Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

could try to find an external hatch and make it out into the caverns.
“Or I could teleport your ass out of there,” Tens muttered, and I shook my head.
“No,” I said, keeping the words firmly between my teeth. “Let’s play this out a little further, and see where it leads. Either way, Odyssey is gonna wanta know about things, and we’ll need to give them as much intel as we can gather.”
Whatever he’d thought of my expression, Varian turned away.
“Come,” he said, his tone reminding me of pack leaders I’d come across before.
I pushed aside the resentment at being treated like a raw pup, and followed, surprised, too, that he hadn’t put me in cuffs, or threatened me with reprisal if I tried to escape. That was very out of character for a wolf.
I followed after him, turning my head to take in as much of the ship as I could. Mack and Delight would both want to be pulling memories out of my head so they could go wandering through them later. They called it making the most of a resource; I called it lazy intelligence gathering.
Before either Mack or Tens could respond to that, I made an observation of my own.
“I don’t think we’re getting anything out of this little debacle,” I said. “The wolves have your ship, Barangail is screwing everyone six ways to stardust, and the arach are about to make life complicated. I’d call this little trip a bust, boss”
“Not entirely,” Mack said, but he sounded down. “Odyssey still pay a bounty for information on arach incursions, and I’m pretty sure they’ll pay one to know the lupar are playing so far from home.”
I was about to respond to that, when Varian grabbed my arm and shook me—and I realized I’d disappeared into my head, and completely missed our arrival outside a large, wide door.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and he gave a growl of frustration.
“I said, you will be very respectful to my captain,” he told me, obviously repeating the instruction. “I do not want to be explaining to your Hammer and your Arc why you are missing your throat.”
I swallowed and gave him a wide-eyed stare, pulling myself together as he morphed from man to lupar, and opened the door.
“Come,” he said, and there was the tiniest hint of a bite to his words.
I went, walking in to the middle of a large office, and resisting the urge to give him the middle finger. As I entered, I took in the luxurious pile of the carpet, a desk made of polished ant carapace, and the ship-style shelves and cabinets lining the walls.
“Stay,” Varian ordered, and crossed to one of the cabinets.
I stopped and waited, daring a peek at the wolf behind the desk from beneath lowered lashes, as Varian fussed with the cabinet. A low rumble from behind the desk drew my attention, and I turned a little more to face the wolf seated there. I guess he wasn’t used to being ignored in his own domain.
Well, sucked to be him, then, didn’t it?
Varian finished whatever he was doing in the cabinet and crossed back over the carpet. I resisted the urge to take a look at him, and flicked a glance up at the wolf captain. As I did, I discovered that it actually sucked to be me.
Varian had kept moving when he’d gotten to me, reaching out to snap a collar around my neck and seal it closed.
“What the f...”
A low growl reminded me where I was, and I stopped, looking up to take a good look at the wolf behind the desk. The captain—and he was regarding me with the coldest look of assessment I’d had in a long time.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, and I wondered that he wasn’t privy to the conversation I’d already had with Varian. I turned and looked at the rebel-leading wolf-man, and his captain wasn’t impressed.
“Answer my question!” barked out with enough force to make me jump.
I swallowed down a knot of nerves, and felt Mack inside my head. This time, he was looking through my eyes, and listening with my ears, pulling the data straight from my senses and the implant record—and I was pretty damned sure he was transferring them straight to a screen, too, goddammit!
I didn’t have time protest. I’d spent too long in my head, and Varian nudged me.
“You were asked a question.”
Again, that perfect Gal, and I realized the captain was speaking it, too. Inside my head, I could feel Mack holding his breath, and couldn’t resist the spike of mischief that ran through me. Before Mack, or Tens, or Rohan could do anything to stop me, I gave the wolf captain my answer.
“I wondered what the beaches were like this time of year.”
Yeah. Now, Mack wanted to kill me... or maybe just wring my neck. It was hard to tell, but the man was pissed. I guessed there was another three rounds on the mats in my very near future, and the thought made me smirk.
Given the wolf captain didn’t know I was smirking at the captain inside my head, and not him, that was probably a mistake. I focused.
Oh, yeah. That was a mistake.
I’d already known these things could move like greased lightning, but going from sitting behind an office desk to leaping clear over it with enough momentum to put me into a wall? That was new.
I peeled myself off the wall, my head ringing, and my eyes just a touch blurry. The wet combat armor hadn’t done much to cushion the impact, either. Things moved in my chest that I was pretty sure should have still been pinned down, and I did my best to hide that from the angry seven or eight feet of wolf that had come to stand two feet in front of me.
It’s hard to look up at someone, while keeping your chin down, harder still to avoid looking them in the eye. I managed to stand on my own