The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (23 page)

Her resentment faded as soon as she started reading.

...Lieutenant Sedgwick Thomlin, dishonorably discharged without benefits or pay after being found guilty of murdering his commanding officer Captain Terrance Huntington during the Dandarisk IX mission.

The article went on, giving more details on how Sedge had been found planet-side during the height of the mission, holding a pistol over his captain’s dead body. The minutes of the court martial were classified.

“
If he can murder his CO,” Mom said, “you better believe he’s capable of tricking you into confiding in him so he can steal everything we find. Did you tell him about the ship?”

“
No,” Kalish said, numbness creeping through her body.

Sedge, a murderer? Of course a mercenary was a hired fighter and would shoot others in the heat of battle, but to kill his own commanding officer? A man he worked with and knew? She could not know what had happened down on that planet, but the report hinted of a callousness that she would not have guessed Sedge capable of. As her mother suggested, he might not be sharing his true nature with her.

“
Did you bring him up to the bridge, or did you find him here?” her mother asked, squinting suspiciously at the control panels.

“
I found him here,” Kalish admitted.

“
Doing what?”

“
Looking at the view, he said.”

“
The view? Kalish, you can’t be so naive. I understand that he’s handsome, but that just makes him all the more effective as a spy. You better check those computer records.”

A fire kindled in Kalish’s heart that had nothing to do with arousal. If Sedge had been snooping around in her private files, she would be furious. She would know he couldn’t be trusted.

“
I’ll check,” she said shortly.

“
Good.” Her mother headed for the hatch. “Kalish?” she added more softly. “I know you think I’m a tough woman, but I’m not young anymore, and you and your sister... look, if those mercenaries turn on us, we would have trouble. You need to think about if we really need them, or if it would make sense to send them back the way we came before we find the ship.”

Kalish rubbed her face. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get the ship out on our own, if we even succeed in finding it.”

“
You better hope they don’t think they can get it out without us either, then. That’s a prize that makes what we’re paying them seem paltry. It would pay all of their salaries for a year, if not
years
. You better believe that they would turn on us to take it.”

“
I understand, Mom. I won’t be... naive again.”

Mom hesitated, her hand on the hatch wheel. “You can be naive on vacation somewhere, once the family is back together and nobody around knows what your occupation is. Or that you’re good at it.”

Kalish nodded. “I know.”

She didn’t hear the hatch clang shut. She was already diving into the computer files, searching for signs of intruders, not wanting to find them, but afraid she would.

* * *

Sedge sat on the edge of his bunk, staring down at the jacket folded neatly in his lap, his thumb hovering over the Mandrake Company comm-patch attached to the shoulder. He could not know for certain what Kalish and her mother were talking about on the bridge, but he guessed that the older Ms. Blackwell had somehow found out about Sedge’s snooping. Maybe she had been monitoring the bridge from her cabin or had checked the files for some reason. Either way, he dreaded the look on Kalish’s face when she found out he had been investigating her past. If he was lucky, he would get a chance to explain his motivations, but would she give him that? Or would it even matter? She hadn’t been pleased when she had found out he had been feigning unconsciousness while she talked to her mother, and this was worse. Much worse.

Should he call the ship and try to get someone to investigate Dirk Cometrunner? Or should he pretend he had never seen those records?

As if he could do that. As if he could forget the humiliation he had felt when Kalish had come in and started stroking his hair, clueless to the fact that he had been breaking into her computer files. He had wanted to make an excuse and leave, knowing it was craven to sit there and indulge in her touch when he had been snooping behind her back, but his body had been too weak. And aroused. As soon as she walked in, clad in nothing more than socks and silken pajamas that hugged her every curve, he hadn’t been able to think of anything except making love to her. He could still taste the sweet warmth of her lips, feel her soft smooth skin beneath his hands, remember her heavy breathing as she ground against him in the chair, wanting him as much as he had wanted her.

“
Stop it,” Sedge growled to himself, annoyed at the insistent erection that refused to disappear, despite his predicament. He was certain the mother had noticed more than her daughter’s unbuttoned pajama shirt when she had been scouring them with her gaze, such as the way Sedge had been standing there in stupefied silence, his penis trying to leap out of his trousers.

He ignored the discomfort now and waved at the comm-patch. He had lost track of what time it would be on the
Albatross
, but he trusted someone would be on the bridge to answer. But nobody responded to the comm’s signal. There were probably too many miles of rock overhead for the unit to breach. He tried Bravo Shuttle instead.

Several long seconds passed before anyone answered, reminding him that this was the middle of the night. Since he hadn’t been included in the watch rotation, he hadn’t been certain which shuttle would have someone up, but he needed to talk to Thatcher for this.

“
Thomlin?” came Tick’s groggy voice. “Everything all right?”

“
Yes. No. Sort of.”

“
That’s specific.”

Sedge snorted. “I know. Is Thatcher there? Are you able to comm the ship from over there?” The shuttle would have more powerful transmitters than his tiny patch.

“
I think so.” Tick yawned noisily. “I’ll get him.”

A moment later, Thatcher’s voice came out of Sedge’s patch. “Yes, Thomlin? Do you have information to report?”

Sedge hesitated. Did he? Kalish wouldn’t like it, but he said, “Yes. I need to get a message to the captain too. Are the shuttles still in contact with the
Albatross
?”

“
Yes. The reception is poor, but I gave him a report before bed.”

“
Good. I need to get this information to him, in case he’s in a position to do something about it.”

“
Tell me.”

Sedge took a deep breath and explained everything he had read in Kalish’s file and shared his suspicions that their duty might be complete if they could simply get the father back.

“
Interesting,” Thatcher said. “I would very much like to see an ancient alien ship. I have models of them, but the manufacturers who made them were largely speculating.”

Sedge scowled at the patch. “That’s not the most important thing here, sir.”

“
You believe the company should attempt to retrieve Ms. Blackwell’s father? This is not the mission we were hired for.”

“
No, but the mission she hired us for would be unnecessary if her father were returned to her.” Though Sedge didn’t think money was Thatcher’s prime motivation for being a mercenary, he added, “I’m sure she would still pay us for our time.”

“
But this is not her request, correct? You have obtained this information without her knowledge.”

It wasn’t an accusation, not exactly, but Sedge’s face heated anew. This whole night had been a mess. Why hadn’t he simply gone to bed?

“
Correct,” he said tersely.

“
I understand. Your diligence to the mission will be noted. Thatcher, out.”

“
Diligence?” Sedge mouthed after the transmission had been cut. He felt like a coward and a traitor, and Thatcher was praising him.

Sedge dropped the jacket onto the deck and rolled onto the bed, again wishing he had gone to sleep earlier instead of snooping.

A frosty silence greeted Sedge when he walked onto the bridge late the next morning. He had stayed in his cabin long after sounds in the corridor had informed him that the three women were awake. Perhaps wisely, the cold looks he received from Kalish and her mother implied. Whatever the senior Ms. Blackwell had told her daughter, none of the attraction from the night before remained on Kalish’s face. Tia didn’t look back at him at all. She was busy at the helm, piloting the freighter into an expansive darkness that had grown so wide, neither the walls, floor, nor ceiling of the cavern were visible.

“
Our sensors confirm,” came Thatcher’s voice over the comm. “There is a large platform ahead that is
not
a natural construct.”

Kalish and her mother turned their attention back to the view screen. The two Mandrake Company shuttles were visible at the edges, flanking the
Divining Rod
and flying just ahead. Three sets of light beams swept back and forth and up and down in the darkness. So far, nothing was visible, but Sedge leaned forward, knowing they should be nearing the first location his program had found. If they were lucky and this was the place Kalish was looking for, maybe she would forget her ire with him and simply be enthusiastic about successfully reaching her find. But then, nothing would remain to keep her here. She would leave the planet and Mandrake Company forever, and Sedge would never see her again.

Bats flew through the
Divining
Rod
’s light beams, and Tia flinched, her hand jerking on the flight stick. A shudder ran through the ship.

“
I hate those things,” she grumbled.

“
Just be glad we haven’t run into anything worse yet,” Kalish said.

Something glinted up ahead, a shuttle’s search lights reflecting off something at the edge of their range.

“
What is that?” Kalish stood, her palms flat on the control panel, as if she would leap through the view screen if she could.

Another set of lights joined the first, and the outline of a platform came into view. The hairs rose on the back of Sedge’s neck. He wasn’t yet ready to proclaim this an abandoned alien outpost, but Thatcher was right. It was
not
natural.

The platform stretched at least a mile wide and a mile deep, with structures atop it, buildings he would call them, though they reminded him of a cross between geodesic domes and amorphous blobs rather than anything typically constructed by humans. Vertical protrusions that might have been chimneys or smokestacks rose from the tops of the structures. Mounds of rubble—ore, he supposed—were piled all around the three buildings in the center. Here and there, large machines that might be the equivalents of cranes and bulldozers rose above the hilly landscape.

“
At a glance, I read titanium, diamonds, iridium, tripytarium, and bowshen crystals in those piles,” Thatcher said. “Tons and tons of valuable ore, carefully extricated from the rocks here. There’s even more underneath the platform.”

His shuttle’s lights swept downward, and Sedge gaped at the mountain of ore that rose almost as high as the platform. The accretion of the centuries covered most of it, dulling the valuable minerals to a drab gray, but the sensors would be capable of seeing through that. The base of the mountain disappeared in the darkness below the platform, and he guessed that they were looking at a pile of precious ore more than a mile high and perhaps just as wide.

“
Is that spillover?” Val asked, her tone shocked. “Look at those piles on the platform. They go right up to the edge.”

“
That does appear to be a possibility,” Thatcher said. “Ore was collected here, perhaps by automated mining ships, the same as we use, and deposited on the platform. And when the people who worked in the refinery left, the ships may have remained, continuing to deliver their loads for countless years or even centuries before succumbing to the rigors of time.”

“
Succumbing to the rigors of time?” Striker repeated. “Thatcher, when are you going to stop talking like a poet who got hit by a dictionary?”