Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  Despite this being the hind teat of the system, there were over a dozen other ships docked, and numerous people walked through the concourse inside or slumped in the rows of rickety chairs. The scent of cinnamon pastries being baked wafted through the area, improving the usual smell of recycled air mixed with the scents of bodies of varying degrees of cleanliness. Thatcher stopped at an auto-pay station near the airlock tube entrance, held up his palm so the scanner could read the tiny chip inserted beneath the skin, then nodded that they could continue. Not the kind of station where parking was complimentary, it appeared.

  “Any idea where to start looking?” Val started walking toward the main aisle, though she already had her eye on a bar on the other side of the concourse. That seemed as likely a place to get the station gossip as any.

  “I have memorized a map of the facility and compiled a list of probable places where one might hide a hostage without drawing attention.” Thatcher unfolded his tablet, and his map and a list appeared in the air above it.

  “That sounds like a no.”

  He gave her a curious look. “I’ve narrowed countless options down to a mere thirty-two likely prospects.”

  “How about we hold that for Plan B?” Val pointed at the bar. “Those who have been here a while may have heard something about someone important being held somewhere.”

  “I hardly think we should be questioning strangers. Not only is it unlikely that they would share valuable information with us, but it may attract attention we would be wise to avoid.”

  “I’ve done this sort of thing before.” She had been questioning random people on a station not two months earlier, trying to figure out why and how her brother had disappeared down a black hole. “Trust me. I won’t be obvious about it. And I think you’ll find that I can use my charms to get men to divulge information without feeling as if they’re being interrogated.”

  “Your charms?”

  He couldn’t truly be so dense—or so naive—to not understand what she meant, could he? Or did he simply not believe she had such talents?

  “Yes, my charms. My left and right charms.” Val pointed at the individual breasts for emphasis before deciding that wasn’t an appropriate thing to emphasize with a commanding officer. Had she been out of the military for too long to go back to being the obedient—and respectful—cadet?

  Thatcher looked at her chest, then back up to her eyes. “Very well, Calendula. We will attempt to narrow down the list by employing… your charms.”

  He started toward the bar entrance with her, but she stopped him with a hand. “I’ll have better luck talking to people alone. Perhaps you can wait by the door. Or get a drink.” She almost choked, imagining what he might be like as a drunk. Instead of drooling and pawing over the nearest woman, he’d probably talk about his model spaceship collection. “Just pretend you don’t know me.”

  “Very well.”

  Val hustled to walk in several paces ahead of him, then removed her jacket, folded it over her arm, and slowed to a sultry sashay once she was inside. Well, it was a sashay, anyway. Sultry was in the eye of the beholder. There were other women in the bar wearing far less than she, including one dancing in a zero-gravity field above the bartender, so she couldn’t say that all eyes swung toward her. Still, there were five men for every woman in here, so she figured she could find someone to chat up.

  She walked past three burly, scarred fellows in their early twenties, gauging them as trouble right off—the lewd perusal one gave her made Striker’s advances seem chaste. She slid into an empty seat next to a couple of grizzled men with potbellies and beards in need of trims. They had the pale complexions of long-time spacers and the physiques of freighter haulers. In short, they were both the kind of people she was comfortable talking with and the kind of people whom women usually ignored. The hopeless longing with which they watched the dancer gyrate verified that.

  Feeling certain they would address her, Val ordered a steaming volcano and waited to see if her guess would prove right. She imagined she could feel Thatcher’s disapproving stare targeting her shoulder blades. Alcohol during duty hours? Inappropriate.

  She glanced back to see if he had actually entered the bar. Ah, yes, he was standing by the door. And she didn’t need to imagine his eyes pointed in her direction; they were. Waiting to see if she messed up and found trouble? It probably irked him that she, the lowly cadet, had presumed to suggest an alternative, or a refinement, as she considered it, to his plan.

  “How you doing, girlie?” the man on her right asked.

  “Been better. Always get nervous doing jobs out here.”

  “You run freight?”

  “For Blazon, yes,” Val said, naming her last employer. It was a big corporation, and if these men were freighter pilots themselves, they would have heard of it.

  “They don’t usually deal in the outer planets.”

  She’d expected that statement and had an answer planned. “They ordered some parts from the shipyard.”

  The man grunted—it didn’t sound skeptical. “Unless you’ve got some real hot cargo, you shouldn’t get anyone bothering your ship. You watch out for yourself, though. Not a real good place for a woman to wander alone.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Val smiled and patted her knife. It wasn’t quite as intimidating as patting a laser pistol would have been, but he shrugged without questioning it. Good. Now that they had established a rapport of sorts, she searched for a way to subtly ask a few questions.

  “Some men might take that as a challenge,” the fellow on her left said. He had been watching them talk out of the corner of his eye. “You’d best stay with someone if you’re going to visit any of the lower levels. Security isn’t too bad up here, though there are some elements preying on the weak.” He scowled over his shoulder at the three thugs she had dismissed earlier. They were playing pool at an old-fashioned wooden table with real ivory balls, each man swaggering around and swilling from a bottle between turns.

  “Those elements are in every bar, aren’t they?” Val asked.

  Both men chuckled.

  “That they are,” the first speaker said. “I think she can take care of herself, Duffs.”

  “Don’t ruin my moves, Zephyr. I was about to offer to be her native guide.”

  “You’re not a native.”

  “So? Don’t tell her that.”

  Val snorted and waved toward a news feed playing in a corner of the room. The words weren’t being displayed and the sound was drowned out, so she had no idea what the anchor was talking about but said, “So long as I don’t end up kidnapped and stuffed in the bowels of the base, like that army officer.”

  “Who’s that?” Zephyr asked.

  But the other man, Duffs, lowered his voice and whispered, “You heard about that? I figured you just got here.”

  “I came from the station.” Val waved upward to indicate the orbiting facility, the spot where she’d originally plotted her course. “Heard the lawmen talking about it just a couple of hours ago. Someone was going to be interviewed for the news.” She sipped from her drink to keep herself from rambling further. She didn’t want to get caught in a lie; she only wanted to explain how she might have stumbled across some secret.

  “Huh, well, guess if I’d heard about it, it was bound to get out sooner or later.”

  “What are we talking about?” Zephyr asked.

  “Some high and fancy admiral got kidnapped. Yesterday, I think it was. Something to do with the fighting going on down on the planet.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter to me. So long as they keep their fighting down there.”

  Val had hoped for more curiosity from the man—better him asking his friend nosey questions than her—but his tone was one of dismissal. She tapped her fingers on the faux wood bar, searching for a way to dig more information out of Duffs.

  “You say he’s in the basement?” Zephyr asked after a moment.

  She had said bowels, randomly pulling the word out of
the ether, but she shrugged and said, “I think so,” because he was frowning, cogitating hard on something. Maybe some remembered tidbit that would be useful to her?

  “That might explain why Sub Six was closed off this morning,” he mused.

  “Enh?” Duffs asked.

  What was Sub Six? A basement level? Val didn’t ask but gave the man an inquisitive look.

  “It’s mostly storage down in the sub-basements, spaces you can rent for the week or month, and some of the environmental stuff is down there too. Air and power, I think. I was supposed to pick up some cargo from the freezers down there, but Six was closed for maintenance this morning. That’s what a sign said. I didn’t think much of it, except to be irked, because it’s going to delay me. Can’t get back in the lanes and deliver cargo I haven’t got in my hold.”

  Val filed the information away even if it didn’t sound that promising. It seemed more likely that the floor might have been closed for maintenance for legitimate reasons, especially if the environmental systems were down there. Doubting she would get more from the old spacers, she took another sip of her drink and twisted in her seat, about to explain that her date had arrived. But Thatcher was busy entertaining someone else: the three pool thugs.

  “Pardon me, boys,” she said, laying her palm on the bar reader to pay for her drink. “I need to help the fellow who’s supposed to buy me dinner tonight.”

  Duffs grunted. “He doesn’t look like he’ll survive to buy you anything. Better stick with us.”

  Despite their words, the men didn’t try to stop her when she slid off her seat. She kept herself from sprinting toward the door—barely. One of the big men had just jabbed a finger into Thatcher’s shoulder. Running would draw attention, and besides, she had to figure out how she was going to stop them from pummeling her commander before flinging herself into the imminent fray.

  “Maybe he wants us to call him sir.” One man snickered.

  “I’m going to call him a pancake if he doesn’t apologize.”

  Damn, had Thatcher spoken to the brutes? Thrown insults? Why? He was supposed to be a genius, not an idiot.

  “For what would I apologize?” Thatcher asked. “I merely suggested you might aspire to a higher-paying job by increasing your education and spending less time gaming in bars. Then you wouldn’t need me to pay for your drinks.”

  Ah, they’d tried to bully money out of him. Still, he could have handled them better, instead of using that patronizing tone of his. The thought made her pause. This wasn’t the place for revelations, but for the first time, it occurred to her that Thatcher’s patronization wasn’t simply of her and of junior officers but of everyone. Maybe he didn’t even know he was doing it. Was it possible what she had always considered arrogance was… obliviousness?

  “Nah, beating drinks out of teat suckers is more fun.” The speaker grinned and threw a punch.

  Val winced; she’d hesitated, and now it was too late to talk the men out of attacking.

  But Thatcher caught the punch out of the air and returned one of his own, his fist striking like lightning. The thug’s nose splattered, the crack of cartilage audible over the bar din—or maybe it was that the din had disappeared as everyone stopped talking to watch the fight.

  Thatcher launched a side kick into the gut of a man lunging at him from the side. The brute reeled back, bumping into a table full of people and sending a chair flying. The last thug was trying to grab Thatcher from the other side. Thatcher snatched a wrist before the grasping hand found him, twisted it so hard the man howled, and dipped, hurling his attacker over his shoulder. He flew into the thug who had earned the ire of the table patrons, and they both tumbled to the floor.

  The leader released his nose—blood smeared his lips and chin—and roared, throwing himself at his new nemesis. Thatcher dodged so quickly, Val barely registered it. The thug struck the wall instead of his human target. Thatcher lunged in, slamming his elbow into the man’s vertebrae. Val gulped. That one wasn’t going to move again without attention from a medic. The others pulled themselves to their feet, but at a few snapped words from the bartender, slunk out, avoiding Thatcher’s eyes as they went.

  Thatcher straightened his jacket and cocked his head at Val. “Have you finished applying your charms?”

  She was gaping at him, but couldn’t stop herself. Of course, she understood that combat training was part of Mandrake Company and that Thatcher would have had military training once, as well, but so had she, damn it, and she couldn’t catch a punch out of the air. Not one going five hundred miles an hour with the force of a torpedo behind it.

  “I, uh, we might want to get out of here,” Val finally managed.

  Several tables of people were looking at them—no, at Thatcher—and the bartender was scowling in their direction too.

  “Agreed.” Thatcher stepped toward the door, paused, considered her, then offered her his arm.

  She had implied he was her date. She almost laughed, but it would have had a maniacal, stunned quality to it. Instead, she linked arms with him and strode out the door. Where she intended to walk with him, she didn’t know, but she led them to the right, onto the main thoroughfare, where numerous shops sold food and trinkets. Thatcher didn’t seem nearly as flustered as she was. He didn’t seem flustered at all.

  Val tried to remember what she was supposed to be talking to him about, but mostly she was finding herself with a new awareness of the ropy muscle beneath his sleeve, of the closeness of his lean form next to hers. She tried to ignore that awareness. It wasn’t seemly to be attracted to someone just because he had proven he could pummel bigger, brawnier men into the ground, nor because the muscles of his chest had gleamed nicely beneath the lights shining between all the models he had hanging around his cabin. A personality; that was what mattered, right? And his grated on her. Although… she was still reeling from the revelation that he grated on everyone. All those times she thought he had been picking on her, had he simply been speaking to her in as normal a manner as he could manage? She squinted up at his face, as if the answers to all of her questions might be written there.

  “Did you acquire information from the men at the bar?” Thatcher asked, clearly unaware of her revelations or the fact that she was still holding his arm and probably didn’t need to be at this point.

  Val managed to return her focus to the mission. “I’m not sure it was anything that useful. One of the spacers had heard something about the kidnapping of a military officer, so we’re in the right place at least. And another said Sub-basement Six was unexpectedly closed for maintenance this morning. Is there anything on your list that’s down there?”

  Thatcher stopped and put his back to a wall—nobody was paying much attention to him, but there were doubtlessly spies and pickpockets among the passing travelers. He pulled out his tablet and poked his map and list to life again.

  “Sub-basement Six contains frozen cargo storage—publicly accessible—and environmental systems—private access only. A generator room in the latter section is on my list. Number seventeen.”

  “Shall we make it stop number one?”

  He frowned at the list.

  Val was starting to recognize that slight wrinkle to his brow as less a sign of genuine puzzlement and more his attempt to figure out how to make the craziness of the rest of the world fit into his realm of logic and order. In other words, she was starting to understand him. A scary thought, that. In this case, it was logical to check their lead first, so she could only guess that the order was the problem. Some longing to adhere to a more linear process?

  She licked her finger, as if she were going to erase a charcoal mark on a piece of paper rather than some digital list hanging in the ether, then prodded the number seventeen and swept it to the top of the list, which automatically rearranged itself to put the number one next to the new entry.

  “Better?” she asked, tongue-in-cheek.

  Thatched snorted softly, but he did appear mollified as he snapped the tab
let shut and returned it to his pocket. “Sub-basement Six. There’s a lift back this way.”

  He didn’t offer his arm again as they walked off—the bar had dwindled from sight behind them, so there was no ruse to maintain—and she told herself it would be silly to find that disappointing. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and merely observed the station around her, checking news feeds flickering in store and restaurant windows and making sure none of the people they were passing looked like trouble. She did find herself curious about Thatcher’s fighting prowess, though, especially since he wasn’t saying a word about the skirmish. There had been no beaming with pride after the fact. If anything, the way he had hurried out of there without looking back made her wonder if he had been embarrassed to be caught in that situation. Again, her mind wanted to add, though of course, she couldn’t know for sure.

  The lights of a bank of lifts came into view ahead, and Val decided she had best ask her question soon; they would be busy with work in a few more minutes.

  “Sir, I remember my mandatory combat training in the academy, and it was… sufficient, I suppose you could say, but they knew they were ultimately training us to sit in chairs and that there wouldn’t be many situations where we’d actually have to dodge punches. Were your skills back there—” she waved behind them, “—something you’ve gained from being with Mandrake Company? And will I have to drill that much as a new recruit? Until I can beat up piles of thugs in bars?” That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but she had mostly added the last two questions so he wouldn’t think anything odd of her inquiring about him. She didn’t want to feel like she was resting her chin across her interlinked fingers and sighing up at him while batting her eyelashes and asking, “However did you learn to fight so well?”

  “The captain doesn’t expect the pilots and engineers to be super soldiers,” Thatcher said, “but we are required to come to the evening or morning unarmed-combat drills twice a week and to the firing range once a week.”