Mack n me, p.1
Mack 'n' Me, page 1
Mack ’n’ Me: Origins
Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey #1
C.M. SIMPSON
I ran away from home to find a better life—not be forced into one. You can call me picky, but a girl likes to be asked if she wants to work for you, not coerced—and Odyssey should know better. Now, I have to find a way to kick free—of Odyssey, and my trainer, Mack—without getting myself killed. Surviving the mission is just the first step. Getting out from under, that’s gonna take some doing.
NOTE: The main character swears like a sailor, and the support cast aren’t much better. If swears bother you, then this story may not be to your taste.
2nd Edition
Copyright © January 06, 2021 C.M. Simpson
Cover Art & Design © July 07, 2020, Moonchild Lilja at Fantasy Book Design
All rights reserved.
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. That’s what feeds the author while they write you the next one.
Dedication
This is for all those who believed in me enough that, eventually, I had the courage to believe in myself.
Thank you.
CONTENTS
1—A Bad Start
2—New Place, New Rules
3—Cohort from Hell
4—Induction
5—Out of Training
6—An Unexpected Hitch
7—It’s All Downhill
8—A Couple of Boundaries
9—Southward Bound
10—Infiltration & Exfiltration
11—Return to Bastien’s
12—The Bastien Excursion
13—Out of the Frying Pan
14—The Mack & Marl Debacle
15—Trading Out
16—For the Sake of a Room
17—Bendigo the Bastard
18—Rohan
19—Mission is Go
20—Entry Point
21—Ghoul’s Little House of Horrors
22—Ghoul’s Little House of Oh-Hell-No
23—The Many Forms of Ghoul
24—Taking Our Leave
25—Home Safe
26—Macked, Again
27—Not Quite as it Seems
28—Post-Dead Recruitment
29—Reanimation
30—An Unexpected Opportunity
Author’s Note
Other Work by C.M. Simpson
About C.M. Simpson
1—A Bad Start
I came from comfort and privilege... Well, I came from a background that could afford to send me to a government-run school—and that only because it was mandatory—and I was part of a system where you could go to university at the government’s expense, and then pay back the cost—if you ever got a job that paid enough.
This made me one of the lucky ones, in spite of my parents going through a bad break-up, and mum and me having to move to a poorer part of town. On the upside, I didn’t have to worry about where to sleep, or what, when or how I was going to eat next, or if someone was going to... well, not at first, anyway.
When that happened, I left home. I left town. I ran as fast, and as far as I could. The freighter crew found me in the galley. I’d managed to get past the security code for the pantry, and figured I could cook something while they slept. I didn’t know about shifts and rosters and crewing a starship 24/7, not back then. That trip, I learned.
And I learned a bunch of other stuff, too. Like comms, and hydroponics, and life support, and a little bit of navigation. Mostly, though, I learned tech and security, because the captain didn’t know his smuggling runs were being watched by Odyssey, and Odyssey’s man thought I might have skills.
And Odyssey’s man kept me out of the hold where they kept the cargo.
“She’s mine!” he’d snarled, when the captain said I should be added to the manifest. “I found her.”
“She got past you at the port,” the captain had argued.
“I caught her.”
“Not before she had herself a fry-up.”
Not exactly true, I thought. Keevers had caught me while it was still half-cooked. What he said next bought him my undying gratitude.
“Which I’ll make sure she eats.”
The look I turned to him, then, must have been something, because he almost smiled—which I rarely ever saw, afterwards.
“She’d turn a good profit,” the captain said, and Keevers shrugged.
“She’ll make you more, when I get done.”
This had brought him a thoughtful stare, and, “Fine, but the cost of keeping her comes out of your wage, and you’ve got two years to prove your point.”
“Two years,” Keevers had begun, but the look on the captain’s face was enough that even I knew he’d better not argue. “Fine, but she’s hands off for everyone. I won’t have her training disrupted.”
This had gotten him another look, one I couldn’t interpret, at the time. Now, I know why Keevers had added what he did.
“You’ve got plenty in the hold to keep everyone entertained,” he’d added, and the captain shrugged.
I hadn’t known what he meant, when he’d said it, but it didn’t take me long to work it out.
“What’s up, girl?” he asked, two nights later, when he found me curled up in a locker.
Not that he needed to ask. We could both hear what was happening down the hall.
“Can’t you stop it?” I asked, and he’d looked sad. Sad and angry, and I wondered what I’d said.
“No,” he’d said, but he did, him and Odyssey both, and he kept me safe during that, too.
The first I’d known something was going very wrong for the smugglers was when the klaxons started to sound, and then cut off abruptly. The screams from down the hall stopped, and I heard the guy at the nav comm swear. He’d glanced up, as the captain came running into the control centre, was speaking before the man was at his console.
“She just came out of nowhere, sir. Nowhere. One minute we were in clear space, the next—”
“What came out of nowhere?”
And that was when the ship stopped dead in space.
All eyes turned to Keevers, but he was studying his board, pointing out the red patches blooming along the hull.
“See that?” he’d asked, and I’d nodded. “Comms mines. They’re patching in to the ship’s systems.”
“Comms mines?” The captain sounded alarmed, but Keevers stayed calm, focused on his screens, and focused on me.
“See that?” he’d asked, pointing to the way the engine rooms were flashing amber.
Again, I nodded.
“Teleport.”
“Teleport?” the captain shouted.
Keevers turned to the captain.
“We’ve been boarded,” he said, and I watched as he keyed several commands into the system, heard him curse when the screen flashed ‘Access Denied’ in reply.
“Can’t you stop them?”
“They’ve jammed compartment access,” Keevers told him, lifting his hands off the control board, and then lifting them above his head. He’d glanced across at me, nudging me with his knee so that I did the same.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the captain roared, but I could see the armed and armored figures coming through the door behind him.
I knew exactly what Keevers was doing.
It was still a surprise when he reached sideways and grabbed me, dragging me to the floor when he threw himself out of his chair. I hit the deck, and then scrabbled sideways to get behind our work station, Keevers pushing me all the way.
“Hells bells, and stars and fury!” he muttered, but he kept his head below the level of the console, and snagged me tight against him when I would have bolted across the control room. “Don’t move, girl. You might live through this yet.”
I might? That came as a surprise to me, because the firefight going on above console level was like the shortest lightning storm, ever. And then they came, those armored figures, moving quickly into the control room, until Keevers and I found ourselves staring up the barrels of some very big guns.
“Get ’em up!”
I got, raising both hands over my head—right up until I realized Keevers hadn’t moved.
“Keevers!” I turned, reaching for him, and was picked up and then slammed into the deck.
The weight on my back didn’t stop me from trying to turn around to check on my guardian.
“Keevers!”
“Get him to Medical,” was almost comforting.
“Maybe he has a chance,” was not.
I fought to get to him, but I couldn’t get out from under the operative pinning me to the floor.
“Keevers!”
I didn’t stop trying to reach him, until a hand grabbed the back of my neck and pressed my head against the floor.
“What do you want me to do with this?”
This? I stilled. I was a this?
“Keevers wanted to keep it alive,” said the voice that had ordered Keevers to Medical. “Port it over and lock it down, until he can explain.”
“But what—”
That first voice didn’t let my captor finish.
“Now!” Fury laced those tones, and light engulfed us both.
“Keevers!”
I was still shouting it, when the light faded and I landed on another deck. I was still held, and I was still pinned.
“Oh, for fury’s sake, SHUT! UP!”
I shut, but only because I’d caught a glimpse of where we were, and what was happening to Keevers. I’d never seen a regen room before. I thought they were drowning him. And I couldn’t do a thing about it, except watch.
I stared in horrified silence as they stripped him bare, my eyes drawn to the bloody holes stitching one side of his chest. They strapped him into a frame and closed the tank. I stayed silent, as the regen fluid engulfed him, and I saw clouds of silver swarm into the liquid and swirl around him.
I must have made some sound, then, because one of the medics glanced my way.
“What in the stars is wrong with you?” she snapped, and it took me a moment to realize she was referring to the person pinning me to the floor.
“Keevers was protecting her.”
“And you didn’t think she might need to know we weren’t killing him? Given where she’s been?”
Where I’d been? I remembered the cargo in the hold, the ‘training’ systematically carried out down the hall from the control centre, heard the medic continue.
“Do you even have a brain inside that tiny, little head of yours?”
She came toward us, and knelt down so I could see her.
I couldn’t help it. I tried to get away, shifting sideways in a panic that got me absolutely nowhere.
“I need a sedative,” she said, and another of the medics moved to a counter along one wall.
She ignored him, and turned back to me, while she waited.
“Keevers wants you to live, so we’ll make sure of that” she said, and I stopped trying to get away. It was good to hear her add, “and he’ll pull through.”
I felt a sob catch in my throat. She looked almost sympathetic, but glanced up as her colleague brought her a hypoderm.
“But you,” she said, taking it, and turning back to me as she prepped the needle, “have had a shock, and you really need to sleep.”
“No,” I said, my mouth going dry and my heart racing at sight of the needle. My body scrambled to escape as I tried to explain. “No needle. No need to sleep. No...”
But she was relentless. Gentle, but relentless, and I was still protesting when the sedative took me under.
“Idiot!” I heard as darkness closed, but, somehow, I don’t think she was referring to me.
2—New Place, New Rules
I saw Keevers a few times after that. The first time was when he came into the small cubicle that served as my room. I was quietly destroying another pillow, when the door to my quarters hissed open.
“I hear you’ve been causing trouble,” Keevers said, stepping through, and closing it behind him.
I didn’t care. I stared seconds longer, making sure he was real, and then dropped the partially dismembered pillow before launching myself across the room at him. I wrapped both arms around him, until I heard him gasp, which was when I let him go. When I looked up, his face was a comical mix of pain, consternation, and happiness, as he surveyed the mess I’d been making of my bedding.
“Didn’t they give you enough to do?” he asked, indicating the strips of cloth that used to be a perfectly serviceable set of sheets, and I blushed.
Truth was, they had given me stuff to do, but I’d trashed the first computer system with the keyboard, and that had been that. They hadn’t interrupted me in my destruction of the sheets. Not yet. I wondered at that, and then eyed Keevers suspiciously.
“Who are they?”
He moved slowly over to sit on the edge of my bed.
“They?” he asked, and I nodded. “You mean the people who came and got us off that smuggling vessel?”
I nodded again.
“They are my bosses,” he said, “and they’re asking me some very serious questions about why I bothered to save you.”
They were? My face heated as I blushed, even more.
I looked up at him.
“You were gone,” I said. “And I...”
I waved a hand around at the little box I’d been kept in.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
“You didn’t think they were helping you?”
“Captain kept some of the cargo in little rooms,” I said, referring to some of the people taken from the cargo hold and kept aside for what was termed ‘special’ training.
Keevers cursed.
“And you were waiting for when they came,” he said, and I nodded, tears sparking when I saw he truly understood.
He cursed again, and pushed himself off my bed. He was halfway to the door when it opened, and he stopped. I didn’t recognize the female agent, but Keevers did.
“You heard her,” he said. “She thought she was being ‘kept aside’.”
He glared at the woman, and she glared back. Finally, she answered.
“Our bad,” but she didn’t sound a bit repentant, and then she laid a hand on his arm. “You did good, John. We’ll take it from here.”
And that was when I got it.
Keevers was leaving—and he was leaving me behind. I crossed the room to him, reached out and took one of his hands.
“You’re not coming back?”
And he laughed, short and painful, as he turned and wrapped his arms around me.
“Give it a rest, kiddo. I got you out of a really bad place, and brought you to something a whole lot better. I like you, but I can’t keep you, okay? This is the next best thing.”
That hurt, but I got it. And it was true. He had got me out of a very bad place, and kept me out of a worse one. Whether it was anywhere near ‘a whole lot better’, was yet to be seen. I leant my head against him, and then let him go.
“Thanks,” I said, as my vision blurred, but I refused to cry.
I swallowed back the tears, and looked up at him—catching a sadder version of the almost smile I’d seen before.
He stepped back, and laid a hand on my shoulder.
“I gotta get back to the tank, kiddo. Before the medics come to find me. Apparently, I’m not done yet, but Agent Delight here said I had to come and see you, before she decided you needed putting down.”
I felt my insides freeze, and shot a quick glance at the agent waiting just inside the door. She met it, let me see just how close I’d come, and looked up at Keevers.
“Get going, John,” she said. “Medical will have my hide if I let you fall down before they can put you back in the tank.”
And he nodded, squeezing my shoulder once, before letting go and walking out the door. I waited until it had closed behind him, before looking at Agent Delight. To my surprise, she had the tiniest smile on her face as she looked at me.
“You,” she said, “are a barrel of trouble.”
Which was when I decided I’d see just how well I could live up to that assessment.
Pull me off a slave ship, and then force me to work for them, would they? Some might call that luck. Well, I had words for it that weren’t quite the same. I’d left home so that I had a choice—and I sure as shit wasn’t going to let these people take that choice away.
And I was very careful to keep all of that off my face, when I returned Agent Delight’s stare.
She made a show of looking me up and down, and then casting a critical eye around the room.
“And you owe us quite a few credits.”
Well, I have to admit, my mouth fell open at that. I what? Delight didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise, however. She just kept right on.
“We’re not going to bill you for Keever’s first rescue,” she said, and I stared. I kept staring as she went on. “But we will bill you for retrieval off Lockyer’s Transport.”
And, now, I did have something to say.
“But—” I began, and she cut me off.
“And then there’s the computer, the sheets, the medical care...”
Medical care? Did she... Was she referring to them sedating me? But, again, she didn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
“...your accommodations and food for the last three days.” Finally she stopped. “What?”
And well she might ask. I had opened my mouth to say something, several somethings, actually, and she’d just rolled over me without so much as an invitation. I just said the last thing that came into my head.
“So, you’re not letting me go, then?”
Yeah, I know. So much for not saying anything about not wanting to be there.
