The Assassin's Salvation (Mandrake Company) (6 page)

“Yes, ma’am. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you wherever you go.”

Hazel bristled at that and looked like she might volunteer to go along, but Ankari pointed at the shuttle. “You’ll keep an eye on the business aspect, Sergeant?”

Hazel’s jaw ground back and forth a few times before she said, “Yes. That’s what
I’m
supposed to do. Watch out for the company’s twenty percent.” She glowered at Sergei and looked like she wanted to say something. What? Be good?

He had never done anything to anyone on the
Albatross
that should lead her to doubt him. Oh, he knew she had never approved of the idea of the company having an assassin, but this was new distrust, all related to the fact that he was guarding women. He sighed. This wasn’t the place to point out that he was indeed a decent person, or at least one who followed an honor code, but he would have to pull her aside for a private conversation at some point. She seemed to have some notions that went beyond what was in his Fleet file.

“Can I come?” Jamie asked as Ankari was about to walk off.

“You want to?” Ankari glanced at the shuttle. “Oh, because you were kicked out?”

“That and you’re going to the hospital that treats the downsiders, aren’t you? I’m curious about those people, about who sent that fighter and what they needed.” Jamie grimaced, her eyes full of guilt that didn’t belong there.
She
hadn’t been the one to fire at that craft. She had merely been evading it, doing her job.

“Yes,” Ankari said, “but it’s unlikely they’ll know anything about the craft or even be from the same continent. Viktor said he was going down to the planet to find out what the fighter wanted.”

“I’d still like to come.”

Ankari shrugged. “Fine with me.” She looked at Sergei.

As if he was going to object.

“I’m just the bodyguard,” Sergei said, keeping his tone indifferent. The last thing he needed was for Hazel to think he had some particular interest in Jamie. He
shouldn’t
have any interest in her.

“Off we go then,” Ankari said.

* * *

Jamie tried not to gawk like a tourist as she, Ankari, and Sergei took the high-speed moving sidewalks from the docks to the interior of the city, but everything from the cars crossing overhead on invisible air-bridges to the floating vendor carts that dispensed meals at the wave of a hand was new to her. Sure, she had been on four different planets and at least a dozen space stations in the months since joining up with Ankari and Lauren, but this was the first metropolis she had been in, and it was a wealthy one at that. Luxurious spa treatments were touted at every corner, along with thousand-aurum meals, adult amusement parks, and floating casinos that were bigger than her family’s entire farm back home. Marinth, the other cloud city, seemed a tiny outpost compared to this, not that Jamie had been given time to explore there.

The hospital was the first underwhelming building they encountered, a squat, three-story structure surrounded by skyscrapers and floating homes. Its old-fashioned glass windows longed for a cleaning, and the peeling paint on the walls would doubtlessly fall off if
they
were cleaned. The tired security kiosk that slumped against the wall by the front door wasn’t manned.

“I’m not sure if this place will be able to afford us,” Ankari murmured, “even with a group discount.”

Jamie didn’t know much about the appointment, other than the handful of words she had pulled out of Lauren, who had been preparing the specimens that Ankari now carried in a briefcase. “But you brought everything along, anyway?”

Ankari looked down at the briefcase. “Yeah, for these cases, I would give the specimens away, but I’d certainly rather make enough money to cover our costs.”

“What exactly does your business do?” Sergei asked.

It was the first time he had spoken since they left the docks, though Jamie had been aware of him watching their surroundings alertly and standing behind her and Ankari, keeping anyone from coming up too close behind them. Having a bodyguard was decidedly weird. Granted, he was
Ankari’s
bodyguard, but Jamie liked to think that he would expend some effort to protect her, too, if she was targeted.

“Do you want the long or short version?” Ankari asked as they stepped off the moving sidewalk.

“Short,” Jamie told him, a piece of friendly advice. Ankari wouldn’t burble on the way Lauren did, but she did know enough to give a very thorough answer, even if she ostensibly handled only the business’s accounting and marketing side.

“Short is fine,” Sergei said.

Jamie tucked strands of hair behind her ears, ones that had escaped her braids in the wind generated by the open-air sidewalk. She caught Sergei watching her movements, his eyes intent. His normal expression was on the intense side, as if he was always trying to figure someone out or decide if there was trouble around. It was a little intimidating. He seemed to realize he was staring at her and softened his face, giving her a slight bow. A thank-you for the advice? She wasn’t sure, but he returned to surveying their surroundings as Ankari spoke, and they walked toward the front door.

“We have a research part and a clinical part to our business,” Ankari said. “I won’t bore you with the details of the research we’re doing on ancient alien microbiota—” Sergei blinked a few times at that, “—but our current clinical work involves providing transplants of gut flora, giving people with compromised intestinal systems the microflora of a healthy and, of course, thoroughly screened person. There are numerous parasitic ailments that can be overcome this way, and a person who had previously suffered from all manner of gut dysbiosis can develop a healthy intestinal system after just a few treatments.”

Sergei touched his abdomen. “Why would someone have a compromised system to start with?”

“Any number of reasons from poor diet to extreme stress to past diseases to infections. Infections are particularly problematic in our system. We believe it’s because humans didn’t evolve here. We’re studying what remains of the ancient aliens’ microbiota—it’s all fossilized as you might imagine—in the hopes that we can use the same gut flora that they possessed to thrive here. Maybe more than thrive, since the aliens were purported to be similar to us but lived much longer and were healthier and stronger overall.”

“Huh.” Sergei leaned closer to Jamie as they stopped at the front door. “That was the short version?”

He had whispered it, but Ankari smirked back at them. “Sorry, I’ve had to write these things a thousand times for the marketing literature. It all sort of rambles out.”

“I did ask,” Sergei said.

“That’ll teach you.” Jamie grinned at him, and he paused again, his lips parted and his eyes intense as he looked at her.

Her grin faltered—had she said the wrong thing? Maybe she shouldn’t be teasing him, in light of what Sergeant Hazel had said. Or simply because he was supposed to be working, to be focused on protecting them.

Sergei winced slightly and looked away.

Ankari spoke into an intercom, and the door soon opened. Jamie hustled inside after her.

Despite the dilapidated exterior, the corridors inside were wide and clean. A cafeteria opened up to the left and a waiting room to the right, with a woman working behind a desk. A few of the floor tiles were chipped, but the remaining ones were polished and free of dust. The people sitting in the chairs, presumably waiting for service, were less tidy. A mix of white- and brown-skinned men and women, they wore clothes not much different from what Jamie and her family favored around the farm, long-sleeved cotton shirts and sturdy overalls, no hint of the Gar-zymes or other technological weavings that allowed garments to change colors, adjust sizes, or repel stains. That much was clear from the dirt smears and faded stains on the clothes, many of the overalls baggy and large on the gaunt frames of the people. Some had yellowed skin, shaking hands, bags under their eyes, and other signs of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. With tired, weathered faces, they all looked like they could use some extra meals. Now and then, one would glance toward the cafeteria, eyes full of longing, but the only people eating in there were men and women dressed in the hospital’s white and pastel green uniform.

“Those are the downsiders?” Jamie whispered.

Ankari gave her a grim nod, then walked to the desk.

“I’m beginning to see why they need help,” she muttered to herself, “and why one of them might throw away his or her life for a chance for… something better.”

She had been speaking to herself, thinking out loud, and hadn’t expected an answer, but Sergei said, “It’s likely the majority of their crops go to GalCon.”

“That’s how it was on my farm, too, but we still had enough to eat.” Not enough to ever amass any wealth, but that was the plight of farmers all over the system; at least her family owned the land and had the freedom to work it as they saw fit, so long as they made their annual quotas.

“My guess is that they’re being double-taxed.” Sergei spread a hand toward the ceiling—encompassing the entire floating city? “There’s not much in the way of industry or food production up here. The wealth these people enjoy must come from somewhere.”

“That’s despicable.” Jamie was probably being naive—she knew she was—and showing her sheltered youth, but she couldn’t keep from feeling indignation on these people’s behalf.

Sergei lifted a shoulder.

“You don’t think so?” she asked, a little disappointed. She wasn’t sure why. Someone who killed people for a living probably didn’t care much about the plight of humanity in general.

“Oh, it is,” he said, “but I’ve seen… much worse. Where I was born…” He considered her face for a moment, then shook his head and said, “Never mind. Your friend is waving to you.”

Ankari
was
gesturing for them to join her, but that didn’t make Jamie forget Sergei’s words, the hint that he had grown up in unpleasant circumstances. Maybe his youth, whatever it had been like, accounted for why he had picked such a dubious career in the Fleet.

He paused before following her, frowning at something down the hall. Jamie looked but only glimpsed someone darting into a cross hallway.

“Trouble?” she asked.

“Maybe. If there is, I’ll take care of it.” Sergei pointed toward Ankari. She and the receptionist were heading through a door behind the desk.

Jamie hurried to catch up, though she couldn’t help but look at the people she passed, the forlorn faces watching her. There was a gaunt boy of eleven or twelve in the last chair, and she wished she had a candy bar or some other treat she could have given him. She caught Sergei giving the boy a long look, too, and wondered if he was as jaded and indifferent as his shrug had made him seem.

Jamie caught up to Ankari as she turned into an office down the corridor behind the waiting room. There might have been a door once, but it had been removed—or the hinges had rusted off.

An older woman in white and pastel green sat at a desk inside, no less than three holographic displays hovering in the air, showing accounts and medical records. She flicked a couple of them off and waved for Ankari to sit down. Jamie sat in a chair farther back from the desk.

After Sergei took a look around the office and skewered the doctor with a soul-piercing expression, he stepped into the hallway and leaned against the wall next to the doorjamb. From her seat in the back, Jamie could see his arm. She wondered if she should wait out there, too, since she had nothing to add to the meeting. Maybe she could talk to Sergei and ask him about the childhood he had hinted at. No, she shouldn’t bother him. He was working. She didn’t know why she was interested in his past. Some morbid curiosity about what might prompt a man to become an assassin?

“I appreciate you coming,” the doctor said. “The downsiders who are sent up here tend to be experts on equipment or have otherwise critical positions in the system, so the government prefers to keep them alive rather than finding and training replacements.”

“How magnanimous,” Ankari said. “What happens to the people who aren’t experts on anything except harvesting crops?”

The doctor spread her hands, a helpless expression on her face. “Trust me, I would prefer to help everyone and improve the conditions down there if it were possible, but we’re given an extremely stringent budget. We put everything toward helping patients.” She glanced toward the missing door. “And I do mean everything.”

Jamie followed the doctor’s gaze, again noting the rusty hinges. She also noted that Sergei’s arm wasn’t in sight anymore. Weird, he wouldn’t have left, would he? Not when he was supposed to be watching them.

She leaned closer to the doorway. He had probably shifted a few inches to the side. But even when she left her chair, she couldn’t see him. She lifted a hand toward Ankari and mouthed, “Be right back,” and stepped outside. Sergei wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Surely he hadn’t wandered off to the cafeteria or something, not two minutes into the meeting. If Ankari had been in there for hours, it might be understandable, but deserting so early? She barely knew him, but didn’t think that seemed like him. Then she remembered the person who had darted into a doorway and Sergei’s admission that there might be trouble. Had that person made another appearance?

Jamie glanced toward the office, wondering if either woman would care if she wandered off. They were engrossed in a conversation—that was Ankari’s negotiating face—so they probably wouldn’t notice. If there was trouble, Jamie should probably let Sergei handle it, but when there was a pause in the discussion in the office, she heard voices in the distance. They weren’t coming from the waiting room, but from somewhere beyond an intersection that lay in the other direction.

She spotted a lavatory sign near the cross hall and decided she might have to use the facilities. That would at least be an excuse for her to wander in that direction.

Not trying to silence the clomp of her work boots, she headed for the door. She doubted she could sneak so quietly that Sergei—or some bounty hunter who had Sergei-like training—wouldn’t hear her.

The voices became clearer as she walked down the hallway. There were two men speaking, and one sounded like Sergei. They stopped before she could make out what they were talking about. They had doubtlessly heard her. She pushed open the bathroom door, glad it
did
have a door, and it squeaked on rusty hinges. She took a step, but didn’t go in. She let the door fall shut. It squeaked again. She froze, wondering if the silly ruse would work to fool an assassin. Would the men start talking again, or would they know she was there? Judging by what she had heard, they were too far down the side corridor to see her. There was a little noise coming from other offices and hospital rooms along the hallway, so it wasn’t so quiet that they could hear her breathing. She hoped. For all she knew, Sergei had cyborg enhancements.