Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (26 page)

Ankari stood, picked up her bowl, and leaned
against the table beside him, giving him a little smile.

“Huh.” His grunt sounded pleased. At least he
shifted his weight so their shoulders were touching as they stood
side by side, eating oatmeal and gazing out at the world—or at
least the rest of the dining room—from their feet.

“You’ve read that letter from my friend,”
Ankari said. “What wasn’t in there was some information Jamie,
Lauren, and I scrounged up on the net, that one of her academic
papers had been turned into a sensational health article and
broadcast all over the system. We believe that’s what brought our
company to Lord Felgard’s attention, even if we’re not sure yet why
he’s opted for putting a bounty out for our arrest, rather than
simply contacting us about our services. Not that we actually have
services yet. Even so, he might have offered to buy us out for our
research too. He’s a mystery for me at this point.”

“Maybe throwing some money out there was
easier than tracking you down and talking to you himself.”

“He could have hired a lawyer or a private
detective to find us for a much smaller amount. And, hell, if he’d
offered us two hundred thousand for a straight-up buy out, I might
have been tempted.” Ankari chewed on a bite of bland oatmeal—did
monks not have brown sugar?—and considered her words. Would she
have? “No, that’s not true actually. I think we’ll be worth a lot
more than that one day. Especially with the publicity. I knew the
alien angle was hot—people have been fascinated since we first
found their ruins in this system, after all—but I hadn’t
anticipated that much interest. If that’s an inkling of what we can
expect, the future is looking promising, so long as humans can
actually get something out of those alien gut bugs.”

“Is that likely?” Viktor asked, switching his
empty oatmeal bowl for a coffee mug.

“The mouse trials were promising, and that
was just using a few of the known bacteria. After Lauren finishes
analyzing the stool samples and we get a complete profile on what
the typical microflora of the time was, well, she could tell you
more, but even I can see the potential just from my layman’s
understanding of her work.”

“It sounds like you have a greater
understanding than that.”

Was that a compliment? She smiled at him just
in case. It seemed the right response, for he smiled back. Strange
that it should tug at her soul so. It had been scant hours since he
had admitted he cared for her, that he wanted to protect her.
Before that, he had been The Enemy. She had never fallen for
soldiers in the past, and even though he had an appealing
face—especially when he wasn’t scowling—and body, she wasn’t quite
sure why that smile made butterflies dance in her stomach. Maybe
something about the fact that it was as rare as a blue diamond. And
maybe he was too. He had admitted he was wrong about her and wanted
to make things right, rather than simply doing what would be
easier—and far more profitable. It touched something deep inside of
her. One didn’t find that sort of integrity in many places in the
galaxy, certainly not in a mercenary outfit.

A bleary-eyed Sergeant Hazel walked in the
door, and Ankari looked away from Viktor, realizing she had been
staring into his eyes for a long time. She expected him to move
away from her, now that they had a non-monk witness to their
closeness, but he merely gave Hazel a nod and sipped from his
coffee. She had showered and changed, but her arm looked stiff and
painful. She nodded back, but there was a wariness in her eyes when
her gaze flickered toward Ankari, taking in her presence at her
captain’s side. She didn’t comment, instead heading past him for
the kitchen and the coffee scent drifting from it.

“There are some medical procedures that could
be done now,” Ankari said, figuring she should return to business
while they had time. That shuttle ought to be down to pick them up
soon, and how was she going to have private talks with Viktor then?
Would she and the others end up back in the brig? So the crew
didn’t think anything had changed? “Other clinics do them, but we
might be able to make a name for ourselves, thanks to the
publicity. Once we prove ourselves credible, with successful
microbiome transplants, we might even be able to sell future
services. Take a deposit for those who want to get on the list for
the alien microflora treatment. We wouldn’t make any dubious
promises or prey on people’s hopes. We would make it all
legitimate, and we’d let people have their money back at any time
if they changed their minds. Anyway, you’re probably wondering why
I’m pouring all this in your ear over coffee.”

Viktor’s eyes weren’t glazing over, but
Ankari would be surprised if he didn’t start checking his tablet
soon or glancing toward the door, hoping someone more interesting
would walk in.

“Aside from the fact that you might make an
intriguing donor,” she added, mostly to see if he was paying
attention.

“A what?”

“You would have to be tested, of course,
certified disease free and metabolically sound, but from what I’ve
seen—” Ankari gave his stomach a pat, “—you probably have excellent
gut
microbiota.”

“
I...”

Goodness, had she rendered
the mighty captain speechless?
“It’s quite amazing, really,
considering the food you eat. All those dubious logs.”

Of course, if he had been raised in
Grenavine, he would have been born into an ideal environment. The
planet had been known for its people’s back-to-nature lifestyle,
with farmers growing food forests that mimicked the wilderness and
maintaining livestock that roamed free on mountainsides rather than
being cooped up in barns. A healthy place to be a kid. She wondered
if he had appreciated it at the time. Probably not. What kid
did?

“Do you always discuss these topics with men
you see, or am I special?” Viktor asked.

“You’re special.” Ankari had been in the
mining business briefly with a former lover and had discussed work
with him, but she hadn’t ever complimented his gut bugs. He would
have been too busy trying to talk her out of her fifty percent
share to notice, anyway. “I just wanted to try and give you an idea
as to our value. Our business’s value, that is. Your people take a
risk going in to see Felgard. He might not even pay you. I imagine
he has all sorts of security, and he isn’t afraid of
mercenaries.”

“He should be,” Viktor said.

“Regardless, if Mandrake Company chose to
work with
our
business, instead, we could give you some
shares and a percentage of earnings. It would be an investment in
the future rather than a simple payday.”

“If you were making money now, that might be
an easier sell.”

“Yes, but now’s the time to get in. You could
have, say, ten percent just for helping us with this small Felgard
problem, whereas when we’re big and can afford our own huge
security staff, we’d have no need of you.”

“No need at all?” Viktor murmured, lowering
his chin and gazing at her through his eyelashes.

The expression surprised her, both for its
playfulness—such a strange word to attribute to him—and because it
immediately had her thinking bedroom thoughts. “Well, I would
always be open to hiring quality help, but you wouldn’t get the
deal I’m offering now.”

“And are you authorized to offer this deal?
How much of the company do you own?”

“Seventy-five percent.”

He straightened, surprise crossing his face,
then a more serious expression taking control. “That much? I had
this notion that you and the others would be equal partners. You
and the microbiologist, at least.”

“Jamie only has five percent. We basically
brought her on to pilot us around the system and keep that boat in
the air. I thought about offering Lauren half, or closer to fifty
percent, but she was just sitting in a lab, doing research and
working for someone else when we met. I was the one, with my knack
for crazy schemes, to suggest there might be a way to finance
independent research and turn the results into a practice that
could help people. Further, she had no interest in running
day-to-day operations or doing the marketing or any of the things
that actually make a business successful, so I offered her a
percentage commensurate with the effort she was willing to make.”
Ankari remembered how she had been the one to climb down that
ancient latrine shaft, doing the dirty work. Literally. “I’m fully
able to offer your company ten percent to come on board as our...
special security detachment. Temporarily, of course. I don’t expect
you to forget all of your other assignments and be at my beck and
call. This would just be for Felgard and... any other emergencies
that might come up.”

“Twenty percent,” Viktor said, “and you set
up your labs on my ship, so we can keep an eye on our
investment.”

Ankari stared at him. Was he actually
negotiating with her? Yes, she had made an offer, but she hadn’t
expected him to take it, not right here and now. She had mostly
wanted to give him something to think about, an option that
might
appease his crew, the possibility that they could
potentially earn more over time than they would from turning her
in. Twenty percent. That would still leave her as the majority
shareholder but without much wiggle room if she needed to barter
pieces of the company to others in the future.

“Fifteen percent,” Ankari said, “and we will
gladly accept your offer of a laboratory if it comes fully stocked
with the equipment we need, equipment we
had
before a
certain mercenary company blew up my ship.”

“How much would that equipment cost?”

“We don’t need anything shiny. I can shop at
the surplus medical suppliers, auction houses, and rummage sales,
get good deals. Three or four thousand should get us set up
nicely.”

“Twenty percent, and I know an illegal
medical facility we can raid for your equipment.”

Ankari almost choked on the idea. Raid. As if
that were a common business practice. “You’re offering to undertake
this raid with your ship and your men?” The men he was afraid might
mutiny over her bounty not being collected? Was she insane for even
negotiating with him? Was this all
legal
?

“Yes.” Viktor stuck his hand out. “Deal?”

Wasn’t she supposed to be the business savvy
one here? Why did she feel like she wasn’t getting the best of this
negotiation? She should have known he was brighter than he looked
the moment she’d met him and he had known what the hell aliuolite
was. “Twenty percent,” she said, “but I want the option to buy you
back down to ten percent later on, given a
five-hundred-thousand-aurum valuation of the company.”

“You can buy us down to fifteen percent at
that valuation.” His hand was still sticking out.

Ankari looked at it for a long moment. “Just
to be clear, this deal would start as soon as we return to your
ship, and my team and I would no longer be staying in the
brig?”

“You’ll stay in your lab.”

“Which won’t be in the brig.”

“Correct.”

“Where
will
it be?” she asked,
imagining some utility closet full of mops.

“I’ll find a spot.”

“Larger than a closet?”

“You can set up in my cabin if I can’t find
anything bigger.” Viktor wriggled his fingers for emphasis. “Do
people ever actually close deals with you?”

“Rarely.” Ankari took his hand. “All right.
It’s a deal. All of it. You’ll handle explaining things to your
company?”

“Yes.”

“This should prove interesting,” a voice
murmured from behind them.

Ankari jumped, but Viktor responded right
away so he must have known Sergeant Hazel was sitting there,
sipping her coffee, all along. “That’s why you signed on with me,
isn’t it? I’m sure ‘see interesting places and meet interesting
people’ is on your application.”

“I was twenty-two at the time,” Hazel said.
“I thought the gum stuck to the deck of the space port was
interesting.”

“Then this won’t disappoint.”

Stars drifted by outside of the porthole in
the
Albatross’s
briefing room. Viktor leaned against the
wall at the head of the rectangular wooden table, its warm knots
and whorls a contrast to the cold gray metal of the ship’s
bulkheads. The old cedar boards had come from Grenavine, and
Commander Borage, the chief of engineering who had been a carpenter
in his former life, had assembled it and figured out a way to
attach it to the deck plating so it wouldn’t fly around in a rough
battle. Borage sat to the right of the head of the table now, with
Commander Garland waiting across from him. Sergeant Tick, Sergeant
Hazel, Lieutenant Sequoia, Sergeant Aster, and Sergeant Rowan
occupied the other seats, everyone silent, but everyone making eye
contact and trading shrugs with each other, wondering why they had
been called here. They knew the old crew had been assembled, the
men and women Viktor trusted most because he had known them longest
and they had all come from Grenavine, either when he had or later
on, as homeless refugees drifting out of space to join the outfit
when they’d heard about it. Zimonjic, who had been married for a
time and had left her Grenavinian surname behind, was the only one
absent, but there was an empty chair waiting for her. There were
others on the
Albatross
who ranked higher, but they hadn’t
been invited to this private meeting. Doubtlessly, Viktor’s old
comrades were wondering why.

The door open and Dr. Zimonjic entered, her
pockets full of medical tools once again. She had been busy
patching up Tick, Hazel, and the company’s three new business
partners—Viktor was about to explain that revision to everyone,
everyone he felt he could implicitly trust, both because of their
long service and because they had joined the company for reasons
other than money.