the stories decided to inform me they were linked? Man, now I actually have to keep track of them, and do things like put the little devils on a timeline, and...

You know? It’s kinda fun.

I think, just maybe, I have one of the very best jobs in the world.

You will note that this book was originally published under a different cover. This edition has gone through another round of editing to bring it up to my current speed, and was held back from re-release until this series was complete.

I have also included a list of my other, available or soon to be available, work in the next few pages, and thank you for keeping me company on