The lav door opened. Cheeks redder than cherries, Sedge pushed himself up, all too aware that he had blasted the back of a ten-thousand-year-old artifact with semen and that the shuttle probably smelled like sex. He made a desperate stab at moving some icons around on the tablet’s holodisplay even as he hoped that Tick returned to the cockpit without so much as a glance in their direction.
“Thank you,” he whispered when they were alone again, or as alone as they would get in the shuttle. “That was wonderful.”
“You’re easy to please. I thought it was awkward.” She grinned at him and patted his chest. “And you just defiled that ancient artifact. I’ll get a towel.”
Kalish rolled to her feet, and he watched the sway of her hips as she headed for the lav. Quite lovely hips. He looked forward to exploring them—all of her—at some future date. A not-too-distant future date, he hoped.
He grabbed his shirt and extricated his handkerchief—fortunately, it had survived the attack better than the rest of the scorched, bloody garment. Next, he used his sanitizing wipes on the artifact. Then, feeling much better, he fastened his trousers and focused on the runes and the translation program. He had quite a pile of notes by the time Kalish returned, her cheeks flushed. He had been engrossed in the work, and it wasn’t until she handed him some paper towels and settled wordlessly beside him, tugging her own tablet onto her lap that he realized she had been in there a while.
At first, he decided to say nothing, but then, reminded of how much she had teased him, he whispered, “You’ll agree with me then that the lav is a small and inconvenient place to relieve one’s urges?”
“Oh, yes,” Kalish said, unflappable. “I’ll agree to that.” She glanced toward the front, then leaned in to whisper in his ear, her lips so close that they brushed his skin. “I couldn’t help myself. But next time I want you to touch me.” She sucked on his earlobe before pulling back, her eyes full of promise.
A flutter of anticipation teased his belly. He licked his lips and whispered, “I can do that.”
“Good.”
Chapter 11
A thick fog smothered the view screen, with little more visible than drops of water pattering onto the nose of the shuttle. The three ships were bedded down for the night next to a pond fed by a waterfall with lush green vegetation carpeting the rocks outside. A strange place to exist in the stygian darkness of the caverns.
Kalish could have returned to her own ship, but she and Sedge were still working on deciphering the runes, so it had made sense to stay in the same shuttle.
Sure, girl, that’s why you want to stay here with him.
She smiled from her spot in the middle of the shuttle, stretched out across three seats. After they found a ship and got Dad back, she resolved to kidnap Sedge from his company and take him to some romantic and private spot. Where that might be out here in the hind teat of the system, she wasn’t sure, but she would find it. Hell, if everyone else disappeared, this serene underground pool might be nice. Assuming that the man-eating monsters stayed away.
A shadow fell across her. “Got it,” Sedge said, waving his tablet in one hand and the lid in the other.
“Already?”
Kalish couldn’t quite keep the frown off her face. She had suggested the contest, fully expecting to decrypt the message first. Even though the only thing that truly mattered was finding out what the artifact said, she couldn’t help but feel disgruntled at losing. She blamed it on the fact that she had overly distracted herself by spending that naughty time with Sedge. She had been delighted to realize he found her closeness so arousing, and it had been fun to help him find his release, something deserved after the grief she had given him, especially when all he had wanted to do was help her. Of course, she hadn’t meant to become so aroused herself from handling him. That interlude in the lav had not been terribly satisfying, and as he beamed a smile down at her, she found herself looking at his bare chest instead of at the items in his hands. What would he say if she suggested they step outside and see if they could find a bare patch of rock without anything allergy-inducing growing on it?
“Already,” Sedge said, then smirked wryly. “A mere four hours after we started. Thatcher fell asleep waiting for us to solve the problem.”
Kalish sat up. “Let’s make sure it’s solved. I had about ninety percent of it translated.” She wasn’t sure why she mentioned that, other than a need to let him know that she had been almost as swift as he. “Shall we compare?”
“Absolutely.” Sedge bent over the seat, holding his tablet so they could both see the display. He laid the lid down on the seat next to her.
She twitched an eyebrow at it. “That’s been thoroughly cleaned, I trust.”
He held up a case she recognized from outside of the refinery, the one that held his moistened wipes. For when a handkerchief just wouldn’t do. “Yes, but I’m concerned that my supply of wipes is growing low. I should have known that crawling around in caverns would result in hygiene emergencies.”
“I don’t think we can blame the cavern for this emergency.” She tapped the artifact.
“No.” Sedge grinned mischievously. “That was clearly your fault.”
“Would you two keep your sexual innuendoes down back there?” Tick asked from the pilot’s seat, where he had his tablet out, some kind of spaceship combat game hovering in the air before him. “It’s hard to pretend nothing’s going on when you’re so obvious about it.”
Sedge flushed. Kalish shrugged easily. She had been fairly certain Tick had guessed what they were up to back when he had gone to the latrine, but had not been that worried since Sedge outranked him. Thatcher was the one who could reprimand Sedge, and he seemed oblivious.
“All right,” Sedge said, lowering his voice. “Here’s what I have. Bowshen crystals: twenty. Titanium filaments: one hundred. Tripytarium plug nozzles: ten...”
As he continued to rattle off a long list, Kalish checked off the ones she had figured out. On some of the parts, she had concluded that there wasn’t an equivalent term in GalCon Standard—or any other of the human languages still spoken in the system. But she had grown excited nonetheless, guessing from what she had decoded that this had been a list of small parts used in the creation of spaceships.
“That would have been thousands of aurums worth of parts,” Sedge said when he finished reciting the list. “It’s too bad Thatcher grabbed the lid instead of the box.”
“No, it’s not.” Kalish turned over the big plate. “Not when this is on the back.” She tapped the map of the cavern etched in the back, lingering over a small dome on a plateau, one similar in design to the refinery buildings. “We can’t know for sure, but I’m guessing this is where they were going to ship those parts. And I’m hoping that it’s their shipbuilding facility.”
Sedge traced the outline of the map, perhaps admiring the detail of the etching. Somehow the craftsman—or the factory that had stamped out the lids—had managed to capture the three dimensions of the caverns in a two-dimensional form. Looking at it had a tendency to make one’s eyes cross, but at the same time it conveyed the area around the dome in far more detail than should have been possible on such a compact surface. The miners’ birds-eye-view maps were ridiculously simplistic in comparison.
“That looks familiar, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Does it?” Kalish switched programs on her tablet, pulling up the miners’ maps.
Sedge prodded one section, and it enlarged in the air over the lid.
“You’re right. That’s crazy though. That’s in an area less than five miles, as the shuttle flies, from the entrance of the compound. If there was a shipyard or any kind of alien ruins so close, the miners would have had to find it over the years.”
“True, but the edges in that lower cavern there match up.” Sedge shrugged. “Maybe it’s a coincidence and there are other identical caverns in this system.”
“This isn’t one of the spots your program identified, is it?”
Sedge shook his head. “Those were all deep in the complex, like the spot we just visited. Dozens of miles from the mining compound, and those two that were off the map were hundreds of miles away.”
“I would hate to waste days or even weeks exploring back here if the answer is right up there, but it seems impossible that the miners could have been flying by this cave entrance—” she traced the map, which had an opening in the side wall of the familiar cavern, one that led through a twisting tunnel before opening up into another chamber, “—for decades without noticing it or thinking to explore it.”
“Agreed.”
“So if this is the same place, why isn’t this side tunnel on the miners’ maps?”
Sedge gazed at the fog outside of the view screen, then poked their map and zoomed into the wall that should have held a tunnel opening but did not. He followed the base of it with his finger and tapped a couple of times at roughly the spot where the cave should have been. “They didn’t label much, did they? Is that thick smudge an accidental pencil mark? Or is it supposed to denote some rock formations? Or—” he glanced toward the view screen again, “—is it possible there’s a pool there?”
Kalish stood up so quickly she almost pitched over. “Water, yes, I hadn’t thought of that. What if, in the intervening centuries, a new pool formed? Unless the miners fancied some summer swim parties down there, they would never know of the other cavern because the access is underwater.”
“You’ve located the destination of the ruins you seek?” Thatcher asked from the front of the shuttle. He must have heard the excitement in their voices and woken up.
“Maybe,” Sedge said. He summarized their findings and musings for his commander. “What do you think, sir? Go check it out, or continue to investigate the points my pattern-seeking program identified?”
“Your program was based on specific ore concentrations, is that right?” Thatcher asked.
“Ore such as we believe the aliens used in crafting their ships, yes.”
“And that refinery was such a spot.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perhaps all of the other spots were refineries, too, centrally located in prime mining areas.”
“That’s a possibility.” Sedge looked at Kalish. “If it’s a shipyard you seek, then maybe we need to look for what’s different.” He waved his hand at the lid. “The place where all of the things being made in the refineries were going.”
“The problem with getting so close to the entrance is that we would risk detection,” Thatcher said. “It’s been a day since I’ve been able to communicate with the Albatross, and I don’t know if they have continued to be able to keep the miners out of the tunnels. And then there’s their corrosive biological agent. A problem for them, which could become a problem for us, too, if we came too close. I would like to get the specifications on that agent, specifically how far it was designed to spread.” Thatcher eyed the comm, his lips thin. He sat down next to Tick and tapped the controls, trying to reach his ship.
Kalish turned the lid over and over in her hands. This was her mission, and she was in charge. She could give the order to divert from the preplanned search, but if, in venturing close to the entrance, they were discovered, she might not get another chance to check the distant points. Or to ever return to the planet again.
Several short beeps came from the cockpit, and she lifted her head. Perhaps Captain Mandrake would report that none of the mining ships were in the caverns, and the risk would be minimal.
“That was not me,” Thatcher said to the expectant eyes turned in his direction. “Sergeant Tick?”
“Oh.” Tick leaned forward, checking a display on his side of the cockpit. His second, “Oh,” was much lower, and he added, “We may have a problem.”
“The security cameras you left at our entrance?” Thatcher asked.
“Yes.”
“More of those old fighters from the mining compound?”
“Not exactly.” Tick grimaced and waved his hand.
A holodisplay popped up, showing the familiar outlines of that first cavern, with the green ledge and with the gaping hole the laser had burned. Several ships were flying out of that hole. Kalish’s stomach sank. The sleek one- and two-man fighters were painted green and black, with torpedo launchers, guns, and laser cannons bulging from beneath the noses. The camera caught glimpses of names such as Tiger 1 and Spitfire 6 painted on the sides, along with distinctive GalCon Fleet nomenclature.
“What’s the Fleet doing here?” Tick wondered.
“Nothing that can be conducive to our health,” Sedge said.
Tick frowned back at him.
“They can only be here because of us.”
“Because of us?” Tick asked, pointing at himself, Thatcher, Striker, and Sedge, “or because of us?” This time he pointed at all of them and at Kalish too.
“Does it matter?” Sedge asked, resting a hand on Kalish’s shoulder. “We’re all in this together.”
Thatcher frowned at the two of them, though she didn’t know if it was because of the touch or the situation in general.
“It matters if there’s a dozen—hell, that’s two dozen that have streamed out of that hole—fighters coming after us,” Striker said, sitting up and frowning at the display. “Fighters don’t just appear on planets. That means there are Fleet ships in orbit too. At least two.” Striker pointed at the names on the sides of the craft, which represented multiple squadrons and apparently multiple mother ships as well. “What the hell? It’s too soon for them to have gotten ships out here, even if the miners sent out a distress signal that first night. And why would Fleet have cared anyway? This is a private operation that the whatever-it-is company owns, right?”
“As Captain Mandrake pointed out,” Thatcher said, “Ferago Enterprises supplies the Fleet. In fact, GalCon is its largest account.”
“Still,” Tick said. “Striker is right. And yes, it pains me to say sentences that involve the word right and Striker’s name. Enough time hasn’t passed for them to hear what’s going on and get ships out here.”
“Maybe they were on their way out this direction for something unrelated and were able to divert on short notice,” Sedge said.
Kalish dropped her chin to her fist, only partially listening to their suppositions. They were here. That was what mattered. The chances of escaping Karzelek’s orbit while towing an ancient vessel had just dropped from improbable to impossible. Even without extra cargo, she couldn’t outrun Fleet ships. Her backup plan had always been to take the engine, since she hadn’t known if the alien craft would be small enough to tow or if anything even remotely space worthy would remain after all these years. She could hope that a ship as pristinely conserved as those robots would exist, but she had never been counting on that.
Even if she took the engine and nothing more, could she slip past the Fleet ships? If there truly were two or more, they would probably have their orbits staggered so it would be hard to escape without being seen. Normally Fleet would have no reason to stop her, but if attacks had been reported on the mining facility, any vessel leaving orbit would be suspicious. And, as she recalled with a wince, this mission of hers had resulted in the murder of miners. If Fleet put the pieces together, she would be labeled a criminal. Unless she could somehow foist the crimes off on the mercenaries—after all, she hadn’t personally killed anyone—but no, that would be cowardly. They had been protecting her. Sedge had been protecting her. She couldn’t abandon him to the Fleet and try to save her ass.
“Captain got anything to say?” Striker asked.
“I haven’t been able to get in touch with him,” Thatcher said.
“Too much rock over our heads, huh?” Tick looked toward the ceiling.
“That is possible,” Thatcher said, “but the altimeter shows us as only eighty meters beneath the planet’s surface currently. We were much deeper the last time I successfully contacted him.” He gave Sedge a short nod.
“What are you
saying, sir?” Sedge asked. “That the Albatross is no longer in orbit?”
Kalish shifted uneasily. If that was true, nobody would be distracting the miners any longer. There might be ships, automated and otherwise, all over that area they wanted to explore.
“I believe that is likely,” Thatcher said.
“They probably saw the Fleet thugs coming and cleared out,” Tick said. “Might be hiding in that nebula.”
All four men nodded. Nobody brought up the other possibility, which came to Kalish’s mind. The miners had reported Mandrake Company’s suspicious shuttle trouble, not to mention that strange gas that had poofed into existence along with their appearance, and Fleet had decided the mercenaries were after the ore. And taken drastic measures.
She turned away from the men, swallowing and staring at the deck. Getting innocent workers killed had been bad enough, but what if, as a result of her crazy plan, all of Mandrake Company had been annihilated?
“How long until they catch up with us?” Tick asked.
Not soon, Kalish hoped. They had been exploring the tunnels for two days. They had a head start.
“It depends on whether they can track us,” Thatcher said. “We have some time, but it’s a foregone conclusion that we won’t be able to go out the way we came in. That entrance will be guarded now.”
“The main one will be too,” Sedge said.
“Maybe Thatcher can penetrate his way through another wall and blast us a new one,” Striker said, smiling, though his innuendo wasn’t heartfelt this time. Maybe he was wondering if something had happened to his ship as well.
“That’s a possibility,” Thatcher said.
“Not yet.” Kalish turned to face them again. “We’re in trouble either way, right now.” An understatement. “I want that ship before we leave.”
“We may no longer have time to check all of the points,” Thatcher said. “Especially if Mandrake Company is in trouble, and the Albatross has engaged in evasive maneuvers.” He leveled a piercing stare at her, and she knew he’d had all the same thoughts that she had and was also thinking that the mercenaries could be in trouble because of her.
The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) Page 22