Chapter 269: One Use, Absolutely No Refunds

Rusk pointed her sidearm at Bridget while standing close enough to a fuel trailer to demonstrate that good judgment wasn’t part of the promotion process. I stopped above the service ramp, keeping the captain looking at me while Bridget moved her hand away from the ruined car door.

My first thought involved the Blow-Up Doppelgänger, because hurting a copy of the woman with the gun sounded considerably safer than approaching the original. Old Mate rejected the idea before I finished imagining where I’d bend its trigger finger.

[System: You spent that one during the Channel business, mate. One use means one use, not one use whenever the situation gets inconvenient and your memory develops a refund policy.]

I was checking the inventory, which seems responsible when somebody’s threatening to shoot my date. The doll stayed spent, leaving a fuel trailer, a crane and my ability to irritate strangers as our available equipment.

[System: Look around, ya goose; there’s enough machinery here to bankrupt a council, and your girl’s already finding a use for it.]

Then help me watch the gun while she works, because I refuse to lose her to somebody dressed like an overpriced trophy.

Rusk demanded the disabled lure key, the recordings and the names of everyone who’d helped us at the camp. I told her she would need a larger notebook for the names, then asked whether she wanted them alphabetically or arranged by how much they disliked her.

"You can keep talking if it helps you stay still, but she moves when I say she moves," the captain replied. Bridget stayed beside the car with both hands visible, looking at the hanging crane chain instead of giving Rusk the frightened attention she wanted.

Lukas was still inside the control room, where the windows gave him a view of the car without exposing his whole body. His own phone buzzed beside Pike’s hand, and the mechanic looked down before reaching towards the crane controls again.

Bridget had sent the message before Rusk told her to put the phone away. The empty lifting hook hung above the fuel trailer, with a broad canvas weather cover caught beneath its chain, and the crane could move it without anyone crossing the captain’s firing line.

[System: Keep the captain yapping, champ; the fairy’s got the scenery organised, and spider boy’s finally using machinery without proposing to fucking marry it.]

I’ll ask about the paperwork, because she’s the sort of miserable bastard who probably enjoys explaining why a hostage needs a receipt. I told Rusk the recordings had already gone to people outside the yard, which was true of Bridget’s gala evidence and enough to make her ask exactly who.

Pike raised the chain while she spoke, pulling the canvas loose from the trailer’s side. Lukas guided a web-line attached to its corner through the open control-room window, turning the hanging sheet just as the captain noticed movement above her head.

The canvas dropped between her and Bridget, blocking the gun’s clear line for the moment we needed. I fired both fin jets and struck the captain’s weapon arm with a solid coil, driving its muzzle towards empty concrete while Bridget moved behind the trailer’s wheel assembly.

The shot broke stone beside my tail, and Rusk answered the impact by grabbing the coil wrapped around her wrist. She pulled with enough strength to remind me what the C+ badge meant, then drove my body against the trailer’s frame before I could loosen my hold.

The impact knocked the clever answer out of me, leaving a pained grunt that made Bridget’s voice sharpen when she called my name. I let that section dissolve into mist and slipped her grip before she could strike again, reforming above the wheel where Bridget had already moved clear.

"That’s a disappointing handshake, Captain, and I don’t think we’ll be leaving a tip," I told her. She tore the canvas aside while her two guards tried approaching the control room, only to stop when Hollis’s patrol arrived behind them with weapons raised.

The guards looked between the sergeant and the captain, then lowered their rifles rather than begin a second argument with people still wearing their own unit’s bars. Rusk called them cowards and moved towards the armoured gun carrier parked beside the loading shed.

I could have stayed with Bridget and let Hollis try the official conversation, but the carrier’s weapon was already turning towards the road back to the shelter. Leaving Rusk inside it would give her another way to make our escape somebody else’s medical problem.

[System: Follow her away from the road, mate, not across it. If you’re going to annoy a cannon, at least pick somewhere the audience won’t collect the bloody leftovers.]

I’m taking her towards the empty bay, and I’d like somebody to remember that sensible decision before discussing whatever stupid thing happens next. I flew low across the carrier’s front, making Rusk track me towards the concrete walls of the deserted ammunition shed.

Bridget shouted that the carrier used the same leased control system as the road gun, then followed its external cable towards a maintenance cabinet behind cover. Lukas stayed at the control-room window with Pike, watching the new firing angle while Hollis moved her guards off the road.

Rusk climbed into the carrier’s cabin and slammed the hatch before I could reach it. The weapon mount turned after me while a loading arm unfolded from its side, catching the chain I’d passed beneath and sweeping it across the space behind my tail.

I cut towards the open service slot, intending to reach the gun’s feed before it could fire. The loading cradle rose underneath me instead, clamping my solid body between two steel guides while the gun’s cooling system started drawing air past a warning about hot propellant gas.

Old Mate told me to stay solid before I could turn into mist, but the cradle was already moving. Rusk had stopped trying to shoot the snake outside her cannon, because the machinery had decided I belonged in the next loading cycle.