Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  Kalish winced at the bastardization of his name, but he didn’t mind. It was better than Sniffles.

  With one hand, Tia waved Kalish forward. Not taking her eyes from the view screen, she whispered, “He’s a salted caramel,” and winked. “Better than Mingus.”

  Sedge scratched his head, not sure what to make of the comment. Had it been a compliment? If so, the girl might change her mind once he broke out in hives in front of her, but with luck they would spend most of the mission in the ships, and that wouldn’t happen.

  “Tia is twenty, but still thinks she’s a kid,” Kalish explained to Sedge, looking faintly embarrassed by the comment. “She rates boys according to her favorite ice cream flavors. I believe salted caramel is third best.”

  “Nope, nope,” Tia said, tilting them to avoid the pillar. “It’s up to second. I got sick of black cherry chocolate.”

  Sedge braced himself against a wall. Whatever the ship relied on for artificial gravity, it wasn’t that reliable. He guessed they might only have ten or twenty percent of normal when in space.

  “What’s at the top of the list?” he asked.

  “Honey lavender,” Tia said.

  “Last I heard, there were only two men who rated that comparison,” Kalish said. “The vid star, Edgardo Garcia, and the zero-grav racquetball player, Nikolay Volkov.”

  “Yes. They’re delicious.” Tia sighed with longing, then glanced back again. “Kalish doesn’t appreciate how much I’m giving up to be here, flying in this pit for her. I could be back on Orion Prime, hunting for my own honey lavender.”

  “Uh huh. I’m paying you a lot more than you were making as a part-time lifeguard, and you’re getting college credits for this.”

  “But no boys on the last planet, and no boys on this one. Or if there are any, I never get to see them.”

  “Keep talking like that,” Kalish said, “and I’ll toss you to the miners on the way out. You’ll be lucky if any of them even rate as strawberry.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  Kalish nodded Sedge toward the corridor. “Now that you feel confident about the maturity of our pilot, I’ll introduce you to Mom. I think she’s in engineering.”

  They stepped into the corridor, and Sedge halted, a stern woman with braided blonde-gray hair standing no more than two feet away. He wasn’t sure what he had expected when Kalish had been explaining her mother’s career as a finance officer, but the lean woman with sleeves rolled up and tattoos covering her ropy forearms wasn’t it. She glowered at him with icy blue eyes in a hard, weathered face. A pistol, a dagger, and a multitool hung from her belt, and she wore a laser rifle strapped to her back as well. If Sergeant Hazel had lighter skin, Sedge would have believed this woman could be her mother.

  “Mom,” Kalish said. “This is Sedgwick Thomlin. Sedge, this is Tina.”

  “Tina?” Sedge managed to keep the shocked, strangled tone out of his voice, but barely.

  Her eyes narrowed anyway. She smelled faintly of some floral perfume or another. It seemed out of place, given her tough exterior, and it made his nostrils twitch.

  “They called her Tank in the Fleet.” Kalish winked.

  “Can I call her Mrs. Blackwell?” Sedge smiled, attempting to win the woman over, or at least make the iciness fade from her face. It was hard to imagine the tough lady working in some high-rise on Orion Prime, with a corner office looking out over the city. Maybe she was one of those rare finance pundits who preferred an office in the back of a mechanic’s garage. Or a tattoo parlor.

  “Ms. Blackwell. And you better.” She frowned as she looked him up and down—they were almost the same height. “Sedge?” She sounded even less impressed by his name than he had been by hers. “You the mission commander?”

  “No, ma’am.” Ma’am seemed safer and less confusing than Ms. Blackwell, since they had already been calling Kalish that. That must mean the parents were divorced, or had never been married. He struggled to imagine this woman with a mild-mannered history professor, though he supposed not all professors were mild-mannered. “I’m the intelligence officer.”

  “He put together a program that located possible places for the ruins,” Kalish said.

  “We’ll see.” The woman pushed past Sedge, bumping shoulders with him even though he tried to move aside.

  Her perfume won the assault on his nostrils, and he loosed a series of sneezes, barely managing to get his hand up to cover his nose. She paused to frown even more deeply at him, then strode through the hatchway and onto the bridge. The hatch slammed shut with a clang.

  “I’m not sure she likes me,” Sedge said.

  “She’s never liked any of my bo—male friends.”

  Kalish turned down the corridor before he could catch the expression on her face, but Sedge allowed himself to feel hopeful at that slipup. What could she have meant to say besides boyfriend? Maybe he hadn’t imagined that connection on the shuttle when she had clasped his hand.

  She pushed open the last hatch in the corridor. “Here’s where we eat and make food. Have a seat, and I’ll see if anyone wants to join us.”

  As Sedge walked in and sat at the four-person table, he debated on that word, anyone. Since Tia was flying, as evinced by the dips and occasional shudders that ran through the ship, she wouldn’t be able to leave the bridge. That must mean dinner with Mom.

  He tried not to feel bleak at that thought but didn’t quite manage.

  7

  Kalish set three places at the table, using the magnetic plates that stuck to the surface, since the ship kept tilting and trembling. The silverware was more likely to go flying, so she stuck it in a magnetic cup and turned that into a centerpiece. Usually, nobody bothered with plates or forks, since the ration bricks were designed to be eaten out of the package, but she had found a batch of her mother’s favorite apples and heated them up, so they would have a side dish with their bricks.

  She smiled ruefully, remembering the expression on Sedge’s face when he had run into her mother. After Kalish had promised a woman who baked apples, he must have been expecting someone more domestic looking. Bringing men to meet her mother was always a fraught activity, so Kalish was relieved she had merely introduced him as the mercenary intelligence officer. That’s all he was after all. That had been a silly slipup when she had started to call him a boyfriend. Of course, she had only meant a friend who was a boy. She didn’t even know when he had become that. Somewhere between the first and second time he had saved her life, perhaps.

  He was sitting in a chair and talking to Commander Thatcher now. Kalish listened in as she heated the apples in the galley and chose three of the more appealing prepared meals. Ham and Mercrusean sprouts. That sounded vaguely nutritious.

  “No, sir,” Sedge said. “I don’t have anything new to report. I’ve met the crew and we’re about to have dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Thatcher sounded like he had never heard of the meal. “Now? Aren’t you watching the caverns? We’re passing a great deal of fascinating terrain, excellent examples of cave coral, helictites, and flowstones, and I believe there are creatures in here that have never been documented before. The giant glowing anthropods hanging from the ceiling were chittering, almost as if they have their own language.”

  “That does sound interesting, sir.” Sedge smiled through the pass-way at Kalish. “Any alien ruins sighted yet?”

  “No, but we’re thirty miles from the first checkpoint on your list.”

  “It’s possible there might be some elsewhere in the cavern. And those booby traps could be anywhere.”

  “Booby traps?” Thatcher asked.

  “Ah, did I not mention that? Kalish shared the information with me. It’s not confirmed.”

  “I expect more thorough reports, Thomlin. You have been distracted on this mission.”

  Sedge grimaced and tapped a fingernail on the table. Kalish tried to give him an encouraging smile, but he was too busy staring at the table and looking abashed. She had been worrying about w
hether she could trust him fully; it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be some kind of bad influence.

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll share anything else I find out.”

  “Do so. We’ll continue for a couple more hours, then find a place to set the ships down for the night. Lieutenant Calendula has informed me that some pilots require more than three hours of sleep at night.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, sir. Thomlin, out.”

  Kalish brought out the pot of apples and the heated ham-and-vegetable slabs. They could be eaten cold, but they were moderately more appealing when hot.

  “May I see the package?” Sedge asked, waving at the meal brick.

  Oh, right. His allergies. There had been a number of food ones. Kalish retrieved the wrapper for him. “The apples just have cinnamon, brown sugar, and lemon.”

  “Sounds good. Thank you.” He read the ingredient list, then set it aside. “No strawberries or mangos. I should be safe from the food. From your mother is another matter.”

  “Are you worried by the number of weapons she carries around? She was a mechanic on an infantry ship for a lot of her time in the Fleet.”

  “Actually, it’s her perfume. It was making my nose itch in the corridor.” Sedge tilted his head toward the hatch. “I would like to imagine that I can handle a fifty-year-old woman in battle, though perhaps that’s arrogance on my part.”

  “She’s pretty good in a fight. And if she stuffs her hair up your nose, you’ll be in trouble.”

  Sedge gave her a quizzical look.

  “That’s her shampoo you’re smelling,” Kalish explained. “Tropical Allure or something like that. I can’t stand the smelly stuff, myself. Or pleasantly fragrant, as Mom calls it.”

  “I appreciate your disinterest in smelly stuff.” Sedge started to smile, but it faltered. “That was perhaps not the most eloquent way I could have said that.”

  “I’m just tickled you use words like eloquent. My last, uhm, my former business partner couldn’t manage words over three syllables.”

  “Eloquent only has three syllables.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a Q in there. That makes it trickier.”

  Sedge snorted.

  “That reminds me,” Kalish said. “We should finish our Crucible game later. I have a Q I’m looking forward to sticking someplace irritating.” She imagined sitting on the bridge, admiring the impressiveness of the cavern as they took turns. Too bad Tia would have to be there. Kalish could man the helm when it was on autopilot and make slight adjustments when necessary, but Tom Mingus had been her last pilot. She had limited flying experience and wouldn’t dare attempt the obstacle course these caverns provided.

  “I would like that,” Sedge said.

  Kalish slid into the seat across from him and uncharitably hoped that her mother did not join them. She knew so little about Sedge, and she would enjoy having an hour or two to talk to him without other mercenaries—or family members—around.

  But the hatch soon opened, and her mother stepped in, the frown she had been wearing since Sedge came aboard still stamped on her face. She sat down beside Kalish and fixed her stare on him.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” Sedge said politely, as if he wasn’t noticing the glowers.

  She grunted. “Intelligence officer, huh?”

  Sedge’s nose crinkled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s a mercenary intelligence officer do?”

  Kalish sighed as she ladled apples onto her plate. Mom was in interrogation mood. It was understandable, given what had happened with Tom, but this wasn’t the way Kalish had imagined learning more about Sedge. She had pictured wine, dim lighting, and perhaps some flesh touching. When that had started being the image in her head, she didn’t know. She should be up on the bridge, sitting next to Tia and watching the caverns. Some of the features and creatures Thatcher had described sounded interesting, and she did want to see them, but she had invited Sedge for dinner, and she would try to make it a hospitable one before heading up to the bridge.

  “I have similar duties to a Fleet intelligence officer.” Sedge lifted a finger to his nose. He looked like he was trying not to sneeze. Maybe Kalish could make her mother’s shampoo disappear later and replace it with one of her unscented varieties. “I have a linguistics background and specialized in cryptanalysis when I was at the New Seattle Academy on Paradise. It’s not uncommon for the small militias we fight to encode messages, so I get practice deciphering them. I also do background checks on people we deal with.” He spread a hand toward Kalish. “To make sure they can pay for our services and that they’re not trying to set us up to get killed. Mandrake Company has a few enemies and some ruthless competitors.”

  “You were Fleet?” Mom asked, seemingly ignoring everything else Sedge had said.

  Sedge hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “The rigidity didn’t suit me. I did four years, then left.”

  “Only four years,” Mom said. “After spending four years for your degree and what must have been... What, three years of extra schooling for linguistics and cryptography?”

  “Four years.” Sedge crinkled his nose again, lost the battle he had been fighting, and turned his head to sneeze. “During my last year, I took an alien language elective.” Was that an attempt to divert the conversation? “I’m quite interested in this assignment and hope we’ll find some ruins.” He nodded toward Kalish.

  Her mother’s eyes hardened, and Kalish winced, wishing he hadn’t brought that up, since—

  “You told them?” Mom demanded.

  Kalish prodded her meal. “They figured it out early on.”

  “Everything?”

  Kalish winced again. Now her mother was giving away intel, confirming that there was an everything. Judging by the careful way Sedge was feigning disinterest as he cut into his ham slab, he hadn’t missed what that word might connote.

  “Just that there are ruins down here and we hope to make some money from the relics,” Kalish said.

  Her mother leaned back in her chair. She jabbed an apple with her knife and stuck it in her mouth.

  “Mom? Kalish?” Tia’s voice came over the speaker at the same time as Sedge’s comm-patch chimed. “You might want to come up here.”

  Mom headed for the hatch right away. Kalish hesitated, torn between wanting to hear what Sedge’s people reported—or what he reported to them—and wanting to know what Tia had to say. Maybe all of the ships had seen the same thing.

  “Yes, sir?” Sedge answered.

  “If you’re done schmoozing that woman over dinner, you might want to look out the view screen,” Tick said.

  Sedge grimaced, either at the suggestion of schmoozing or at the fact that he had wasted a “sir” on the sergeant. All he said was, “On my way.”

  Kalish jogged out ahead of him. Her mother had already joined Tia, sitting in the other seat. Kalish stood behind them, her eyes locking onto a ledge halfway up a cavern wall. As with the first one they had landed on, some fuzzy green plants adorned this one. Unlike the first one, it also supported a wrecked ship. Judging by the grime and water stains on the hull, it had been there for a long time. A broken drill on the nose identified it as a mining craft, though it appeared to be a different model than those currently in the compound. It must have been at work in the area before crashing. The natural limestone walls had ended, replaced by pockmarked rock dotted with drilled tunnels.

  “The mercenaries invited me to join their comm channel,” Tia said and tapped a button.

  “...going down to check it out or keep going?” Val asked.

  “It might be useful to find out what caused it to crash,” Tick said. “That big gaping hole in the side looks about as promising as having a sore tooth yanked out by a tech-hating gypsy.”

  “Hole?” Kalish whispered. She wasn’t sure whether they were transmitting or just listening, but she didn’t want to interrupt the conversation.

  Tia shrugged. “I’
ll see if I can get us closer.”

  She tapped the port thrusters, and the ship sidled closer to the shuttles.

  “I concur,” Thatcher said. “It appears unlikely that an equipment malfunction caused that orifice. We will spend a few minutes gathering data.”

  Kalish walked to the environmental controls and sensor panels at Tia’s side. “Check the atmosphere,” she told the computer. She had been in enough caves to know the conditions could vary widely, even in the same complex. A readout hovered in the air, the back darkened so she could read it.

  “Tia,” she said, “let them know that there’s ethylene in the air, displacing some of the oxygen. We shouldn’t need enviro suits, but we don’t want to stay out there for long, either.”

  “We hear you, Ms. Blackwell,” Thatcher said. “My readings are similar. Tick and Striker will investigate.”

  “Tick and Striker?” Tia crinkled her nose. “Are those names of people or dogs?”

  Sedge had joined Kalish, standing beside her and considering the wreck in thoughtful silence, but he smiled at this question. “Their species is open for debate.”

  Tia looked at Kalish, not finding that answer satisfying apparently.

  “Tick is easily a salted caramel,” Kalish said. “I’d say chocolate for Striker’s exterior, but he has the personality of oyster ice cream.”

  “Oyster? That’s the worst.”

  “Yes.” Kalish suspected Sedge would agree and gave him a nod.

  He wore a faintly horrified expression. Maybe he hadn’t encountered oyster ice cream. That one was popular in a couple of the predominately Chinese cities on Novus Earth.

  “You rank Tick a salted caramel?” he asked.

  Ah, he hadn’t been thinking of oysters at all.

  “You don’t think he’s handsome?” Kalish asked.