Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  In the darkness, Viktor didn’t see the laser pistol being aimed at him, but he knew it was there from the way the fighter crouched, his free hand guarding the weapon. Viktor hurled his throwing knife and threw himself sideways. The whine of a laser sounded, followed by shards of stone being blasted free from the wall, but the pained grunt of his opponent filled the air, too, and he knew his blade had done at least some damage.

  It wasn’t enough to slow his attacker. The lean man, hooded and clad in black like the figure in the hallway, leaped across the room. A blade flashed, cutting toward Viktor’s face. Already on his feet, Viktor threw a hard block, knocking his assailant’s arm up so he could rush into the opening with his own dagger. The point would have stabbed through flesh, but some thin armor lay beneath that sensor-thwarting clothing, and it deflected his blade.

  A knee came up, ramming Viktor in the chest. He roared, scarcely feeling the pain, and tackled the other man. They went down in a flurry of blows, thrashing on the floor, each trying to find an advantage. Nails clawed at Viktor’s eyes even as he tried to pin his attacker. He squinted his lids shut, denying those probing fingers access to sensitive organs. He found the leverage he needed to roll the man onto his stomach. Viktor leaned into his back. An elbow struck his chest, but it didn’t have much power behind it, not when the man’s face was smashed into the floor.

  The smell of blood reached his nostrils—they must have rolled close to that pool beneath the window—and it incensed Viktor. He roared and tore through the man’s last defenses, finding his skull with both hands. With adrenaline surging into his muscles, Viktor gave a great twist. Bone crunched, and a shudder coursed through his foe’s body.

  A soft clunk came from above him. Viktor reared back from the fallen man, yanking another knife free, ready for another opponent. But it was Sergeant Hazel, crawling through the window, coming in from outside. Where had she been? Up on the roof? The windows looked out over the cliff. She landed on the floor with a grunt.

  “What happened?” Viktor wanted to interrogate her about Ankari and the others, but noticing the way she strained to sit up and lean against the wall, grabbing her shoulder, he rushed to her side, bumping something with his foot. The lamp. It skidded and hit the base of the wall. “Are you all right, Hazel? Are there more men?”

  “Not out there,” she said. “That’s why we went.”

  Another person slid through the window and landed on the floor, robes swirling at her feet.

  Viktor was fairly certain it was Ankari—her movements were much more lithe and athletic than those of her friends—but he turned on the lamp and stuck it on the desk before going to her. She was busy helping someone else inside, anyway, the engineer.

  Sergeant Hazel held up the hand she had been clutching her shoulder with, and blood dripped from her fingers. “I could use some first aid, sir. A glug of whiskey, too, maybe.”

  “I can find at least one of those things, if our attackers are all down. Two men, is that all you saw?”

  “I only saw one,” Hazel said. “The one who threw a knife in my shoulder. Tick jumped him, and then I think one more came after him. Do you know if he’s...” She looked toward the door. “I wasn’t sure whether to help him or guard the prisoners. Since I was injured, I thought I’d at least get them somewhere safe—” Her gaze shifted to the window. “Safe-ish, then come back.”

  “Tick is alive.” When the microbiologist appeared in the window, Viktor added, “Looks like we all are.” He met Ankari’s eyes, wanting to rush over and give her a hug, but she didn’t appear injured, or even all that rattled—what was a climb on a roof after all they had endured that night?—and he had to make sure his soldiers were taken care of first.

  “We need to get them dropped off at Felgard’s as soon as possible, sir,” Hazel added, bending over and clasping her hand to her shoulder again. “Our company can’t survive all these attacks indefinitely.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Viktor gave Ankari a nod before leaving to check on Tick and find the first-aid kit, wanting to make sure she knew he had spoken truthfully to her and still meant to find a way to help her with Felgard, not simply turn her in.

  She nodded back, her expression wry but not afraid or displeased.

  After digging into his gear and pulling out bandages, a scanner, and a medical repair device, Viktor went first to Tick, since he had no idea what his injury was—for all Viktor knew his back could be broken. While he was checking his old friend, Hazel’s voice drifted out of the other room, a weird note in it, “Sir?”

  Viktor tensed, expecting more trouble. “What?”

  “You got a picture of what Sisson Hood looks like?”

  “There’s one on my tablet.”

  “Because I think you may have just killed him.”

  Huh. “I suppose that would explain why Striker and the rest of the team didn’t find him in his hideout.” And why these men were running around in hoods.

  “Abandoning his people for a more lucrative prize?” Hazel asked. “Not particularly true to the legend.”

  After identifying a concussion—and a fist-sized lump on Tick’s head—Viktor left the repair device fastened to Tick’s skull, so it could work, then toted the rest of the gear into the room, pausing only long enough to tug the hood off the other fellow crumpled in the hall. He was dead—a laser shot had burned off half his throat—but his face was still identifiable, and Viktor thought he was familiar too. He would have to check the database of wanted posters.

  “At least we’ll be paid well for this diversion,” Viktor said, stepping into the room to help Hazel, who had lain down on the bed.

  “That is good.” Hazel closed her eyes. “I’m more than ready for shore leave. A nice one. Not a few nights at some dented tin can of a town with more gambling halls than restaurants.”

  “Most of the men like those places.”

  Hazel mumbled something unintelligible. Viktor unrolled the bandages to dress her wound while he waited for the repair device to finish on Tick. There was a lot of blood loss, and he’d need more supplies from the others’ first-aid kits—but this would be a stopgap.

  “Need any help?” Ankari asked, sitting on the end of the bed. Her monk robes were almost as wet and grimy as her other clothing had been, and a fresh smear of dirt smudged her cheek. It was hard to stay clean when one had a bounty on one’s head.

  Viktor nodded. “Apply pressure here, please.”

  Hazel’s eyes opened. “Sir? Did you just say please?”

  “Yes.”

  Hazel’s gaze flickered back and forth between Viktor and Ankari. He didn’t think he was giving moon eyes to Ankari or doing anything that would suggest they had spent time together in a non-platonic-prisoner-captor sort of way, but Hazel sighed and shook her head.

  “We’re not going to get that two hundred thousand, are we, sir?”

  Ankari’s brows rose.

  Viktor didn’t have a good answer, so he didn’t respond. He gave Hazel a sedative. That probably wouldn’t work for the rest of the crew. Oh, well. He would figure out something.

  * * *

  Sleep was elusive after the attack. Ankari kept trying to think of what she might offer Viktor—more importantly, his crew—that could mitigate the loss they would feel if two hundred thousand aurums didn’t flow into the company’s coffers. She had this vague notion that she might hire the company, but she wasn’t exactly rolling in gold nuggets at the moment and none of the mercenaries had been intrigued by the idea of a share of her “pre-revenue” business yet. Still, now that she knew about that free publicity she was getting from Lauren’s article, they might be able to make some money based on current acceptable practices. The reproduction of the complete alien microbiome was years out, but they could certainly perform already established medical procedures and improve the health of individuals plagued with persistent diseases and infections. She could vouch for the efficacy of that herself.

  Ankari shifted her weight, the hard
stone of the floor digging through the blanket she was resting on. Lauren and Jamie were next to her, having no trouble snoring. Sergeant Hazel was sleeping on the bed, and Tick was recovering in the chair. Not, he assured them, sleeping, though his head kept listing to the side, until he twitched alert again, his eyelids leaping open. His gum fell out during one of these episodes. He didn’t notice.

  Viktor was sitting on the floor near the door, his eyes closed, his rifle in his lap and his tablet at his side. One lid peeled open every few minutes to check the alarms, so Ankari didn’t think he was sleeping. If they had been alone, she might have crawled over and snuggled against his side. Or in his lap, though she would have had to compete with the rifle.

  There were rooms and beds enough for everyone, but nobody had suggested they split up again. If more attackers came, Viktor was the only one still largely uninjured and capable of fighting at full capacity. Though even he must be tired by now. When his sensors chimed, he rose without a word and walked out of the room. Tick’s head jerked up, and he smacked his lips a few times, yawned, then grabbed his rifle and left too.

  Viktor hadn’t seemed all that alarmed. Ankari hoped that meant he recognized whoever had shown up on the camera. Maybe his shuttle was circling and looking for a place to land.

  Since she wasn’t sleeping anyway, she left the room and padded after the two men, the stone floor cool against her bare feet. The warmth of the thick air kept it from feeling unpleasant, but she hoped her socks and underwear would be dry before it was time to leave.

  Voices came from a chamber ahead. Were Viktor’s men already inside? Ankari stopped at the mouth of the hallway, expecting to see people wearing jackets with Mandrake Company patches. Instead, a file of at least twenty men and women in monks’ robes shuffled through the room, heading for other hallways.

  A lean, brown-skinned man in his sixties or seventies had stopped to talk with Viktor and Tick. He had wispy white hair that stuck out in tufts, and he might have appeared reverent and wise, if not for the tattoo collection peeking out from underneath the rolled sleeves of his robe. Some of them depicted images more lurid than anything Ankari and Viktor had been doing the night before. She gaped at a pair of men performing erotically—and acrobatically—with a woman on her hands and knees and wondered if: a) that was illustrating consensual sex; and b) exactly what kind of temple this was. True, the tattoos were old and faded, perhaps from a long-forgotten and much rougher time in the man’s life, but there were ink removal procedures one could pursue...

  “...of course we seek to avoid violence and the taking of life whenever possible,” the tattooed monk was telling Viktor, “but I do appreciate you ridding our moon and our temple of that murdering, raping, con artist, Willow. I was very tempted to return to my more belligerent ways in regard to him, but apparently I am not the—what was it Xueqin called me?—the ass-kicking, kill-happy bastard I once was.”

  Ankari blinked, trying to imagine the spindly man happily killing much of anything, and she was also confused as to who Willow was. Hadn’t that been Sisson Hood that Viktor had taken down? Maybe the other man had also been some infamous villain, though that name hardly sounded like something that would drive fear into enemies.

  “It should not please me to see mutilated corpses in the trash heap,” the monk continued, “but there is a certain satisfaction in knowing a villain’s crimes will not continue.”

  “They weren’t mutilated,” Viktor said. “Just dispatched.”

  “Yours was mutilated a bit, Cap’n,” Tick said helpfully.

  “His neck was broken.”

  “That’ll mutilate a man.”

  “Just because you shot yours...”

  The monk smiled cheerfully during this conversation. Ankari wondered if she should walk out and join the men instead of eavesdropping from the shadows.

  “I do appreciate you cleaning up the blood and moving the bodies, however mutilated, out of the temple, Willow,” the monk said. “Some of the younger inhabitants who were born into this way of life are disturbed by such unpleasantries.”

  “How odd,” Tick said. “Cap’n, you know your prisoner is spying on us, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Ankari flushed as all three men rotated to face her.

  “Maybe you should punish her,” Tick said, smirking.

  Ankari wasn’t sure if that was an inside joke or an innuendo or what. The tracker didn’t sound serious, and Viktor only snorted.

  “I was just wondering who Willow was,” Ankari said. When in doubt, deflect the attention off to someone else.

  Tick’s smirk deepened. “Right, who’s that Willow fellow? Going to share that with her, Cap’n?”

  “No. Tick, it’s dawn. Get on the comm with the ship and make sure someone is coming to get us. Ling, have we earned some breakfast?”

  “Yes, of course. All we have to offer is yours.”

  “So rice and vegetables?” Viktor asked.

  “Fruit also.”

  Tick elbowed Viktor. “You can mash it all up in one of your drinks.”

  “Wonderful. Ankari, breakfast?”

  Tick’s brows rose, but he walked off to do Viktor’s bidding without comment.

  “I believe you are already familiar with the temple, but the kitchen may be found in that direction.” The monk extended his arm. The motion made the bodies in the erotic tattoo wiggle. “I must contact the government and inform them that Sisson Hood and his bandits are no more.” He inclined his head toward Viktor, then walked in another direction.

  “Do your friends want to eat?” Viktor asked Ankari.

  “They were sleeping when I left. I’m inclined to let them rest. I can bring them something.” Besides, she was more interested in the conversation she might have with Viktor in private. Presumably, he didn’t have sex on the mind if he was leading her to a cafeteria, but that was fine. She needed to run her ideas by him. “I’ve been thinking about a solution to your problem.” It seemed presumptuous to call it their problem, even though he had stated an interest in working together to deal with Felgard.

  Viktor gave her a sidelong look as they walked down the hallway the monk had indicated. “It’s only been three hours since I mentioned that problem. You were busy climbing on the roof during one of those hours. And climbing on... something else during another.” His eyes glinted.

  Since a pair of monks was walking out of the dining room doorway as they entered, Ankari kept her grin sly and secret, but seeing that humor on his face warmed her heart. And other things, as well. “Which left me another hour for mulling.”

  “All right. Tell me in a minute.” Viktor waved her to a table, then disappeared into a small kitchen.

  None of the monks was having breakfast yet, so she didn’t know what he would find back there. Ankari sat down on a bench at the rectangular table, leaving it up to him whether to sit across from her or next to her. He returned soon with cups of coffee and two bowls of instant oatmeal. He considered his seating options, then leaned his hip against the end of the table. Ah, right. The standing habit. One that left her staring at his crotch. Hm.

  Ankari stood, picked up her bowl, and leaned against the table beside him, giving him a little smile.

  “Huh.” His grunt sounded pleased. At least he shifted his weight so their shoulders were touching as they stood side by side, eating oatmeal and gazing out at the world—or at least the rest of the dining room—from their feet.

  “You’ve read that letter from my friend,” Ankari said. “What wasn’t in there was some information Jamie, Lauren, and I scrounged up on the net, that one of her academic papers had been turned into a sensational health article and broadcast all over the system. We believe that’s what brought our company to Lord Felgard’s attention, even if we’re not sure yet why he’s opted for putting a bounty out for our arrest, rather than simply contacting us about our services. Not that we actually have services yet. Even so, he might have offered to buy us out for our research too. He’s a
mystery for me at this point.”

  “Maybe throwing some money out there was easier than tracking you down and talking to you himself.”

  “He could have hired a lawyer or a private detective to find us for a much smaller amount. And, hell, if he’d offered us two hundred thousand for a straight-up buy out, I might have been tempted.” Ankari chewed on a bite of bland oatmeal—did monks not have brown sugar?—and considered her words. Would she have? “No, that’s not true actually. I think we’ll be worth a lot more than that one day. Especially with the publicity. I knew the alien angle was hot—people have been fascinated since we first found their ruins in this system, after all—but I hadn’t anticipated that much interest. If that’s an inkling of what we can expect, the future is looking promising, so long as humans can actually get something out of those alien gut bugs.”

  “Is that likely?” Viktor asked, switching his empty oatmeal bowl for a coffee mug.

  “The mouse trials were promising, and that was just using a few of the known bacteria. After Lauren finishes analyzing the stool samples and we get a complete profile on what the typical microflora of the time was, well, she could tell you more, but even I can see the potential just from my layman’s understanding of her work.”

  “It sounds like you have a greater understanding than that.”

  Was that a compliment? She smiled at him just in case. It seemed the right response, for he smiled back. Strange that it should tug at her soul so. It had been scant hours since he had admitted he cared for her, that he wanted to protect her. Before that, he had been The Enemy. She had never fallen for soldiers in the past, and even though he had an appealing face—especially when he wasn’t scowling—and body, she wasn’t quite sure why that smile made butterflies dance in her stomach. Maybe something about the fact that it was as rare as a blue diamond. And maybe he was too. He had admitted he was wrong about her and wanted to make things right, rather than simply doing what would be easier—and far more profitable. It touched something deep inside of her. One didn’t find that sort of integrity in many places in the galaxy, certainly not in a mercenary outfit.