“A solar flare, this far out? You’d have to hug a heat lamp to get a suntan around here.”
“Nonetheless, our meddling shouldn’t be immediately obvious. If they take precautionary measures, I believe it’s more likely they’ll move men to their ore or ingot holding facilities. We are in the fourth week since their last ore pickup, in a six week schedule, so they should have a significant amount of precious metals on hand.”
“So if we can’t get the maps, we can blow up a smelter and take some nice gold home?” Striker asked.
“That would be a felonious action,” Commander Thatcher said.
“As opposed to stealing someone’s maps?”
“The captain implied we would be scanning the maps, not stealing them.” Thatcher smiled slightly, bowed his head, and like a monk reciting a koan, added, “‘Information wants to be free.’”
Ms. Blackwell smirked. “Stewart Brand.”
“Indeed, yes,” Thatcher said.
“What?” Tick asked.
“That was often said back on Old Earth, when networks were first being established,” Ms. Blackwell said. “Naturally, I agree. At least when it comes to useful maps.”
Sedge smiled at Ms. Blackwell, then decided from Val’s frown that it might be an overly smitten-looking smile, and dropped it. He waved at the slides again. Time to wrap up the briefing. “We shall strive for stealth, but Striker is prepared if we need a distraction in order to escape with the files.”
Striker smiled and patted his bag of explosives.
Ms. Blackwell watched him dubiously. Sedge hoped that the mission would go smoothly and that they wouldn’t need to resort to tactics approved by the Chief of Boom.
“Very well,” Thatcher said. “We’ll take one shuttle, and I’ll fly us in. There’s a butte a mile out that we can land behind. The shuttle is sensor shielded, but that’s as close as I want to get, lest we risk visual detection from an alert watchman on the wall. Lieutenant Calendula will remain with the craft. Tick will go in with Ms. Blackwell and Thomlin, and Striker and I will monitor from the perimeter, preparing to distract if necessary.”
“I don’t get to go with the infiltration team?” Striker asked.
“Lieutenant Calendula has informed me that your tactless words and incessant leers—” Thatcher glanced at Val, as if to verify he was quoting her correctly, “—may be unappreciated by Ms. Blackwell. You will not accompany her anywhere during the mission.”
Striker slumped back in his seat, frowning back and forth from Thatcher to Calendula. “I liked it more before you had a woman, sir. You never used to know what was tactless.”
Val smiled and gave him a rude gesture. Thatcher swung into the pilot’s seat and fired up the engine.
“My leers aren’t incessant,” Striker grumbled to Tick, poking the air above the tablet to make a move. “They’re very... cessant.”
“Inactive or dormant?” Sedge asked, doubting Striker knew what the word meant.
“Friendly. And sexy. Women like them.”
Skeptical, Sedge looked at Ms. Blackwell for confirmation. But she had already strapped into her seat and pulled out a tablet of her own, opening the display in privacy mode so he couldn’t see what she was working on. Remembering his earlier thought of sitting beside her and telling her about his electives, Sedge took a step in that direction. But he hesitated. If she was engrossed in something private, she might not appreciate having him so close. There were numerous other places he could sit.
“Take a seat, Lieutenant Thomlin,” Thatcher said. “We’re taking off.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sedge decided to risk Ms. Blackwell’s ire and headed toward her, though he tried to walk casually, as if he was merely going to the first open seat and had nothing further on his mind. The last thing he wanted was to have Val accuse him of leering, incessantly, surreptitiously, or otherwise. He also had no wish to make Ms. Blackwell uncomfortable. Calm, casual, indifferent. That was him.
No sooner had he reached Ms. Blackwell than he sneezed mightily, one of those irritating surprise sneezes that startled a man. And those around him. She flinched and stared up at him.
“My apologies,” he murmured, dipping into his pocket for his handkerchief.
“Thomlin, you took your medication, didn’t you?” Thatcher asked.
Embarrassed heat warmed his cheeks. Ms. Blackwell was still looking at him, probably wondering why a thirty-year-old man had to be reminded to take an antihistamine like a distracted toddler. “Yes, it should kick in fully before we reach the installation. This planet is proving to be particularly taxing on my immune system.”
“How can that be?” Striker asked. “We haven’t seen more than three plants. And they were cactuses. Who’s allergic to cactus?”
“It’s the dust,” Sedge said stiffly.
“Can’t the doc give you a shot or something?”
“I react poorly to the most common drugs used for controlling the human histamine response.” Sedge decided not to mention the instances of anaphylactic shock. He had no wish to share his vulnerabilities with Striker. Or Ms. Blackwell. How had they gotten onto this horrible topic anyway?
He slid into the seat next to Ms. Blackwell, even though he was more inclined to flee to the rear and hide in the weapons locker at this point. She was still looking at him, but her expression was hardly one of sexual interest—he would have settled for any interest whatsoever. Rather, she had that look that so many of his peers often wore: wondering how someone with so many allergies could make it as a mercenary.
“I’m quite hale in most ways,” Sedge felt compelled to tell her. “It’s a hypersensitivity rather than a weakness, you understand. I haven’t had a cold or other bacterial invasion in years, and I’m in the top tenth percentile on the ship when it comes to the physical fitness tests.” He resisted the urge to take off his jacket and push up his shirt sleeve to flex his biceps—Striker did that move all the time, and it never worked on women. “My parents were explorers in their wilder youths, out in the jungles and rainforests of Mercruse and Amselite III. They sought unique specimens to breed with plants back in their greenhouses, and my mother was afflicted by a nasty parasite before she realized she was pregnant with me. They returned to civilization for treatment, but it was a stubborn parasite that took years to eradicate fully. In the meantime, I was born prematurely and with a compromised immune system. It made for an inconvenient childhood, but I grew out of most of it, and I’m quite normal now.” He wrinkled his nose, trying to fight off another sneeze. When would that damned pill kick in?
“Uhhh,” Striker said, “does anyone else feel like they just learned way more about their intelligence officer than they wanted to know?”
Tick made a vaguely disgusted face. “Yes.”
Ms. Blackwell’s face wasn’t quite so easy to read, but, curse his outstanding mastery of that intelligence officer training course on body language, she wasn’t intrigued or sympathetic. She merely appeared uncomfortable at this sharing of knowledge.
Sedge slumped back in the seat and reached for his harness. Maybe it wasn’t too late to hide in the weapons locker after all. He stared straight ahead, avoiding all eye contact until the ship took off, Striker and Tick returned to their game, and Ms. Blackwell lowered her chin to focus on her tablet again.
“Approximately forty-seven minutes until our landing spot,” Thatcher said after they had cleared the boulder field and were skimming the surface of the planet.
Darkness had fallen during his briefing, not that there was much to see out there. Sedge’s interest in the planet lay beneath the surface.
Reminded of his desire to find out more from Ms. Blackwell, he risked a glance at her. He thought she might be studying the plans of the base or be engrossed in some historical text, but she was poking at tiles with letters and parts of patterns shaded on them in gray and green. He recognized the game, having played it often with other linguistics students at the academy. He had even won a tournam
ent there.
“Crucible?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ms. Blackwell said without looking up. She waved a finger through the air, pushing one of her tiles onto the top of the three-dimensional board, making four new words.
“Good move. Although, if you consider the Q there, the two new words you would make would gain you more points, and you’d also block your opponent’s access point to the top of the pyramid bonus.”
Ms. Blackwell’s expression wasn’t as grateful as he had hoped. She leveled a cool stare at him. “I don’t need help.”
“Pardon me.” Maybe he should be studying the base plans. He had a feeling he was on the verge of being categorized as persona non grata for her.
“If you think you’re so smart, why don’t you start your own game with me?”
Sedge straightened. Had she just invited him to play her? She had.
“I would be delighted to,” he said.
Only after he spoke did he catch Val looking back at him and shaking her head in some warning. Belatedly, it occurred to him that he might have accepted a challenge that could not be won. If he beat their new employer, she might be irked with him when they were trying to gain her favor and win a contract. If he lost to her, she might think him an idiot, not capable of the job she was contemplating hiring the mercenaries for.
He opened his mouth, about to rescind his acceptance, but she had already jabbed the “New Game” button and typed in Sedgwick. Well, at least she hadn’t entered Sniffles.
“‘Nothing reveals humanity so well as the games it plays,’” Ms. Blackwell said, a challenge in her eyes.
“David Hartley,” Sedge said.
“What kind of mercenary knows Old Earth scientists and philosophers?” she asked.
“The kind who spent a lot of time hiding from bullies in the library as a kid,” Striker said. “In fact, he does that on the Albatross too.”
Sedge ignored him and pointed at his name on the display next to his side of the board. “You can call me Sedge,” he said. He offered a hopeful smile. Maybe she would invite him to use her first name. Kalish, the game had automatically filled in, but he wouldn’t presume.
“You can call me Kalish,” she said, sticking out her hand.
He clasped it, excited that she was not only talking to him but had offered this challenge. He probably shouldn’t have noticed the pleasant feel of her warm, smooth hand in his. He definitely shouldn’t have noticed the way some of her tiny braids of hair had fallen forward, tracing the outline of her breast.
She added, “If you win,” and it broke the spell.
Sedge let his hand fall away. Up front, Val sighed and returned her focus to the view screen and the dark boulders drifting past below them. He ought to throw the game, let their employer win. What kind of employer wanted to be bested by one of the scruffy mercenaries she had hired? But there was a prize dangling above the board game now, one that tempted him more than honor or pride. Her first name. He decided to use it in his mind, even if he hadn’t yet earned the right to say it out loud.
Kalish took an early lead in their game, surprising him. It must be that her close presence, her shoulder barely an inch from his own, was distracting him. He noticed that she didn’t wear any perfume or scented shampoo, something he found quite appealing since his senses so often reacted poorly to artificial odors. Despite the lack of artifice, she did smell clean and... nice.
Realizing he was more than thirty points behind, Sedge centered his focus on the game. He took a few extra moments to study his options, then dropped a J onto the long side of the pile, forming a sun pattern and three new words. He kept his smile to himself, though the move made him proud.
Kalish glowered and said nothing. He was three points ahead now.
Perhaps it was just as well that there wasn’t time to complete the game before Thatcher guided the shuttle into a cave.
“We’ll finish this later,” Kalish said and snapped the tablet shut. Too bad it sounded more like some tedious chore that she had to return to rather than a game. He was enjoying himself.
“We may have a problem,” Thatcher announced.
“What is it?” Sedge unfastened his harness and jogged to the cockpit, kneeling between Val and Thatcher.
“There are detector robots flying in a grid all around the complex. They were either too small for the satellite to pick up, or they’re cloaked in sensor-blocking armor.” Thatcher scratched his jaw thoughtfully. He had already killed all power except for the auxiliary lights and a few displays on the panel as well as the view screen itself. Most likely in an attempt to reduce their power signature, so the shuttle wouldn’t be detected. “If so, this is far more advanced security technology than we were led to believe this compound had.” He looked back at Kalish.
She walked up to stand behind Val’s seat, her frown dark as she stared at the instruments. Thatcher pointed at a couple of dashes of white on his sensor panel. One was floating along, paralleling the distant wall of the complex, but another was drifting toward the butte the shuttle was hiding in.
“Do you have any way to scramble their systems, Thomlin?” Thatcher asked.
Sedge already had his tablet out, tying it into the shuttle’s sensors to get a reading on what they were dealing with. The flying robot was even more modern than Thatcher had implied, a unit not widely on the shelves yet. Sedge had read about them only recently making appearances at security demonstrations.
“Not a Mig 3500,” he said. “Not on a minute’s notice. Maybe if I had a couple of days.”
He called upon the network, trying to download information, but they were weeks out from the core of the system, and communications were about as speedy as sending messages by carrier pigeon.
“We don’t have days.” Val leaned forward, squinting into the gloom in front of the cave the shuttle had backed into. “That dot is coming our way.”
“Have to blow it up before it reports back,” Striker said.
Sedge frowned. “That would be as telling as simply letting it report. Is it too late to abort? Slip away before it identifies us?”
Kalish’s fingers dug into the back of Val’s chair. “We’re not aborting. Blow it up. They won’t know for sure what happened. It could have smashed against a boulder and knocked itself out.”
Sedge bit his tongue to keep from saying how unlikely it was that even an older model of detector would make that mistake.
The hatch seal hissed, and Striker and Tick jogged out into the dark cave with their rifles and explosives before Sedge could offer up a better solution.
“That’s disturbing,” Tick’s voice came over the comm. The beams of the two men’s flashlights grew visible on the shuttle’s view screen. They crossed to focus on something lumpy on the ground.
“I’ll say.” Striker made a disgusted sound.
“What is it?” Thatcher asked.
“Animal scat, sir,” Tick said. “A big pile. Definitely from a predator. Looks like this planet has some more substantial critters than those little lizards we saw today.”
“Noted. Focus on the drone, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There it is.” Val pointed.
A dark disk floated in the night air at the mouth of the cave, a few red dots blinking along its rim. A second later, two crimson beams shot out from beside the shuttle. The disk jerked in the air, spinning away. An impressive amount of shielding kept it from exploding outright. Striker and Tick charged after it, still firing, focusing their beams on it. It sped out of the cave, but just before it escaped sight, it blew up in a ball of fiery orange that lit up the boulders and dust. Blackened shrapnel flew away. Then the flames died out, leaving nothing but the night sky.
“There’s no way that would have happened if it had simply run into a cliff,” Sedge said.
Kalish frowned at him again, and he wished he hadn’t made the observation.
“No,” Thatcher agreed, standing. “We’re dealing with more modern defenses th
an we were led to believe. Ms. Blackwell, do you wish us to go in anyway?”
“Yes.”
2
Kalish eyed the watchtowers along the dark wall ahead of them, the stars and the nebula filling the sky behind it. Lights glowed in those watchtowers, and men occasionally moved behind the windows. She tried to reassure herself by noting the large distance of unguarded wall between each tower. The compound was immense, with room for a shipyard, refineries, and giant warehouses as well as barracks and administration buildings. Even if people were standing guard in the towers, they should be bored, reading books or playing games on their tablets.
Unless they were on high alert, thanks to the random explosion of one of their roaming detectors...
Kalish felt vulnerable as she and the mercenaries jogged across the packed earth. The half mile around the walls had been cleared of rocks, cactus, and whatever else might have once occupied the area. Even with darkness shadowing the field, she feared the team would be easy for those in the towers to spot. Thatcher carried some sensor-scrambling shield that was supposed to blanket all of them from security devices, but that technology wouldn’t hide them from the human eye. Still, the mercenaries seemed to believe in it, because they stayed close together, nearly shoulder to shoulder as they ran.
Kalish ran at Thomlin’s shoulder—or Sedge’s shoulder, she supposed it was, since he had offered her his first name. She was not sure yet she wanted to think of him as anything other than one of the mercenaries, another lieutenant so-and-so. His burbling of personal information had left her feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Who met a person for the first time, then started babbling about his premature birth? What an odd man.
A dog barked inside the compound.
“Looks like we’re dealing with some low-tech security too,” Striker whispered.
“No blowing up any dogs,” Tick told him.
“Wasn’t planning on it. I like dogs. Got one with cyborg parts in one of my earlier comic strips. He’s practically the hero of the whole story.”
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 80