“Or he’s in denial,” Pritchard added, making no secret of the fact he could read the surface layer of her thoughts through her implant.

  Jeremy removed his arm from around her shoulders and took his place with the Marine team. The Marines eyed the three mercs with distaste, except for Jeremy who observed them with a detachment that meant he was already shifting from partner to professional.

  The sight of it was enough for Delight to get her own ‘game face’ on, and she took her place at the table, with the three mercs coming to sit opposite. The Marines still didn’t look pleased.

  The woman at the end of the room cleared her throat and they all turned their attention toward her. She clicked the small rod-like instrument in her hand and the wall lit up behind her. Taking a step to one side, she indicated a landscape made up of jagged crystalline canyons and buttes, all packed into a single miles-wide split in the planet’s crust.

  Outthrusts of crystal broke the contours of canyon walls and floors and the entire world rippled with reflections and shattered light.

  “The Crystal Canyons of Togaresh,” the briefing officer began, not introducing herself.

  The pictures scrolled, and Delight understood the company had finally managed to get a drone into the forbidden zone. She tensed. They’d been chasing the smugglers and Togaresh’s illicit trade in genetics for over a year, ten, if you included the time it had taken to successfully get an agent on-world.

  Operative Penny Black had needed to disappear for a while…and Togaresh was as far from her usual haunts as they could get her…and a closed enough world that arrivals, departures and communications weren’t hard to monitor. Keeping Penny safe after what she’d accomplished was a tall order.

  Delight cast a jaundiced eye at Cutter. Which begs the question as to why we need Mack and his crew…

  Fortunately, the woman in charge of the briefing was ready to give them answer to that.

  “As you know access to Togaresh is on a needs-judged basis,” she continued, and gestured toward Mack and his off-siders. “Fortunately, the Shady Marie has decided to upgrade its teleport tech and wants to trial some of Togaresh’s crystalline structures.

  Delight noticed Tens twist his mouth in distaste, and wondered how much the Shady’s cooperation was costing Odyssey.

  This time, she silently added, since everyone knew how much Tens valued his teleport system…and how much Mack and Tens didn’t want to be working for Odyssey.

  They’d kicked free of the organization over the debacle that had occurred with Crow ,and demanded compensation to boot, but even that drastic action hadn’t saved Mack’s relationship with Marie.

  The woman had simply reached the point where she couldn’t do it, anymore—and Mack had gone way past the point where he had any hope of stopping.

  They’d parted company amicably enough, but the fallout had seen him retire from Odyssey, although not even he and Tens had been able to wield sufficient force to slip the leash the company had applied as a result.

  They are getting close, though she reminded herself, having seen the agreement they’d brokered with the company. And we need Mack to be a lot happier with us before it happens.

  She eyed the way he sat with Cutter and wondered if the girl even knew the effect she was having on Odyssey’s most famous retiree…or understood the effect he was having on her, because watching the way she sat in the shelter of Mack’s arm, Delight realized that Cutter just might be happy to be there.

  She stifled another groan.

  That’s all I need, she thought, forcing herself to focus on the briefing.

  “We’ve located the wreckage of the cargo hopper, but Multi-Faceted has already sent in a retrieval agent.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  What cargo hopper? Delight thought, and replayed the briefing as the woman went on.

  “The other problem we have is the number of predators,” the briefer added, and the drone dropped a few feet.

  “In addition to the crystalline cats,” the briefer stated, as the drone dove under the belly of a large six-legged cat Delight had barely registered was there, “There are the shard spinners.”

  Delight stared at a second cat as the drone came up from under the first, dodged the swipe of a heavy forepaw, and twisted past the second beast’s snarling jaws.

  That thing is huge, she thought, At least five feet at the shoulder and six in the body alone.

  And that didn’t include the three-forked tail or a set of jaws that looked like they could close around her head with no effort at all. A sudden scrambling from the other side of the room, drew her attention and she was in time to see Mack pull Cutter close to his side and hold her there.

  Now, what… Delight thought, following the woman’s frightened stare to the screen.

  It was all she could do not to draw her blaster and fire at the monster she saw there. She’d been so focused on the cats, she’d failed to see what had set Cutter off.

  “Looks like she’s still not over K’Kvor,” she told Pritchard, then registered his hand gripping the one she’d dropped to her blaster.

  “She’s not the only one,” Pritchard answered, easing his hand away as she let go of the grip.

  Delight glanced over at Jeremy, but if the Marine had noticed her response, he didn’t show it. His eyes remained firmly on the screen, studying the structure of the monsters. Like the combat-oriented guy he was, he was trying to work out ways of defeating them before they could bring harm to either him or his men.

  Or me, Delight acknowledged, even though she knew he wouldn’t jeopardize the mission on her behalf.

  The replay in Delight’s head reached the introduction of Cargo Hopper 216, and the scientists who’d hidden away in it…along with their genetically modified child. Having found the context she needed, Delight turned her full attention to the briefing as it continued.

  “Unfortunately, the scientists survived the crash, but not the predators that came soon after.”

  The drone footage switched to a recording taken from inside the hopper’s cockpit. It showed the two scientists trying to get the critically damaged craft back in the air, each identifying the predators that had brought it down.

  “No…” Tens murmured, his face grim, but any questions that might have raised had to wait. The scientists were speaking.

  “We should have hired a flyer,” the woman sobbed, as they worked.

  “Couldn’t,” the husband grimly reminded her. “Too many eyes from the company, remember?”

  “And this was the only way…” she agreed softly.

  “We still had to take the chance,” he responded, glancing through the cockpit.

  Not even the hopper’s sensors warned of the attack that came on the back of that statement, but Delight knew why. The monsters hid in the reflections, their crystalline hides disguising both their presence and movements—even from the hopper’s external pick-ups.

  In the few seconds it took for a crystalline cat to take out the cockpit’s shielding, a thread-secured spear from a shard spinner lashed through the gap, skewering the female scientist and yanking her from under the cat’s jaws. The husband followed shortly after, as the cat took what was left, rather than lose it to another spear.

  The wail of a frightened child overrode the sound of the cat feeding, and the footage ended.

  Odyssey’s drone picked up where it left off, turning to a large, dark crack in the hopper’s hull. Dodging another paw swipe, it flew inside, turning on a small searchlight as it proceeded into the craft’s broken depths. Out of the refracting sunlight, things skittered and moved, but vanished before the drone’s camera could find them.

  The closest they got to seeing what had invaded the wreck, was a spindly shadow that vanished through another tear before the camera focused. The drone reached a small chamber where a tier of pods took up one wall.

  The lower two had been opened and were empty, but the empty space above them indicated that the third had not only been removed, but had been much smaller.

  “Their child,” the briefer explained. “She survived the crash and the predators, but would not have survived for much longer if one of Multi-Faceted’s flyers hadn’t arrived and found her.”

  Delight sat up. She’d heard about the flyers, elite couriers who were uniquely qualified to fly the crystal chasms and canyons where only automated shuttles and hoppers were usually allowed. The scientists’ disastrous flight showed why.

  While most humans could navigate the reflective chasms, it took a talented pilot to handle the unpredictable air currents and do so at speed—and even they could not see the predators in time to avoid them all. The Crystal Canyon was a death trap, for anything carrying an inadequately shielded ‘meat’ cargo…and for anyone trying to fly it without the proper genetic qualifications.

  Delight snorted, and the briefer gave her a look of askance.

  Delight returned the look with an arched brow and head tilt that said the woman needed to continue.

  With a slight frown, the briefer did.

  “Multi-Faceted’s rules state the flyers act as couriers, and most crash sites and victims are left where they fall. The canyons are littered with wreckage, particularly from the colony’s early days when they had no choice but to try to make it through…which was when the flyers emerged as a local genetic variant.”