Mack 'n' Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Mack ‘n’ Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

  Dedication

  Contents

  1—Rumors of Wrecks

  2—Three Rounds with Tens

  3—Pre-Ops

  4—A Lady is...

  5—...As a Lady Does

  6—Unmasked

  7—Of Lords and Kings

  8—The Suggestibility of Stims

  9—A Suspicious Meal

  10—The Missing Bracelet Mission

  11—A Guarantee for Good Behavior

  12—Into the Deeps

  13—The Place is Crawling

  14—Varian, Arc and Hammer

  15—Ant Honey

  16— Of Wolves and Honey

  17— A History of Wolves

  18— Upsetting Doc

  19—Back in Training

  20—It’s All About the Mission

  21—Operational Extras

  22—Kids and Cubs

  23—Coming Home

  24—Volunteers

  25—Return to Alpha 9

  26—Battle Plans

  27—Battle Joined

  28—Plans Awry

  29—Free For All

  30—Penance

  31—End Game

  Author’s Notes

  Other Work by C.M. Simpson

  About C.M. Simpson

  Mack ‘n’ Me: The Wolves of Alpha 9

  Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey #5

  C.M. Simpson

  A relic from a near-forgotten war, an escaped concubine, and planetary annexation. When Mack’s hunt for a crashed war ship goes terribly wrong, Cutter and the crew find themselves embroiled in the politics of rebellion, inter-species warfare and inter-clan domination. Throw in clan rivalries and a cub in need of rescue, and a simple wreck retrieval becomes a matter of life, death and Odyssey. The only question is just how much trouble they can get into before they need help getting back out...and if someone will be there to aid them.

  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.

  1st Edition

  Copyright © March 17, 2021 C.M. Simpson

  Cover Art & Design © September 24, 2020, Moonchild Lilja at Fantasy Book Design

  All rights reserved.

  License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book 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 return to an authorized retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  This is for all those who believed in me enough that, eventually, I had the courage to believe in myself.

  Thank you.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  1—Rumors of Wrecks

  2—Three Rounds with Tens

  3—Pre-Ops

  4—A Lady is...

  5—...as a Lady Does.

  6—Unmasked

  7—Of Lords and Kings

  8—The Suggestibility of Stims

  9—A Suspicious Meal

  10—The Missing Bracelet Mission

  11—A Guarantee for Good Behavior

  12—Into the Deeps

  13—The Place is Crawling

  14—Varian, Arc, and Hammer

  15—Ant Honey

  16—Honey and Wolves

  17—A History of Wolves

  18—Upsetting Doc

  19—Back in Training

  20—It’s All About the Mission

  21—Operational Extras

  22—Kids and Cubs

  23—Coming Home

  24—Volunteers

  25—Return to Alpha 9

  26—Battle Plans

  27—Battle Joined

  28—Plans Awry

  29—Free for All

  30—Penance

  31—End Game

  Author’s Notes

  Other Work by C.M. Simpson

  About C.M. Simpson

  1—Rumors of Wrecks

  “You want to go where?” Tens was not impressed. “With all due respect, Captain, are you out of your tiny little mind?”

  I watched as Mack rolled an eye in Tens’s direction, and was glad it was Tens who’d asked, and not me. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near as polite.

  And I wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

  But if Tens was leading...

  “Don’t go there, Cutter.”

  Well, damn. The man was still reading me like a book.

  He smirked.

  “Like that’s ever going to change.”

  He looked back over at Tens.

  “We’ve hit a quiet patch, and I’m curious.”

  The way he said it, you’da thought that explained everything.

  Given it was Mack, it kinda did.

  The man needed distracting.

  “Yeah,” Tens said, picking up on that thought, and I remembered that Mack wasn’t the only one who could get inside my head. “And we all know why.”

  “Shut it, Tens!” was something I said in duet, Mack and I completely in agreement for a change.

  He stared back at us, shifting his gaze between us.

  “Fine!” he said, “I don’t suppose I need to remind you what happened the last time you two were there.”

  And Mack and I looked at each other. Last time we’d been on Alpha 9 it had been because Odyssey asked...or, rather, insisted we go there, and I mean at gunpoint, and with Mack’s ship and crew as hostages. We’d been going to say no, and that wasn’t an answer they’d take.

  Either way, we’d ended up going to Alpha Nine, retrieving a missing data packet, and leaping off a balcony some ten thousand feet above the Carafakt. Tens had picked us up in a teleport beam before we’d gone more than a thousand, but it had still been one Hell of a ride.

  And it wasn’t one that I wanted to repeat. I looked over at Mack, and my heart sank. He really was serious.

  “Damn straight, I am, Cutter.”

  Well, that told me.

  He sighed.

  “It would make a break from our usual line of work, give the crew some downtime, and maybe net us a bounty on the Odyssey tech front.”

  That last point was interesting, given that we’d netted enough bounties in the last ten years that we probably didn’t have to take another Odyssey contract ever, ever again. I looked at him, and saw the tension lurking in his shoulders. For some reason, our agreement meant something. I watched his eyes widen, and he shot me a quick slideways glance.

  It didn’t help that Tens had caught that thought, as well. I caught a second look from him, and he shrugged.

  “Sure, boss. It’s your boat.”

  From the way he said it, he might as well have been saying it was Mack’s funeral.

  And that thought earned me rolled eyes from the pair of them.

  What? They thought I’d go easy on either of them just because I knew they were in my head? Since when had that ever been a factor? I’d given up trying to keep my thoughts out of my implant and private, ever since I’d learned that it just wasn’t something I could do with this model—and I didn’t want to trade up. I was kinda comfortable knowing they were in my head. It wasn’t like either of them could dictate how I felt—and the Stars knew they’d both tried to do that often enough.

  “Hey!”

  I didn’t know why they even bothered protesting. They were both as guilty as sin.
>
  “If the shoe fits,” I muttered, and then changed the subject. “So, boss, these wrecks. You wanta tell us about them?”

  And Mack relaxed.

  “I picked it up on the net,” he said, and he was looking as cagey as hell, like there was some secret about the source that he was uneasy with me finding out.

  That had to mean a woman—and one he was pretty sure I’d disapprove of.

  I’m not flattering myself; Mack and I, we’d recently realized we had feelings—and it was as uncomfortable as Hell. Since he’d never been that worried about revealing his sources, before—and he’d hidden plenty—then he had to have a reason, and I was guessing it was a woman, one that I’d disapprove of...or maybe one that he thought I’d be jealous of.

  Well, there was only one woman that had any chance of that.

  “So,” I said, “when did you see Marie for this cozy little chat?”

  And Tens sputtered, like he was trying real hard not to laugh. Case, our pilot, wasn’t so subtle. She gave an inelegant snort, and got out of her seat.

  “Ship’s on course,” she said, as she crossed the command center. “I don’t need to be here for this.”

  I could hear her cracking up as soon as the door to the command center slid closed behind her.

  “I... uh... I... We met on Gressen,” he admitted, and blushed red to the hairline.

  Tens took one look at him and started howling with laughter.

  “Tens...” Mack wasn’t impressed, and Tens couldn’t stop.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen the man fall out of his seat, and then he just lay on the floor, curled up and crying, because he was laughing so hard.

  “Not funny, Tens,” Mack snapped, and I bit back a snicker.

  “Just tell me,” I said, and then said the one thing that was bothering me. “What was it? You needed one last fling? Wanted to make sure she really didn’t want a bar of you and was never going to change her mind? What?”

  He stared at me, his face working through the range from denial to anger to horror, and, finally, frustration at not being able to get a word in edgewise.

  “I... Oh, give it a rest, Cutter. I just wanted to tell her about you so she didn’t hear it from anyone else.”

  I froze.

  “Why? It’s not like we’re engaged,” but I knew I was wrong the minute I said it.

  We weren’t engaged, and we were still tiptoeing around the edge of declaring intent and exclusivity, but neither of us were looking for anyone else, and pretty much everyone else had picked Mack was taken before I’d been ready to admit he might be interested.

  Whatever.

  It didn’t mean we were in love!

  And Tens stopped laughing. When he spoke, he was as serious as the Stars.

  “It kinda does, you know.”

  I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I didn’t. He was right, no matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, and no matter how much Mack was being cautious about that final step. We both knew we were “in it but deep”, as Abby liked to say, but we weren’t quite ready to admit just how deep.

  I looked over at Mack, and he looked back. I caught a flash of vulnerability through the link we shared, and then it was gone. Still, it took more courage than either of us wanted to acknowledge for him to ask the next question.

  “So. We okay?”

  I rolled my shoulders in an elaborate shrug.

  “Sure, Mack. Why wouldn’t we be?”

  And he took a peek into my head to see that it was true, before he’d continue with his story.

  “She kissed me,” he said, and I stared at him.

  “Why’d she do that?”

  “Because she was happy,” he said, and I heard what he didn’t add. That I’d found someone new.

  And he was as conflicted as Hell about that. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disgusted with himself.

  Stupid man.

  I looked up and caught him staring.

  “What you guys had was special—and she’s nice enough to want you to be happy without her.”

  “Oh. Right...”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Tens was obviously sick of the mushy stuff. “All of this touchy feely shit and you haven’t even shagged yet. Why don’t you just get to the point?”

  He looked from Mack to me and back, again, and then spelt it out for us.

  “The wrecks? Marie obviously wanted to give you a pairing gift.”

  It was my turn to blush. I squashed the urge, feeling the color rise and fade in a short-lived burst of heat.

  “Whatever, she gave you data. You want to go looking for wrecks on Alpha 9, where, I might add you and I are not flavor of the month, so you obviously have a plan, right?”

  Mack shrugged.

  “Nope. That’s why I raised it. Thing is, Marie said the wrecks are old, like Wolf-War old, so they’re old tech, and buried deep because of the weapons they used there.”

  Well, they would be old, but I didn’t know enough about what happened in the Wolf Wars to even start having a clue about what weapons had been used on Alpha Nine. As far as I knew the wars themselves hadn’t touched the world. I slid out of my seat.

  “Looks like I have some research to do,” I said. “I’ll send Case in to take over.”

  Mack looked at me.

  “I know nothing of the Wolf Wars,” I said, “and this is a retrieval job and a half. Your Marie knew what she was doing when she passed it to you. She must like you a lot.”

  I watched the color flow over his face and down his throat.

  “She used to,” he muttered, and I remembered the stories about just how far Mack had gone to try and convince Marie to come back. I mean, the ship was named for her, for fuck’s sake. The man had fallen hard, been as smitten as anyone could possibly be. The fact everyone thought he’d fallen just as hard for me was a little disturbing.

  Not that he’d let it show. I think I’d forced the admission out of him at a time of stress. We’d been about to head out on a mission, and I’d told him not to worry about me because I knew he was taken and it wasn’t me. And he’d told me it was...and I was fucked if I could work out why.

  I felt the shift in Mack’s head when he decided not to explain, felt a barrier go up between us, as though he struggled for distance. Whether for me or for him, I didn’t know...and I wasn’t going to pry. The man had a right to his privacy.

  “Damn right, the man does,” he said, and Tens groaned.

  “Seriously? You two really need to sort yourselves out.”

  We both glared at him, and then I threw up my hands, and headed out.

  “I’ve got some research to do,” I said. “I’ll look into the Wolf Wars, and what sort of shit was flying around back in the day.”

  Tens focused.

  “And I’ll see if I can find us a reason to pay Alpha Nine a visit, given what the two of you did the last time you were allowed on the planet.”

  I wondered if we’d ever be able to live that down, and then decided the answer was probably no.

  “You do know they might not let you back, right?”

  Yeah, I knew that. I also knew Tens was more than capable of finding a way around it, if he wanted to badly enough. I wondered what it would take to make him want it that badly. Another date with Abby, perhaps?

  “Don’t go there, Cutter. Not ever.”

  And I got the impression that going there might be a really bad idea.

  “I’ll haul your ass out of the computer come training,” Mack said, which reminded me that I still had sparring and time on the range to look forward to.

  If I was lucky, he wouldn’t let our pet assassins loose on my ass.

  Given that was going to curtail my research time a bit more than I wanted, I hauled ass out of there and headed to the Rec Center.

  2—Three Rounds with Tens

  The Rec room was rarely quiet. This time, we’d had a bit more down time than usual, and it was pretty busy. I waved away challenges in this
sim or that, stopped to check in on Rohan, our other pilot and tech-head, and Cascade, the big mutt that stuck to his side.

  “How’s it going?” I asked, and Rohan snorted.

  “We don’t find something to do, soon, and I’m gonna find some mischief,” he said.

  Well, that brought me up short.

  “You what?”

  He smirked.

  “You heard.”

  I reached up and poked him in the chest. Damn, the boy had grown some since I was last paying attention.

  “You can come to training with me,” I said, and he shook his head.

  “Nah, the old man has me booked solid, later.”

  “Another time, then,” I said, wondering how Tens would take being called ‘the old man’, as I headed for a computer cubicle.

  “I’ll kick the little rat’s ass,” Tens said, and was gone as quickly as he’d appeared in my head.

  Whatever, right?

  I booted up the computer, hooked in with the implant, and then figured I should be running this from somewhere more secure, and logged out, again. Another minute later, and I was sitting in a locked booth, logged into a terminal isolated from the Recreation Center, as well as the rest of the ship.

  Wolf Wars, I thought, and riffled through the search results.

  There was a lot of stuff. Maybe I needed to narrow it, and I meant by a lot. I added ‘Alpha Nine’, and the results almost vanished. I wondered what was hidden on the dark side of the galactic net, and started at the top of the list. There’d have to be something interesting, right?

  Nope. Nada. Nothing. Zip. And zilch.

  The main reference I found was that the Wolf Wars mainly bypassed Alpha Nine, except for both sides bombarding the shit out of it as they passed.

  Oh. That was what the boys had meant when they said anything would be buried deep. Stuff that got used in those wars? Yeah, it kinda had the effect of shifting continental plates and generally disrupting the way the surface formed and fit together. Talk about your extreme makeover.

  Well, that was going to complicate things.

  I still had a whole pile of nothing when Mack pulled me out of the booth. And I’d thought I was safe once I’d locked the place down. Turns out Mack had made sure he didn’t get locked out of any part of his ship.