Part the eighth
Something seems to be up with the squad when Bonky and Mel reach the Donut Hut again, with some minutes to spare before their deadline Bonky is pleased to note. Jacinta has donned her powershades and Steve seems to be taking a strong interest in kicking the ground, hard enough to dent the paving stones. His heavily modified armour’s servos groan in complaint softly at each impact. As Mel and Bonky arrive Sleet places a hand on Steve’s shoulder guard, half in warning half in sympathy, it seems.
Sleet has a funny way with people sometimes, although to be fair Bonky finds most people are funny at one time or another. Sleet though seems to be able to sense how people are feeling and to react accordingly, even if that does most often involve making tense situations several orders of magnitude worse.
Now, though, he is clearly not trying to antagonise Steve, who stops his kicking and starts checking his FEN AR instead. The bulky weapon has a host of attachments and scopes that need checking and calibrating, and Bonky can see the man calming down as he settles into the routine of prepping his gear. Sleet grimaces slightly in the warm, foetid rain and turns the dial on his Freez-e-Does-It cooler suit down another couple of notches. He gives a lazy yawn and catches Mel’s eye, almost imperceptibly nodding towards Jacinta as he does so.
Mel takes the hint, which for Sleet might as well have been yelled over an open com channel in head office, and makes for Jacinta, who has been talking on her phone with her back to Mel and Bonky. She finishes up abruptly as Mel reaches her side, and Bonky notices that she doesn’t switch her phone off when she’s done talking. Perhaps she has one of those voice-activated ones that Jen was saying he should try, having a tendency towards mashing the buttons of regular models into an indistinguishable soup of sad little electronic bits and bobs.
Jacinta call s out “OK, let’s... let’s get this over with, OK? It needn’t take long and then we can all get some... get some rest. Sleet, you’ve got the co-ordinates of the entry point, right?”
Sleet nods once, then dons his helmet.The com crackles slightly as he goes online. “Affirm.”
“Then sort us out some transport and I’ll put in for... reimbursment OK?”
“Already on its way”
“Good.”
As she has been talking over the com, Jacinta has been walking away from the rest of the group with Mel, and Bonky can see now that they are really quite deep in conversation about something. Jacinta takes off her obviously new Pookai sunglasses (they still have a little tag on them), and Bonky is surprised to see Mel gasp as she does so: normally there is very little that can cause such a reaction from his friend. He hears Jacinta say something that could be “... ran out of KickStart” but then he loses the rest of what she was saying under the rumble of a passing delivery truck.
Mel’s head snaps round immediately as it passes and sprays the team with dirty, puddled water and Bonky can see the weird light of the Ebb playing over her slightly, like tiny bolts of chained lightning. She shakes her head as if trying to clear it, takes another look at where the truck went, then returns her attention to Jacinta, who has clenched her jaw and seems to be shaking ever so slightly. Perhaps she is cold, Bonky thinks, although it seems unlikely in this unpleasant humidity. He is about to go and give her a hug when Mel catches his gaze and gives him one short sharp shake of the head. Bonly stays where he is and checks his 603 for what seems like the hundredth time this morning.
Out of the corner of his eye he can see more tiny Ebb fireflies dancing again, this time linking Mel to Jacinta; and Mel puts an arm around Jacinta as they come and rejoin the group. Jacinta tries to catch each of their eyes in turn but for some reason when she gets to Steve he turns away and starts checking one of his magazines again. Bonky sees his hands are shaking slightly, however, and he drops the mag on the floor. Somehow, one bullet comes free and tumbles out to land at Jacinta’s feet: she stoops to pick it up but Steve gets there first and holds it out to her in his open palm. He doesn’t say anything over an open com channel but Bonky notices the tell-tale for a tight beam transmission come on in his HUD. Jacinta stiffens, then seems to choke on something as she hurriedly puts on her own helmet.
Steve puts the bullet into a separate pouch and not back into the magazine, Bonky notices: perhaps he has detected a potentially dangerous flaw in its construction. Bonky begins checking his own clips. Again. He sighs slightly. Sleet grins. It is a couple of minutes before Jacinta comes online on the group com: Mel stands by her and holds her hand whilst they wait for the taxi to arrive.
Bonky’s curiosity has been piqued by this exchange so he opens his own secure channel to Steve and what was wrong with the bullet. Steve replies that there was nothing the matter with the bullet and that, on the contrary, it is eminently suited to a task that might well be accomplished soon after the successful completion of the squad’s current BPN contract. There is something tight in Steve’s voice that Bonky has only ever heard before in combat: Bonky asks if it is something he can help with, which results in a chuckle from Steve over the com. He says something about this job being a ‘one on one’ thing to do with Blake. Bonky is slightly relieved and leaves things there. If Steve is going through the squad’s finacier then everything must be ‘Above Board and A-OK’ as the training video put it. He starts one last weapons check as Steve starts whistling tunelessly over the com.
He is cut short by Sleet’s terse interjection: “Ride’s here.”
And it was.
And they went.
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