Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (14 page)

“Fleet issue, but there are a lot of those
available in surplus stores,” Hazel said, her gaze roving the trees
all around.

The three shuttles that Alpha, Charlie, and
Delta squads had come down in sat in the clearing, each with a
well-armed pilot waiting inside. Striker and the rest of the
fighters had already tramped off to the east to deal with Sisson
Hood and his band of merry outlaws. Viktor itched to join them, but
not until he had his missing men and his other shuttle back.

“In other words, it could be anyone.” Viktor
faced the clearing, eyeing the churned mud around the landing pad.
“But I’ve only seen evidence of hand weapons so far. Nothing that
would have come from a ship.” He raised his voice to address the
third soldier skulking around the clearing with them. “You find any
tracks yet, Tick?”

“’Bout fifty million left by our own people,
Cap’n.” Sergeant Tick tossed a baleful look over his shoulder. He’d
asked Viktor to keep the men in the shuttle until he could have a
good look around, but with that storm rolling in, Viktor hadn’t
wanted to delay the core mission. He
had
made sure the
squads funneled out of the clearing in a single file, so as to
minimize the disturbances.

“Fifty million? From forty-five people?”

“Forty-five people with real busy feet,” Tick
said around a wad of that caffeine gum he was always chewing. He
grinned, his balefulness forgotten in less than ten seconds, like
usual. When it came to tracking, he liked a challenge, anyway. “Lot
of critter traffic too. All agitated with this storm coming, I
reckon. This the planet with the dinosaurs?”

“It’s a moon,” Hazel said.

“Fine, this the
moon
with the
dinosaurs? It was nice of those aliens to terraform so much of this
system for us, but they did get a might creative when they were
adding the wildlife.”

Viktor had seen the “dinosaurs” on a previous
stop here—there was a zoo in the capital city. They were predators
that had reminded the early settlers of velociraptors from the Old
Earth fossil record. They had been known to kill men wandering in
the jungle alone, but he doubted any would be out in this weather.
He was more concerned about humans armed with laser rifles than
feathered dinosaurs with pointy teeth. “Just let me know if you
find sign of our men or our shuttle thieves.”

“Working on it, Cap’n.”

Viktor stalked around the clearing, too,
poking under fronds and searching for broken branches or other
signs that someone had pushed through the dense undergrowth. He
hadn’t grown up with wolves or bears or whatever Tick was claiming
this month, but he’d taken all of the prerequisite survival
training courses as a part of his recruitment for the Crimson
Ops.

“If there weren’t any ships firing, someone
had to have come on foot,” Hazel said, following him. She would
probably figure out the solution with her head before either Viktor
or Tick found enlightenment looking at the ground. “So someone came
in on foot and surprised our people.”

“Except that shouldn’t have happened.
Standard operating procedure is for the pilot to wait inside the
shuttle, in case someone needs a fast pickup. The shields are
impenetrable to hand weapons. Heavy artillery might make a dent,
but there’s no evidence of that.” Viktor waved at the ground. He
didn’t need Tick to tell him that nothing heavy had been dragged
around out here.

“So someone would have had to convince Tank
and Rawlings to open the door,” Hazel said. “They’re not that
stupid. Well, maybe Tank. But Rawlings wouldn’t have gone for that
unless it was someone on our own team needing help, and Striker
didn’t say anything about that.”

“Just that the shuttle and our men were gone
when he came back with prisoners.”

“What?” The wind had kicked up, and Hazel had
to lean closer to hear him.

Viktor repeated himself in a louder voice and
added, “It’s possible one of those two intentionally let someone
in.”

Hazel stiffened. “Sir? What do you know?”

“That those women we have in the brig are
worth a lot of money to Felgard and that a surprising number of
people know we’ve got them.” Granted, Viktor only knew about the
bounty hunter right now, but that was one more person than
should
be aware of who he was keeping in his brig. “Someone
also removed the tracking device inside the shuttle. A stranger
shouldn’t know where to look for that.”

“It could have been damaged in a fight. I
can’t imagine Rawlings selling out.”

“No thoughts on Tank?”

“He’s dumb and greedy. I suppose it’s
possible.”

“Yeah.” Anger simmered inside Viktor at the
thought of such a betrayal, but he kept it on a side burner. It was
too early to start accusing men of mutiny. If Goshawk hadn’t
contacted him, he wouldn’t be thinking along these lines at all. He
would assume the trouble had originated down here. “It might not
have anything to do with our prisoners. It’s possible Sisson Hood
got wind of our visit ahead of time and that this was something his
men launched.”

Viktor walked around the clearing again. He
spotted one of the “critter” prints Tick had mentioned, a
three-clawed mark that was probably right for those raptors. It was
heading in the direction of a mountain range ten miles away. With
the towering trees all around, it wasn’t visible from the ground,
but Viktor had spotted the ridge on the way down. There had been
lights over there, too, but his map had promised there was a
Buddhist temple in that direction, rather than anything so inimical
as an enemy camp. Bandits didn’t usually camp out on mountains with
lights blazing so anyone could find them.

Tick had disappeared into the trees, a few
meters away or a few hundred. The thick foliage had already
swallowed the illumination from his flashlight, so it was
impossible to tell. Maybe he was onto something. If they found
footprints, they might trace them back to the source, but it would
need to be soon, before the rains started and obliterated
everything. The problem was Viktor was more concerned about where
the shuttle had gone than where the thieves had come from. Was it
already back at some headquarters where his men were being
interrogated? Or up on someone’s ship? Or maybe the men had already
been dumped, and someone was taking the shuttle away to rip it
apart and sell it for pieces on the black market. If this had
something to do with stealing the prisoners, maybe the shuttle was
heading up to the
Albatross
right now with a strike team
ready to invade his ship.

Viktor halted, the simmering anger
threatening to boil over into hot fury. Why hadn’t he thought of
that right away? It was such an obvious possibility.

He was about to stomp back to the parked
shuttles when Tick yelled from the trees. The wind made this voice
sound distant, but he was probably within fifty meters. “Got a
trail, Cap’n.”

Viktor pushed through fronds and branches,
with thorns clawing at his battle armor. The clearing quickly
disappeared from sight, and he had only his ears to rely on to find
Tick. It would be easy for someone without equipment or a good
sense of direction to become lost out here. Rain spattered on the
leaves high overhead. It wasn’t dampening his shoulders yet, but it
would start dripping through to the jungle floor soon.

He stepped around a vine-strangled tree, and
Tick’s flashlight beam came into view.

“Take your time, Cap’n, no rush.” Tick
grinned again, his big white teeth flashing in the darkness. They
were the same age and had even crossed paths a time or two back on
Grenavine, but Tick always seemed twenty years younger. Must be the
gum keeping him perky. “These the tracks you were hoping to
find?”

Tick pointed at a clear boot print, many
clear boot prints. A trail of them wound back into the jungle,
heading in the direction of those the mountains. At least six sets.
Most of the prints were facing toward the shuttle clearing, men on
their way to the ambush point, but a couple were following the same
trail and heading the other way.

“Didn’t spot ’em closer to the landing sight,
’cause they took to the trees here.” Tick pointed up to the
branches, highlighting a couple of snapped branches with his light.
“Probably knew someone with my fine tracking skills would be out
later, so they didn’t want to walk at the end. Might’ve had some
short-range hover packs.”

“These prints.” Viktor crouched and pointed.
“They look like they’re on top of the others—made after. You
agree?”

“Yup, that’s right, Cap’n. You do a fair bit
of tracking for a kid who grew up in the gardens.”

“They made us go out and hunt from time to
time.” Viktor didn’t talk much about his time in the fleet, even
with the oldest members of the crew, so he didn’t bother mentioning
where he’d truly learned to hunt. “So. At least two tracks leaving
the landing pad. Not
everyone
left on the shuttle. I don’t
suppose you can tell if these tracks might belong to our men?”

“Not just from the prints—we haven’t got
standard uniform boots, and I haven’t taken a look at Tank’s or
Rawling’s treads lately, but let me walk along a spell. Might be
able to pick out their gaits. Tank rolls along like he’s on a
horse, you know.” Tick headed off, flashlight toward the
ground.

Branches snapped and leaves rattled behind
Viktor, announcing Hazel’s arrival. He showed her the tracks.

“We following them, sir?” She glanced toward
Tick’s receded back.

Good question. Viktor was tempted to hop in
one of those shuttles and fly back to the ship on the chance that
their stolen one was already heading that way, but that would leave
one of his teams stranded down here if his people got in trouble
and had to retreat in a rush. Besides, all he had was a hunch so
far. And Bravo squadron was back on the ship. It wasn’t as if the
Albatross
was adrift and waiting for someone to board it and
take over. He had known there might be trouble while he was gone,
more trouble than a handful of pilots and engineers could be
trusted to handle, no matter how capable they were in combat.

“Yes, but I want to let the ship know first.”
Viktor tapped his comm unit. “Garland, any change in status?”

The wind whistled in his ears, nothing
else.

“I can’t get him, either, sir,” Hazel said
after trying her own comm. “They have some weird storms out here
that affect the ionosphere. Must be interfering.”

“So glad we paid for that state-of-the-art
communications equipment last year.” Viktor pushed through the damp
leaves, rain droplets spattering his armor and face, and headed
back to one of the shuttles. Its comm equipment was more powerful.
Lightning flashed in the distance, and he winced, the Eytect unit a
hair slow in washing out the sudden brightness. He tugged it off
and stuffed it into his pocket. All of his equipment was unreliable
tonight.

When he stalked inside the shuttle,
Lieutenant Sequoia, his boots up on the console, looked up from an
old-fashioned book he was reading. “Problem already, sir? You look
grouchy.”

“That how you guard my shuttle?” Viktor
pushed the boots to the side and jabbed the comm.

“
Sound
grouchy too.” Sequoia shifted
his book to reveal a laser pistol and waved to a hologram
displaying the area around the shuttle, presumably demonstrating
that he was paying attention to the surroundings. Another
Grenavinian, he had been with the company since the beginning, too,
and was a good pilot and a reliable man, but he had zero career
ambition and even less interest in commanding others, so he wasn’t
always the model soldier.

“If someone steals this shuttle while you’re
in it, I’m sending you to remedial pilot school with Commander
Thatcher.”

Sequoia’s face grew pale, and he lowered his
boots to the deck. “I... would rather have my pay docked, sir.”

“Yes, I know.” Viktor jabbed the console
again. “Garland, come in. You there?”

“Here, sir. What’s—” The speaker interrupted
him with a crackle and hiss.

That didn’t sound promising, either, but at
least Viktor had gotten through. “Hazel, Tick and I are going to
follow some tracks. The rest of the crew is approaching Hood’s
hideout. I want you to keep an eye out for our missing shuttle. If
it shows up out of the ether, ask some pointed questions and make
sure there aren’t any unauthorized visitors on it, do you
understand?” Lightning flashed beyond the viewport, and the first
spatters of rain landed on the craft’s nose. “Garland?”

“...breaking up, Captain. I heard that you’re
tracking and... about shuttle?”

Viktor raised his voice, as if that could
somehow make his words cut through the storm interference more
easily. “If that shuttle shows up, make sure nothing fishy is going
on before you let it on board.”

“...understand, sir. The shuttle... already
here.”

“What?”

“...a few minutes ago.”

“Send a team down to check on that, Garland.
I want to know what happened. I want a full report.”

More static answered him. The rain picked up
outside.

“Should I fly up to check on things?” Sequoia
asked.

“No. Not yet. Garland should be able to deal
with any problems small enough to fit in a shuttle. If there’s even
anything to deal with.” Viktor might have missed half of Garland’s
words, but they hadn’t sounded alarmed. Maybe Tank and Rawlings had
already resolved their trouble and were reporting back to the ship.
Still, why wouldn’t they have come back down to pick up the men
they had marooned down here first instead? “Just... don’t let
anyone in who’s not supposed to be in.”

“No, sir, wasn’t planning on it. Especially
not given how grouchy this weather is making people.”

Viktor gave him a flat look and started for
the door. He glanced back before leaving and caught Sequoia
reaching for his book. Sequoia stopped, smiled innocently, and
crossed his hands in his lap over the pistol instead. Viktor
returned to the comm for a moment.