The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4)

by Lionsdrake, Ruby

  “Then we just check the one spot,” Kalish said. “If we find the ship, it could be a bargaining chip.”

  “A trade for our safe passage out of here?” Thatcher said.

  Kalish could not make that trade, not when she had already promised the ship in exchange for her father’s life, but she nodded anyway. Whatever it took to keep the mercenaries on her side. She hated to lead Sedge astray, but what else could she do? If they found the ancient shipyard, then their options should increase. Maybe she could keep the engine for Cometrunner and trade the vessel itself to the Fleet. Or maybe there would be two ships. She prayed that whatever gods the aliens had worshipped might remain in the system and that they would bless her endeavor.

  She tried not to think about what would happen if they reached their destination and found nothing.

  * * *

  Kalish watched over Tia’s shoulder as the Divining Rod swooped and rose, dipping and banking to follow the gray combat shuttles. It felt good to be back on her ship, though she didn’t think Sedge felt the same way. He had not asked to come along; Commander Thatcher had ordered him to, in case she needed more help interpreting alien ruins when they reached the cavern with the pool. Thatcher had sent Striker and Tick, too, and Kalish was less certain as to why. After several days together, she no longer believed the mercenaries would betray her—at least, she did not want to believe that—but she could not be certain they had not been sent along to monitor her, to make sure she didn’t try to abandon Mandrake Company here once she had what she sought. Either way, she had been pleased to have Sedge join her, and not only because she had activities in mind that they could engage in within her private cabin here. He had proven himself useful more times than she could count, both as a protector and as a partner in this hunt.

  Her mother had not seen things the same way. She had given Sedge a chilly greeting of, “What’s he doing back in here?”

  Kalish had admitted that Sedge had translated the list of parts more quickly than she had and could be of assistance when they reached the next outpost. She just hoped there was an outpost and that they would not be stumbling into a zealously mined chamber without a hint to suggest the aliens had ever traveled through that part of the caverns.

  Clangs came from the back of the ship now, noisier clangs than her mother’s repair task probably required. But Kalish could not complain. She did not think her mother had slept at all during the rest period, instead ensuring their craft would be space worthy if they needed to flee the planet quickly. That could prove invaluable.

  Tia frowned at something on the sensor panel.

  “Problem?” Kalish asked.

  “A mining ship, I think. A couple of miles ahead. It’s sailing into a side tunnel. We shouldn’t cross its path, but if there are more of them, it might be hard to avoid them.” Tia glanced back. “You know the mercenaries are heading toward the entrance of the mining compound now, right? There was a fork where we could have gone deeper into the complex, but this might eventually take us to their big entrance hole.”

  “I know. I told them to go that way.”

  “Oh?”

  “Change of plans,” Kalish said, giving Sedge a nod.

  Tick and Striker were back in the cargo hold, cleaning their weapons, but Sedge had been standing quietly next to the hatch since the three ships had taken off. Judging by the pensive expression on his face, he was not thinking of sneaking away with Kalish to her cabin. It was just as well. She should not be thinking of that either, not until they finished here. One way or another.

  “Are you worried about your ship?” she asked quietly.

  “Partially,” he said, “but Captain Mandrake can take care of the Albatross. I don’t think he would put himself into the position of being targeted by the Fleet. I would hope not, anyway.”

  “Why so glum, then?” Kalish supposed she should feel glum, too, given their prospects of escaping the planet, but she found herself bouncing from foot to foot with excitement instead. Later, when it was time to slip out of the caverns, she would worry more, but she felt like a hound closing in on its prey now. The end seemed so close, closer than it had ever been, and she could not wait to see what they uncovered.

  “When Thatcher shooed me off the shuttle, I got the feeling...” Sedge shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “What?” Kalish took his hand.

  “If it had just been me, I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but Striker and Tick too? I’m worried he has notions of kamikaze piloting in mind for himself and Val. To buy us time if necessary. I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  “We have a two-day head start on the Fleet fighters. They shouldn’t catch up with us, and we shouldn’t have any problems until it’s time to leave orbit. I have some ideas for that.” Perhaps she was being overly optimistic, but when she smiled at him, he nodded, seemingly reassured.

  “Good.”

  “More mining ships,” Tia said. “Fleet isn’t the only thing we have to worry about if we keep going this way.”

  “Those should be unmanned craft, right?” Kalish asked.

  “Yeah, but I thought the miners were being distracted and that we wouldn’t encounter them.”

  “We believe the Mandrake Company ship may have had to flee to avoid getting entangled with Fleet politics.”

  “Or Fleet torpedoes,” Sedge murmured.

  Tia frowned back at them.

  Kalish patted her on the shoulder. “You’re being too serious. Don’t you want to tell me what you think of the other two mercenaries, now that they’ve joined us? Do you agree with my ice cream assessments?”

  Tia wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a very good look at anyone on that mining platform. It was dark and grungy.”

  “Shall I ask them if they would take a spin through the bridge and model?”

  “Careful,” Sedge said. “Striker has a notion that modeling should be done sans clothes. I don’t think any of you want to see that.”

  Kalish arched her brows. “How did you come to know that about him?”

  “The less you know the better.”

  Kalish stared at him, her mind creating images whether he had intended for it to do so or not.

  “Founders’ Day party,” Sedge said. “I had only been aboard the ship for a week. It was an alarming holiday welcome.”

  “Divining Rod, this is Thatcher, do you read me?”

  Kalish tapped the comm. “Yes, Commander. We’re here.”

  “We’ve been avoiding the automated mining ships, but we’re heading into a cavern where four of them are working. Their sensors may be limited and they may not react to us, but we will follow the outside edge in an attempt to get past them without trouble.”

  “Understood.”

  Kalish slid into the seat beside Tia, letting her hands rest lightly on the weapons controls. She couldn’t imagine the mining ships having much in the way of attack power—unless they pinned the Divining Rod and drilled it into a wall—but she would be ready.

  The ships’ lights played over walls that had already seen explosives and drills, the stone here much less attractive than the striking limestone caverns they had been passing through the day before. She wondered if all of these passages had been excavated by Ferago Enterprises or if the ancient aliens had mined these tunnels ten thousand years earlier.

  “That must be it,” Tia whispered.

  Up ahead, the walls grew less restrictive, opening up into a massive space that reminded Kalish of a pit mine, except that stone still covered the hollowed chamber. Here and there, support pillars more than ten meters thick rose up from floor to ceiling. She did not think those had been placed by humans and wondered if any might have runes along the sides. But the combat shuttles veered away from the pillars in the center, following the walls instead. Kalish glimpsed lights from other ships in the distance.

  Her team had gone a third of the way into the chamber, when Thatcher spoke again.

  “They’re changing
course to come toward us.”

  “Uh.” Kalish couldn’t imagine the unmanned mining ships being programmed to pick fights with intruders—or even to recognize intruders as such. “Do they have weapons?”

  “Tri-dynamite launchers, lasers, and drill blades powerful enough to cut into a pillar of granite—or a starship hull.”

  “So that’s a yes.”

  “They shouldn’t be programmed to attack ships,” Sedge said.

  Maybe not, but the three blips on the sensors were beelining toward the Divining Rod with intent.

  “Unless they’ve recently been reprogrammed,” he added.

  “I suggest avoiding them,” Thatcher said. “We won’t attack unless they attack first.”

  Before he had finished speaking, his shuttle zipped upward, leaving the party to pass close to the lead mining ship, then circle a pillar a couple of times before drifting lazily toward the ceiling. Thatcher seemed to be taunting the automated craft, but none of them deviated from their path.

  Val’s shuttle dipped downward, banking around a different pillar and disappearing into the darkness below.

  Kalish tried not to feel as if her ship had been abandoned. “They’re still coming toward us. That’s interesting—and alarming. Tia, how about some fancy maneuvers like those shuttles are doing?”

  “Fancy? In this barge? Haven’t you noticed how many times I’ve scraped up against rocks during this trip?”

  “I just assumed you were sheering off the mantle to check for ore underneath.” Kalish gripped her sister’s shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be fancy, just quick. They don’t seem to be that speedy.”

  Tia dipped after Val’s shuttle, following a similar path to the floor of the chamber and then skimming along it. The mining ships dropped as well, giving chase. They immediately picked up speed.

  “All right, why are they after us specifically?” Kalish muttered. “Think they know Striker stole some of their gold?” She glanced at Sedge, but he had taken his tablet out and was engrossed in the display. She hoped he wasn’t sending what he believed would be the last message he ever wrote home to his family.

  No, he didn’t look too worried. With Thatcher and Val out there, piloting fully armed combat shuttles, how much trouble could they be in?

  “They shot something at us,” Tia yelled, banking hard.

  Footsteps thudded in the corridor leading to the bridge.

  An explosion lit up the darkness to the starboard side of the ship, the shockwave slamming into the hull of the Divining Rod. The craft rocked and pitched toward one of those massive pillars. The bridge lights flashed out, and for a moment, nothing except the view screen and the buttons on the control panel illuminated the space.

  “What kind of mess are you creating for your mechanic now?” Mom asked, striding into the bridge.

  The lights flickered back on.

  “I think that was the dynamite,” Tia said, maneuvering them past the pillar without striking it. “All three of those ships are after us.”

  “Well, turn around and shoot some of them,” Mom said.

  Kalish nodded at Tia. “I’m ready.”

  Lights blazed up from below, and Kalish gulped, afraid that a ship that had not registered on the sensors was about to strike them. She reached for the laser banks, but checked the sensors first. That was one of the mercenary shuttles.

  It skimmed past under their belly, so close it could have kissed the ship’s thrusters, then zipped out the other side, blasting lasers into the lead mining ship. The craft blew up in a fiery explosion that lit all sides of the massive chamber briefly. Instead of attacking their attacker, the remaining two ships continued their inexorable chase of the Divining Rod.

  “What the hell?” Kalish muttered. She was on the verge of targeting one and firing the aft lasers, but Sedge spoke first.

  “Hold fire for a moment, Commander Thatcher,” he said calmly. “I believe I’ve just about... there.” He tapped a control hovering in the air above his tablet.

  An instant later, the two mining ships changed course. They left the Divining Rod’s trail and headed for the canyon at the mouth of the chamber, the canyon that should eventually lead them back to their home base on the planet’s surface.

  “Good work, Thomlin,” Thatcher said.

  “I should be able to deter any others we come across now,” Sedge said.

  “What did you do?” Kalish asked.

  “Before we came down, I took the liberty of downloading a copy of the operating system for the craft we saw that first night in the compound. They have only a simple encryption program masking the transmissions between their home station and themselves. I convinced them that they were being called back to their hangar.”

  “You could have said that three seconds before Gregor obliterated that one,” Val said dryly.

  “Wouldn’t Commander Thatcher be upset if he didn’t get to obliterate something during the course of the mission?” Sedge asked.

  “You’re thinking of Lieutenant Frog. Gregor only needs to prove that he’s the most talented pilot on the field. He can do that without explosives.”

  “Pressing onward,” Thatcher said, his shuttle veering for the same passage the mining ships had taken. “Time is not in excess, please recall. Thomlin, will those ships continue to ignore us if we pass them?”

  “They should. Unless someone is paying attention back in their control hub and deletes my command.”

  “Let’s pass them quickly, then.”

  “Quickly,” Tia grumbled. “As if that’s so easy for this ship.” She dragged her sleeve across her brow.

  “You’re doing well,” Kalish said quietly.

  Even if she had taken her sister along on missions before, avoiding enemy fire was rarely required, and as Tia said, the Divining Rod was not the most maneuverable craft out there. Someday, Kalish might be able to afford something more sophisticated that would still offer the space and tools she needed, but she had other matters to worry about first.

  Chapter 12

  The sides of the cavern looked like the recipients of more than a few nuclear blasts. Sedge shook his head, wondering if the original map of the area had been made before the miners started working. As the group had flown closer and closer to the entrance to the mines, the subterranean landscape had grown more and more devastated. Even the walls of the purely limestone caverns, which offered nothing in the way of precious metals and had been largely ignored by the alien prospectors, had been pulverized. Sedge was surprised the ceilings had not caved in anywhere, given the vast chambers made even larger by the mining operations.

  Kalish still sat beside Tia, who was yawning and talking about overtime bonuses, but she had not spoken in hours, other than to nod or grunt at something her sister said. Sedge had remained in his spot by the hatch, not speaking much either. He wondered if she worried, as he did, that coming this direction had been a mistake. With the walls so thoroughly chewed away, it seemed impossible that the miners would have left an ancient tunnel unmolested.

  “Ten minutes to destination,” Thatcher said. If the man ever grew tired of piloting, it was not apparent in his voice. His personality was not the only reason crew members called him a cyborg or android behind his back.

  Val cracked a noisy yawn in response.

  Tia snorted, yawning herself, albeit more quietly.

  “That is not an acceptable acknowledgment, Lieutenant Calendula,” Thatcher said.

  “Does that mean you’re not willing to come over here and give me a neck rub?” Val asked.

  At first, Thatcher did not respond, and Sedge assumed he wouldn’t, but then he said, “Perhaps it is fortuitous that the Albatross remains unresponsive to my hails. Captain Mandrake might not consider this comm chatter appropriate.”

  Sedge snorted. It was nothing compared to the conversation he had walked in on earlier, back in the cargo hold. Tick and Striker had finished cleaning their weapons and had moved on to discussing less military matters, such as
speculation of the age of Kalish’s sister and whether she liked mercenaries. Tick, thank his parents for instilling within him a scruple or two, had been arguing that she was too young for them. Striker had rather crudely said that a girl old enough to have breasts was old enough to rub them up against a man and have some fun. Sedge might have punched him for that comment, but he hadn’t needed to, since Kalish’s mother had overheard. She might be a finance specialist these days, but she could throw a knife across a cargo hold with enough accuracy to land it in the canteen a man happened to be holding in his lap. Of course, it was possible she hadn’t noticed the canteen and had truly intended to castrate Striker. The conversation had turned much cleaner after that.

  “Five minutes,” Thatcher said. “Once again, I do not detect any mining ships.”

  They hadn’t since Sedge had unleashed his program. After successfully sending the last two ships home, he had plugged into the Divining Rod’s mainframe and transmitted the commands over a longer distance. The remaining automated craft in the tunnels had headed for home long before the group reached them. He would allow himself to feel smug, but that wouldn’t work with those manned Fleet fighters, once they showed up. And if this turned out to be a dead end, and the team had to turn around and fly back the other way, encountering them would grow far more likely.

  “Destination reached,” Thatcher said quietly.

  Quietly, perhaps, because there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the decimated cavern. He, too, had to be wondering if they had spent the last eight hours flying in the wrong direction and would have to retrace their route.

  “Looking for a pool,” Kalish said, leaning over the sensor display.

  “There are several along the floor,” Thatcher said.