His ward had scarpered. Between Aisle 8-B, down between a tight copse of pharmacy and biotechnological presentation booths, little Mala dissolved away through crowded, elbowing body-traffic, leaving her Keeper to pause and upset the consumer flow. Someone tall in dark orbital cloth and last cycle’s pantaloon-fatigues cursed him, adding handfuls of rounding assaults pertaining to Cato Fett’s armour, martial heritage, and the worth of the Mando’ade as a whole. Then gone, rejoining his perusing group after shuffling around Cato, now brightly aware of paired scabbards knotted to his spider-silk waist belting and the way his gauntlet easy fondled the longsword grip.
“Mala!” He called. He stepped out of the way of aisle traffic and darted lengthwise along a darkened, empty booth alleyway, nested with power cabling and flash-food wrappers under his boots. Audio-gain was sharpened, software scrubbers embedded in his helm simultaneously muting and highlighting pre-selected sound cues. If the Squib was loitering close, she was camouflaging her cardiovascular patterns with the expo hall’s tinny acoustics. Cato swept through layered AR visor-modes, striding onto Aisle 8-C, looking for a little caterwauling goblin mocking him from behind passerby legs, tracks, and hover-plates.
“Nasties!” Cato paused, dialed the gain higher, washing the vocal pick-up out of the background chatter. “Throwing things at Mala!” Nineteen metres south-by-west, six aisles over approximately, overlaying the echo against a sonic-returns mapping a hard-light floor-plan. “Mala can throw things too, see!” He pushed into a low jog, adjusting the ride of his daisho, a well-rehearsed apology readied on his tongue. Floodlight glow-lamps winked dully off his shoulder plating, striding against the crowd flow, senses jammed by sweat odour, bacta grease, hydraulic aromatics, faint oils and the electric sting of ozone discharge. He wasn’t fond of the venue; ATC’s corpulent commercial regalia dominating the trade station from the shielded aerodrome and port to the expo floor, thronged with too many bodies to properly account for, too many vectors for hostile approach, too many blindspots, simply too much situational data that he could not process except for his personal immediacy. Cato felt at the lashings of his armour and hurried after his ward.
What’d Mala filch this time?
[member="Mala"]
