Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Halt,” one officer demanded.

  Ankari waved her hand at the sensor on the closest door. It didn’t open.

  “Here,” Jamie whispered, trying the one across the corridor. It slid open.

  It was probably a dead end, but what other choice did they have? To give up?

  Jamie ducked inside, and Ankari charged after her. The whine of a laser pistol made her hair stand on end. To her surprise, a blast of crimson energy splashed against the metal doorjamb where her head had been an instant earlier.

  “They’re shooting,” she blurted, even if it was a statement of the obvious.

  “Don’t shoot to kill,” came one of the guard’s voices over the clomp of their boots. “Just stop her. You saw the poster.”

  Poster? What poster? Ankari yanked out her own pistol, not to fire back but to melt the sensor on the panel by the door. She blasted it, having no idea if the damage would keep the door from opening again.

  “It’s another bay,” Jamie said. “No other doors.”

  Ankari cursed again, staring around at the rows of beds, searching for inspiration. None of these beds were occupied, but as with the other bay, this one came with security robots. Security robots that clanked into motion at the intrusion. The closest two rolled into the aisle and headed for Ankari and Jamie.

  “Shall I?” Jamie waved her tablet.

  “No time,” Ankari said, hearing the pounding of boots again just outside the door. She almost said, “No point,” as well, but remembered the laundry chute in the other bay. She scanned the walls, spotted a similar hinged square halfway down this room, and pointed. “There. Go.”

  She jumped onto the beds to avoid the two robots rolling toward them. Jamie took another route, crawling under the beds instead of over them. One of the robots raised a stun gun, spinning on its rollers to track her. Ankari shot at it even as she leaped from bed to bed. Her laser melted part of the robot’s wrist, but the wild shot missed her intended target. The robot fired, a whomp sounding at the same time as Ankari flung herself down between two beds. Energy crackled through the air where her head had been. It might not have killed her, the way a laser pistol would, but it would have knocked her senseless for long enough for the security men to catch up.

  She almost landed on Jamie, who was still crawling beneath the beds.

  “Hi,” Jamie blurted as she scrambled under the next one.

  “They’re in here,” someone called from the doorway. So much for that attempt to melt the lock.

  Ankari took off after Jamie. They were about a third of the way down the bay, with the chute at the halfway point. Maybe they had a chance of making it. So long as the chute opened without a special code or sensor scan. And so long as it was indeed a laundry chute and not a trash incinerator.

  That thought blasted into her head with such alarming intensity that she almost stopped right there. Escaping these men was not worth flinging herself to her death. But with the security officers shooting with laser pistols, could she be certain their attempts to “just stop her” wouldn’t prove fatal? They ought to be using stun guns if they wanted to capture her alive. Granted, those didn’t have the range or pinpoint accuracy of a laser pistol. And maybe the security guards didn’t care if they seriously maimed her on the way to stopping her...

  “They’re down there,” someone said. “On the floor. Get those robots out of the way and get them.”

  Jamie reached the chute before Ankari. She paused, looked back, and pointed. “In?”

  “Is it for laundry?” Ankari asked, hurrying to catch up.

  “I think so. There’s a bin right here.” Jamie pushed it into the aisle—maybe it would hamper their pursuers. “Looks like it’s for sheets.”

  “Good. Yes. In.”

  “Hah, see you,” a man growled from the floor several beds behind Ankari. He glared at her from his belly and stretched a weapon toward them.

  Ankari did not look long enough to determine if it was a stun gun or a laser pistol. After being shot at with laser fire once, she would assume the worst. She was still one bed away from the chute—Jamie’s feet were leaving the floor as she clawed her way through the chest-high opening—but Ankari leaped to her feet. The man’s weapon whined, and the air shivered with the invisible pulse from a stun gun.

  She jumped over the bed and almost crashed into a man who was vaulting over the sheet bin. He reached for her even as she landed. She turned that landing into a launching pad, thrusting a side kick at him before his fingers could wrap around her arm. He hadn’t had a chance to steady himself from his own jump, and he tumbled backward, tipping into the bin.

  Not daring to hesitate to check the way, Ankari hurled herself into the chute. Darkness surrounded her, and she dropped immediately, tumbling like a rock. A rock that bounced from side to side in the chute, falling farther than she had anticipated. Terror clutched at her heart as she picked up speed. She had been envisioning a dip to a laundry room on the floor below the hospital, but she had to be falling into the bowels of the space station, far below the bottom level that was accessible to the general populace. Maybe this wasn’t the laundry chute after all. A vision of going careening out into space at the bottom came to mind.

  Her back struck the side with a final thud, and she fell through open air. She curled into a ball, knowing she should roll and try to protect her bones from breaking when she struck. But the space around her remained black, and she couldn’t see if the ground approached. Until she struck.

  She landed on a pile of linens, her feet touching down first, but the momentum of the fall took her tumbling down a hill. She stayed in a ball, trying to keep her hands and feet from snagging in the mountain of fabric underneath her. Even though landing on sheets might be preferable to landing on cement, the fall still blasted the air from her lungs and pummeled her as she rolled butt over head. Finally, the steep slope lessened, and she slowed to a stop.

  A pitiful groan sounded in the air. At first, she thought she had made the noise—it was justified, certainly—but no, that had to be Jamie. The sound came from the other side of the... whatever this was. Since she couldn’t see, she couldn’t determine that it was a room. The only break in the darkness came from a row of tiny green lights to the side, the controls for some machinery.

  “Jamie?” Ankari whispered.

  Another groan sounded.

  “Did you hurt anything?”

  “I hurt everything. Again.”

  “Maybe Sergei will give you a massage tonight.” Ankari forced herself to her feet, ignoring the muscles that protested that landing. She felt like lumpy dough that had endured the ministrations of a ruthless rolling pin, but they couldn’t linger here. The security officers would know where they had gone and send men.

  “I think I need bandages, not a massage.”

  Ankari pulled out her tablet, turned on the flashlight, and almost yelped when her beam chanced across a metallic torso two paces away from her. The hulking robot rolled toward her on soundless wheels, its yellow eyes glinting in the reflection of her light. Sharp prongs protruded toward her from where arms should have been. She scampered to the side, thinking it was another security robot out to get her.

  It did not turn to follow her. Instead it continued to the linens pile, lowered the twin prongs, extended them, and lifted a heap of sheets. It rolled backward, ignoring Ankari as it headed for the green lights, which were part of a row of giant washing machines.

  Jamie gripped her forearm. “You’re not going to make me reprogram them, are you?”

  “No.” Ankari found a door with her flashlight. “We’re getting out of here before security shows up. And then...” She took a deep breath, the image of those lasers firing at her seared into her memory. “And then, I’m going to find out why it’s suddenly acceptable to fire lasers at petty thieves.” It might not be the first time she had been shot at, but that wasn’t an experience that ever grew easy to deal with, and this was the first time lawmen had at shot her with we
apons that could kill.

  “That was alarming,” Jamie said as they headed for the door. “And not just because I was standing next to you.” She grimaced, favoring her right leg. She would need more than a massage. “It can’t be because of that captain’s tablet, can it? Or because of the information we saw on it?”

  Ankari glanced sharply at her friend. She hadn’t thought of that. Was this Fleet meeting secret? So secret they would kill to keep it that way? It was hard to imagine that. The Fleet wasn’t the mafia, and besides, one could hardly hide a conference that would take place on a public space station, where the docking ships would be visible to anyone on the station or cruising past it. Besides, the second guard had used a stun gun. Maybe his compatriot had simply been overzealous. If so, that still wasn’t all that comforting.

  “I don’t know,” Ankari said. “But I plan to find out. And I’m going to figure out how to publicly reveal this mafia problem too.”

  “Is that wise? Fleet is already mad at you. Security is apparently mad at you. If you annoy whatever mafia people are here, too, how will you ever get out of here alive?”

  “I don’t know,” Ankari said again, her voice low. Maybe picking this fight was foolish, but she couldn’t pick a fight with the Fleet. That could never come out well. A fight with the mafia... At least that might help people, and she had a vague notion that if she helped enough people—or the right people—she might somehow clear her name, or at least have her charges dropped. Whatever those charges were. She definitely needed to find that out. Along with a dozen other things.

  Feeling daunted, she wished Viktor was with her, and not only so he could massage her battered muscles.

  8

  Viktor was tired of his own thoughts. Without access to the network so he could research his suspicions, so he could relieve his curiosity, there was no point in thinking them. A half a day in jail, and he was already longing for his punching bag so he could relieve the tension in his limbs. Instead, he did pushups. He had stopped counting long ago. He simply performed them until his muscles gave way and he had to drop to the floor. Then he rested, contemplated how he could possibly trick the sensors into thinking there was a fire in his cell, and did another round.

  “Visitor for Mandrake,” someone up the corridor said. A buzz sounded, and a door lock was released.

  Viktor jumped to his feet and thought about grabbing his shirt—he had removed it so he wouldn’t sweat in it, having no idea when he might get to bathe or do laundry next. Most likely, it would be Borage returning with news, but he found himself hoping to see Ankari stroll into view, a quirky smile on her lips. He wouldn’t mind being caught shirtless for her.

  Stop it, he told himself. Thoughts of nudity, and what nude people did together, were not the priority. The priority was his need to know that she was all right, that his impulsiveness in the burning pet store hadn’t resulted in trouble for her. He also felt bad that he had walked away, the flex-cuffs securing his wrists, without looking back and meeting her eyes in some silent exchange that might have let her know how much he cared. But if the security guards had not known she was with him, he hadn’t wanted to be the one to alert them.

  “Mandrake again?” someone else responded, the guard on the inside of the cellblock most likely. “Who knew that thug would be so popular?”

  “Jealous, Marks?”

  “Nah. So far, it’s only been men who visited him. If anything with breasts comes to see him, then I might be jealous.”

  “Anything? I didn’t know you had such low standards. Maybe that pet store that blew up has some apes that would do.”

  Viktor ignored the rest of their lewd banter, because his visitor had walked into view. Captain Xu. Still clad in his black Fleet uniform, he stopped in front of the cell, clasped his hands behind his back, and stared at Viktor. His bronze face was unreadable. His almond-shaped eyes narrowed slightly, but that might have signified irritation, scrutiny, or thoughtfulness. Viktor folded his arms across his chest and stared back. He stood six inches taller than the man, and his biceps were probably larger around than Xu’s thighs, but the captain did not look like someone who was intimidated easily.

  “What were you doing in that pet store, Mandrake?” Xu asked.

  Viktor had anticipated a half a dozen questions, with inquiries about the alien technology chief among them. This hadn’t been on his list.

  “Getting lab rats for my microbiologist,” he said, suspecting the truth would sound ridiculous enough that Xu wouldn’t believe him.

  The man snorted.

  Viktor remained silent. He did not want to give anything away.

  “I saw the footage,” Xu said, then his mouth twisted. “Before the news station edited it.”

  Nobody had shared the news feed with the prisoners, so Viktor could only guess at what this editing might have entailed. The fact that he was in jail suggested the gist of it.

  “Were you the one who told them to edit it?” Viktor asked.

  Xu inclined his head. “As your spy has doubtlessly told you, my superiors wished you incarcerated here.”

  His Spy. Ankari. As much as Viktor wanted information on her, he would not ask his new enemy for it. He didn’t want Xu thinking about Ankari at all.

  “Why?” Viktor asked, though he doubted Xu knew.

  Xu lifted a shoulder. “A captain does not question an admiral.”

  “Isn’t it great, following orders that you don’t get to question, even if they require you to bend your ethics?” Viktor did not know if Xu’s ethics would be disturbed even remotely by altering what the news reported, but he watched the man’s face closely, in the event that they might. After all, something had brought Xu here, to question and assess Viktor. Viktor doubted that his superiors would have asked him to come, especially if they hadn’t told him why he was taking actions against some random mercenary captain.

  “Why did you desert, Mandrake?” Xu asked instead of answering the question.

  Normally, Viktor would not respond, especially not on this subject, but he had a niggling hunch that his answer might somehow matter to Xu.

  “The Fleet blew up my planet. My family. My friends. My village. The house I grew up in.” Viktor cut himself off, not wanting to show the man that this subject could still make him emotional ten years later. He switched to flippancy, in an attempt to hide his feelings. “Mom, Dad, and I had almost completed assembling our First Colonists Juice Glass Collection. It was inconvenient.”

  Xu did not respond. His face was back to unreadable as he gazed at Viktor.

  “Where is Commodore Parsons?” Viktor asked, thinking the abrupt topic change might surprise some information—or at least a telling reaction—out of the man.

  Xu did lean back slightly, but he merely shook his head. “I’m not familiar with the name.”

  Viktor couldn’t tell if that was a lie or not. The Fleet was big, but most of the ship captains knew the other ship captains, at least when it came to vessels the size of heavy cruisers and dreadnoughts. Parsons commanded an Intrepid-class cruiser, and there were only about twelve in the system. It was possible Xu hadn’t heard of him, but unlikely.

  “He’s the one your superiors should toss in jail. He either has the items they’re looking for, or he has information on who he sold them to.”

  Xu kept his face neutral, but Viktor had the impression he wasn’t tracking the conversation. Either Viktor was off on his guess as to what all of this was about or Xu was simply being treated as an errand boy.

  “I shall consider your words.”

  Xu turned and walked away. Viktor wished he had gained more from the meeting. He was stuck, waiting to see if Borage returned with more useful information. He wanted to see Ankari even more than he wanted to see Borage. She would probably have a whole slew of information, also useful. And she was far more pleasant to look at than he was.

  Sighing, Viktor dropped to the floor again, this time for sit-ups, along with further contemplation on the fire sens
ors.

  * * *

  The decking vibrated beneath Ankari’s feet, air rushed through the maze of ductwork running over her head, and water gurgled as it flowed through the dozens of pipes stretching along the bulkhead at their backs. Giant compost tumblers rumbled on the far wall, barely visible in the dim lighting as they turned the station’s biological waste back into fertile soil. Next to the tumblers, a strange tangle of living foliage and machinery surrounded a sealed container littered with stickers that read “Danger” and “Do Not Touch.” Those stickers weren’t nearly as alarming as the plaque on the front that read Radioactive Waste Degradation Station.

  Ankari had chosen this level, which was a couple of floors above the laundry room but still below the public areas, as a hiding spot because it was dark and possessed a maze of infrastructure for the station. She hadn’t counted on being irradiated while they hid.

  “It’s fine,” Jamie said, waving toward the machinery as she came to crouch beside Ankari in the shadows. “I looked it up. It’s actually quite encouraging. The technodruids found some bacteria that eats radioactive waste, if you can imagine that, so all of the station’s garbage, even what’s left over from fission, gets recycled instead of jettisoned into space. The container is quadruple shielded and can withstand earthquakes and laser cannons without cracking. That’s what the technical manual promises, anyway.” She grinned and waved her tablet.

  Ankari wished she could manage a grin. Nothing about this situation was piquing her humor.

  Her comm unit beeped, the sound muffled by all of the ambient noises, as well as the thuds, clunks, and hisses echoing from the environmental control room behind the wall. Ankari and Jamie could see the door leading into it from the corner where they hunkered, but a very expensive and very modern security system guarded it, complete with laser beams crisscrossing the air in front of the entrance. That was fine. Ankari had no need to fiddle with the station’s air conditioning.