The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance)

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  Lauren strode from the room, barely noting the oddly stunned expression that Tick still wore. She was annoyed with Hailey’s presence here and even more annoyed that she wanted to involve the company with her ridiculous research. Sturm! Who in their right mind would go there? She fully intended to lock herself in her lab for the next month and ignore Hailey, ignore this mission, and keep the door locked if anybody tried to disturb her.

  Chapter 3

  Tick hurried after Lauren—she had disappeared quickly, striding briskly from the shuttle bay. The captain had already informed him that he was wanted in the conference room for the meeting, but he’d also said they had an hour before that started. Now more than ever, Tick wanted answers to his questions. He should have asked them days earlier, when Lauren had been asking him about side effects, but he hadn’t had any more strange visions since then, so he’d thought it all might have been a fluke. No need to report flukes, right?

  Unfortunately, the captain hadn’t seen it that way. And after listening to Hailey speak vaguely about Grenavinians and ESP, he knew he couldn’t keep this to himself.

  He had his tablet open, reading entries on extrasensory perception as he strode through the corridors toward her lab. The network encyclopedia talked about card tricks and babbled about precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and other terms Tick had only read about in books. In fiction.

  When he reached Lauren’s lab, he forced himself to knock on the door instead of bursting in and demanding explanations. It was difficult. A feeling of panic rode behind his breastbone, refusing to go away. What was special about Grenavinians? Aside from the fact that they had green eyes and their parents had insisted on cursing their children by naming them after plants? And that their—his—planet had been destroyed by the government a decade earlier, he thought grimly. But that wouldn’t account for any strange mental quirks, surely. He had been billions of miles away from his planet when that had happened.

  Tick knocked again—there hadn’t been an answer.

  The door slid open, accompanied by an exasperated, “What? I told you, you’re not getting any of my specimens.”

  Tick walked in, not daunted by Lauren’s exasperation, assuming it wasn’t for him. “Not looking for any specimens, ma’am. Just needing to report some… oddness.”

  Lauren had been standing at a lab bench, her station fenced in by all manner of microscopes and computerized equipment that Tick couldn’t identify. As soon as he spoke, she turned and said, “Oh.” A moment later, she added, “I thought you were my sister.”

  “No, ma’am.” Tick would much prefer to use her name, as he did when he thought of her in his mind, but she had never invited that familiarity, so he stuck to ma’am or Dr. Keys. “I reckon your sister is missing some equipment I have and vice versa.”

  Lauren’s dark eyebrows twitched, but she did not look him up and down, the better to assess his equipment. Tick reminded himself that he had come for a reason that had nothing to do with sex, so he shouldn’t be disappointed.

  “What kind of oddness?” Lauren picked up her tablet computer and also a scanning device that reminded him uncomfortably of a medical doctor’s repair kit. He wasn’t injured, and he shifted uneasily at the idea of some device probing him.

  “Down on that moon, I knew something was happening when there was no way that I should have known it. There was a shuttle hiding in a lake, aiming to attack the captain. I knew it was there before there was any sign. And then once we captured the woman who’d double-crossed us, I was able to… I know this sounds odd—” He certainly was using that word often. “I know it sounds odd, but for a minute, I knew what she was thinking. I remembered something she remembered.”

  Lauren peered into his eyes. He had a feeling it was because she was wondering if he was drunk or drugged, not because she found their clear green depths alluring. After she’d had a good look, she propped her fist on her hip.

  “Have you been talking to my sister?”

  Tick shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

  Not since she had commented on his nickname and eyed his crotch, that was. He did not bring up either moment to Lauren.

  “First Hemlock and now you,” she grumbled and turned back to her workstation. She laid her tablet on the countertop, called up a display, and swiped her finger a couple of times to bring up charts of data.

  Tick didn’t know if he was supposed to come close and take a look or if he had been dismissed. “Others are having… oddnesses?”

  “Everyone who’s had two or more dosages has had measurable increases in their physical and mental prowess—Hemlock has only had one dose, and he’s already had improvements. But do you remember those brain scans we did?”

  “Yes.” He scooted closer when she pulled up a picture of a brain. Was that him?

  She murmured a couple of commands to the computer, and areas of the brain lit up with different colors. Tick found himself noticing her scent, a floral blend that must be from her shampoo, and there was also a hint of orange that he’d encountered around her before. It was probably from a hand sanitizer or something distinctly unsexy, but he found it appealing, nonetheless.

  “The Grenavinians receiving the alien intestinal microbiota have shown increased activity in the right posterior cortical and hippocampal regions.” She waved to what were presumably the aforementioned spots.

  It all looked like blobs and squiggles to Tick. “What do those regions do? What’s this mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly. The hippocampus is part of the brain’s limbic system, which regulates emotions and is associated with long-term memory. As far as I’m aware, studies in the past have suggested that there isn’t any particular area of the brain that lights up when subjects are attempting feats of extrasensory perception, and I should mention that attempts to perform these feats under observation have shown a nearly clinical insignificance. Nobody’s succeeded in rolling a pencil across a table with her mind, for example.”

  Tick hadn’t tried to move anything with his mind. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to or not. What he had experienced so far made him twitchy, especially given the way the captain and that trader had looked at him. With wariness.

  “Honestly,” Lauren went on, gazing at the floating brain image again, “I wasn’t paying much attention to these scans, my interests in improving human health and longevity being more somatic in nature. But I’ve been uploading my data to my drive on the network where several of my long-term scientist acquaintances have access. We often bandy thoughts about on each other’s research problems, you see. I’d forgotten that Hailey has access too—she’s had it since we studied at Novvy Novosibirsk University more than ten years ago. She saw these scans and was immediately intrigued. She’s been observing the human brain in relation to her field of study—” Lauren’s nose crinkled in distaste, “—for a long time, so maybe she’s seen research that I haven’t. Apparently, she saw something in these scans that caused her to send me a message and ask if any of the Grenavinian subjects had displayed evidence of paranormal mental processing.” Her lips flattened and she looked at Tick.

  “What did you say?”

  Even though Tick was curious about the research and the problem, he’d also grown aware that he and Lauren were standing close together now, their shoulders almost touching. He had tried to draw her into conversations numerous times, but this was the longest she had deigned to talk to him. It occurred to him now that he should have been inquiring about her work and her research, rather than asking what she thought about the new cook or other goings on around the ship.

  “I told her that I hadn’t done any ESP tests and that I refuse to.” Lauren arched her slender brows. She had fine features, almost delicate, even elegant. Tracing the contours of her face would be appealing, or taking down that strict bun she so often wore, and stroking her hair as it dangled around her shoulders.

  “Going to change your mind now?” he asked, pulling his mind away from contours and hair.
r />   “I don’t know. Can you tell what I’m thinking?”

  “Uh, that you’d like to know what it would be like to receive a shoulder rub from such an attractive fellow as myself?”

  She blinked, and Tick experienced a flash of thought, one that had to come from her. It was of Striker coming up and slinging an arm around her shoulder and suggesting a night of sexual endeavors, evoking extreme distaste on Lauren’s part.

  Tick backed away, alarmed that the strange insights had returned, and also worried she would feel that same distaste for him. He raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry, it was a joke.” Sort of. “I haven’t tried to tell what people are thinking. I find this very alarming. I don’t want to be a… a freak.”

  “Then why did you sign up for my study?” She smiled slightly, and he realized she was joking.

  He hadn’t realized she ever did that. It was nice. He tentatively smiled back while debating how to answer. Should he lie? Or tell the truth? He hoped she wouldn’t find an admission of his attraction to her as unappealing as Striker’s clumsy flirting, but given how little interest she had shown in any of the men on the ship, as far as he had observed, she might find all overtures unappealing.

  “I wanted to get to know you,” he said, choosing the most innocuous words as possible. “I thought that if I was in your study, you might let me do that, and that maybe you would like to get to know me. Or at least my name.” He smiled and stuck his hands in his pockets, trying to look as inoffensive and nonthreatening as possible. Lauren wasn’t saying anything—she looked mildly stunned. He didn’t know if that meant he should change the topic or just keep nervously babbling. “I didn’t know then that you would just give me a number. Not that A27 doesn’t have a nice ring.”

  Her lips pursed. “I know your name, Sergeant.”

  “Oh?” He debated whether he wanted to ask her to prove it. She had never used it within his hearing. Maybe she just didn’t care enough to do so.

  “I don’t think I can say it. It’s unflattering. Do you not find it so?”

  “Well, I suppose. I’ve gotten used to it. I take it as a compliment to my tracking skills. You can call me Heath, if you want. Or Sergeant Hawthorn, if that’s too familiar. But, ah, I’d prefer Heath.” In fact, he wouldn’t mind at all if she used that. His mother and friends had, of course, used his name when he had been growing up, except for his brothers, who’d called him variations of Slug, Baby, and Rat, depending on the occasion. His sister’s favorite name for him had been Get Out of the Way.

  “All right,” Lauren said after some consideration. “Heath. But Heath, I must tell you that I’m not interested in relationships with men.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders slumped. “You prefer women?”

  He remembered speculation he’d heard from the other mercenaries, that Lauren, Ankari, and their pilot, Jamie, had some good times when they flew off together in their shuttle for “business purposes.”

  “No,” Lauren said. “I’m not interested in relationships with women, either.” That faint smile curved her lips upward again, though it had a bemused tinge to it. “Why do people always assume it has to be one or the other?”

  “Uhm, well, what are the other options? Asexuality?”

  “That is an option, though there’s typically a spectrum with sexuality, and a strict label might not work for everybody. I do tend to find the male body more attractive than the female form—” her gaze flickered toward him, “—but I have no urge to engage in coitus with anyone from either sex.”

  “None at all?” He tried not to gape since she would probably consider that rude, but he couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Though maybe it was promising that she found men more attractive than women? “You don’t ever, uhm, feel the urge to...” He kept himself from pointing at her nether regions—that would definitely be rude.

  “I’m perfectly capable of stimulating myself when I have urges.”

  “I—oh.”

  She said it so clinically that he didn’t know what else to say. Tick decided it would also be rude to imagine her stimulating herself and was relieved that she wasn’t the one who was developing mind-reading techniques.

  She smiled and laid a hand on his forearm. “I will call you Heath, though.”

  A few of his wires crossed, and sparks lit up his brain at that touch. Dear Buddha, he did have an itch he needed scratched. He managed not to react outwardly, saying only, “Thank you.”

  She lowered her hand and turned back toward the brain scan.

  He should have dropped the subject, but the thought that she’d simply never experienced sex and therefore didn’t know what she was missing sauntered into his mind, and he couldn’t help but ask, “Have you ever had, er, coitus with someone?”

  “Yes.” She poked at the holodisplay, bringing up a chart.

  “Oh. It wasn’t Striker, was it? Because that would horrify any woman away from sex.”

  She snorted. “No. A professor I had in grad school who convinced me that I needed to experiment, if only for scientific curiosity,” she said, her tone going extremely dry. “He knew me well enough to make the right arguments.” She sounded annoyed by the fact, which he took as a warning that he had better not try to make arguments. Besides, he didn’t know her well enough—or know science well enough—to make arguments that would likely persuade her. Still, it was very hard not to suggest that he, being rather fit and practiced in matters of sex, might be a more appealing partner than some stuffy professor.

  “Well, if you ever change your mind or just want a massage, let me know. If I don’t turn into a crazy freak, I’d be happy to help out.” He wriggled his fingers in an approximation of a shoulder rub. “Probably even if I do turn into a crazy freak.” He offered a self-deprecating smirk, then turned his attention back to her display, figuring he better drop the topic if he didn’t want her to start avoiding him altogether.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmured, then glanced at the clock in the corner of her holodisplay. “I’m tempted to pull up some ESP tests for you, but your captain has requested that I attend this meeting with Hailey, as if I have anything to do with her ludicrous plans.”

  “Do you know what her plans are?” Tick asked. Given the strange things that were happening in his head, he wasn’t ready to dismiss anyone who studied ESP as ludicrous, not now.

  “Not exactly, but she mentioned finding Grenavinians of her own, and she wants some of my microflora to implant, assuming she finds willing participants.” Lauren snorted. “Perhaps even if she finds unwilling participants. My sister has never let ethics get in the way of her research needs. I can’t even start to count how many people she’s slept with to improve her odds of receiving funding.”

  “That’s surprising.”

  “If you think that, it’s just because you don’t know her well.”

  “I meant that I’d expect her to share your disinterest in… well, I guess I don’t know if such things are genetic.” What he did know was that he was out of his element when it came to science and should shut up. She had spoken bluntly to him about her interests—or disinterests—and probably wouldn’t appreciate him continuing to bring up sex.

  “I don’t know that she doesn’t share my disinterest. She’s very manipulative. It could all just be a means to an end for her.”

  Tick remembered that Ms. Keys had flirted with him and apparently kissed Frog, two people who couldn’t do anything for her, as far as he knew. Unless she’d already known that he and Frog had both participated in Lauren’s experiments? Was there a reason that would matter to her? She hadn’t flirted with Mandrake, though that could have been because Ankari had been leaning on his arm. Frog wasn’t Grenavinian, but what would Tick do if Keys came up to him and wanted to run some experiments?

  “She seems very different from you,” Tick said.

  “Good.”

  “Did you get along as children?”

  “Until we were teenagers, yes. We didn’t have
anyone else.” Lauren frowned and poked at the brain scan, enlarging the image.

  “No other siblings?”

  “No other anybody. We grew up in an orphanage.”

  “Oh. What happened to your...” He hesitated. Would she think he was prying? He was interested, but it might be a painful point for her.

  “They died on Galamoor 7, when a virus they had gone in to help with mutated into something extremely deadly to humans. The entire continent was quarantined, with some of the villages being outright destroyed by airstrikes to keep the virus from spreading. The government was terrified that it would get out and infect the entire system. My mom died early on—she was a doctor trying to treat people and got infected herself somehow. My dad was a research scientist. He died in the airstrikes. The government wouldn’t let anyone out. From what I later learned, the airstrikes were a cruel surprise to those on the ground. My dad and some others were still working on a solution. They weren’t told...” She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” Tick said quietly. He hadn’t meant to dig up painful memories for her.

  “I barely remember my parents now. I was eight at the time, and they were often away on humanitarian missions like that when I was younger. I have vague memories of going on a couple of trips with them, though it’s rather understandable that they didn’t take us on this one.” Her eyes had lost focus, and she seemed to be looking through the holo scans and to the wall, or perhaps to nothing at all, except her memories of the past. “The last thing my mom said to me was to take care of my little sister.” Her mouth twisted. “I tried, but Hailey became her own person and wasn’t interested in my care—or my advice.”

  “Is what happened to your parents why you became a scientist?” Maybe Tick should have left instead of prying more into her past, but he found himself curious to know more about Lauren, a person who was an enigma to many on the ship, someone who rarely came out of her lab or opened up to anyone, at least not to any of the mercenaries.