The Transporter's Favor by C.M. Simpson (pride and prejudice read .txt) 📕

All for my benefit, of course.

I sighed. I couldn’t argue with that. I swiveled in the pilot seat, caught sight of the familiar burl of arachnid legs and slid all the way out, reaching for my blaster… and then I stopped.

“Askavor?”

The spider angled his head and thorax towards me, before vanishing into nothing.

“Abby!”

A sense of loss shot through me.

“Congratulations. You passed.”

I missed Askavor.

“Fuck off.”

And the lights in the cockpit went out. I waited, but the lights stayed out.

“Abby?”

Light flared outside the cockpit, a searchlight with the power of several suns that made my eyes water.

“Abby…”

“Unidentified craft, we are taking you in tow.”

I recognized those tones—not the voice, exactly, but the words licked by the edge of a growl.

“I didn’t know Lichcomb’s was a wolf world,” I said, but Abby did not answer, and the cockpit stayed as silent as a grave.

“Pilot. Holster your weapon and prepare for boarding.”

I tilted the blaster so its muzzle was pointing to the cockpit’s ceiling, and then turned. The light hurt my eyes, so I closed them, but kept my head up so they could see my face—and then I shifted my grip on the blaster, and very carefully holstered it, turning side-on so they could see me strap it down.

“Very good, Pilot. Now, raise your hands and stay exactly where you are until the boarding party arrives.”

Boarding party?

Abby shuddered, and a soft thump rang through her hull.

“Don’t you hurt my ship,” I muttered.

“Your ship will not be harmed. We are taking you into custody.”

“What have we done wrong?”

As soon as I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake.

“We? Please have all crew come to the cockpit.”

Oh, crap.

“There is no crew, just my ship and me. We. The two of us. You’re taking her under tow, I can only assume she’s going into custody, too.”

The silence grew long, and I waited, uncertainty nibbling at my insides. Given Septu had been kidnapped—and given the value of HMT ships on the black market—I didn’t want them working out exactly what Abby was.

“Any personnel found outside your cockpit will be neutralized.”

So they hadn’t bought it.

“Understood.”

Hopefully, when they discovered there were no other crew, they’d just think me a little space-crazed from being on my own too long. It had been known to happen.

And hopefully, they wouldn’t make too much of a mess of Abby checking I had no one else on board.

More clunks echoed through the hull.

“If you restored power, I could open the door for you,” I said.

There was a hiss and a grinding sound behind me.

“Thank you, Pilot, but there is no need. We can access your ship ourselves.”

“So, I see,” I muttered, even though I couldn’t see a thing.

I could hear it, though. The door ground slowly open, and I worried about damage to the servos and the locking mechanism, wondered what Abby would have to say about it, and if I had enough stashed away to cover the damage. How much did a goddamn servo cost, anyway?

The heavy tread of combat boots sounded in the airlock, and I tensed, bowing my head. There was silence, a hesitation, and then a rush of boots, the sound of partitions being slammed open, the sudden and familiar nudge of a blaster being shoved against my ribs.

I gasped, and made myself keep steady. I’d survived this far. The weight of my blaster disappeared from its holster, and gloved hands grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back, the sharp, metal snap of cuffs following shortly thereafter. I didn’t move, not even when the blaster was removed from my ribs, and I heard it slide back into its holster.

The firm grip on the back of my neck was unexpected, but, before I could register what it meant, I felt someone fumbling with my hair, and then heard the snick of the jack sliding home. I tried to slide-step away and jerk my head enough to dislodge the jack, but couldn’t move.

The growl that rumbled out behind me slid over my skin and left cold, hard fear in its wake. I stamped back and down, drove my foot onto the top of a boot, and was pushed forward against the console for my trouble. Another growl rolled through me, more so because the wolf holding me was now pressed hard up against my back.

“Keep still,” was a command I heard both in my implant and in my ears.

“Get the fuck out of my head.”

“Not yet.”

It was like watching a kid opening gifts on Family Day… and then going on to open everyone else’s, without bothering to hide the fact. It was a whirlwind of sheer info-pulling delight.

“Hey!”

My forehead met the console in a quick, sharp jolt. Hard to make myself think of being alone in space, with just the ship for company. Not hard to make myself wish I’d had company for the journey. Difficult, though, to lock down my skull before the rampaging tantrum beast could get into the memories I didn’t want it to have.

That time my head hit the console a lot harder, and my knees gave way. Too late, though; I’d activated the security suite Rohan had given me for emergencies, after one of our riskier ventures. The wolf stopped.

“Rampaging tantrum beast?”

Oh.

Well.

Whatever.

“Ifthe. Bootuh. Fits.”

And he laughed.

“You are fortunate this part of our duty is on contract,” he said, and unjacked. “We get to turn you over to the planetary authorities so they can see why you spent so much time just sitting out here.”

He didn’t add that the wolves had probably picked us up, while they were hijacking the Shady Marie, but that was my guess. System security had nothing to do with it. I’d be interested to see if I even made it to the orbital… and as for the ship…

I stayed exactly where I was. There was no point in giving him an excuse to beat me up; Tens wasn’t on stand-by to haul me out, and Mack didn’t have a regen tank handy. I figured Doc would also be pissed