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

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Will you and Dr. Keys come along?” Mandrake asked Ankari quietly.

  A surge of alarm ran through Lauren. What? Why should she have to go?

  “Yes,” Ankari said at the same time as Lauren blurted, “No.”

  Ankari frowned at her. “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “You can stay in the shuttle and work in the lab in there. If you’re worried about the raptors, I’m sure we can take some tranquilizer guns with us. Viktor, don’t you even have some aerosol tranquilizers in your armory? No aim required?”

  “Some aim is required,” Mandrake said dryly. “And those are expensive. They’re for subduing enemy mercs without killing them.”

  “We can use them for subduing enemy raptors,” Ankari said brightly, gripping Lauren’s shoulder.

  Mandrake’s lips flattened, but he did not object.

  Lauren didn’t care. She didn’t want to see those raptors, subdued or not.

  “There’s no reason why I should go,” she whispered, aware of all the eyes in the room upon her. “You know I hate field work.” And she hated—loathed—that damned jungle. The night she had spent down there with Jamie and Ankari had been the most terrifying in her life. She still woke up from nightmares about those raptors and falling out of the trees and nearly being killed by kidnappers.

  “We may need your expertise,” Ankari said, “and it won’t be like last time. We’ll have strong soldiers to protect us.”

  “I’ll be happy to protect you, Doc,” Striker said and wriggled his eyebrows at Lauren.

  That did nothing to reassure her. Lauren slumped back in her chair, feeling defeated.

  “We’ll protect you,” Tick said firmly, giving her a nod.

  She couldn’t manage a smile or a return nod for him, not with this bleakness washing over her. She hated the field, and she knew her sister was up to something. This would not go well, not at all.

  Chapter 5

  Tick sat in the back of the shuttle that Microbacteriotherapy, Inc. had leased from Mandrake Company. Unlike the rest of the sleek gray and deadly combat shuttles in the outfit’s bay, this one was painted pink. The interior was afflicted with fuzzy, spotted seat covers, and the curtain that separated a small lab from the bank of seats along the wall sported pink and purple polka dots.

  Most of the mercenaries going down to the moon had jostled for spots in the other two shuttles, leaving empty seats and more space in this one. Tick had never felt manly riding in the pink craft, but privately admitted that it was more comfortable than the rest of the shuttles. A coffeepot burbled happily, filling the air with its pleasant aroma as Jamie Flipkens piloted the shuttle toward the vibrant green foliage of Sturm.

  Hailey and Ankari sat up front near Jamie while Lauren puttered in the lab. Corporal Hemlock and Sergeant Striker rode in the back with Tick, Hemlock fiddling with a dice game and Striker waving his fingers in the air over his tablet doing who knew what. Navigating his porn collection, perhaps. Tick and the other men were along to defend the women if their craft ended up split off from the other Mandrake Company shuttles. Tick doubted that would happen—despite some inhospitable wildlife on this side of the moon, Sturm was controlled by a relatively stable government run by a collection of corporations, and the only people who flew around down here were usually miners and loggers. Still, he didn’t mind riding along with Lauren, unmanly pink shuttle notwithstanding. He figured that if his brain went on the fritz, she would be the most likely to be able to help him. Besides, he felt more of a kinship toward her now that he knew that she had lost most of her family too. Aside from him, only his sister had been off-world when Grenavine had been destroyed, and while he wouldn’t consider his relationship with her cantankerous, she was a determined and reckless woman who was always off on adventures and rarely had time for him.

  Tick wondered if Lauren would mind if he slipped behind the curtain and offered her his company. Even if she wasn’t interested in sex, it was nice talking to women once in a while and not always—

  An elbow found its way into Tick’s ribs as Striker leaned over. He waved his tablet. “Want to see the comic I’m working on this week? The panels are coming out great. I’m getting better at virtual art.” He wriggled his fingers.

  “Does that mean your strange alien women now have three distinct breasts rather than that strange oblong mono-boob?” Tick asked.

  “All of my breasts are excellent.”

  Lauren walked through her curtain in time to hear that comment. She cocked an eyebrow, glancing at Striker’s chest. He proceeded to tastelessly look at her chest and give her a lurid wink. Ignoring him, she strode to the front to speak to Ankari about something.

  “She’s so frigid,” Striker said. “You better give up on that one.”

  “She’s not frigid,” Tick said.

  “You’ve made progress with her?”

  Tick did not acknowledge the comment. He had no interest in discussing his progress—or lack thereof—nor the fact that in light of Lauren’s recent revelations, he lamented that there would never be progress. Instead, he bent over his own tablet, bringing to life the novel he’d been reading.

  “Now the sister,” Striker said, “she’s not frigid. I bet you could make some progress with her. Or I could.”

  “You’re welcome to try.”

  “Maybe later, if we end up spending the night down here. You know there’s a bed in that clinic, right?” Striker gave him another elbow nudge.

  Tick sighed.

  “He really creates art?” Hemlock asked, glancing at Striker.

  “It’s not art,” Tick said. “He glorifies himself and his weapons in picture books.”

  “My comics are definitely art. And I’ve glorified you too.”

  “You made me your sidekick.”

  “It’s a vital role. Someone has to hold the hero’s weapons while he reloads. Look, in the newest one—”

  Tick held up a hand, pushing the tablet away. “Sorry, but I’m not in the mood for megalomaniacal mad scientists taking over the ship right now.”

  Striker lowered the tablet and stared at Tick. “How did you know?”

  “What?”

  “How did you know about the plot? I just started drawing this volume.”

  “You must have told me,” Tick said, though a hint of uncertainty crept into his mind. His brain wasn’t being odd again, was it?

  “I didn’t. I just thought it up this morning while I was in the shower. Thinking about scientists.” Striker winked.

  Tick shrugged, hoping Striker would dismiss it. He remained casual, staring down at the page floating in the air over his tablet, but he barely saw the words.

  “You’re not as fun as you used to be, Tick.” Striker pushed himself to his feet and wandered up to visit the women.

  Tick let out a slow breath. He could settle for being called un-fun. He hoped to avoid accusations of being a freak.

  Hemlock was still rattling his dice around in a cup, but his gaze shifted toward Tick.

  “I heard you’ve got symptoms too,” he said.

  “Symptoms?” Tick asked carefully.

  Hemlock shrugged. “Not sure what you’d call it. New and interesting powers?”

  Powers? Tick thought the word symptoms sounded more accurate. Or maybe side effects. Alarming side effects.

  “Can you do this?” Hemlock set a couple of dice on the seat next to his thigh, then lifted his hand, making a point to show that his fingers weren’t anywhere near them. A look of concentration—or perhaps constipation—took over his face.

  The dice fell on the floor.

  Tick jumped—or he would have, if he hadn’t been seated and strapped into his harness.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked. “You must have bumped the seat with your foot.”

  Yes, he knew Hemlock was also in Lauren’s study, but he had just started. Lauren had told him that he’d just received the first dose last week. Strange things hadn’t started happening to Tick until
a few days ago, after several doses. And he couldn’t make dice flip over. Of course, he hadn’t tried. He swallowed. He didn’t want to try.

  “You know that’s not it,” Hemlock said, giving him a steady, knowing look. His gaze lowered to the deck, and the dice tumbled a few times, each one landing with a single dot up.

  “Have you told Dr. Keys about your new abilities?” Tick asked.

  “I mentioned it, but I think her sister is more interested.” Hemlock held his arm out, his palm facing downward toward the dice. They lifted from the deck, and he plucked them from the air, then dumped them back into the cup. “Wish I’d had some powers like this when I was a bounty hunter.”

  Powers. There was that word again. As if he considered himself some superhero from one of Striker’s comics.

  “Fewer of those bastards who blew up our world might have escaped,” Hemlock said, his hand curling around the dice cup, his green-eyed gaze growing intense.

  “Is that who you were hunting?” Tick asked. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Spent the last ten years at it. Sometimes for pay, sometimes not. There weren’t a lot of wealthy Grenavinians who were off-world when it happened. I took other jobs on the side, to keep fuel in my tank and my ship in the air, but mostly, I was researching the assholes responsible and avenging our people whenever I could.” His fingers tightened around the dice cup. “Didn’t you ever want to do the same?”

  “Sure,” Tick said. “After it happened, I was more pissed than a tiger dumped in a river with his legs tied together. Didn’t know who was responsible, though, other than the military. A big organization to target.”

  “There were key players in the military and the government. I had someone helping me do the research, until she—” His grip loosened on the cup. “Lost her last year in a fight with Fleet. Lost my ship too. Never lost my desire to avenge the deaths of our people, but it was harder after that. I couldn’t get the money together to find another ship, and I wasn’t as good at research. It was hard to find someone else who was, someone else who still cared.” He closed his mouth, his jaw tightening noticeably.

  “That why you applied to join Mandrake Company?”

  “Yup, heard the captain took assignments to irk the government sometimes. Heard about the finance lords he’d killed.”

  Tick knew the captain had only killed one finance lord—the assassin, Sergei Zharkov, had dropped the other—and that it had been to protect Ankari and her business partners rather than out of a desire for revenge. Oh, he’d taken some assignments over the years to help Grenavinians, but he always seemed too practical to get into the revenge business. Tick wasn’t surprised it had ended up costing Hemlock his ship and a friend, or maybe more than a friend. Tick couldn’t fault him for his choices, could even understand them, but wouldn’t have made them himself.

  “Just wish he was more interested in targeting those bastards.” Hemlock glowered down at the deck. “I suggested a mining outpost owned by the man who built the weapon that destroyed our planet. He wasn’t interested.”

  “Revenge isn’t real profitable, and it gets men killed.”

  Hemlock grunted neutrally.

  The shuttle wobbled, and Tick gripped the armrests, his gaze lurching toward the view screen. They had flown closer to the planet, the curve of the horizon disappearing. The greenery had disappeared, as well, now hidden beneath a blanket of swirling gray clouds. They had also flown past the terminator between day and night and were looking down at the dark side of the moon.

  “Best buckle in,” Jamie said from the pilot’s seat. “Looks like Ms. Keys’ first set of coordinates is going to take us down into a storm.”

  Ms. Keys did not appear nervous—she leaned toward the view screen, as if she could pierce the clouds with her eyes and spot their destination—but Lauren groaned.

  Tick couldn’t blame her. The first time she had visited the moon, it had been during a storm and at night, with two groups of mercenaries trying to capture her. Mandrake Company had been one of those groups of mercenaries, before the captain had figured out that the women weren’t criminals and that the bounty on their heads had been illegally placed.

  “Don’t worry,” Ankari told Lauren. “You can stay in the shuttle while we search.”

  “The shuttle won’t be landing a hundred feet up in a tree this time, will it?” Lauren asked.

  “That’s not the goal, but the jungle side of this moon does have a dearth of desirable landing spots.” Jamie flicked a blonde braid over her shoulder and winked at Ankari, not noticeably alarmed by the notion of a tree-branch landing.

  Lauren groaned again. Tick wondered if she might like a big, strong arm wrapped around her for comfort.

  More wind battered the shuttlecraft, and he grimaced. He might need a big, strong arm wrapped around him right now. Once they reached the ground, he would cheerfully fight mercenaries, pirates, and raptors, so long as his feet were on solid earth. Until then, he would try his best not to imagine them crashing into the treetops.

  “Pink Shuttle, this is Alpha Shuttle,” Lieutenant Frog’s voice came over the comm. “I’m going to make us a nice landing spot. Follow us down.”

  “What do you mean make?” someone else in his shuttle asked.

  “You’ll see.” Frog’s grin came through in his voice.

  “Do not take undue risks,” a new speaker said—Commander Thatcher from the third shuttle. “We can find a suitable landing place, even in the jungle.”

  “Of course we can, sir,” Frog said, that grin still hanging on his words.

  Lauren walked back to the rear and buckled herself into the seat Striker had vacated earlier, pulling the harness tight enough to cut off circulation. Tick wasn’t surprised, not with Frog’s reputation for blowing things up.

  “Don’t like flying?” he asked, nodding toward her fingers, which tightened around the armrests, not unlike his own.

  “I don’t care for crashing.”

  “It is alarming. Especially the way Frog does it. Be glad we’re not flying with him.” Tick smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. He wondered if it meant anything that she had chosen to come back and sit next to him. Maybe just that she was avoiding Striker, who had strapped into the first seat behind Jamie, Ankari, and Ms. Keys, and was pointing at flashes of lightning in the fast-approaching clouds.

  “Jamie taught herself to fly by reading technical manuals,” Lauren said.

  “That was months and months ago,” Jamie said over her shoulder. “I’ve had plenty of lessons with Lieutenant Sequoia since then, and Commander Thatcher has given me all manner of flight equations to solve and memorize.”

  “Are equations useful for avoiding trees?” Ankari asked.

  “Of course.”

  A powerful gust of wind battered the shuttle again, and Tick wondered how useful mathematics could be when trying to survive a storm.

  Rain pelted the hull, and the visibility grew foggy beyond the view screen. Jamie switched to looking at instrument panels, probably trusting the sensors more than her eyes. She and Ankari did not speak again as the wind railed at the craft.

  Another gust nearly tipped them on their side. Lauren clenched Tick’s hand. He blinked, his own fear washed away by the abrupt awareness that she was touching him. Sure, it was a talons-sinking-into-one’s-flesh grip rather than a loving caress, but he couldn’t help but think it might mean something. She could have chosen to sit by Hemlock.

  A distant boom sounded outside.

  “Was that thunder?” Ankari asked.

  “Uhm, I think that was Frog,” Jamie said as a series of booms followed the first.

  A flash of light brightened the interior of the shuttle for an instant, the illumination oddly distorted by the fog outside.

  “That was lightning,” Jamie said. She lowered her voice and added, “We’re close to the treetops.”

  “Should we be?” Ankari asked.

  “I’m following Frog. It looks like there’s an opening now be
side that river. We—”

  A scrape-thump sounded as a jolt went through the cabin. Jamie’s fingers flew across the controls as she stabilized them. Lauren’s grip on Tick’s hand tightened to the point of being painful. He didn’t move, though he had the urge to dig out his gum and pop a fresh piece into his mouth. Too bad he didn’t carry a flask around with him; alcohol would have been even more bracing.

  “Was that a tree?” Ankari asked.

  “It was a boulder. The sensors aren’t reading the terrain below us very well, and I can’t see much. Frog got ahead of us, and we’re in a narrow canyon. I’m heading toward the landing spot he made. I think he’s already down there in the middle of some freshly made stumps and some boulders.”

  “Hitting boulders sounds even worse than hitting trees,” Hemlock muttered.

  “Maybe you can use your new powers to roll them out of the way,” Tick said, drawing a glance from Lauren.

  Hemlock smirked. “Haven’t tried to roll anything that big yet. Maybe later.” His eyes gleamed, as if that idea excited him.

  A vision sprang into Tick’s mind. He saw a river ahead, filling in a fresh crater in the bank with smoldering stumps sticking out of it. A patch of mostly flat land lay beside it, and two Mandrake shuttles had already settled down onto the charred earth. Then he saw the area from farther away, as if he were a hawk flying above the canyon.

  “Veer right,” Tick said. “There’s a bend ahead before we get to our landing spot.” If that stump field could be called a landing spot.

  “Are you sure?” Jamie asked. “The sensors aren’t showing—well, they’re not working real well in the storm.” She peered at the fog and rain outside, relying on her eyes. Static hissed and popped on the screen, muddling the view.

  “I’m sure,” Tick said.

  Though she shook her head doubtfully, Jamie turned the craft.

  It was only with his mind that Tick could see solid rock towering ahead of them, and then to the side as the craft turned. The fog cleared slightly, and Lauren sucked in an alarmed breath as the cliff briefly grew visible on the screen. Jamie let out a low whistle as she finished the turn, then tilted the nose of the shuttle downward. Lightning flashed again, illuminating the landing spot Tick had seen in his mind. Jamie took them toward it, hovering over the water while she tried to pick out a spot.