Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (20 page)

A bounty hunter leading with his rifle crept
close below him. Viktor dropped down behind the figure, yanking his
head back as he dropped and slicing a knife across the man’s
throat. That had been the one who had struck Keys. Good.

He cut down three more bounty hunters without
them ever knowing he was there. He grabbed a fourth man, ready to
take him down, too, but caught a whiff of strawberry gum at the
last moment. Tick was whirling toward him, rifle in hand, but
Viktor caught the weapon.

“It’s me,” he breathed. “Fall in.”

Without a word, Tick followed him, moving
just as soundlessly in the jungle. They killed a trio of men
hunting together, then a pained cry came from the clearing.

“Mandrake, I know that’s you out there,”
someone growled. “You kill any more of my men, and I’ll make sure
you don’t get that bounty, either.”

Viktor and Tick slipped through the brush,
finding the trampled ground around the shuttle again. A burly man
with a short gray beard stood with his back against the side of the
craft and Flipkens pulled to his chest, a dagger to her throat.

“That’s Captain Jarlboro,” Tick
whispered.

Viktor recognized him too. Not Goshawk after
all. Another mercenary captain. How many people were after these
women?

“Meet up with Hazel,” Viktor whispered.
“Clear out the rest of the woods. I’ll deal with him.”

The Keys woman was on the ground, inching
toward a fallen merc. Inching toward the laser rifle that had
fallen beside him, rather. Good.

“I’m not screwing around, Mandrake.” Jarlboro
tightened the blade against Flipkens’s neck, and she gasped with
pain. “Get out here. You want to make a deal, I’m listening, but
you touch any more of my men, and I’m—”

A shot fired from the captain’s side, from
the trees behind the shuttle. It slammed into his helmet, and he
staggered to the left, but his hand tightened on the dagger.
Knowing that shot hadn’t done serious damage, not through the
helmet, Viktor charged. He sprinted the intervening ten meters,
launched himself off a log, and rammed into the other captain,
tearing the girl away before Jarlboro could cut into her. The merc
tried to turn the dagger on him, but Viktor twisted his torso away
and slammed his own blade into the man’s gut. The fine mesh armor
kept the point from piercing, but Jarlboro still grunted at the
power of the blow, his shoulders jerking forward. Viktor shoved his
head back, exposed his throat, and sliced through the jugular.
Blood sprayed him, and he shoved the man to the side.

“I don’t make deals,” he told the dying
man.

As he spoke, he was already turning to face
the clearing again, to check for more danger while the shuttle
protected his back. The sounds of fighting came from the trees, and
he almost started for it, but he remembered the shot that had
distracted Jarlboro. He looked that way, expecting Sergeant Hazel
to step out of the shadows, but it was Ankari who walked hesitantly
toward him, a laser pistol clenched in her grip, her face ashen but
determined.

For an instant, something between shame and
uncertainty rushed into his chest, an unexpected feeling, a wish
that she hadn’t seen him killing people and that he wasn’t standing
over a body with blood painting his armor.

Viktor pushed the feeling away and lifted a
hand toward her. “Come check on your friends while we deal with the
others.” Please. He should have said please. She wasn’t one of his
soldiers.

But she came, giving him a worried look he
couldn’t decipher as she passed, then she dropped to her knees in
the mud to check on her engineer. A twig snapped nearby, and Viktor
jerked his rifle in that direction, holding his fire in case it was
one of his people. The tip of a barrel pointed through the brush.
Not
one of his people. He fired, and the branches rattled,
something slumped to the ground, then was quiet. He trusted his
aim. Jarlboro’s men would likely lose their eagerness to fight when
they realized their captain was dead, but it was dark and confusing
out there. That information might not have percolated through the
unit yet.

Viktor touched Ankari’s shoulder, refusing to
acknowledge that it stung when she flinched. “Take them in the
shuttle for now. Please.”

She looked up at him, maybe surprised by the
word. Admittedly, it wasn’t one he used often or that flowed off
his tongue. He patted her shoulder, then stepped past her, facing
the trees.

“Your captain is dead,” Viktor called.
“Surrender or disappear if you want to live.”

A fern shivered on the other side of the
clearing, then a clang sounded as something struck the side of the
shuttle. Guessing what it was instantly, Viktor pounced. He would
only have a second. In the dim light, it was tough to spot the
small grenade, but he’d heard it land. There. He snatched the
explosive and hurled it back where it had come from, hoping it
wouldn’t clank off a tree and bounce back.

It parted the leaves and exploded with a
blinding flash of light. Wood snapped, and trees heaved. Dirt and
debris rained down all around the shuttle. Ankari had helped
Flipkens inside and was going back for the biologist. Viktor
grabbed the woman first, dropping his weapons to lift her in both
arms and carry her inside.

A short burst of laser fire came from the
spot the grenade had been thrown from. A moment later, Sergeant
Hazel walked out of the brush there, her rifle at her side. Broken
twigs and leaves stuck out of the fasteners on her armor, but she
appeared uninjured.

“He didn’t want to surrender,” she said, her
voice deadpan.

“A mistake.” Viktor laid down Keys, then
sighed as he looked around the dim interior of the shuttle. There
was as much mud on the floor of the craft as there was outside, and
it had more dents in it than the rusty, perforated tanks on the
fleet artillery range.

“Yes.”

“Tick, you out there?” Viktor called over the
sound of water running off leaves and splattering to the soggy
ground. The rain had slowed earlier, but it was picking up again.
The wind too. He had a feeling they were in the eye of the storm,
and that it would continue to gust and rain all night.

“Yup, we got all but two, I think. I was
trying to get a count of how many we were dealing with when you
blasted in there, blowing holes in people.” Tick stepped out of the
trees behind the shuttle. “Want me to track the ones that took off?
They’re heading for the mountains, it looks like.”

“No.” Viktor eyed Jarlboro’s body. “I doubt
they’ll trouble us again.”

“There might be more,” a soft voice said from
behind him. Ankari came to his shoulder, a battered and
mud-splattered tablet in her hand. She brought up a message and
handed it to him warily. Her calculating feistiness was nowhere to
be seen on her face. Was she not sure where she stood with him at
the moment? Or simply worn down by the events of the night? Even in
the poor lighting, he could tell she hadn’t had a pleasurable last
few hours. None of them had.

Viktor wanted to give her a hug, to cradle
her against his chest and protect her, but wasn’t sure if she would
want it, so he simply accepted the tablet. “Sweet cakes?” he asked,
reading the greeting aloud.

Ankari snorted softly. “He calls everyone
that. Everyone female, anyway.”

His humor faded as he read further, about the
increased bounty and that Felgard had apparently let everyone in
the system know where to find the women in question. “I’m going to
kill him,” Viktor growled.

“Felgard?” Ankari watched his face, the
faintest expression of hope dawning in her eyes. She had to be
wondering if she still had prisoner status.

“Listen, I’m not—”

Lightning flashed, and Tick and Hazel ran
inside as the rain went from hard to torrential.

“Glad you didn’t send me to track anyone,
Cap’n,” Tick said, shaking off like a dog and spraying water
everywhere. “My gun would rust out in that. I might too.” He looked
curiously at the women, Ankari standing at Viktor’s side and the
other two slumped in chairs. “This all that came down?”

“I don’t know,” Viktor said.

“Oh, thought you might have, uhm, made
inquiries.”

Viktor snorted, though he was glad Tick had
chosen those words instead of interrogated.

Sergeant Hazel slapped at the auxiliary
lighting panel, but nothing responded. “Fine, I’ll find the
first-aid kit in the dark,” she grumbled, waving her flashlight
around the interior. How
had
those vines gotten all the way
up to the front? They were plastered across the control panel.

“You injured, Sergeant?” Viktor asked.

“Not seriously, but your prisoners are.
Wouldn’t expect a man to notice such trite things as blood flowing
from a woman’s head.”

“It
is
dark in here,” Viktor said.
“Must be your maternal instincts that let you sense such
things.”

Tick snorted. “Hazel? She’s about as maternal
as a chicken. Chickens eat their own eggs, you know. Which is a
real threat to mercenary rations. Can you imagine where we’d be
without egg logs?”

“Not even remotely.” Viktor caught Ankari and
Flipkens looking back and forth at each other and wondered what
they thought of their blood-covered saviors—or maybe they still saw
Mandrake Company as their captors—tossing jabs at each other. He
groped for a way to explain that Tick and Hazel came from his home
world and had been with him since the beginning, but then Tick and
Hazel would be wondering why he was explaining himself to people he
hadn’t yet to claim as anything other than prisoners. Hazel had
been there when the team had captured the women, but Tick had never
met them, so he supposed introductions were in order. “Tick, this
is Keys, Flipkens, and Markovich. Ladies, Heath ‘Tick’ Hawthorn.
You ever get lost out in a jungle, he can help you find a way out.
I believe you’ve all met Sergeant Hazel.”

The sergeant had Flipkens holding her
flashlight so she could apply a bandage to Keys’s cut temple. She
had taken Ankari’s rifle and made sure her comrades weren’t armed,
either. Practical, but it reminded Viktor that the rest of the crew
would continue to think of the women as prisoners unless he said
something to the contrary, and with such a huge reward attached to
them, he didn’t know if he dared do that.

“Which is the one that knocked out Striker?”
Tick asked. “’Cause I’m already predisposed to liking her.”

“That’s Markovich. The feisty one,” Viktor
said. Ankari looked at him, brows raised, so he added, “She’s being
quiet tonight. Might need some of your gum to perk her up,
Tick.”

“We all might, sir,” Hazel said, “if you’re
planning to have us march farther tonight.”

A distant screech sounded. If they stayed
here, they would have to post guards all night. That was doable,
but they had come far enough that they ought to only be a couple of
miles from that Buddhist temple. That might make a desirable
refuge, assuming it wasn’t already giving refuge to bounty hunters.
He imagined the expressions on the faces of Jarlboro’s survivors if
Viktor and the others strolled in after them. Refugees or not, the
temple would be dry, something he wouldn’t mind being about now.
Unless they could get one of the other squads to pick them up, it
would be twice as far to walk back to the landing site.

He tapped his comm. “Striker, report.”

Lightning flashed outside. He wondered if he
would get a response.

A burst of static came over the comm, but
Striker’s voice was clear enough when he spoke. “Just about done
cleaning up, sir. We didn’t find Sisson Hood himself yet, but we’re
hoping he’s in the compound here, already dead. There are a lot of
bodies around. His men were dug in here good and put up a fight.
This was definitely his lair. There’s some women locked up back
here that are all roughed up. They identified him. There’s lots of
loot too. I, ah, suppose we’ll be giving it back?”

“Yes, we’re getting paid in aurums for our
work. No need to make off with people’s silverware and antique
andirons.” Viktor grumbled to himself. They needed Hood’s head.

“It’s more like nice weapons and some
diamonds pulled out of the mines, but understood, sir. We do have
quite a few injuries and a couple of men who need to get back real
quick to see Doc Zimonjic. Where are you? How much longer will you
be? Should we wait?”

“We found the missing shuttle. No sign of
Tank or Rawlings.” Viktor looked at the women, wondering if they
had run into the missing soldiers.

“One of your men...” Ankari pointed upward.
“Your people killed everyone in that boarding party, it looked
like, but one of your men was in the shuttle, already dead, I
think.”

Viktor growled at the situation. He hadn’t
meant it to be an audible snarl, but Ankari stepped back. He lifted
a hand in apology—and hoped she read it as such. He would get the
rest of the story out of her later, but it could wait until they
reached the temple and they could talk in private. “The shuttle’s
not operable,” he told Striker, “at least not at the moment. One of
the mechanics will have to take a look when it’s lighter. And
drier.”

“You want us to swing over and get you on the
way up?”

Yes. Going back to the ship now sounded quite
appealing. But there was still the matter of the missing men and
the tracks Tick had been following before the shuttle crashed. Not
to mention that the other shuttles would struggle to find a landing
spot that didn’t involve smashing every branch in a tree on the way
to the ground.

“Go up, drop off the sick, take care of
everybody, and send a shuttle back down to pick us up at the temple
in the morning. Send Bassman and Chen with spare parts. I’ll show
them to the other shuttle. I expect it to be made operable
again.”

“What temple, sir?” Striker asked.