Trial and Temptation (Mandrake Company)

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  The officers were busy with their own tasks, so it probably only seemed like everyone was staring at Val, but she felt silly wearing training goggles linked to the helm and pretending to fly the ship. Worse, the program was throwing everything from pirates to wrecks to irate grannies with canes at her, and she had a tendency to fling herself to the left and right, her body wanting to dodge the obstacles as much as her virtual spaceship did. After every “near miss,” she told herself not to react physically, but the next time laser fire blasted her view screen, her body ignored her mind and tried to fling her to safety, her heart racing as if it were real. Doubtlessly because it felt so real. Whoever had programmed the goggles had done a good job. Thatcher probably.

  A clunk came from the side of the helm, and Val flinched, expecting another virtual pirate attack until she realized the sound had been real. She paused the simulation and pushed the goggles onto her forehead.

  “Sorry,” a young blonde woman in coveralls said. She was kneeling beside one of the displays that hadn’t worked since Val had sat down that morning. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  The clunk must have come from the floating box of tools and diagnostic equipment that hovered near her shoulder, or maybe from the multitool in her hand. After her apologetic wave, she started unscrewing a panel.

  “It’s all right.” Val wiped sweat from her brow, glad for an excuse to take a break. Her shoulders were as tense as if she had been in actual combat all morning. “Uh, you’re a mercenary?”

  The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty, far too young for this job. She was a beauty, too, even with a smudge of grease smeared across her cheek. Val had only spotted two or three other women among the crew thus far, and they’d all had a weathered hardness about them that promised this hadn’t been their first career that involved slinging guns.

  “No, not exactly. I’m Jamie.” The blonde wiped her hand and stuck it out. It was still grease-smeared, but Val shook it anyway. The girl seemed a lot friendlier than the women Val had encountered. “I’m a partner and employee of Microbacteriotherapy, Inc.,” Jamie said, “and we’re working with the mercenaries. Except I don’t have a lot to do right now, since I’m mostly the pilot for the company’s shuttle. I’ve been apprenticed to one of the engineers, and I’m learning about spaceship maintenance.” She waved her tool.

  Another trainee, good. Val needn’t feel so isolated among the highly experienced and gruff crew. This was the kind of person she wished Commander Thatcher had thought to make her roommates with, not the burly glowering woman who had yet to say more than three words to Val. But then, maybe as a part owner of this Whatchamacallit Inc., Jamie rated her own room. Or maybe she slept on the company shuttle.

  Val squinted as a thought occurred to her. “Your company’s shuttle, that wouldn’t be the pink one, would it?”

  Jamie’s nose crinkled. “Yes, it’s a monstrosity, isn’t it?” She glanced at Sequoia. “The color, I mean. Not the shuttle itself. It’s fine.”

  Sequoia smirked, though he didn’t take his eyes from his work—he was maneuvering the ship close to an asteroid the size of a mountain, which elicited excited whispers of anticipation from the men working the weapons.

  “It’s… somewhat distracting.” Val decided not to mention that the sight of the pink craft, docked amid all those sleek gray shuttles bristling with weapons, had caused her to fumble her landing. She might have if Lieutenant Sequoia weren’t listening in, but she didn’t want to make excuses for her nervous docking.

  “Ankari—that’s the majority owner of the company—is leasing it from the captain, and it has all of our fancy medical research equipment in it, so she wanted to make sure none of the mercenaries would be tempted to take it on a mission and get our stuff wrecked up.”

  “It was a smart choice,” Sequoia said. “There’s no way I’d fly a pink anything. Although that tactic might not work as well if we get a female pilot.” He flicked a glance at Val, one she decided to find encouraging.

  “Uh, no, I wouldn’t fly a pink shuttle, either.” Val still shuddered when she thought of the eighty-year-old Walrus-class freighter she had taken on an extremely plodding run from Paradise to Targos VII. She had promptly removed the fuzzy pink seat covers, but her contract had forbade her to paint over the pink-and-purple pinstriped wallpaper that covered every inch of the ship, from lavatory to engine room. During that three-month mission, Val had developed a serious aversion to pink and purple. “I’m surprised the captain allowed a leaseholder to make such a drastic change to his equipment.”

  Sequoia snorted. “Leaseholder.”

  Val was trying to puzzle out his comment when Jamie added, “They’re sharing a cabin.”

  “Ah.” Val had yet to meet the captain, but everyone described him as gruff and forbidding. This Ankari must be a brave girl. “I suppose the promise of getting laid regularly can cause a man to make some dubious choices.”

  A throat cleared behind Val, and she nearly fell out of her seat. Commander Thatcher loomed there, tall and lean, his hands clasped behind his back, his face impassive.

  “Is there a problem with the training program?” he asked.

  Lieutenant Sequoia also flinched at his commander’s appearance.

  “No, sir,” Val said. “I paused it because I wasn’t certain if Jamie would need this station for her work.” Which was the truth, yet somehow sounded like an excuse when it came out of her mouth. She readjusted her goggles over her eyes, though she didn’t start the program again yet. She didn’t want to have those all-too-realistic asteroids and laser beams causing her to fling herself from her seat when Thatcher was looking on.

  But he didn’t leave. He watched the displays and the holograms, perhaps observing the weapons practice.

  “Sir, it’s several hours until the shift change,” Sequoia said in a casual tone, the tone one assumed when trying hard not to be obvious that one was trying to get rid of someone. “I’m keeping an eye on our pilot trainee. There’s no need for you to interrupt your sleep cycle.”

  “I will download the results of the training program and determine whether Cadet Calendula is being suitably tested,” Thatcher said.

  “Goody,” Val muttered as he walked toward the sensor station.

  Thatcher turned back, and she winced, afraid he had heard her. Lipping off to one’s commander was never a good way to get a new job.

  “Lieutenant,” Thatcher said, “when I was on the ladder coming up to the bridge, I felt the slight quiver of a gravitational pull exerting itself on the Albatross. I’m aware that you’re using this field as part of a training mission—” he extended a hand toward the officers at the weapons stations, “—but make sure you’re giving those asteroids enough leeway so the ship is unaffected by their mass.”

  “Quiver?” Jamie mouthed. Her back was to Thatcher, so she could get away with rolling her eyes, something Val wouldn’t have minded doing, too, even if this criticism was directed toward someone else. If there had been a quiver, she hadn’t noticed it. There hadn’t been any close calls with the asteroids, not the real ones anyway. Her virtual asteroids were another matter.

  “Yes, sir.” Sequoia managed to say it without sighing. He must be used to his commander’s anal rigidness by now. Val doubted she ever would be.

  “I will also send you some force-gravity equations to work through, to ensure the formula is fresh in your mind.”

  “But the computer—”

  “Is not a replacement for a quick and educated mind,” Thatcher said.

  This time Sequoia did sigh his, “Yes, sir.”

  Val glanced back at Commander Garland, wondering what he thought of his stuffy colleague. But she caught Garland giving Thatcher a nod. Of course one of the senior officers would be enthusiastic about discipline and extra training. Just like the military. Val hadn’t expected so much dedication from mercenaries. She should have known what kind of place this was as soon as she first saw Thatcher standing in the shuttle bay. />
  With his reprimands delivered, Thatcher sat at one of the consoles, doubtlessly already at work on ways to make her virtual training even more harrowing.

  Chapter 3

  Val walked down the corridor with her roommate, trying not to wince with every step, only a respectable every third or fourth step.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to see a medic?” Sahara asked. “You’re limping.”

  “Just an overused muscle.” All of Val’s muscles were overused. What kind of masochists did three hours of P.T. after a ten-hour work shift? When she had been eyeing the job requirements for a Mandrake Company pilot, she had dismissed the part about “remain fit to crew standards and engage in mandatory armed and unarmed combat training,” assuming she could handle it after she had endured the physical training that had been required at the academy. At the least, she had believed she wouldn’t be expected to attend those drills until after she had officially been hired, but she had a feeling tonight’s workout had been as much a test as the hours she had spent working the helm with Lieutenant Sequoia.

  “The other leg will be just as overused if you keep putting all of your weight on it like that.”

  Val smiled—all right, it was more of an irritated baring of her teeth. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  She had assumed a female roommate would be a boon here, someone who might share the crew gossip, give her warnings about which of the prepackaged foods to avoid, chat about the rigors of living on a ship dominated by males… Instead, she was sharing a cabin with Private Muscled and Tough. She was about as likely to chitchat about mundane things as Commander Thatcher was to dance naked through the corridors. Further, Sahara gave the impression that she was annoyed that she had been given a roommate. After only a day and night together, Val felt the same way. And she found the collection of knives and guns mounted on the walls disturbing.

  As they neared their second-level cabin, one of the comm-patches Val had been given chimed from her pocket—she hadn’t yet affixed any of them to her clothing, figuring she should make sure she got the job first, a job she was having second and third thoughts about applying for. She fished it out and touched the sword-and-tree design in the center.

  “Hello? I mean, this is Calendula.”

  Sahara gave her a cool what-kind-of-idiot-doesn’t-answer-a-military-comm-properly look and strode into the cabin without a limp, or any indication that the long workout had hurt her. No, she had been busy hurting other people for the most part. During the wrestling portion of the evening, she had pummeled a few of the young men who had underestimated her on the combat mat. And some of the not-so-young men as well. The only entertaining part of the evening had been watching her challenge the captain to a match. A big muscular man of about forty, Captain Mandrake had been Crimson Ops before leaving the army, and he had a reputation for being able to kill people with a twitch of his fingers—and doing so often. He had smashed Sahara into the floor within the first three seconds of their bout, offered a tip, then smashed her again. Val had gotten the impression he had been going easy on her roommate.

  “Calendula, this is Sequoia. You still have the ocular simulator?”

  “Yes, sir.” Val had managed to walk off the bridge with the goggles perched in her hair above her eyes earlier. “They’re on my bunk. I left them there when I changed for P.T.” Or flung them there as the case might have been. After spending more than eight hours being run through hazardous piloting simulations, she had been sick of them.

  “Can you take them to Commander Thatcher’s cabin? He’ll be replacing me on shift soon, and he said he’d program something special to challenge you tomorrow.”

  As if his first programming hadn’t been special enough. “I’m a lucky girl, aren’t I?”

  “Let’s just say that I’m glad I was already a part of the company when he joined up. I’m not sure I would have performed up to his rigorous standards.”

  Even if Val dreaded the idea of climbing another ladder with the muscle she had strained—if a woman had designed this ship, it would have crew elevators—the confession warmed her. Sequoia was turning out to be a decent fellow.

  “I’ll take them to him now, sir,” she said.

  “Good. Then get some rest.”

  She certainly intended to try. If she could get past the fact that a strange spiked mace leered down at her from the wall beside her bunk. Sahara hadn’t yet made any mention about moving any of her belongings or clearing out space. Maybe she didn’t think her new roommate would be there for long.

  When Val walked in, a surprising barrage of amorous noises hit her. All she could think was that Sahara had dug out some pornography, but she soon spotted a bare and hairy ass moving vigorously on the top bunk. She hadn’t been watching any of the times Sahara had changed clothes, but she was pretty sure the woman wasn’t that hairy. Ah, yes, there was her ass. Also bare. And indeed less hairy.

  Val put a hand up to shield her eyes—more for her sanity than their privacy—and patted her way to the bottom bunk. The lights had been dimmed, and she didn’t have any interest in turning them up. She had already seen more of what was going on in that top bunk than she would have preferred. Nobody besides Sahara had walked in while Val had been in the hall, so Hairy must have been in there waiting. So reassuring to know that some random man had access to her cabin.

  They didn’t stop or acknowledge her, so Val grabbed the goggles and hurried out, ignoring the twinges from her knee. She wished she knew more people so she might have somewhere to go until her cabin grew… quieter. Or preferably vacant. Maybe the randy duo would go get drunk somewhere afterward. Though where she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if the ship had a bar—she had checked Thatcher’s map. Such a delight to feel like a school kid again, sharing rooms in a dorm and having no privacy.

  Val hauled herself up to the top floor, where the officers’ cabins were. Then she stood in the corridor and chewed on her lip. She had no idea which one of those doors was Thatcher’s. Maybe she would take the goggles to Sequoia on the bridge instead.

  She turned around and almost smacked into a man’s naked sweaty chest. She stepped back, only to have a fresh stab of pain spring from her knee.

  “Doesn’t anyone in this zoo wear clothes after nine?” she snapped before the rational part of her brain could point out that yelling at people on the officers’ deck probably wasn’t a good idea.

  She looked up, hoping she had stumbled across a couple of privates who might simply be running some pre-approved exercise loop that snaked through the ship’s corridors. The two men looming in front of her did appear to be doing something like that, since sweat slicked both of their muscular chests, but they weren’t privates. The one on the right was Sergeant Striker, the crude fighter from the shuttle ride, and the one on the left… er, yes, that was the man who had smashed Sahara into the mat in three seconds. And who happened to be the captain. Crap, there went Val’s hopes of getting the job.

  “Nope, no one,” Striker said, giving her a leer, which was silly because she was wearing sweat pants and a baggie sweatshirt that her taller, broader shouldered roommate had loaned her. There was nothing worth leering at on display. “Rules are you gotta wear trousers, shoes, and shirt on duty, but after that, your time’s your own. Maybe you want to take off some of your clothes. You look hot.” He winked to make sure she didn’t miss his clever double entendre.

  “Striker,” the captain said, his voice cool. “Take a shower.”

  “Yes, sir.” Striker started past Val, but he paused and chomped down on his lower lip, like he was trying to think of some quick way to invite her to stop by later.

  She avoided his eyes, and the captain added, “Alone, Striker.”

  “Yes, sir.” The brawny man deflated and jogged off, hopping onto a ladder for a lower floor.

  “Sorry, sir,” Val said, hoping she might salvage the wreckage left by her outburst. She had yet to have a commanding officer who wanted to hear excuses about hairy-butted ca
bin visitors, so she wouldn’t whine about that, but she felt she had to apologize somehow. “My knee’s a bit sore. It made me grumpy. Won’t happen again.”

  “Grumpiness?”

  She squinted up at him, almost suspecting him of a sense of humor, but that didn’t fit in with all she had heard about him. He was supposed to be dour, reclusive, and prone to angry streaks. She had already heard from several people that he’d broken the necks of crew members who had betrayed the company.

  “Snapping at superiors, sir.” Eager to change the subject, Val held up the goggles. “Lieutenant Sequoia told me to take these to Commander Thatcher’s quarters, but I was just realizing I don’t know where they are.”

  The captain pointed behind her. “Fourth door on the right.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Val hustled off before she could get herself into trouble. More trouble.

  Fortunately, the captain disappeared into another cabin without another word. She waved her hand at a door chime. Maybe Thatcher would already be on the bridge. It seemed weird to visit the sleeping quarters of a superior officer, especially one she answered directly to. He probably wouldn’t invite her in though. She could hand him the goggles from the corridor.

  “Enter,” came his voice over the intercom.

  Er, so much for standing in the corridor. Val stepped toward the door, and it slid aside. She stopped on the threshold, though the busy and omnipresent decor distracted her from her resolve to simply toss the goggles and go.

  She wasn’t sure what she had expected from Thatcher, but walls filled with spaceship, shuttle, and airplane models wasn’t it. Walls, shelves on walls, display cases on walls, larger pieces hanging from the ceiling… It was like walking into a ten-year-old boy’s room, except everything was fastidiously organized and labeled. And there wasn’t laundry on the floor. The sole deviation from the flying-things decor was a set of dwarf fruit trees potted in a grow system in the corner. They all had the same long drooping leaves, with one tree flowering and two others bearing fruit. The flowers smelled lovely even from across the room, and she recognized them from the big greenhouses she had worked in as a child.