Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (11 page)

“There’s a lot that’s a mystery to the
mechanics,” someone else snickered.

“Oh, please, Frog. Don’t act like you’re a
brain because you know how to fly a ship. Nine out of ten people
here beat you at space rocks.”

“That’s a game of chance.”

“Only for you, my friend.”

“The mess hall, Corporal,” the captain said.
“I’ll be there in ten.” Throughout his men’s banter, his eyes had
never left Ankari’s, and she was doing her best not to look guilty,
but she continued to feel that he already knew she was up to
something. She was relieved when Cutty led her out of the cargo bay
but knew the feeling would be short-lived unless she could figure
out somewhere to hide the tablet on the way back to the mess hall.
But if she did that, how could she be sure to find it again?

* * *

The lush green landscape of Sturm was visible
through the portholes by the time Viktor walked into the mess hall.
It had taken him twenty minutes instead of ten, because he had
first showered, changed, and checked to make sure the scouting team
had made it to the moon without trouble. When he saw
Ankari—Markovich—sitting at a table near the view, he almost
apologized to her, but her hands were folded in front of her, the
flex-cuffs clearly in view, and he kept the words to himself. By
now, the hour had grown late, but there was still a table occupied
by a group of fighters from Delta Squadron, and they had grown
silent when he walked in. They must be insufferably curious about
this meeting between captain and prisoner.

Viktor had initially planned to meet with
Markovich in plain sight of everyone, to keep rumors from spreading
and any resentment from starting up in the ranks—we haven’t had
leave for months, but the captain gets to shag prisoners? What the
hell? But when he saw the nervous way Markovich watched him enter,
he found himself wanting to set her mind at ease, not turn her into
a spectacle. He had seen Zimonjic up there talking to her and
wondered what the doctor had said. She was a talented medical
officer, but she’d come from GalCon, too, and knew more of his
secrets than he was comfortable with. While he couldn’t imagine why
she would share any of those secrets with a random prisoner, he had
caught her pointing to him a couple of times while she had been
talking, and he wondered.

Corporal Cutty was standing at parade rest
behind Markovich, clearly ready to go, but clearly doing his best
to appear a model soldier until he was dismissed. He was trying
harder than usual. What
had
Zimonjic been talking about?

Viktor grabbed a couple of plates of food,
avoiding the “dogeaters” in favor of meatloaf and a mashed side
dish that could have been potatoes, parsnips, or a pale squash. The
smell didn’t give any clues. “Give me the key, and hit your rack,
Cutty.”

“Yes, sir.” The corporal should have been off
duty a couple of hours ago, but he would survive a late night here
and there. He gave a quick salute, tossed Viktor the electronic key
that opened the cuffs, and trotted out of the mess hall.

Plates in hand, Viktor tilted his head toward
a door at the back of the room. “Officers’ mess,” he said and
headed that way. Markovich hesitated, maybe not quite catching his
invitation, but pushed back her chair and followed when he walked
past her. A few soft groans of disappointment came from the Delta
table as the entertainment disappeared. Too bad.

“Sit.” Viktor set the plates down at the
single oval table inside, then jerked a thumb toward the outer
room. “I’m getting a drink. Want something?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.” Markovich
sat at one of the seats with a plate.

“Probably not.” Viktor waved the key over the
cuffs, and they popped open. He tossed them to the center of the
table.

“Pardon?”

“It’s green.” At her blank stare, he added,
“My drink. We’ve got whiskey if you want some. It’s not good, but
it has a high alcohol content.”

“Your drink is green?”

“Green as grass. It’s vegetables mostly, some
fruit, some seeds. Mashed up in a glass.” He stuck the electronic
key in his pocket, noticing that Markovich tracked the motion with
her eyes. He would have to make sure it was still in his pocket at
the end of the night, since it could open a lot of doors on the
ship as well as all of the flex-cuffs.

“Is that the secret to your speed on the
wrestling mat?” Markovich asked.

It was silly, but he found himself pleased
that she had noticed. “My last doctor would have said so. Mostly,
I’ve only found it the secret to keeping regular.”

She blinked a few times. Viktor kept himself
from wincing. Barely. It had been years since he tried to woo a
woman, and he’d been horrible at it even then. Not that he was
trying to woo this one, but he vaguely remembered that there were
some topics that were perfectly appropriate to talk about with
one’s soldiers and that were completely inappropriate to discuss
with women. Women who weren’t soldiers anyway. Sergeant Hazel never
seemed to care.

“Well,” Markovich said when she recovered
from her surprise. “Then I’ll have one of those.”

Viktor arched his brows. He had offered the
concoction to people before, but never had a taker. He wasn’t even
sure why he still drank them. Doc Aglianico, the one who had
insisted soldiers consume greens now and then, was long gone, dead
in the line of duty, like so many others before him. Maybe that was
why Viktor still drank them. Aglianico had been Grenavinian, one of
the original crew and one of his few confidants.

“My routine has been disrupted of late, and
those meal logs you give to prisoners...” Markovich shuddered.
“Something with a vegetable in it sounds lovely.”

“Everybody gets the logs when they’re on
assignment. There actually might be some pulverized vegetables in
them somewhere. But no promises.”

Viktor’s step was light as he returned to the
kitchen area. The Deltas had cleared out, and for whatever reason,
Markovich wasn’t glaring daggers at him tonight. He didn’t believe
for a second that she had forgotten her anger over her ship, but
maybe having the prisoners’ gear sent to the cell had quenched some
of that rage.

When he set the tall glass of green juice in
front of her, she took a sip without hesitation. While she didn’t
smack her lips in delight, she gave it a considering head tilt,
then a nod of approval, as if she were judging some much-lauded
vintage of wine.

He drank half of his glass before setting it
down. That was probably one of those things that wasn’t proper in
front of a lady, either, but he was thirsty after the gym workout.
He would switch to water shortly. He had to be hydrated and ready
if the scouts found the camp quickly and called for the rest of the
fighters.

He took a bite of the meatloaf, noticed
Markovich hadn’t started eating, and asked, “What did you want to
see me about?”

She looked up at him. “Oh, I forgot. This is
to be an interrogation.” A flash of nervousness crossed her
face.

Viktor tried to figure out what he had said
to bring that on. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re standing. I thought dinner... I
mean, I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting a casual chat, but I guess
I’d thought...” She bit her lip. It was an alluring gesture, though
he didn’t think she meant it to be. No, she looked uncomfortable
and confused.

Great. He had flustered her, and he didn’t
even know how or why. “I always stand. And who said this was going
to be an interrogation? I told Cutty I’d see you—you asked to see
me, remember?—and that I might ask some questions. That was
it.”

She searched his face, as if he were the
puzzle here. Hardly that. “You always stand when you eat
dinner?”

“I always stand for everything. Except sleep.
I’ve done that a few times, but you inevitably pitch over at some
point.” Viktor tried a smile. He wasn’t very good at them—he had
been told they looked more like bear snarls than signs of
friendliness or pleasure. But despite her nerves tonight, she
seemed like someone who wasn’t easily daunted.

“You never sit? At all? Why?”

“I’m not good at relaxing. And it’s easier
for people to get the jump on you when you’re sitting.” Maybe he
shouldn’t be explaining this. She would think him paranoid. Which
he was, but that wasn’t the sort of thing that impressed women. Not
that he was trying to impress her. He took a long drink.

“What if a woman wants to make out with you
on the sofa?” Markovich asked.

Viktor almost choked on his juice. Not so
much because of the question—he had been asked it before—but over
the fact that, for whatever reason, she had been thinking of him in
such a scenario. He had made exceptions to his rule for situations
such as that, but he decided not to confess to it. “I don’t have a
sofa. We’d have to use the bed.” He hadn’t ever brought a woman
aboard the ship, so his lack of furnishings hadn’t come up much.
The men on the crew thought it was practical that he had room for
the punching bag.

“Er, we?”

Was she alarmed or intrigued by the notion?
He couldn’t tell.

“Whoever wanted to kiss me on a sofa.” Viktor
took another bite of meatloaf. This wasn’t how he had imagined this
meeting going. “I do have a couple of questions for you, Ms.
Markovich, if you’d be inclined to answer.”

“Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.” She
nodded, looking relieved at the change to a more formal tone. She
even took a bite of her dinner.

“Where did you learn mashatui?”

She sputtered, flecks of meatloaf flying out
of her mouth. Apparently that had been too blunt a question to
start with. He handed her a napkin.

“Thank you,” she murmured, wiping her mouth,
and then the spattered table. Thoroughly. Buying time before
answering, was she? Because she did, indeed, have something to
hide? Or because it was an uncomfortable subject?

“My father,” she finally said.

“He was from Spero?”

“We all were.”

Ah. One question answered. “You escaped the
destruction.”

Had she been nearby when it happened? Perhaps
been in orbit and seen it with her own eyes? The way he had for his
world’s destruction?

“We’d left a week earlier. My father had a
job offer on Novus Earth, one that evaporated after... Let’s just
say GalCon didn’t trust Speronians for a while.” Markovich gave him
a puzzled expression. “Why do you...? I mean, these aren’t the
kinds of questions I expected you to ask.” Or care about, her tone
said.

Yes, and why
did
he care? Why
was
he asking? “You’re something of an enigma. I’m trying to
figure you out.” That sounded plausible. Maybe.

“I’m not that complicated. Really. My father
didn’t get the job, and there was no home to go back to—” her mouth
twisted, “—so my brothers and sisters and I grew up in the slums of
Calimar on Novus Earth. Sometimes we had a place to stay; sometimes
we were on the street. My father always kept us together though,
made sure we didn’t starve. Financially, he had nothing, and he had
to do jobs well beneath his education level, but he loved us, and
he gave us... his culture, his sense of honor. I don’t know what
you’d call it. He taught us a lot, and he always made me want to be
a better person than our situation and my own tendencies might have
otherwise warranted.” She smiled faintly for the first time. She
was still wiping the table, though she didn’t seem aware of it. “He
hated it when we stole. Better to starve than to act without honor,
he’d say. Though...” She squinted up at Viktor and pointed a finger
at his nose. “I’m positive he’d have no qualms about stealing if it
was to escape an enemy.”

“Hm,” Viktor said, not ready to give more,
not ready to admit that his mind was working over her words, what
it would mean to be raised by a Speronian practitioner. “This
business of yours, it’s not the first?” He didn’t want to mention
her ship and bring the loathing back to her eyes, but he was trying
to work out how someone who had grown up in poverty could have
acquired a craft. Even if it had clearly been a clunker, spaceships
weren’t cheap under any circumstances, and it had apparently been
full of expensive scientific equipment.

“Oh, it’s at least the tenth.” Markovich
tapped her fingers on the table, counting. “The eleventh. Twelfth
if you count the recycling craze. To this day, I can give you the
spot price of more than two hundred metals that trade on the
market. Well, I haven’t had a chance to check the market for a
couple of days, but...” She spread her hand.

Viktor grunted. Then, feeling he should say
more, thus to encourage her to continue speaking, he added, “No
other prisoners have asked for market feeds to be delivered to the
brig.”

“No? How odd.”

He chewed on a bite of food while he tried to
think of another question that would lead her to answer his
unspoken one. The food had been lukewarm to start and was cold by
this point, but he barely noticed. His mind wasn’t on the meal.

“The recycling stint was what gave me seed
money for my first real business. I’d learned early on, you see,
that working for someone else didn’t suit me.” She paused for
effect, or so the twinkle in her eyes said. “I discovered that when
I was selling pet hair detangling devices door to door.”

He thought it was a joke at first, but nobody
would make up something like that, would she?

“It was for a pet grooming company. I’d never
had a pet in my life, unless you count the stray cats that wandered
all over the back streets of Calimar, but I was working on
commission and did my best to detangle every cat, dog, gerbil, and
furred lizard in the city, thus to show off my product. It wasn’t
the worst thing I’d done, but the company was very strict about the
sales pitch you had to give and it was... ludicrous. Pay was by
commission only and usually late. I never worked for anyone else
after that. My first business success was in that industry though,
building a system for people to find lost pets. I should tell you,
lest you think my whole life has been silly, that I was fifteen,
sixteen at this time. I had a couple of more serious businesses
later on. I didn’t get into the medical industry until I met
Lauren, who helped me with some of my own issues. I’m sure you
don’t want the details, but let’s just say that she made me a
believer with her microbiota transfer solution, and I agreed to
help figure out a way to finance her research into the ancient
alien gut bugs. I’m, ah, talking a lot, aren’t I? Is this what you
had in mind with your questions?” She shrugged, looking sheepish,
but at least she had lost some of that nervousness. Her rambling
didn’t bother him the way it might coming from others. He wasn’t
sure why. He usually preferred silence, but the solitude of command
did sometimes grow old.