2. The Weapon #3
“Are you going to count the whole time? Because I should put the kettle on if so. Seems a waste of a minute otherwise.”
“Thirty-nine —“
The number stalls. She has reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and the motion has shifted her cardigan, and the tactical vest beneath it is visible at the collar — scarred polymer, the kind that takes damage and keeps functioning, and there is a scorch mark near the left shoulder that I would classify as recent energy weapon contact.
She is wearing a tactical vest under the cardigan.
She has been wearing it this entire time.
She greeted me with tea and banter and a warm smile and an uncovered blaster, and she was armored underneath the embroidered animals.
Every second of this has been a performance — not of weakness, of control.
She let me see the knitwear, so I would miss the kevlar.
I did not miss the kevlar. I missed it for twelve seconds, which is eleven seconds longer than any target has ever deceived me, and I find this profoundly irritating.
I have lost the count.
Her eyes drop to my hands — both of them, the retracted and the armed — and her gaze stays there one second longer than assessment requires. Her fingers twitch against the ceramic, once, a reach she redirects to the mug handle before it becomes anything else.
“You know,” she says, “most people who want to rob me at least introduce themselves properly. You’ve given me your title and your employer.
” She looks up. Steady. Warm. Entirely unintimidated by the claws and the tail and the fact that I am twice her size and standing in her ship uninvited. “You haven’t told me your name.”
“I have told you my designation.”
“Not the same thing, lovey.”
The word again. Lovey. My processing hitches — not a crash, a stutter, a half-second gap where the framework tries negotiation tactic, and it does not fit, tries psychological manipulation, and it does not fit, tries condescension and —
It does not fit because she means it. She calls me lovey the way she calls the ship a name it does not have and the weapons names they did not earn and the orb a word that is not its designation. She means all of it. There is no invoice attached. No leverage. No trade.
I have been called a great many things in nine years.
Operative. Specialist. Weapon. Monster, twice, by people who were not wrong.
Nobody has called me lovey. There is no framework for lovey.
I would very much like one, because operating without a framework is the tactical equivalent of freefall, and I do not do freefall.
I do structured descent with predetermined vectors.
This is neither structured nor descending in any direction I recognize.
The proximity alert screams.
Three contacts. Incoming fast, weapons signatures hot, transponders dark. Not the courier’s soft chime from her earlier alert — I heard that through the hull as I approached, gauged her readiness, assessed her response time. This is different.
Mercenaries.
Three vessels. Unmarked. Configuration: Outer Rim freelance, the kind of crew that takes contracts from people who do not want paperwork. Not SRS. Not law enforcement. Not here for negotiation.
Here for the container. And they do not care who is holding it.
My body moves before my brain authorizes the action.
Tail first — it uncoils from my leg and wraps the courier’s waist. All three and a half feet of prehensile muscle closing around her midsection and pulling her behind the pilot’s chair, behind me, between my body and the bulkhead.
The contact is immediate and total, and I am not going to think about what it feels like because what it feels like is irrelevant to the tactical situation, and also I would like to remain functional.
She is warm. That is the only data my nervous system is processing.
Warm through the cardigan and the tactical vest and the shirt beneath, and every receptor in three and a half feet of prehensile muscle has fired simultaneously, and the output is a single word I do not have an operational category for, and I am not going to examine it, because the mercenaries are fourteen minutes out, and I need to function.
Both hands go to full extension. Ten black points. I am between her and the airlock, thermal output spiking, the markings along my shoulders running hot enough to feel through the tactical suit.
She does not scream. Does not freeze.
She takes up Betsy. Two-handed grip, feet planted, weight centered.
The stance is Morrison-trained and flawless, and I will be revising every assumption I have made about OOPS couriers and their operational capabilities, starting with this one, who is holding a named weapon with the steady hands of someone who has killed before and will kill again and is not troubled by the interval.
Four minutes. I have known this courier for four minutes.
My tail is around her waist. My claws are out.
My body has positioned itself between her and the threat with the efficiency of nine years of combat training applied to an objective I did not select and did not authorize.
This is not a framework failure. This is the framework collapsing entirely, and there are three armed vessels inbound, and I do not have time to examine what that means.
“I suppose we have a problem,” I say.
“We have several, lovey.” She does not look at my tail. Does not look at my claws. She watches the tactical display, where three red signatures are closing fast, and her grip on the flower-stickered blaster does not waver. “The mercs are only one of them.”
My tail does not let go. This is not a tactical decision.
This is not a decision at all. My tail has made an assessment I was not consulted on, arrived at a conclusion I cannot countermand, and is currently holding a courier against my body with the certainty of something that has been waiting nine years to do exactly this.
I am going to have to think about that. I am not going to think about it now.
It is not dismissed.