“Don’t sweat it, kid.” Pritchard’s voice sounded in my ear, as he hit me with the first round of sedatives.

  “Guess we didn’t need her cuffed, after all,” Delight said, and Mack gave an exasperated sigh.

  It was the last sound I heard for quite some time.

  * * *

  “You have got to get a handle on your fear of needles,” Tens told me, when I woke up.

  He was looking down at me from one side of the pod, and Mack was looking down at me from the other.

  “You okay, girl?”

  I thought about that, found I’d gone into the pod fully clothed, and discovered I still had my boots. I wriggled my toes, and the sensation made me smile.

  “Yup.”

  Tens rolled his eyes, and then he and Mack helped me out of the pod.

  As they did, I realized they’d both kept their voices down to a low rumble, so I did the same.

  “Where we at?”

  “Well,” Mack said, “Tens and I are going to go distract a coupla squads of marines, and you are going to give these to the twenty or thirty kids they’re keeping in this compound.”

  “You’re also gonna need these,” Tens added.

  As he spoke, he sent me the lay-out of the compound we’d be going into, and the floor plan for the building I needed.

  Trust Tens to remember to send me the files for every single damn child stuck in a building full of self-enclosed cubicles. I did a quick study of the faces, trying to glue each to a name, and then I took another look at the building.

  Typical Bluebirds, from what I’d seen of their files: small rooms, bare of any comfort bar the essentials, and full worker isolation outside the work zone. Not the best employer—and that was even before I got to the total lack of wages.

  From the schematics Tens had managed to pull from their server, each room had a slightly different combo, with the computer running access able to send lock-down codes to each one simultaneously, which was fairly impressive, except that I wasn’t a computer, and I’d need to be moving fast to get the kids out before the whole damned thing locked down on me.

  “You gonna tell me how to open these?”

  There was no reply, so I opened my eyes, realizing I’d closed them when I’d gone inside my head to look over what Tens had sent…and, while I’d been doing that, the boys had left.

  Almost.

  “You should be inside the gates, by the time you hear the first shot,” Mack told me, and I started to run.

  It was a good thing Tens had sent me a map. I started to move, not running, because I didn’t know the terrain, but… I stopped. There was one way I could get a better idea of what was around me.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  It only took a few moments to go back and hard-wire into the pod’s systems, and a few moments more to hack the sat feeds—looked like Bluebird hadn’t had time to take the orbital, yet—and I sure as shit hoped Delight and Pritchard had that situation under control.

  Pulling my mind off that situation, I found the satellite’s observation feed, counting my blessings that the damn thing had been in the right orbit to give me what I was looking for—and praying I’d get the time I needed to fix the route I needed to take in my mind.

  The terrain around me was the usual hard, rocky, hilly shit you’d expect from a mining operation, and I wondered just exactly what they were digging out of it to make it worth the trouble.

  “Not your concern,” Mack told me. “You wanta shift your tail?”

  Shift my—

  He flashed me a picture of around twenty neatly-landed pods and the men rolling out of them in the pre-dawn dark.

  Oh Hells, yes, I did.

  I bolted for the fence-line nearest the building I needed, neutralizing the cameras and cutting myself a hole with the tool kit someone had decided to strap to my belt. Probably shoulda checked for that, before I got to work, but I was glad to find it, now. Looked like Odyssey wanted us to succeed, after all—Delight and Pritchard’s antics aside.

  What was it with those two, anyway?

  “You there, yet?” Mack, as impatient as Hell as always, and I was glad to have the right response.

  “In.”

  Message sent, I moved into the shadow of the building, and trusted he’d stay out of my head long enough for me to do my job. Blueprints showed a door leading into a kitchen. It was right alongside a four-man guard post. This time of day, I could probably expect the kitchen staff to be stirring, and the guards considering a shift change. I slid up to the rear wall, trying to decide what I was going to do next.

  For a moment, I contemplated the idea of heading round to the front door, and waiting for the guards to start their changeover. It was a no-go, though; the sound of Mack’s first shot changed all that.

  Mack hadn’t told me they’d be using a rocket launcher.

  At the sudden boom, I heard shouts of alarm from inside the building, and then footsteps running through the kitchen.

  “You! Back in your rooms! Now!”

  Pots and pans clattered, and footsteps moved rapidly away from the door in response. Heavier steps followed, and I wished I could patch into the building’s security system so I could see what was going on.

  Didn’t dare.

  The situation was too fluid for me not to be aware of my surroundings.

  As if to prove the point, the door slammed open, crashing into the rear wall and making me very glad I wasn’t standing right behind it. It was a relief when the four guards rushed past me, making for the sides of the building and the direction of the front gates, without checking the shadows.

  Nice.

  And then it struck me: We hadn’t been going after a Bluebirds’ facility. We’d been sent to secure someone else’s interests, so, if this wasn’t already a Bluebirds facility, why was it so similar in design?

  That was a question that was going to have to wait for later, and I waited for the last guard to disappear from view, before I slid past the still-open door, and into the kitchen beyond.

  I’d been right about the kitchen staff being up and around, and then locked back in their quarters…completely wrong about the number of guards. They’d left two behind.

  Both of them looked up when I entered, and then they pushed off the walls they’d been leaning from beside two doors leading deeper into the building.

  Well, damn.

  I reached for the blaster I usually carried, but found a Glazer, instead. I guessed it would have to do, and headed in the direction of the guard on the right while I checked the settings. When I found it only had one, I had to ponder why Delight didn’t trust me with anything that wasn’t set to stun.

  “I wonder,” which also made me wonder how Mack could be doing whatever he was doing, and still be giving me grief. “Never you mind.”

  And he was gone, just like that.

  Leaving me to deal with two guards, all by myself.

  “You’re a big girl, now. I’m sure you can handle it.”

  Nice. Thanks, Mack.

  I shot the guy on the right, and then shot him, again, for good measure. The guy on the left had proven that big guys can also be very nimble on their feet, and fast…so very, very fast. I wondered if he was nanned, or stimmed, or both, but didn’t think asking would do me any good, so I ducked under the stun-stick he swung at my head, and turned my gun to shoot across my body, hoping to hit something that mattered.

  Oh… yeah… Well, I guess he should have been wearing a guard over those.

  I pivoted as he pitched forward, and then I shot him in the head, just to be sure. There was no telling just how stunned he’d stay from a hit to the goolies, the head I could always count on for a couple of hours. He hit the floor with a solid thump, and I guessed he’d have a few bruises to think about when he woke up.

  And he’d more than likely need an ice-pack at both ends.

  The thought made me snicker.

  Too bad.