“I… understand,” Jamie said, though she wasn’t quite sure if she did.
“You got that, Lauren?” Hazel pushed aside the curtain.
Lauren had her back to them as she sat on a stool, peering at three holographic displays stretched out over the counter, showing results for who knew what experiment. “Pardon?”
Hazel sighed and stepped into the little clinic.
Sergei walked into the shuttle, carrying a crate. His face was a mask of stone. He met her eyes briefly, but buckled the crate into the storage area and walked back out without a word. Jamie had a feeling he had overhead at least some of Hazel’s words. She hoped Hazel wouldn’t be in danger of some retribution. Sergei didn’t strike her as a vengeful soul, but she wouldn’t have guessed he was an assassin based on their first meeting, either.
She sighed and headed for the pilot’s seat. It was time to run through her preflight checklist and put these thoughts out of her mind. With luck, nothing would happen during their appointments, and they could return to the ship with the business a few aurums richer. At some point during the trip, Jamie hoped she could get her chance to ask Ankari about cashing in her shares so she could afford the tuition at the university. She was a little worried that Ankari might say it was too early or that there wasn’t much cash on hand yet. The deadline for applying for the semester was coming up in a couple of weeks, and maybe she didn’t need to worry about it until she was actually accepted, but the tuition would be due soon after that.
“Got a week to figure things out,” she murmured.
3
Sergei leaned against the shuttle, trying not to feel emasculated by the pink paint under his shoulder. The color of the transport was the least of his problems.
He struggled to focus on the swarms of richly clad people strolling down the main dock of MountSky Central, passengers having departed from civilian transports and local shoppers browsing the offerings of the small grocery and craft ships that turned the promenade into a traveling flea market. He needed to be watching for threats, not dwelling on Hazel’s conversation with Jamie and the fact that it was eating holes in his gut. She had made it sound as if he was some psychopathic rapist. Assassination missions aside, the only woman he had ever hurt had been that damned counselor, and she had deserved to be killed in a horrible way. More horribly than he had done. He shuddered, his fist clenching even though the memory was ten years old. The utter shame of that whole situation… Sergei hated that Mandrake knew about it, but he had been, in many ways, a fellow victim. That made it less horrible. But the fact that Sergeant Hazel had been privy to Sergei’s record… He hadn’t known that. A part of him wanted to resent Mandrake for sharing that information, but he guessed he could understand why he had done it. He hadn’t fully trusted Sergei back then. Maybe he still didn’t.
That stung, and he wasn’t sure how to change Mandrake’s perception of him. Maybe he had made a mistake in coming. Maybe he should put it all behind him, change careers, and forget Mandrake Company and the Fleet forever. Except he had already tried that once, and he had missed the ship, missed the fact that Mandrake had never sent him on missions that made him feel like a villain in the end. The people he had killed for the company had deserved it, the evil bastards. Sergei wasn’t as good at choosing missions for himself.
He pushed away from the hull to walk a circuit around the ship, to make sure nobody suspicious was lurking. Numerous people were assuming the shuttle had some farmers’ market goods for sale, probably because of the cheerful pink facade, and he had to shoo people away. He had a list of customers who would be by today, and he would make sure nobody who wasn’t on the list walked up the ramp.
It was a job that was beneath him, but maybe this mission would ultimately give him the chance he wanted to prove himself to Mandrake. Protecting Ankari shouldn’t be difficult, but if he could also find the man who had put out the bounty in the first place… That should prove to Mandrake not only that Sergei was trustworthy because he hadn’t been tempted by the bounty, but that he could be counted on to take initiative. And that he could be trusted with the crew, whatever their sex. He ground his teeth. That insinuation Hazel made bothered him more than anything else.
Movement in the sky caught his eye, and he stopped his circuit. He was back near the ramp, and he eased into its shadow, crouching with the shuttle at his back. A bright afternoon sun beat down from above, a few white clouds being stirred as shuttles and freighters came and left the docks. But a ship wasn’t what he had seen. Something smaller had appeared at the periphery of his vision.
There.
A small black sphere floated above a craft on the other side of the broad promenade. A mobile camera. City security? Or the spy tool of a private party? It was too far away to tell if the lens was pointed at the Mandrake Company shuttle or if the camera was simply monitoring the dock. It hadn’t been there before, though. He would have noticed it during his scans of the area.
Without letting the device out of his sight, Sergei pulled a tablet out of his pocket, unfolded it, and murmured, “Show me the security equipment used by the MountSky central police.”
A hologram popped up, showing body armor, vehicles and planes, and weapons. He swiped at the floating image for more information, though from the gray and green color scheme and logos on the police gear, he doubted the black device belonged to city security. The display showed him some of the surveillance equipment in use on the station, verifying that none looked quite like the sphere. A private model, then.
Sergei pocketed the tablet and strolled into the center of the crowd, trying not to twitch when people walked near him. He had never cared for crowds. His habits made him scan everyone, searching for threats.
The camera continued to monitor the area from a stationary position until Sergei had reached the halfway point between the Mandrake shuttle and the other ship, a small freighter selling tropical fruit and bamboo crafts. The owner looked curiously at Sergei as he drew near, but Sergei was focused on the camera. Maybe the owner knew something about it.
But when the sphere let out a tiny bleep and darted off in the direction of the port authority building, the owner seemed surprised, as if he hadn’t had any idea the camera was there. Sergei whipped out his pistol and fired. The crimson laser beam blasted into the side of the sphere before winking out.
A few nearby people shouted and ran away from him, but most of the shoppers and travelers didn’t notice the shot or the whine of the pistol. Sergei holstered his weapon right away. There was probably a mandate against firing in a public area, and he didn’t have his Fleet credentials anymore. He slipped between the docked ships to further evade notice, coming out from behind one only to pick up the remains of the camera. It had plummeted to the deck, half its casing melted and its wiring and chips drooping out. He took a circuitous route back to the shuttle, though those who had noticed him firing had already lost track of him. They were talking and pointing toward the freighter he had first ducked behind.
“Problem?” Sergeant Hazel asked when he popped into sight again at the bottom of their ramp. She was standing next to Ankari, who had an insulated briefcase in hand and was talking to a middle-aged bald woman wrapped in colorful silks. The woman pursed her lips, frowning at Sergei.
He wasn’t scruffy—his clothes fit well and were without dust, grime, or holes—but he was far more likely to be taken for someone’s bodyguard than one of the well-to-do citizens strolling the promenade.
“Possibly,” he said, addressing Hazel and ignoring the other two.
“Right up there, ma’am,” Ankari said, pointing to Lauren who had come out of hiding in her lab. “Dr. Keys will be helping you.”
The bald women gave a disdainful sniff. “Very well.”
As soon as she walked up the ramp and disappeared inside, Sergei held up the mangled security camera.
“Someone was keeping an eye on us,” he said.
“On us?” Hazel asked. “You’re sure?”
&
nbsp; Ankari rubbed the back of her head, mussing her brown hair, but not seeming to care. “I never thought I’d be the kind of person that people sent spy cameras after.”
“It’s probably nothing,” Hazel said. “If someone wants the captain, they’ll be more likely to go after him.”
Sergei frowned. He might be a trained assassin rather than a trained bodyguard, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to tell the person one was protecting not to worry. Vigilance from all parties would be more likely to keep everyone alive.
“Even more comforting,” Ankari said, her tone making it clear it wasn’t. “He wouldn’t be in this trouble if it wasn’t for me. I shouldn’t…” She sighed and gazed out at the passing crowd.
“He’s been in plenty of trouble over the years,” Hazel said. “Zharkov, any idea whose device that is? You sure you didn’t blow away a legitimate security camera?”
“It doesn’t belong to city security,” Sergei said. “I checked. As to who it does belong to, it might be possible to salvage the parts and trace its signal back to the owner.”
“You know how to do that?” Hazel asked.
She probably hadn’t meant it as a derogatory question, but Sergei was no computer expert, so he wasn’t that confident in his ability to trace the device back to what would probably be a secured network, one that might have been programmed to dismiss all association with the camera if it was destroyed.
“I might be able to,” came a cheerful voice from above.
Jamie walked down the ramp, her hands in her pockets. She had the look of someone who had just been booted out of a meeting. Indeed, she had no sooner stepped off the ramp than it rose, closing the shuttle.
“By looking up the technical manual?” Ankari smiled faintly at some shared memory apparently, because Jamie smiled back and said, “Maybe.”
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Ankari said. “I have an appointment.” She raised her eyebrows at Sergei. “And my understanding is that you do too.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you wherever you go.”
Hazel bristled at that and looked like she might volunteer to go along, but Ankari pointed at the shuttle. “You’ll keep an eye on the business aspect, Sergeant?”
Hazel’s jaw ground back and forth a few times before she said, “Yes. That’s what I’m supposed to do. Watch out for the company’s twenty percent.” She glowered at Sergei and looked like she wanted to say something. What? Be good?
He had never done anything to anyone on the Albatross that should lead her to doubt him. Oh, he knew she had never approved of the idea of the company having an assassin, but this was new distrust, all related to the fact that he was guarding women. He sighed. This wasn’t the place to point out that he was indeed a decent person, or at least one who followed an honor code, but he would have to pull her aside for a private conversation at some point. She seemed to have some notions that went beyond what was in his Fleet file.
“Can I come?” Jamie asked as Ankari was about to walk off.
“You want to?” Ankari glanced at the shuttle. “Oh, because you were kicked out?”
“That and you’re going to the hospital that treats the downsiders, aren’t you? I’m curious about those people, about who sent that fighter and what they needed.” Jamie grimaced, her eyes full of guilt that didn’t belong there. She hadn’t been the one to fire at that craft. She had merely been evading it, doing her job.
“Yes,” Ankari said, “but it’s unlikely they’ll know anything about the craft or even be from the same continent. Viktor said he was going down to the planet to find out what the fighter wanted.”
“I’d still like to come.”
Ankari shrugged. “Fine with me.” She looked at Sergei.
As if he was going to object.
“I’m just the bodyguard,” Sergei said, keeping his tone indifferent. The last thing he needed was for Hazel to think he had some particular interest in Jamie. He shouldn’t have any interest in her.
“Off we go then,” Ankari said.
* * *
Jamie tried not to gawk like a tourist as she, Ankari, and Sergei took the high-speed moving sidewalks from the docks to the interior of the city, but everything from the cars crossing overhead on invisible air-bridges to the floating vendor carts that dispensed meals at the wave of a hand was new to her. Sure, she had been on four different planets and at least a dozen space stations in the months since joining up with Ankari and Lauren, but this was the first metropolis she had been in, and it was a wealthy one at that. Luxurious spa treatments were touted at every corner, along with thousand-aurum meals, adult amusement parks, and floating casinos that were bigger than her family’s entire farm back home. Marinth, the other cloud city, seemed a tiny outpost compared to this, not that Jamie had been given time to explore there.
The hospital was the first underwhelming building they encountered, a squat, three-story structure surrounded by skyscrapers and floating homes. Its old-fashioned glass windows longed for a cleaning, and the peeling paint on the walls would doubtlessly fall off if they were cleaned. The tired security kiosk that slumped against the wall by the front door wasn’t manned.
“I’m not sure if this place will be able to afford us,” Ankari murmured, “even with a group discount.”
Jamie didn’t know much about the appointment, other than the handful of words she had pulled out of Lauren, who had been preparing the specimens that Ankari now carried in a briefcase. “But you brought everything along, anyway?”
Ankari looked down at the briefcase. “Yeah, for these cases, I would give the specimens away, but I’d certainly rather make enough money to cover our costs.”
“What exactly does your business do?” Sergei asked.
It was the first time he had spoken since they left the docks, though Jamie had been aware of him watching their surroundings alertly and standing behind her and Ankari, keeping anyone from coming up too close behind them. Having a bodyguard was decidedly weird. Granted, he was Ankari’s bodyguard, but Jamie liked to think that he would expend some effort to protect her, too, if she was targeted.
“Do you want the long or short version?” Ankari asked as they stepped off the moving sidewalk.
“Short,” Jamie told him, a piece of friendly advice. Ankari wouldn’t burble on the way Lauren did, but she did know enough to give a very thorough answer, even if she ostensibly handled only the business’s accounting and marketing side.
“Short is fine,” Sergei said.
Jamie tucked strands of hair behind her ears, ones that had escaped her braids in the wind generated by the open-air sidewalk. She caught Sergei watching her movements, his eyes intent. His normal expression was on the intense side, as if he was always trying to figure someone out or decide if there was trouble around. It was a little intimidating. He seemed to realize he was staring at her and softened his face, giving her a slight bow. A thank-you for the advice? She wasn’t sure, but he returned to surveying their surroundings as Ankari spoke, and they walked toward the front door.
“We have a research part and a clinical part to our business,” Ankari said. “I won’t bore you with the details of the research we’re doing on ancient alien microbiota—” Sergei blinked a few times at that, “—but our current clinical work involves providing transplants of gut flora, giving people with compromised intestinal systems the microflora of a healthy and, of course, thoroughly screened person. There are numerous parasitic ailments that can be overcome this way, and a person who had previously suffered from all manner of gut dysbiosis can develop a healthy intestinal system after just a few treatments.”
Sergei touched his abdomen. “Why would someone have a compromised system to start with?”
“Any number of reasons from poor diet to extreme stress to past diseases to infections. Infections are particularly problematic in our system. We believe it’s because humans didn’t evolve here. We’re studying what remains of the ancient aliens’ microbi
ota—it’s all fossilized as you might imagine—in the hopes that we can use the same gut flora that they possessed to thrive here. Maybe more than thrive, since the aliens were purported to be similar to us but lived much longer and were healthier and stronger overall.”
“Huh.” Sergei leaned closer to Jamie as they stopped at the front door. “That was the short version?”
He had whispered it, but Ankari smirked back at them. “Sorry, I’ve had to write these things a thousand times for the marketing literature. It all sort of rambles out.”
“I did ask,” Sergei said.
“That’ll teach you.” Jamie grinned at him, and he paused again, his lips parted and his eyes intense as he looked at her.
Her grin faltered—had she said the wrong thing? Maybe she shouldn’t be teasing him, in light of what Sergeant Hazel had said. Or simply because he was supposed to be working, to be focused on protecting them.
Sergei winced slightly and looked away.
Ankari spoke into an intercom, and the door soon opened. Jamie hustled inside after her.
Despite the dilapidated exterior, the corridors inside were wide and clean. A cafeteria opened up to the left and a waiting room to the right, with a woman working behind a desk. A few of the floor tiles were chipped, but the remaining ones were polished and free of dust. The people sitting in the chairs, presumably waiting for service, were less tidy. A mix of white- and brown-skinned men and women, they wore clothes not much different from what Jamie and her family favored around the farm, long-sleeved cotton shirts and sturdy overalls, no hint of the Gar-zymes or other technological weavings that allowed garments to change colors, adjust sizes, or repel stains. That much was clear from the dirt smears and faded stains on the clothes, many of the overalls baggy and large on the gaunt frames of the people. Some had yellowed skin, shaking hands, bags under their eyes, and other signs of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. With tired, weathered faces, they all looked like they could use some extra meals. Now and then, one would glance toward the cafeteria, eyes full of longing, but the only people eating in there were men and women dressed in the hospital’s white and pastel green uniform.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 54