And all that momentary hope disappears.
CHAPTER THIRTY – DELPHI
Our plan to get through the Lair Gate and make it to the actual station is iffy, at best. But what can you do? When the Loathsome One is holding your soulmate, your bot, and your brother captive you pull out all the stops and go balls in. That’s all there is to it.
Once I told Dicker what I wanted to do her huffy attitude faded and she became a little more amicable. Maybe because it made this whole crazy scheme a little more even.
She is, after all, risking her life just by going through the gate. And that new cloaking device she’s been going on and on about is pretty cool, but it’s by no means a guaranteed win. We need to be sneaky about this.
The Loathsome One is a seasoned pro. She’s been on the run for two decades. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She’s seen more action than Dicker, Jimmy, and me put together. This plan has to be insane for the sheer fact that if it’s not, she’ll see through it immediately.
What we need is a little bit of skill, a little bit of luck, and a whole lot of lying. Heavy, heavy emphasis on the lying part. Because that’s the clincher.
“You let me know when you’re ready,” Dicker says.
We’re floating about half a million klicks away from the last gate before we jump into the Lair Station neighborhood.
I’m still strapped into Xyla’s exoskeleton, but I’m also hitched to Jimmy’s nearly-worthless Palladium bot.
Because that’s my plan.
Dicker told me the whole Bull Station story as we made our way through stealth gates to get to this last one without being noticed. She told me how Lyra saved Nyleena by using her bot to shuttle her through space to Nyleena’s cryopod and how ALCOR pretty much did the same thing on some other bot to infiltrate and destroy the Cygnian warship.
And hell, it’s a damn good idea. I’m not sure it’s one you’d choose if you had better options because you can get lost in space pretty fucking quick when you’re nothing but a human-sized anomaly with barely a blip of heat signature to track. And I gotta say, being lost in space and dying slowly as you freeze to death and run out of oxygen is a pretty fucked-up way to go out.
Yeah. Not my number one choice. Just the only one I have.
But here’s the thing. Us Cygnian princesses? We’re mastermind plan-makers. Like this is just something we can do. That’s how we all escape. We’re just good at this shit. You know your plan is amazing when it’s stupid crazy. It’s like the defining factor for success.
So I was like, OK. This plan is awesome. I can use this stupid Palladium bot tagging along as my shuttle, right? Infiltrate the Lair Station, kick some ass as a souped-up, exoskeleton-equipped, Mighty Minion princess girl, then find Jimmy, Flicka, and Tycho, get back to Dicker, get the fuck out of here, and start a brand-new life on Harem Station.
What could go wrong?
OK, maybe there are a few snags to work out. Like for one, Dicker’s new cloaking device only gives her thirty-seven seconds of non-trackable heat signature. Which means that once we get through the gate I have thirty-seven seconds to launch myself out of the airlock and get far enough away from Dicker so when Lair Station finally sees her, they don’t shoot me in the process of trying to shoot her.
Because they will shoot her.
I was a little bit worried about that, and said so. But Dicker just got all huffy and said she can take care of herself and I should just concentrate on my part of the plan, because that’s the part that matters.
She’s right. So I let it go.
You do you, Dicker.
The other obvious flaw is that this plan depends on me becoming that kick-ass souped-up exoskeleton Mighty Minions princess girl. I’ve been inside the Lair Station so I know it’s big and filled with borgs and bots that are way stronger than little ol’ me. But this suit is kind of amazing. I really feel like I can pull this part off. I have some moves in my back pocket. I might be small, but I’m three sun-damned meters tall inside this freaking exoskeleton and I have body parts that shoot shit like plasma streams and shrapnel grenades.
I feel like it’s probably gonna be a pretty even match as long as I don’t get overrun by a mob.
Then, you know. There’s the whole getting off the station. That part really depends on Dicker. Somehow she needs to find a way to dock. Preferably a dock that’s not in vacuum so we can like… you know, get to the ship without suffocating. Either that or find Jimmy a suit along the way, but I feel like stumbling upon some random environmental suit as we escape is pretty absurd.