Last week, Tiger was worried sick about Simone. This week, she lets him know what happened.

Chapter 9 – The Journey Back

Hey, Tiges,

We’re on our way back. I’m hoping this is going to make some sense, because I’m pretty tired. It was a long fight—and we’d have been in a lot more trouble if the GalPol forces and Odyssey’s back-up hadn’t arrived.

You should have seen my spec-ops siblings. Oh, Tiger. I never want to see them like that again. I wish I knew this fever was contained, because it horrifies me that it just might not be. They were okay with Delight’s team, but only because Gunny and I kept them in line.

It was like I was the interface. They looked at me, and something almost human came back into their faces. When they looked away, it was like looking at a set of particularly intelligent animals—intelligent predatory, ruthless, hunting animals. It was horrible. There was almost nothing left of them.

I just want to find whichever scientist thought it was a good idea to take those slime moulds out of a safe, sterile environment and send them anywhere. If I didn’t think they were already dead, I’d think about killing them myself.

And I need to be grateful.

We didn’t have to kill anyone. We were so lucky… or we planned really well.

Actually, I think it’s more that we did plan really well AND we were lucky.

I don’t think they’d got the base up to full strength, yet.

When we went in, we found that a lot of those names we were worried about hadn’t arrived yet.

It still wasn’t a cake walk.

We decided on an almost direct approach to get us in. Call us crazy, but it actually worked… well, almost.

Delight brought me in, holding me by the scruff of the neck like I was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe.

“I heard you were looking for this,” she said—and I swear she’d practiced that lip curl for hours.

She looked like she thought I was something that should be chucked in the garbage. Whatever. It sure worked well on the girl behind the desk. She looked up, took one look at me, and then at the results showing up in the computer scan, and suddenly it’s all “right this way, Ma’am”, “is there anything we can do for you, Ma’am”. I swear, if we hadn’t been about to open a door, and let the team loose on a complex of scientists and ex-military trainers, I might have burst out laughing right then and there, or killed someone; I’m not sur which.

The truth is there wasn’t anything to laugh about.

We had to find my sisters, and I hadn’t been able to get through to them.

I mean, I’d tried. I did that as soon as I had access to the complex, but none of them were on-line. At first, I didn’t let that worry me. I figured FedExplore were keeping them off-line in the same way they’d tried to keep me off-line, but it was worse than that.

They hadn’t even taken them out of storage.

You hadn’t given me a lot of time to crack the system, and that was actually a good thing. They’d put my sisters into stasis pods—and they hadn’t taken them out, yet.

They were still deciding on whether or not they were going to take them out… and I’m not ready to discuss exactly what they meant by that. I’m… just not.

The pods made it a lot harder.

It took us ten, maybe fifteen, minutes to work out what we were going to do about that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When the girl at the counter opened the doors to let us through into the inner section where they said they had a waiting room, three things happened.

Delight smiled sweetly at the girl, and thanked her—and then she shot her.

I just stood there, my mouth hanging open in horror.

She. Had. Just. SHOT. her.

And then she turned to me and said, “Don’t look like that. It’s only a stunner. Come on. We have rescuing to do.”

I’ll give her this, Delight can actually be okay with people when she thinks about it. Pritchard would laugh himself sick, if he was reading over my shoulder, but he’s sitting up back with my sisters. For some reason, they’re all a bit afraid of me, and Gunny won’t leave my side.

Which is a good thing, because Delight won’t leave my other side, and Haskell is right beside her. And my spec-ops siblings? They’ve got my back—as in, they’re sitting pressed up against my back or as close to as they can get. There’s nothing getting anywhere near me except through them—and I’d strongly advise whatever it is not to try.

Like I said, it wasn’t all a piece of cake.

After Delight had made the girl behind the desk unconscious, she jumped the counter, and did a few things that locked the base doors open. My guys came through with Gunny, and Delight’s team came after. Keeping those doors open made it really easy for the back-up teams, too.

Gunny and Delight had come to an understanding on the flight over, and the teams were sitting together, not quite at ease, but not looking like they were going to rip each other’s throats out, either. It was an improvement on how they’d responded to each other, when we first pulled my guys out of their pods.

That wasn’t friendly. I introduced them and then we all went to the sparring mats, and got down to it. By the end of that Delight’s team and mine had come to an agreement: They were hunting partners, not predator and prey. I know. Right?

That was so wrong, but it was the best we could expect at short notice.

Anyway, we got the entry to the moon base proper open, and they came in, and we moved straight into the complex, following the map, and the plan we’d drawn up. It didn’t take us long to get to the first location we’d worked out for my classmates.

We had to hit five points, and I was hoping the first one held Marrietta.

To be honest, I was hoping FedExplore had also moved Na, Lainee and Luiza here, but I couldn’t know for sure. I mean, for all I knew those three might already have been moved into some corporate psi position, and were already lost to me. I really wanted that not to have happened.

So we went looking. The first point held six pods, and each one of these had been flagged with a red dot. I’m pretty sure they were meant for termination, but I pushed that thought away, and Pritchard set about pulling them out of stasis. We split the teams. I left Gunny and three of the guys with Pritchard, and Delight left two of her team to keep them company.

We arranged to meet them at the third point. It just wasn’t safe to split our numbers down any more than that—and none of us were happy with having to divide into two teams as it was. I pointed Gunny at Pritchard, and said “He’s in charge!” and she just looked at me, and curled her lip.

I think she was fighting to keep any humanity she had, and that was something else I didn’t want to think about. She turned and took one of Pritchard’s hands, lifting it to her face and pressing it against her face, and then she took a long, hard sniff. When she was done, she let it go, and lifted her head to look at me.

“Got it,” she said, and growled at our nearest team-mate.

That was disturbing, but I left them to it.

It was just one of those things we didn’t have time to fix. Now, we knew we were going to have to get my sisters out of stasis, we knew we were going to be really pushed for time—and that had been in short supply to begin with.

Delight and I bolted for the door, the rest of our teams in tow.

We took it on the fly—and those corridors weren’t empty. At the sound of running footsteps, doors opened and people looked out. Delight is a machine when it comes to a gun. I’m really glad she’d told me she had it set to stun, because I’m not sure I could have coped with that many dead bodies.

What she aimed at, she hit, and her team weren’t far behind her. It got to the point that they were running ahead, two to a side. They’d leap-frog targets. It was like watching a wave of destruction. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t trip on any of the bodies, and keep my team moving.

The funny thing is that I could read my team’s minds. I know they were happy with the way Delight and her pack were taking down the opposition. They weren’t so happy with the way they were leaving them alive, but they were willing to put up with it. I’d already told them we had to rescue more pack, and we had to be fast.

They figured that, as long as the fallen weren’t going to wake up and try to stop us, they could sleep.

I’m so glad we agreed on that, because I really didn’t have time to prove the point with each and every one of them. At the second pod point, we got to work waking up the six hybrids who’d gone into stasis. None of them was Marrietta.

All of them were almost human, again… and more human than my pack was, at that point in time. I felt their minds brush against mine, seeking comfort—and I couldn’t stop my hunter from responding. I wish she had been a bit more gentle, but she knew we didn’t have a lot of time, so she growled at them. I guess comfort can come later.

From what I understand, my hunter wasn’t polite or gentle, even if what she did worked to get the new hybrids doing what we wanted them to do. They stopped asking questions, like who we were, and what made us think we were any better than FedExplore. Maybe my hunter had a point, but it makes me sad, because they’re all afraid of me, now.

Getting them out of stasis and moving took us ten minutes, and then we ran for point three.

Pritchard and Gunny’s team were already there.

Delight and I stuck our heads through the door. My hunter took one look at the waking hybrids, and roared, and that was the end of that. They fell into line, and my pack surrounded them. Some of my team even draped their arms around the new hybrids’ shoulders, and gave me a look that was pure askance.

My hunter raised her lip, and snarled, and they all ducked their heads.

Well, so much for winning friends and influencing people. Delight and I left our group with Pritchard and took off for point four. Delight passed me the map, and I could see the security sectors lighting up. And don’t ask me how Pritchard was using his implant to block the comms out of the base, while he was getting people out of stasis, but he was.

That man has more skills than he lets on.

I sent the security data to Gunny’s implant, and hoped she was human enough to still remember what to do. And then things got really, really tricky.

Point Four had more stasis pods than I’d ever thought we’d have enough infected to fill. There were about twenty in all—and who knew how that many had gotten in contact with the slimes?

If you get this, can you try and strip the research data before it can be erased?

Because I don’t think all these folks were volunteers.

Oh, and you know those guys I didn’t think had made it to the base?

My bad.

They were here. They were at the fifth holding point. They just weren’t logged in as arrivals because they had been infected while they were in stasis and en route—without their consent.

Honestly, I have no words for any of this.

All those stories I hear about humanity being monsters? I’ve never believed them. Not until, now—and, now, I don’t know how to process it.

Let’s just say we got them out, and they were still mostly there, because the stasis had paused the hybrid process. I told them what was going to happen, and got them to stick close, and Delight just made sure they knew she and her folk had them covered. A couple started to argue, right up until I growled at them, and then they stopped.

You could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn’t know why they were on their knees, staring up at me. I told them it was because of the hunter fever they were coming down with, and that they had to come with me, if they wanted to live.

Yeah, I know. There’s an old movie, somewhere, with that line in it. My dad used to play it when he was with friends. They thought it was really funny. So did I, but not any more.

That line might have saved them.

We got them out, and we got them moving. We were going to head back to the third point, but Pritchard radioed Delight and said we had all sorts of bad company, and that we were going to have to take another way out.

He highlighted one in our heads, and we took it.

There wasn’t any time to argue, and if Pritchard and Gunny were agreeing on the ventilation shafts and an old construction dock, who were we to say no? Turns out it was a good call. Delight’s people dropped back with Delight, and Pritchard came up front. He asked me to send Gunny and the pack back to Delight, and to hold them steady unless they had to go hand to hand

It took me a minute to realise he meant fighting with their actual hands, and I really didn’t want to know how my team was going to deal with that. They looked way too happy with the idea, when they heard it. An excuse to attack the prey?

Yeah, not a good barrage of thoughts to be feeling. It got worse when one of the Corp Wars guys turned pale, and said, “Is that what we’re going to become?” I knew then that he’d be a new psi. I just laid a hand on his shoulder, and told him that it wouldn’t be permanent, and he went even paler than before, and just stopped. His whole mind went blank with shock.

When that happened, I did the only thing I could think of; I roared at him to follow.

And he did… along with everyone else.

Pritchard led us out at a jog, and everyone bunched in together. When he was sure they could all keep up, Pritchard upped the pace. He moved even faster when shots were fired behind us—and none of our rescues said a word in complaint. None of them stopped, either.

We got to the platform. It wasn’t easy, and we almost failed when we realised the construction dock was open to space. That was where we got lucky… or maybe Pritchard is a lot more efficient than he lets on.

Odyssey had sent a transport around. It helped a lot when I saw two smaller craft hovering not too far away. I got everyone to hold still, while they sent out a docking tube, and then contacted Gunny and Delight and told them to pull their troops back. Gunny and the pack resisted until I said I was going, and then they came straight back.

That’s the first time I’ve ever felt a sense of relief from Delight.

I’m guessing the pack weren’t too far from being out of control.

It was a relief to drop back and meet them, and then to get them to follow me on board—even if things were getting a bit cramped by then. We still fit. All the hybrids we’d rescued kinda pushed their way towards the back of the shuttle when I came on board, and Pritchard waved me to the front.

The others crowded around him, and Delight shouldered through the pack to come and stand on one side of me.

“You’ve scared stardust out of them, kid,” she said, and she sounded just a little bit sorry for me.

And then she glanced back, as my pack made a protective wall between me and the new ones.

“Give them time,” she told me, and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.

He went. He didn’t say a word, just retracted the docking tube, sealed hatches and lifted.

And that’s all there is to tell.

I’m on my way back, Tiges.

Oh, and I found Marrietta.

She’s not talking to me, right now, but she’s here.

And so’s Na, Luiza and Lainee; they were in with the instructors.

You’ll be able to see us soon. Just take a look out through the observation deck. That shuttle? The biggest one in the sky? That’s me.

I’ll be there soon, Tiger.

You coming to meet me?

Hugs

Simone.

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The complete series is available as short, individual ebooks, and will become available as an omnibus, later this year. In the meantime, you can find them on this blog, until one week after the last chapter in the last book of the series has been posted, at which point this series will be taken down, and a new series serialised on site.