Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (2 page)

A laser gun fired, the whine abrupt and over
quickly. Ankari’s stomach sank. Lauren? Had Ankari’s choice to run
cost her partner her life?

But more shots fired, not only from nearby
but from that ridge, as well.

“Take cover, Striker.” That was the captain’s
voice. “We’ll get her later. Deal with these idiots first.”

Ankari risked poking her head over the wall.
Red and orange bursts of laser fire were streaking across the
ruins, bright against the fading light of the afternoon sky. She
picked out the backs of the woman and two of the other men,
including the brute holding Lauren. They had taken cover behind
crumbling walls and were all facing the ridge, where two figures
hid behind ruins of their own, leaning in and out of sight to
shoot. Lauren was the only one looking in Ankari’s direction, and
her face lit with hope when they made eye contact.

Ankari aimed at the back of the head of
Lauren’s captor. She had never killed someone before, and she had
no way to know for certain that these were criminals with bounties
on their heads. Hoping she wouldn’t regret it, she shifted her aim
to the man’s shoulder. That ought to get him to release Lauren.

“Ready?” Ankari mouthed.

Lauren nodded vigorously, her tangled,
shoulder-length black hair flopping in her dark eyes. Her alarmed
gaze darted from Ankari to the laser blasts streaking through the
ruins and back again.

A scream came from the ridge.

“Nice, shooting, Captain,” someone said.
“Didn’t think any of us were going to get past that full body
armor. Best armed scavengers I’ve ever seen.”

“Stolen gear,” the captain said. “It doesn’t
fit properly.”

The men kept ducking, dodging, and shooting
as they traded this casual exchange. Another scream came from the
ridge, a shot fired from the female warrior this time.

“You’re right, sir,” she said. “Armpit was
open.”

The kidnappers were making quick work of
their opponents. Ankari didn’t have time to waste, but she made
herself wait until Lauren’s captor finished shooting a spray of red
beams and paused to reload his gun. He wasn’t holding Lauren at the
moment. She probably could have lunged free and run, if she wasn’t
afraid of being hit by the stray beams herself, but she merely
crouched there, her round eyes riveted on Ankari. Well, nothing on
her résumé had said she was good in a fight. So long as she ran
when she had the chance.

Ankari fired.

The beam lanced into the back of the man’s
shoulder, charring through his shirt and into his skin. He didn’t
cry out. He only grunted and spun toward her.

Lauren leaped to her feet without looking and
sprinted toward the half wall Ankari hid behind. She didn’t so much
as glance at the beams lancing through the air all around, but luck
favored her mad dash, and she flung herself over the stones and to
the ground. The brute who had lost her jumped to his feet, as if to
charge after them, but Ankari pointed her pistol at his eyes. He
considered her for a long second, but the burning hole in the back
of his shoulder must have convinced him that her aim was decent. He
gave her a wry smirk and even a salute, then went back to shooting
at the people on the hill.

“‘Suppose I shouldn’t feel indignant that he
sees me as so little of a threat that he’s turning his back on me,”
Ankari said and dropped below the wall again. “That way,” she added
when Lauren gave her a questioning look. Ankari jerked her head in
a direction that would take them away from the conflict but that
should let them circle back to their ship. She hoped the
Marie
Curie
was still hidden beneath that overhang and that nobody
had noticed it. She didn’t want to return to a league of bounty
hunters—or slavers or whatever these people were—lined up in front
of the craft.

Shots continued to fire, but they grew less
loud as Ankari and Lauren scurried through the ruins. If other
treasure hunters lurked in the area, Ankari and Lauren didn’t run
into them on their way back to the ship. Scavengers or not, they
were probably smart enough to stay away from a firefight—at least
until the carrion birds were circling and the bodies could be
looted. As she weaved around and over the dusty ruins, Ankari
acknowledged that she and her team were technically scavengers down
here too. And they, too, ultimately wanted to make money from what
they were pulling off the planet, if in a roundabout way.

“Judge not lest ye be judged...” Wasn’t that
some saying from one of the old Earth religions?

When the
Marie Curie
came into view,
sans a brute squad, Ankari gasped a relieved, “Yes!”

The rainbow-striped freighter with its flower
highlights wasn’t exactly designed to blend in here—or anywhere—but
with night’s approach, the deep shadows beneath the overhang should
be hiding it, at least from the air.

“Jamie, you there?” Ankari asked into the
comm. “If you could open the door, we’d appreciate it.” No need to
mention the squad of men she feared would be tracking them to this
spot within minutes.

“Mission accomplished, boss?” Jamie asked as
the big cargo bay door on the back lowered, providing a ramp for
Ankari and Lauren to run up.

“Yes, but we may have company soon. Get us
out of here.”

“Will do.”

The deck shivered beneath its shaggy blue
carpeting as Ankari and Lauren ran past the science stations that
dominated the old cargo hold
.
Ankari charged into the
compact navigation cabin first, breathing hard.

Jamie, hands on the controls, glanced back,
her blue eyes widening. “You weren’t kidding. Someone really is
after you.”

Twenty years old with blonde pigtails, Jamie
didn’t look old enough to be a pilot, much less the ship’s
engineer, but, like Lauren, she was willing to work for a share of
the business. Few people with more experience—and without criminal
records—were so inclined.

“Yes. Are we in the air yet?” The view on the
screen was depressingly similar to the view Ankari had left
behind.

“We’re almost out from under the ledge,”
Jamie said dryly.

“This ship’s a real cheetah, isn’t she?”

“She’s not that bad.” Jamie gave the console
a friendly pat.

Lauren stepped into the hatchway. “If you’ll
give me that pack, I can get to work.” Her face was red, her
clothes were torn, and she was smeared with dirt, and she wanted to
get right to her research?

Ankari could have hugged her, though she
wasn’t ready to drag her eyes from the viewer to remove her pack,
not with the dusty ground inching along at a snail’s pace. Once
they were in the air... Better yet, once they were completely off
the planet, it would be a different story.

“Let’s see if we make it out from under this
ledge first,” Ankari said.

“Almost there.” Jamie tapped a display
flashing a clearance warning.

The burly captain stepped out from behind a
boulder, and Ankari almost peed down her leg. He had removed the
scanner on his head, and his two hard green eyes were staring
straight at the view screen. She expected him to raise his pistol
and point it at them, but even if the freighter wasn’t a sleek
warship, its hull would easily withstand the firepower of a hand
weapon. Those grenades that other brute had been carrying might do
some damage, but Ankari didn’t see him. The captain was alone. But
his lips were moving. Issuing some command to the rest of his team?
Letting them know he had found Ankari’s ship and that he needed
help bringing it down? Well, the
Marie Curie
wasn’t waiting
around for that.

“Who’s
he
?” Jamie asked. “He’s
handsome. Pissed looking, but handsome.”

“Calm your teenage hormones down and get us
some altitude,” Ankari said.

“I haven’t been a teenager for weeks now, you
know.”

“He wants to kidnap us, not get in bed with
us. Now, go.”

“Really? Kidnap all of us?” Fortunately,
Jamie’s fingers danced across the controls as she spoke, and the
captain disappeared from view as the ship rose from the ground.
Soon, he and his men would be powerless to stop them.

That didn’t keep Ankari’s fingers from
digging into the back of Jamie’s chair. “Lauren and me for sure. I
don’t know if they’re aware of your existence.”

“Typical.” Jamie sniffed. “Let me get us
turned away from that mountain, and it’ll be a clear shot into
space.”

“Good.” As the view rotated, Ankari was on
the verge of loosening her fingers when a sleek black shuttlecraft
glided out of the twilight sky. Before she could do more than
wonder if it had weapons, a torpedo launched from its bow.

“No, no, no,” Jamie said over and over,
trying to navigate out of the way.

But even the most agile GalCon fighter
couldn’t have dodged at that close range. Ankari didn’t have time
to brace herself before the world exploded in her face.

Her last thought, as she was hurled backward,
was that she should have known the captain was calling to a ship,
not talking to his crew. Then her head struck the bulkhead, and
darkness swallowed the world.

* * *

Captain Viktor Mandrake led his team toward
the smoking wreckage, grimacing at the damage Frog’s torpedo had
done. The ugly little freighter would never fly again,
and—worse—its passengers might not have survived. He flipped open
his pocket tablet and skimmed the wanted hologram that formed in
the air above it. Yes, alive. The prisoners were supposed to be
delivered alive.

“Problem, sir?” Sergeant Hazel asked, falling
into step beside him.

Corporal Jiang had also caught up with them,
clutching at a shoulder smoldering from a laser blast, and wearing
a chagrined expression. He probably felt abashed after letting the
girl out of his grasp. He should.

Striker, Dunhill, and Chen were making sure
all of the thugs who had ambushed the team were either dead or knew
better than to bother Mandrake Company again. Viktor also wanted to
know if there had been a reason behind the ambush, or if the
riffraff had simply been trying to take advantage of distracted
people. Maybe they had overheard that woman’s lie about the fortune
to be made in fossilized crap.

“They’re wanted alive,” Viktor said.

“They weren’t very high up when Frog hit
them, sir. The crash shouldn’t have killed them.”

“The torpedo hit right below their nav
cabin.”

“Oh. That might have cut them up.”

The torpedo, or the crash, or both, had left
a jagged hole in the side of the freighter. That was fortuitous,
because the cargo door looked too smashed to ever open again.

Viktor ducked circuitry and jagged pieces of
hull, but paused before charging inside, inhaling, listening, and
looking in all directions. He wouldn’t expect a handful of
civilians to lay a crafty trap or have the wherewithal to mount a
defense, but one never knew. The woman who had seemed to be in
charge—Ankari Markovich, the wanted poster said—had been agile. She
might have some combat experience. If she was still alive.
According to the write-up, they were criminals, so their deaths
shouldn’t bother him, but he hated bungling a job. Even if Mandrake
Company was more known for killing people than kidnapping them, his
crew ought to be able to manage either in a competent, professional
manner. Otherwise what was to separate them from all the
ill-trained mediocre mercenary outfits in the galaxy?

Aware of Sergeant Hazel shadowing him, Viktor
stepped inside before she could offer to go first and remind him,
as she so often did, that it was foolish for the captain to come on
these missions personally and risk his life. No matter how many
times he pointed out that he was a combat specialist and would be
bored into insanity if he never left the ship and saw action, she
never failed to point out that captains weren’t supposed to be
expendable. Few others would presume to lecture him, but she was
from Grenavine, the same as he and a handful of others in the
company, and she had known him for years. They were part of the
original crew. The survivors.

Ceiling panels dangled everywhere in the
warped corridor, and Viktor had to walk in a hunch to reach the nav
cabin. A woman’s unmoving form lay crumpled on the shaggy floor
covering—a carpet, he supposed it would be called, though it looked
more like the fur off an animal that seldom bathed. As he knelt to
check the woman’s pulse, he spotted the other two crew members
slumped against the base of a nav console so devastated it was
barely recognizable. Blood smeared one of the women’s faces, and
neither person was moving. At least this one—Lauren Keys, according
to the poster—had a pulse.

Viktor winced when another panel fell from
the ceiling, banging down between the two other women.

“I’ll get that one, sir,” Hazel said, “if you
want to grab the others.”

Viktor stepped past the Keys woman, letting
Hazel pull her out, and gathered the other two, draping one over
each shoulder. Dr. Zimonjic wouldn’t approve of using anything
other than a stretcher, but she wasn’t here, nor did Viktor want to
wait for someone to grab first-aid equipment out of the
shuttle.

Ducking panels and buzzing circuits, he toted
the women back to the hole in the hull. Maneuvering out of the
smashed corridor with two people balanced over his shoulders was
awkward, but he had carried heavier loads.

One of his passengers stirred and moaned as
he stepped out into the night. The temperature was plummeting now
that the sun had set, and it had already dropped below freezing.
The shuttle should land on the flat hilltop a quarter of a mile
away. After eyeing the winding, rocky path leading up to it, Viktor
handed one of the women to Jiang to carry.

“Don’t let that one go, eh?” he said.

Jiang wasn’t one of the original crew, and he
gulped noticeably at Viktor’s slight censure. He was cocksure with
his comrades and most people he met, but he gave a mild, “I won’t,
sir,” here.