The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (35 page)

“
Ten minutes to destination,” Thatcher said. If the man ever grew tired of piloting, it was not apparent in his voice. His personality was not the only reason crew members called him a cyborg or android behind his back.

Val cracked a noisy yawn in response.

Tia snorted, yawning herself, albeit more quietly.

“
That is not an acceptable acknowledgment, Lieutenant Calendula,” Thatcher said.

“
Does that mean you’re not willing to come over here and give me a neck rub?” Val asked.

At first, Thatcher did not respond, and Sedge assumed he wouldn’t, but then he said, “Perhaps it is fortuitous that the
Albatross
remains unresponsive to my hails. Captain Mandrake might not consider this comm chatter appropriate.”

Sedge snorted. It was nothing compared to the conversation he had walked in on earlier, back in the cargo hold. Tick and Striker had finished cleaning their weapons and had moved on to discussing less military matters, such as speculation of the age of Kalish’s sister and whether she liked mercenaries. Tick, thank his parents for instilling within him a scruple or two, had been arguing that she was too young for them. Striker had rather crudely said that a girl old enough to have breasts was old enough to rub them up against a man and have some fun. Sedge might have punched him for that comment, but he hadn’t needed to, since Kalish’s mother had overheard. She might be a finance specialist these days, but she could throw a knife across a cargo hold with enough accuracy to land it in the canteen a man happened to be holding in his lap. Of course, it was possible she hadn’t noticed the canteen and had truly intended to castrate Striker. The conversation had turned much cleaner after that.

“
Five minutes,” Thatcher said. “Once again, I do not detect any mining ships.”

They hadn’t since Sedge had unleashed his program. After successfully sending the last two ships home, he had plugged into the
Divining Rod’s
mainframe and transmitted the commands over a longer distance. The remaining automated craft in the tunnels had headed for home long before the group reached them. He would allow himself to feel smug, but that wouldn’t work with those manned Fleet fighters, once they showed up. And if this turned out to be a dead end, and the team had to turn around and fly back the other way, encountering them would grow far more likely.

“
Destination reached,” Thatcher said quietly.

Quietly, perhaps, because there was absolutely nothing remarkable about the decimated cavern. He, too, had to be wondering if they had spent the last eight hours flying in the wrong direction and would have to retrace their route.

“
Looking for a pool,” Kalish said, leaning over the sensor display.

“
There are several along the floor,” Thatcher said.

His shuttle swooped down, and its lights were soon playing across piles and piles of rubble that apparently had not held enough ore to be worth carting out. It was as if a miniature mountain range sprouted from the cavern floor.

Kalish had the oval relic out, map side up. She alternated examining it and looking out the view screen. She pointed and murmured something to her sister.

“
You’re the boss,” Tia said.

The
Divining
Rod
headed off in a different direction, though it also followed the floor, as closely as the rubble heaps allowed. Here and there, water and sludge lay in the valleys between the mounds, but none of the large puddles had the appearance of an ancient pool that had not been disturbed for eons.

“
This
is where your map led you?” Kalish’s mother asked from the hatchway. She wore a tool belt, in addition to her weapons belt, and frowned darkly at everyone as she leaned into the bridge. Judging by the bags under her eyes, she had not slept in some time.

“
Yes, Mom,” Kalish said.

“
Well, the hull is fixed, if we need to get out of here.”

“
There’s little point in leaving until we find what we came for.”

“
Listen,” her mom said. “I’m worried about your father, too, but if we all end up in jail, we won’t be able to do him any good. This does
not
look like a promising site for ruins.”

Kalish did not look back, but Sedge could see part of her profile from his spot, the grimness of her face and her clenched jaw.
She
probably needed a neck rub, but he dared not try it with her mother looking on.

“
I’m not finding anything promising,” Val said over the comm.

“
Nor I,” Thatcher added.

The
Divining Rod
was heading straight for a corner—a dead end.

Kalish brought her knuckles to her mouth, watching the view screen intently.

“
There,” she breathed, rising out of her seat as the ship crested the last of the rubble mounds.

“
It’s a pool of water,” Tia said. “Dirty looking water, at that. You make it sound like we’ve found some grand treasure.”

Kalish must not have shared her suspicions with her sister. Sedge came forward to stand behind her, not caring if the mother glared at him.

“
It’s larger than it appeared on the map, and it looks deep, like something that’s been there a while.” Sedge pointed. “There’s a pump on that end, but it’s rusty and long-forgotten, it looks like.”

Kalish slumped back into her seat. “Does that mean they pumped out the pool at one point? If they did, they would have found any tunnels down there.”

“
It’s worth checking anyway. Maybe the water filled in too quickly, and it ended up not being worth draining for them.”

“
Checking the sensors,” Kalish said, “but they’re not able to probe very far into the water. That’s surprising. If we were in the atmosphere, I could get readings all the way out to the nebula. Why would ten feet of water be an obstacle?”

“
I don’t know, but the fact that it is might mean something,” Sedge said. “Maybe this isn’t a normal pool.”

Kalish’s mother snorted. “You’re as idealistic as she is.”

“
My idealism has proved fruitful in the past, Mom. We wouldn’t have this business otherwise.”

Her mother sighed. “I know. You’re right.”

“
If the aliens didn’t want their secret shipbuilding facility to be found,” Sedge said, “they might have used a sensor-dampening material to block out probes.”

“
Underwater sensor-dampening material?” Kalish asked, though she turned in her seat, her face hopeful rather than skeptical. She
wanted
him to be right.

“
Why not? Lots of ships today have such a mesh built into the hulls.”

“
I wonder if that’s why the mining ships zeroed in on the
Divining
Rod
,” Kalish said. “We don’t have anything like that.”

“
Perhaps.”

“
Does that mean we’re going to have to go underwater and take a look with our eyes?” Tia asked.

“
Is this ship seaworthy?” Sedge asked. The pool was large enough for the combat shuttles to dive into, and even the bulkier
Divining Rod
could make it with plenty of room to spare. So long as the pool did not end up being five feet deep, and they hit the bottom as soon as they entered.

“
Seaworthy
?” the mother asked. “I’ve been working to make it space worthy. Nobody said anything about water.”

“
The hull will be airtight, naturally,” Kalish said, “and I’ve landed the ship in a lake before. The engines weren’t damaged by a little water. The only problem would be if we went down too deep. Spaceships don’t have to withstand all of the pressure that submarines do.”

“
I doubt that pool is
that
deep,” Sedge said dryly.

“
Navigating could be challenge too. We don’t have ballast tanks, so we would actually have to fire the thrusters.”

“
Maybe someone should just get out and stick her head underwater,” Tia said.

“
Do you have underwater suits?” Sedge asked. “Or even spacesuits? That might—”

“
We have company,” Thatcher said.

“
More mining ships?” Sedge guessed.

“
No. Eight Fleet fighters just showed up on my sensors.”

“
What?
” Sedge said at the same time as Kalish.

“
They’re supposed to be two days behind,” she added.

“
They’re flying swiftly,” Thatcher said. “They’ll enter this cavern in less than two minutes.”

“
What do we do?” Tia asked.

“
Try it now.” Sedge pointed at the pool. “We have to find out if there’s anything worth defending, or if we should get out of here.”

Kalish scowled at his last few words, but all she said was, “Do it, Tia.”

“
Anyone care to speculate on how they found us?” Val asked.

“
It’s possible Ms. Blackwell’s ship was tagged with a tracking device,” Thatcher said. “The mining ships were also zeroing in on the craft.”

“
We’re not tagged with anything,” Kalish snapped. “We just don’t have a sensor-dampening hull. It’s been weeks since we’ve seen Fleet ships, and until a few days ago, they had no reason to have an interest in me.”

“
What about pirates?” Sedge asked. “Did you communicate with them only from afar, or did any of them get close?”

“
The only ones I’ve been close to are you people.”

Tia manipulated the controls as the conversation went on around her, and the pool grew large on the view screen. They dipped into the water, their thrusters going from keeping them aloft and hovering to pushing them below the surface. The running lights thrust through the murky water ahead of them. Even with the heavy sediment dulling visibility, deep, twisting passages stretched ahead of them instead of the shallow bottom that Sedge had feared they would encounter.

“
Which way?” Tia whispered. “Neither of those tunnels looks large enough for a big ship. We might be able to squeeze through that one.” She waved toward a side passage that yawned, dark and serpentine, the end impossible to see.

“
Can the sensors read it now?” Sedge asked, leaning over Kalish’s shoulder.

“
The sensors are completely bonked out.” She pointed at the panel. “Look, they think we’re half sunk in rock at the bottom of the lake.”

Tia cursed, her hands darting across the controls. “Hurry up and decide. This is—it’s a real struggle not to let us float back up.”

“
Spaceships are designed to be light, like airplanes,” Sedge said. “Submarines are heavy. I know of craft that can be both, and I believe the combat shuttles are actually rated for limited underwater operations, but I agree that getting through here as quickly as possible is necessary. Although, we’ll be lucky to navigate that tunnel. This isn’t the kind of navigation a ship is designed for.”

Tia snorted. “I’ve got the shields up. We’ll just fire the thrusters and bump along, bouncing off the walls and going in the direction we want.”

“
I... guess that could work.”

“
You find anything in that pool, Sedge?” Val asked, her voice breaking up, as if hundreds of thousands of miles separated them instead of a couple hundred meters. “We’re about to get a visual on those ships, and picking fights with Fleet fighters isn’t going to be healthy for Mandrake Company, either now in the moment or long-term.”