“You downloaded a program for opening cell doors?” Jamie asked.
“No. Is there such a thing?”
“I’m not sure.”
“The bounty on our heads has been increased to two hundred thousand,” Ankari said. “And everyone in the system knows where we are.” She waved to indicate the mercenary ship.
“What?” Lauren stared at her.
“Why?” Jamie added.
“We’re going to have to take that up with Felgard. He really wants us. All of us. It must be related to our business, but I’m perplexed since we haven’t done trials on anything more interesting than mice yet.”
“Yes, but those mice had some amazing results,” Lauren said. “Anyone who read the paper I published last month would have seen the potential.”
“That’s the one you told me about that was printed in Specialized Gastroenterology Quarterly, right?” Ankari asked. “The peer-reviewed journal that three people read?” She supposed it was possible that Felgard was a subscriber, but it seemed unlikely for someone outside of academia to keep up with such publications. Of course, journalists occasionally scanned them for news stories.
“Yes,” Lauren said, “and it’s more like three hundred people, thank you.”
“What was the name of the article?”
“Increasing Genetic Potential, Health, and Longevity Through Ancient Alien Microbiota Transplants.”
That was less obscure than a lot of the titles of articles Lauren had published. Ankari could see it catching a reporter’s eye. Anything to do with the long-dead aliens was always a hit with the popular press. She plugged the title and author name into the news searcher and waited, drumming her fingers on the side of the tablet. Why was there so much lag tonight?
When the results came up, she groaned. “Lauren, did you seriously not know about this? Because you’re cited.” She turned the tablet toward her partner. A Chao Yu had published an article called, Alien Gut Bugs as Potential Life Extender and Cure to Deadly Ailments. It had been syndicated in no less than five hundred news outlets. That had been just under three weeks ago. And Felgard’s bounty had come out two weeks ago. Coincidence? It hardly seemed likely.
Lauren’s face grew ashen as she looked at the tablet. “None of you saw this earlier?”
“I don’t read the news,” Jamie said.
“I do—” the financial news, mostly, “—but we were busy packing and bartering for used science equipment then. And then we were out at the Bartoka Ruins for almost a week, and I don’t know. We’ve been so busy.” Ankari tapped on one of the articles to skim it. She doubted her name was mentioned, else someone in her circle of friends would have forwarded it to her. No, she wasn’t in there, and neither was Jamie nor the company, but it wouldn’t have been hard for someone to research Dr. Lauren Keys and find out where she was currently employed. And the name of their company, Microbacteriotherapy, Inc. could certainly sound promising to someone who had read the sensationalized article.
“This is all my fault then,” Lauren whispered, looking around at the confines of the cell.
“No, it’s not,” Ankari said, “but if a feeling of guilt helps you get that generator working in a way that drops the force field, I’m willing to glare at you with condemnation.”
Lauren didn’t manage a smile. Her face was bleak. “We can try it now, but I don’t think it’s going to do anything.” Her shoulders slumped.
Inspiring.
“Try it,” Ankari said. “If it’s not going to work, we’ll have to think of something else.” What that something might be, she had no idea. Since nobody was guarding them, there was nobody to seduce or stab with a syringe, not that she had one anymore.
Lauren and Jamie bent over the generator. Ankari leaned forward on the bench, her hands clasped, her eyes on the force field, hoping...
A deep hum came from the depths of the ship, and the lights flickered. Ankari straightened. “Was that you two?”
“I haven’t pressed the button yet.” Lauren sounded bewildered.
The lights flickered again, not only in the cell but in the entire security area. Ankari jumped to her feet. She tapped the field, and it buzzed at her, sending an unpleasant shock through her body. It was still up, but had it been when the lights had gone out? She waited, ready to test it if the power cycled again.
Darkness fell. Ankari swiped her hand through emptiness. The field was gone.
“Come on. Grab your stuff. Hurry.” Ankari snatched up her own bag, not certain how long they had—or what would happen to someone caught in the middle of the force field when it reactivated. She lunged into the corridor. Bangs, thuds, and grunts of “ow” sounded in the darkness behind her, then she was being jostled as the others bumped into her.
“Are we all out?” Ankari asked.
“Yes.”
As Ankari was feeling her way toward the door, the lights came back on. She expected some announcement, some explanation, but the ship’s communications system remained silent. They needed to get out of the brig and to the shuttle bay as quickly as possible, but she stopped at the desk, hoping she might find a weapon inside. She didn’t know what was going on out there, but she had a feeling it had to do with the three of them. And their two hundred thousand aurum reward.
The desk drawers held two sets of handcuffs and a number of unopened food bars. Ham log, turkey log, mixed meat log. Maybe Ankari needed to start a new business in supplying mercenary outfits with more appealing shelf-stable food items. She stuffed them in her pack anyway.
Without warning, the ship shuddered. It wasn’t enough to throw Ankari off balance, but she did put a hand on the wall, not certain what was coming next.
“Did we hit something?” Jamie asked.
“Or did something hit us?” Lauren added.
“I don’t know, but leaving is sounding like a better idea all the time.” Ankari slipped the electronic key out of her pocket. This was one of the few rooms she had seen that had a lock on the inside as well as the outside, doubtlessly to put extra obstacles in the way of escaping prisoners.
The door opened before she reached it. She looked down at the key in confusion. Had it transmitted a code?
Then a number of hulking men in the corridor stepped into view, none of them familiar. One thrust a gun through the doorway. Ankari jumped back, kicking at it in midair. More by chance than skill, she struck it, knocking the weapon from the man’s hand. The hulking figures surged forward. Ankari slammed her hand against the palm lock, hoping something would happen.
The door slid back shut. The palm panel flashed, “Incorrect match. Access denied.”
Good.
Thuds sounded at the door, followed by the whine of a laser weapon firing.
“What the hell—” Lauren asked, crouching behind the desk. “Who are they?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.” Ankari snatched up the fallen gun and pointed it at the door, trying not to feel like someone planning to halt a waterfall with a measuring cup.
More shots fired. Wisps of smoke wafted from the lock panel.
“Anyone have any ideas?” Ankari asked.
“Go back in our cell and hide?” Lauren said.
“Throw egg logs at them?” Jamie asked.
“I need to hire some security people,” Ankari muttered.
“Or get the captain to retire and work for you,” Jamie said. “He looks like he could knock down some thugs.”
“Too bad he’s down on the moon.” Ankari joined the others behind the desk. She doubted it would stop laser fire for long, but it was the closest thing to a barricade the room had.
More shots fired, then someone shouted. Or was that a cry of pain? If those people were trying to sneak into the brig to steal the prisoners, they were being rather noisy about it.
Something thudded against the door, then a scrape followed, almost like a metal fork on a metal plate. More smoke flowed from the panel. Ankari waited, her finger tight on the trigger. She planned to shoot
anything standing in the doorway and prayed she could hit them all before they hit her.
But then it grew silent.
“What happened?” Jamie whispered.
As if Ankari knew. As smart as her two partners were—Ankari had seen their IQ tests—they were out of their element when the fights started.
Rhythmic thuds sounded next. Footsteps? Running footsteps? They came close to the door, but then passed it, fading to nothing again. After many long seconds passed without a noise, Ankari lowered the gun and stepped out from behind the desk. The smoke still rising from the lock panel didn’t entice her to touch it, not that her palm had done anything anyway. Remembering the key, she waved it next to the wall. She didn’t expect anything—even if it would have worked once, those men must have melted the innards with their shots.
Surprisingly, the panel gave a sickly bleep, and the door slid open. Ankari aimed the gun into the corridor, but immediately knew there was no need. At least six unmoving men lay on the floor, their weapons fallen at their sides. They were all in black, and as she had thought at her first glance, she didn’t recognize any of the faces. Intruders. How had they gotten on board?
“Should we tie them up somehow?” Jamie whispered.
“There were those handcuffs,” Lauren said. “But only two pairs.”
“There are probably another ten pairs in that Striker’s cabin.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Ankari said, numbed by the unmoving figures, the open unseeing eyes. “Looks like the Mandrake Company men took care of them.” She forced herself to step into the hallway and pick up laser pistols for Lauren and Jamie. One of the bodies didn’t want to release its weapon, even in death. She let him keep it and found another one.
Lauren and Jamie accepted them, all the jokes gone from their lips as they realized the men were all dead. By now, Ankari had a good idea of the layout of the ship, so she led them straight to a ladder that would take them up to the middle deck. She paused when more laser fire sounded, echoing from somewhere above her.
“Maybe we should wait for Viktor’s men to clear out the roaches,” she whispered.
Lauren and Jamie had squeezed into the bottom of the ladder well with her.
“Who’s Viktor?” Lauren asked.
“The captain.”
“Oh.” Whatever Lauren thought about the first-name basis, she didn’t mention it. She was too busy flinching at noises.
Ankari climbed the ladder and was about to crawl out of the well when a door opened somewhere down the corridor.
“We get all of them?” someone asked.
“Better have, or the captain will flay us. Don’t know why Tank sold out, but if Rawlings was in on it, he’s going to be dead when Mandrake gets a hold of him.”
The voices were coming closer. Ankari scooted down a few rungs, waving below her to warn the others.
The ship shuddered again. It didn’t sound like it was in danger of flying apart at any second, but Ankari gripped the ladder tightly.
“Can’t believe that little cruiser is picking a fight with us.” Footsteps accompanied the words now.
Ankari hoped the men would continue on to another ladder and that they needed to go up to the bridge and not down to the brig.
“It’s just trying to distract us, I bet.”
“As if we wouldn’t notice these rats with guns running around our ship.”
“I don’t get it though. Why were they here?”
For me, Ankari thought, leaning farther away from the corridor and the light spilling into the ladder well.
“Because the captain’s gone, and they think they can take the ship? I don’t know.”
The men continued past the ladder, and Ankari released the breath she had been holding. She listened intently until their words and their footsteps had disappeared, then peeked into the corridor. There weren’t any bodies on this deck, but those men had been fighting with someone. Tank, that had been one of the men Striker had mentioned as missing, hadn’t it? Along with a shuttle? Ankari probably should have been paying more attention to that conversation, instead of letting herself be distracted by the tendons in Viktor’s neck...
“This way,” she whispered to the others. She had a feeling they were going to find more bodies in the shuttle bay. She hoped they found a shuttle too.
Voices drifted down from the deck above. Those men had to be searching the entire ship, looking for more intruders. They would doubtlessly have no trouble dealing with escaped prisoners if they came across them.
Ankari waved the key in front of the shuttle bay door pad and clenched her fist when it opened. The bodies she had expected were there. Two more men in black lay in front of the single shuttle in the open bay. She didn’t see any of Viktor’s men. Good.
“Everyone in,” Ankari said, waving for the others to join her so the door would shut again, then she jogged down the stairs. The layout of the space was similar to that of the cargo bay, minus the gym equipment. There were a few control panels along the wall at the bottom of the staircase. “Think we can gain access to the bay doors from inside the shuttle?” she asked Jamie.
“You’d think so.”
“Your technical manual didn’t say so?”
Jamie gave her a flat look. “It was for the shuttle, not the shuttle bay.”
They stopped in front of the door on the back of the sleek black shuttle. It was open, and there were three more bodies inside, two of them wearing the same black and killed with laser fire. Smoke still wafted from some of the clothing. The third man was bald and wore a leather jacket more in line with the civilian clothing Viktor’s crew favored. His throat had been slit.
“Any chance we can leave them... those... here?” Lauren extended a finger toward the bodies.
Ankari might have thought the question callous, but Lauren truly looked disturbed at the idea of climbing into a shuttle full of dead men. Admittedly, Ankari wasn’t that enthused about the idea, either. “If you’ll help me move them out. Jamie, want to get up there and see if you can start this?”
“Starting it should be easy. Figuring out what to press to get the shuttle bay doors to open might be more of a challenge.”
Good point. Ankari doubted she could simply wave the key at them.
“All those bodies are going to be blown out into space when the bay doors open,” Jamie said. “Just so you know.”
Ankari and Lauren stared down at the dead man they had been about to move. She didn’t feel good about flinging corpses into space, but... “That’s probably what the captain would do with them anyway.”
Lauren grabbed the legs, leaving Ankari to take the body under the armpits. She had seen dead people on the streets as a child, but she had never touched a dead man before. It chilled her to think how easily a life might be taken. Had these people truly made this ultimate sacrifice just to try and collect a bounty? Viktor’s mercenaries made similar sacrifices for money. Most of them must not believe they would be killed, but either way, Ankari found this willingness to fling oneself into battle for such trite rewards hard to understand.
Without talking, she and Lauren moved the bodies into the bay and sat down behind the cockpit. Jamie tapped a button, and the shuttle door closed, sealing them into the gray oblong can. There were seats for sixteen people and the pilot, but it still felt claustrophobic. Unlike the cargo haulers she was used to, these were lean, aerodynamic vehicles intended solely for moving troops.
“I’d be worried that she has the technical manual open on the console beside her,” Lauren murmured, “but she flew us most of the way to the ruins like that.”
“I’m sure she’ll have this mastered in no time,” Ankari said.
“They’re going to know on the bridge that we’re here as soon as I depressurize the shuttle bay,” Jamie said. “Are we—”
The white lighting beyond the view screen dimmed, and red lights flashed. A series of warning bleats went off. Clinks and clanks came from beneath the shuttle
, something securing them so they wouldn’t be blown out as soon as the bay doors opened? Or were they already being released into space?
“Er, ready?” Jamie finished.
Ankari snapped her harness. “Ready.”
“Me too,” Lauren said.
A couple more clunks sounded underneath them, and the craft lifted. The view on the screen switched from what was visible out the front to what was visible out the back. The departure process must have been automated, because Jamie wasn’t touching anything.
“Bridge to shuttle bay,” a male voice growled over the comm, “you don’t have permission to depart.”
“What do we say?” Jamie whispered.
Ankari was tempted to respond with something sarcastic, but the bridge might have a way to stop them and bring them back inside. They had equipped their science freighter with tractor-beam technology for collecting samples; a mercenary ship might have it too. For collecting wayward shuttles.
“My vote is for nothing,” Lauren said.
“Let’s go with that for now,” Ankari said. They had already left the shuttle bay and were maneuvering away from the ship. Jamie still hadn’t had to do anything and was staring down at the console with a perplexed expression.
“Shuttle One,” a calmer voice said, though it didn’t have any less steel in it, “this is Commander Garland. Identify yourself or prepare to be fired upon.”
“They’re not going to fire on their own shuttle, are they?” Jamie whispered.
A warning light and alarming beep came from the console.
“What’s that?” Lauren asked.
“Either the ship is powering their weapons, or the shuttle stores are out of egg logs,” Jamie said.
Ankari pushed her hands through her hair. “Maybe we can buy time enough to get out of their range.” Good idea, but how? “Uhm.”
“Shuttle One, this is your last warning. Return to the shuttle bay now or—”
A blast of red light shot past a porthole. Ankari stared at the view screen, certain the shot was meant for them, but it skimmed past their nose without striking the shuttle.
“That hit the ship,” Jamie said, frowning at a display. “And it came from another ship.”
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 12