The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (39 page)

His words hit Kalish like a mallet to the gut. Oh.
That
was why Sedge looked worried.

“
I’m hoping that closes again soon,” Sedge said, “but even if it does, we’re not far from the mining compound. Someone’s probably going to have noticed that.”

A shadow fell across the hangar again as the alien ship moved under the tunnel, blocking the shaft of sunlight. It rose upward, but as soon as it crossed into the passage, it faded from existence. The ship disappeared, and so did all of the machinery and tools. The trapdoor and the tool room under Kalish’s foot winked out as well, leaving her team alone in the empty rock-filled hangar. Everything was as it had been when they had first walked in, except for the sunlight still streaming down through that door.

“
Is that going to close soon?” Tick asked. “I like some sun on my face as much as the next feller, but that’s making me feel a mite vulnerable.”

“
Kalish?” Tia said. “I’m able to pick up comm chatter. At first, I thought it was coming from orbit, and there may be some of that too, but it sounds like there are Fleet ships nearby, maybe at that mining complex. We’re only a few miles from it now, aren’t we?”

Kalish swallowed. “Yes.”

“
Their transmissions are encrypted, but the people talking seem real excited about something.”

“
I don’t doubt it.” Kalish clenched her first. She was not ready to go—damn it, all she had was a couple of nuts and bolts in her pocket so far—but they might not have any choice.

Sedge was already jogging back to the panel on the wall when Kalish pointed at the cavern ceiling and said, “We need that closed, please.” Even though she was polite, her voice sounded strained.

He understood. That exit might be useful when they were ready to go, but they hadn’t yet found anything that they could take with them.

“
I know,” he said. “I’ll try to close it.”

As soon as he reached the wall, he pressed the roof symbol he had touched earlier. A resounding
ker-thud
came from high above. He could not see the cavern opening from his spot in the corner, but he watched the still-open ceiling of the hangar, waiting for the slash of sunlight to narrow. The noise came a couple more times, followed by a distressed grinding.

“
Oh, sure. Their killer robots work perfectly after ten thousand years, but the door sticks?”

He pressed the rune a few more times, but the tunnel remained open, sunlight streaming down into the chamber.

“
Striker, Tick,” came Kalish’s voice from across the hangar, oddly muffled, as if she had her head in a box. “I need your muscles.”

Sedge returned to that side of the building, hoping she had found something and that it could be removed quickly. Striker was climbing into a hole—the entrance the trapdoor in the holodisplay had shown. They had found the actual one, exactly where the recording had shown it.

Curious, Sedge ran to join them, but a beep came from his comm-patch, and he slowed down to answer it.

“
Thomlin here.”

“
Sedge, this is Val. Are you down in that hole?”

“
Yes. Uh, who all knows about the hole? Are you all right? Is Thatcher?”

“
Who
doesn’t
know about it? It just opened up on a mountainside right above the desert floor where two Fleet heavy cruisers are landed.”

Sedge groaned and peered into the hole. “If we want to have any hope of escaping, we need to go now,” he told Kalish, Striker, and Tick, who were trying to lever a sleek gray cylinder out of a storage cubicle in the wall. It reminded Sedge of a torpedo, but thicker.

“
Tell my mom to get the hand tractor,” Kalish ordered. “I don’t know if this is the engine, but it definitely looks like something important. That rune that means energy is written on the side.”

“
Hand tractor?” Val asked. “Sedge, you need to get out of there now. There’s no time to pack the luggage. And be careful coming out. There are ships heading over to look inside. Thatcher is harrying them, but they’ve figured out he isn’t striking to kill, and they’re mostly ignoring us. Sedge, we can’t get in a firefight with Fleet over your girlfriend.”

“
I know that. We’re hurrying.” Sedge relayed Kalish’s request, then climbed down the ladder, so he could help the others. “Can’t the
Albatross
come down and try to distract them again? Maybe that bio-agent could be used in the open air.” Not that he wanted the
Divining Rod
to fly out through a corrosive miasma, but if it would bother the Fleet ships, it would be worth it.

“
We don’t know where the
Albatross
is,” Val said. “We still can’t raise them on the comm, and the only thing we see in orbit is three more Fleet ships. This is way more than we signed on to handle.”

“
I know, I know. What happened out in the cavern? Have we... committed any crimes against the military that would be indefensible?”

“
I hope not. I don’t know. Gregor led those fighters on a high-speed chase through the caverns, and most of them crashed of their own accord. I blew a new exit in the side of the mountain, thinking we might slip out unnoticed. Hah. Fleet’s all over out here.”

“
Understood,” Sedge said. A small green box affixed to a corner next to wall of tools caught his eye.

Striker, Tick, and Kalish were shoving their cylinder over to the trapdoor. It must have been too heavy even for the three of them to lift. When Kalish’s mother appeared and tossed down a hand tractor, Sedge trusted they could handle the burden themselves. He slid his hands over the box, searching for a way to detach it. Aside from the tools, there wasn’t much else in the room, besides another of those cylinders, also in a cubicle that had been designed to fit it. Maybe the box held the computer. If, like he suspected, the program inside was a training aid, something meant to teach those people how to construct a spaceship from scratch, then it could be more valuable than any other artifact they might find.

It did not come off the wall when he pulled and twisted. He patted all over it for buttons or latches, but all he found was a plaque screwed into the bottom. The runes etched in it were probably the equivalent of a serial number. He could investigate them later,
if
he succeeded in pulling out the box.

“
Kalish, can I borrow your laser cutter?” Sedge glanced back, only to realize she had already climbed up the ladder.

A blueish field surrounded the cylinder, and it had tipped vertically, rising under the power of the tractor beam.

“
Careful,” Striker said. “Don’t get too close to the energy field. I’ve heard those things scramble your balls.”

“
It’s amazing you’ve lived this long with your balls still intact,” Tick said. “You find threats to them everywhere.”

“
Kalish?” Sedge risked leaning close to the field to wave up to her. “Can I—”

The laser tool dropped down, landing in his hand.

“
Striker, Tick, get the second one of those levered out of there,” Kalish said. “Two would be better than one.”

“
Kind of a greedy treasure hunter, aren’t you?” Striker asked, but he and Tick turned to follow her orders.

“
I’m going to ignore that question, since it’s coming from someone with a pocketful of pilfered gold.”

As soon as the cylinder cleared the tool room, the beam pulled it in the direction of the door. Sedge turned back to the box, hoping he would not sever any crucial components when he cut into the back of it. With luck, he could simply break the seal and pull it off.

“
You almost out of there, Sedge?” Val asked.

Striker grunted, his legs quivering as he and Tick tugged out the other cylinder. “Define
almost
.”

“
We found what we were looking for,” Sedge said. “Sort of. We have to get it out of here for Kalish.”

“
For Kalish? Get the hell out of there. I’m not joking. Otherwise, this mission is about to cost us all our lives.”

“
Confirmed,” came Thatcher’s voice, calm even though he must be flying around like a madman up there to avoid being struck down. “I order you to leave right now, Lieutenant Thomlin.”

“
Yes, sir.” Sedge kept cutting. Disobeying orders was not in his nature, but since Mandrake Company did not have a ship down here, he had to rely on Kalish and her family. They were
not
going to leave before they had those cylinders aboard. He didn’t have to ask to know that.

“
Some fighters are heading in,” Val said. “You’re about to have new friends. A dozen of them at least.”

Striker cursed. “That dirt-sucking little freighter couldn’t handle one fighter, much less twelve. LT, what’re we going to do?”

He and Tick had pushed the cylinder under the trapdoor, but they stopped to look at him, sweat dripping down their brows and concern in their eyes.
Now
they looked to him for leadership? For orders? Most of the time, they treated him as if they were all the same rank.

“
Get to the ship,” Sedge said. What else could they do? “Kalish can get that with the tractor if she wants to risk her life for it. I’ll—” Be right up, he had meant to say, but the box tumbled free, and he fell to the ground, with it slamming into his lap.

“
Fighters in here,” Tia’s voice came over someone’s comm. “I’m taking off, whether you all are here or not.”

“
Stay there,” Kalish yelled, her voice coming from above the trapdoor. She activated the tractor beam again, before Striker and Tick could climb out. “Hail them. Tell them we’ve found good stuff, and if they shoot us, they’ll risk blowing it up.”

Sedge pushed himself to his feet, grunting under the weight of the box. He levered it on top of the cylinder, where it balanced precariously, right before the energy field activated. Both items raised toward the trapdoor. Sedge clenched and unclenched his fist, wanting to charge up the ladder, whether their purloined items were blocking the exit or not.

“
Hurry, Kalish,” he urged, not trusting her sister to effectively negotiate with those fighters, or trusting the pilots inside to be high enough on the chain of command to do anything except follow orders, orders that probably instructed them to blow up the
Divining Rod
and anyone else in the vicinity.

The cylinder and his box disappeared from view. Striker and Tick charged up the ladder ahead of Sedge, clearly feeling the urgency of the situation as strongly as he did.

“
Robots,” came a call from outside of the hangar. Kalish’s mother.

“
Not again,” Striker groaned as he pounded for the door.

“
Guess you’ll get to blow something up today after all,” Tick said, matching his pace.

“
All I did was blow up the mountains
under
the robots last time. Then they got back up and kept firing.”

Sedge raced out the door right after them. Fighters streaked through the shaft of sunlight, heading straight for the
Divining Rod
. The craft had not taken off yet, but the shields were up. Orange and crimson laser beams lit up the cavern and bounced off the ship.

“
Lower the shields, Tia,” Kalish barked. “We’re coming in.”

“
Can’t. We’ll be blown to hell.”

An explosion came from the side, and Sedge glimpsed a black robot before the flames roared into a ball around it. The senior Ms. Blackwell ran toward the group, her rifle in one hand and a second grenade in the other.

“
I’m starting to like that woman,” Striker said.