The Assassin's Salvation (Mandrake Company)

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  Mandrake was wearing a black shirt, and Sergei hadn’t noticed at first, but when he slumped against the wall, a hand to his gut, Sergei realized she was right. Blood seeped between his fingers.

  “Sickbay,” Lieutenant Chang barked into his comm-patch. “Get a gurney down to the shuttle bay now. The captain—”

  “Sshh,” Sergei hissed, flinging a hand toward the man. “Don’t give details over the comm.”

  Chang’s eyes were wide, his heart doubtlessly racing, but he caught on. Anybody could be listening. Such as the person who had modified that robot.

  “We’ve had an incident,” Chang finished.

  Ankari had leaped to her feet and run to Mandrake’s side. She whispered something, and he responded with a couple of soft words and wrapped his free arm around her. She buried her face in his shoulder, shaking her head.

  At a loss as to how to help, Sergei walked the perimeter of the bay, his pistol in hand, in case a flesh-and-blood assassin was close by. Jamie and Lauren had come out of the shuttle and were standing next to each other near the nose of the craft. Lauren was gaping around, her eyes wide. Jamie was staring at the robots, probably already trying to figure out how this could have happened.

  “Yes, Thomlin. All of it,” Sergeant Hazel was saying quietly into her own comm. “I want the footage for the whole week. Someone came down here and modified that robot.”

  By the time Sergei finished searching the bay and the other shuttle in it, a medical team had arrived with a float gurney. Mandrake had made his way to the stairs, Ankari at his side still, her arm around his waist. He was walking all right and waved away the gurney at first. He looked like he would climb the stairs and go to sickbay under his own power, but he paused, eyeing it and the medics swarming around him. He murmured something to the doctor, got a nod in return, and lay down on the gurney after all. It floated him up the stairs and out the door, leaving Sergei wondering if Mandrake had been hurt worse than it had appeared at first.

  Jamie was heading over to the wayward robot, its arm still smoking, so Sergei walked in that direction too.

  “Leave it,” Hazel said, stopping them both. “I’ve got a team coming down to investigate. Don’t touch anything until they’ve had a look.”

  “But I know enough to investigate,” Jamie said.

  “I’m sure you do.” Hazel’s tone was chilly, though Sergei was the one receiving the brunt of her harsh stare.

  His shoulders slumped. Were they going to be suspects in this? They hadn’t been on the ship for the last week, and they had just come back aboard. How could they possibly have had anything to do with this attack?

  “Go to your quarters,” Hazel said. “Both of you. I’ll tell Lieutenant Thomlin that he can find you there if he wishes.”

  “Who’s Lieutenant Thomlin?” Sergei murmured to Jamie, not recognizing the name. He must have been added to the crew since Sergei’s first run with the company.

  “Our intelligence officer,” Jamie said, her normally bright eyes now dark and grave. Hazel’s unspoken accusation clearly hadn’t gone over her head.

  Sergei sighed and shuffled toward the stairs, casting a long look over his shoulder at that robot.

  * * *

  Jamie sat on her bunk, hunched over with her chin propped on her fists, as she watched the holovid of Robot Gone Wild, as she had come to think of it, for the twentieth time. Or maybe the two-hundredth time. A day had passed since the captain’s attack, and there wasn’t much else she could do. She had been asked to stay in the small cabin she shared with Lauren, and nobody had rescinded that request yet. She would have much preferred to be poking through the wreckage in person. Some special intelligence team had been assigned that task, but there was no reason she couldn’t help, especially since she had more at stake than any of them.

  She didn’t like that thoughtful, suspicious look she had caught in Sergeant Hazel’s eyes so many times since Fergusson had sent that video over. At first, it had been directed at Sergei, but this afternoon… that thoughtful, could-you-be-responsible-for-some-of-this look had turned toward Jamie. Ankari had gone to sickbay with the captain, so Jamie had no idea what she thought of this whole thing. She couldn’t believe Ankari or Lauren would suspect her, though. She had been with them since the inception of the business. And Jamie hadn’t been on the Albatross for the last week; none of them had. How could she or Sergei have anything to do with that sabotaged robot? It would have required a lot of forethought.

  The door chime rang.

  “Come in,” Jamie said, hoping someone had some good news. She wouldn’t mind seeing Sergei and asking him his opinion on the attack, but she had the feeling he was confined to his cabin too.

  The door slid aside. It wasn’t Sergei. She hadn’t often talked to Lieutenant Thomlin, the lean figure who stepped across the threshold and stopped there, his hands clasped behind his back in a more rigid parade rest than the mercenaries usually bothered with.

  “Ms. Flipkens. I would like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Am I a suspect?” Jamie asked, though she didn’t know if she wanted to know, especially if the answer was yes.

  “We are merely gathering information at this time.”

  That sounded like a polite way of saying yes.

  Assuming the lieutenant didn’t want to sit on the bunk with her—he wasn’t one of the over-testosteroned mercenaries who leered at her whenever they passed in the corridors—Jamie gestured toward the desk built into the bulkhead. It had a foldout seat.

  “Thank you, Ms. Flipkens.”

  Thomlin waved his hand in front of the sensor, and the chair slid out. Before sitting, he reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a neatly folded handkerchief. He was the only person on the ship who wore three-piece suits, and Jamie hadn’t figured out if it was a throwback to his Fleet career—intelligence officers who worked in civilian locales wore such suits—or simply a representation of a quirky dress preference. Regardless, he dusted off the seat and returned the handkerchief to an inner pocket before perching on the edge. He then set a small camera on the desk, a more compact version of the flying one Sergei had shot down.

  “I’ll be recording our discussion,” he informed her.

  “I’m not surprised. I suppose you’ll be taking out truth drugs next?”

  “Not for this session. I would also need the captain’s permission for that, especially since you aren’t a part of the crew. But he’s… incapacitated at the moment.”

  “Is he going to be all right?” Jamie asked.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Her mouth dropped. She hadn’t thought he had taken such a grievous wound, not when he had charged across to stop that robot after he had been shot. But it had been a gut wound. Those could be tricky. Still, she would have assumed the sickbay on a mercenary ship could handle all manner of injuries from shootings—laser, projectile, and otherwise.

  “Could you please tell me how long you’ve known Sergei Zharkov?” Thomlin asked.

  Jamie shifted her weight, almost clunking her head on the bunk above hers. Was this going to be more about Sergei than her? Was he the real suspect? Did he know how to modify a robot? Or did someone think that he had suborned her at some point, since she knew how to modify a robot?

  “I met him the day he came to our shuttle on Marinth,” she said, realizing her hesitation might seem suspicious.

  “You never had any correspondence, in-person or otherwise, before then?”

  Jamie shook her head. “I didn’t know he existed before that morning.”

  “I see. What were you doing the day of your shuttle’s departure?”

  “Packing. Running systems checks.”

  “A robot that you constructed was helping you load gear, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.” She bit back an urge to get sarcastic and point out that lots of people on the ship had the know-how to modify a robot. Any of the engineers and most of the mechanics could handle it.

  “Have
you ever worked on the maintenance robots located in the shuttle bay?”

  “No.” As if she would say yes if she were the culprit…

  “Were you aware that maintenance robots were located in that space?”

  What did that have to do with anything? “Yes.”

  Thomlin’s tone never changed as he asked his questions. He gazed blandly at her with his gray-green eyes, no matter what she said. He never fidgeted or shifted his weight on the hard chair. Jamie, on the other hand, kept almost bonking her head on the bunk above. She thought about standing, but she felt a twinge of paranoia that any expressions of nervousness might be noted, right along with her spoken responses. Like most people on the Albatross, Thomlin was reputed to be good at his job.

  “Did you ever spend any time alone with Zharkov before the shuttle departed?” he asked.

  Jamie opened her mouth, but Thomlin added, “Be aware that most of the ship’s common areas are under surveillance.”

  His interruption made her pause. It was as if he wanted to warn her not to incriminate herself. Did he have some footage in mind? Or was he simply trying to keep her off-balance? Either way, she thought back to the day she had been packing, not wanting her own memory to betray her.

  “For a couple minutes while we were packing, we were both in the shuttle, but Lauren was in her lab in there. She would have heard anything we said.”

  “Would she have?” For the first time, a hint of a smile touched Thomlin’s lips.

  Jamie snorted. “I see you’ve met her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, if you have surveillance, can’t you just check and see who messed with that robot?”

  Thomlin’s bland gaze continued, this time without a response. Maybe he was trying to decide if he wanted to give her any information? “We’ve checked,” he finally said. “Mandrake Company doesn’t export security footage to remote locations via the network, so there’s a limited amount of data storage space on the ship. After a week, recordings are automatically deleted.”

  Jamie sagged on the bunk. If whatever had happened had occurred over a week ago, no wonder she was being implicated. “Couldn’t someone with the know-how have deleted or modified the recordings at some point in the last seven days?”

  Thomlin’s nose wrinkled. At first, she thought it was a response to her question, but then he sneezed several times in rapid succession. He cast a baleful eye toward a potted plant mounted on the wall above the desk, withdrew a handkerchief—she swore it was a different one from the one he had used to dust the chair—and blew his nose.

  “It’s a possibility,” Thomlin said, “but there are not many people on board with the know-how, as you call it, and it’s even more unlikely that an outsider unfamiliar with the system would easily accomplish it. It’s more likely that someone knew of the one-week storage limitation and programmed the robot not to act until that window had passed. It’s also possible the perpetrator simply got lucky—at the time of your arrival it had been just over a week since Captain Mandrake last appeared in the shuttle bay.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Lieutenant. I don’t have any reason to want the captain dead. I like him. I like Ankari too. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt either of them. I’m not a violent person.”

  Thomlin’s eyebrow lifted. “You did purportedly kill an assassin on your trip to Icesphere.”

  “I… That was an accident.”

  His brows rose higher.

  “I mean, I was just trying to get away, and he basically fell on his own knife.”

  “I see.”

  Jamie grimaced. She never would have thought that crazy night with Commander Thatcher and Lieutenant Calendula would come back to haunt her.

  “Your profile does suggest that you prefer non-confrontational methods to deal with problems,” Thomlin said.

  She had a profile?

  “Programming a robot would be in line with this.”

  She sighed. “What’s my motive then?”

  Thomlin straightened and waved toward his camera as if he had been waiting for this very question. A couple of seconds later, a holodisplay appeared and played back the very video she had already seen more often than she would have wished, the one that included her seemingly treacherous words from Fergusson’s office.

  “I already explained that to Ankari and Sergeant Hazel,” Jamie said. “Sergei and I have been trying to get to the bottom of things, to find the person who set the captain’s bounty. We want to help. And we think we know who it is. Did Ankari tell you about our plan?”

  “Sergei?” Thomlin asked mildly.

  Jamie tried not to grit her teeth in frustration. That was what he had latched onto? “I’m not in the military, Lieutenant. I don’t usually call people by their last names.”

  “You call me by my last name.”

  “I don’t know your first name.” She glared at him.

  He gazed back impassively.

  She didn’t know if she had won that argument. Probably not.

  “Tell me about what you and Sergei did that night, please. Account for all the time you were alone together.”

  Jamie managed to keep her groan internal, but she did not want to share the details of that night with anyone. Especially some uppity intelligence officer whose first name she truly didn’t know. But if she left anything out, would he see the holes in her story? Probably. She rubbed the back of her head and prayed for an intervention. Too bad her family had always been Buddhists, and miracles and interventions weren’t a part of the deal.

  However, before she’d even gotten to the part about the sidewalk ride to the spa, the lieutenant’s comm bleeped.

  “Thomlin,” he answered it.

  “You alone?” Was that the captain’s voice?

  “I can be in a moment, sir.” Thomlin rose, making a stay gesture to Jamie, and strode to the door.

  “Ask him if I can look at the wreckage, will you?” Jamie asked as he walked out.

  Thomlin sent a quelling glare over his shoulder before the door shut behind him.

  Jamie sighed and lay back on the bed. She needed to be on good behavior here and to curb any sarcastic comments that came to mind. If not, if she was accused—or even condemned—of having colluded to kill the captain, nothing good could come of it. She wasn’t sure if a mercenary ship would pay attention to GalCon laws or not; the Fleet had its own laws, specifically for dealing with soldiers, but independent vessels tended to be on their own, their captains establishing their own methods of handling problems. There was a lot of empty space between the planets where the government’s reach was tenuous. It chilled her to realize that if these people decided to have her shot… there might not be anything she could do about it. They could cut off her access to the network, and she would never have a chance to send a last message home to her father, to her little sisters, to let them know that she loved them.

  The door slid open again, and Jamie wiped her eyes before sitting up. Thomlin picked up the camera on the desk, making it disappear into a pocket again.

  That had to mean they were done, but in a good way or a bad way? Maybe Thomlin had decided he didn’t need her story, that he already had enough to make up his mind.

  “The captain heard you and has decided that you may examine the wreckage.” Thomlin gave her the same dirty look he had given the plant earlier. “It will do you no good. My team already examined it.”

  “Did your team find anything?”

  Thomlin’s lips flattened, but he didn’t respond. She took that for a no.

  “You are not confined to your cabin,” he said, “but I suggest that, for your own safety, you do not roam the corridors freely. Captain Mandrake may be a tough master, but he is respected here.”

  It wasn’t until Thomlin left that his words fully sank in, that someone offended by the attack might take it into his own hands to exact revenge on those believed to be responsible. Jamie swallowed. What rumors were flying around the ship? Was she truly in danger? W
as Sergei? And this permission she had to examine the wreckage… Was it because the captain believed in her and thought she might find something? Or was she simply being given the rope to hang herself?

  Chapter 10

  Sweat ran down Sergei’s face, dripped off, and disappeared into the spongy black flooring. He idly wondered how hygienic that was as he flexed his stomach for another curl-up. His knees were hooked over a bar that hung from the ceiling, opposite from the door in the tiny guest cabin. A timer hovered in the air over the small desk. Only Viktor Mandrake would have included bars and rings on the ceilings of people’s quarters, so his men could exercise in the convenience of their cabins if they didn’t want to visit the ship’s gym. At the moment, the equipment was serving Sergei well, because he had grown bored of lying on his bunk and waiting for something to happen. And his “interview” with Lieutenant Thomlin had left him agitated.

  The timer buzzed, but he kept going, curling up to his knees and thumping the ceiling with his hand on every iteration. He doubted that added anything, but hitting things felt good at the moment. A day had passed since the shooting, and he was being kept in limbo—as well as in his cabin. He had no idea how Mandrake was doing. He had found his cabin door locked when he had tried to leave the evening before. When he had called the bridge and asked about going to the mess hall, a beleaguered private had passed through, depositing a stack of meatloaf and ham logs before running off. Tension permeated the ship, and Sergei itched to go on the hunt. If only someone would let him.

  The door chimed.

  “Come in,” he growled, not bothering to stop his exercise.

  It was probably Thomlin again, back with some drug to assist with the next round of questions. He would much rather see Jamie, but she would be unwise to visit, if she was even being allowed out of her room. Still, he would have loved to have her walk in on him then, giving him a chance to show off his bare chest again. She probably didn’t even remember the last time she had seen it—though she had remembered the thugly masseur’s name, a fact that had irked him. His own memory of those events was a lot sharper than he had let on, and he had relived that delicious moment when she had slid her hand up his waist and run her tongue along his stomach more times than he could count, not to mention the feel of her nearly naked body in his arms as he had carried her out, his overwhelming desire to take her to some private room instead of to the changing rooms, to let his hands and his lips roam…