The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) (10 page)

“It’s likely the cave is hidden,” Ms. Keys said, hugging herself and shivering. The temperature in the tropical jungle wasn’t that cold, but the wind and rain did add a bite.

Tick set his gear down so he could shrug off the jacket he wore over his armor. Wishing he had the opportunity to be chivalrous to Lauren instead, he said, “I’ll look for it,” and handed her the jacket.

Keys smiled at him.

Tick popped a fresh piece of gum in his mouth, felt the caffeine charging his limbs, and whistled as he headed off to check the waterfall and the cliff walls. Sergeant Hazel joined him, as alert and professional as the men in the unit, as usual. Her lips flattened at his cheerful whistling. He shrugged at her and changed the tune but kept going. Someone had to keep the jungle from feeling like a place they might die.

“Get any flashes of insight about caves?” Hazel asked as they walked along the base of the canyon, poking into crevices with their rifles.

“No.” Tick frowned at her. Had Mandrake been confiding in her about him? No, probably not. Mandrake didn’t confide in anyone except Ankari most of the time. Hazel had been along when they’d talked to the trader, and she surely remembered how he’d warned the group of danger before the enemy ship burst out of the lake.

“Too bad,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind finishing here quickly and getting out of this storm.”

“Don’t tell me the rain is bothering you. I didn’t think anything bothered you. Except Striker.”

“Striker bothers everybody.”

“That’s the truth.”

Tick peered into a mossy crack, lining his Eytect unit up with it. It snaked back into the cliff several feet before bending out of sight, but it did not look like a hidden cave entrance. Just in case the rocks might move, he poked around, looking for levers or switches for secret openings. Nothing.

Maybe he should
try
to get insights. So far, the visions and glimpses into people’s thoughts had come of their own accord, whether he was thinking about them or not.

“Can’t get behind the waterfall,” Hazel said, backing away, water dripping from the brim of her hat.

Tick rested his hand on the damp cliff wall and tried to imagine caves. A squawk came from across the pool, along with several bursts of laser fire.

Winged creatures were flying out of the trees, giant bats with talons and fangs. They swarmed toward a knot of men, howling and intent on attack. Mandrake fired from across the water, taking one down. Then he charged around the pool to get closer. Hazel took off in the same direction.

As Tick started after them, some sixth sense told him to look at the cliff instead of at the fight. A bat with a smoking wing flew out of control and crashed into the rocks—no, it
should
have crashed into the rocks. But it disappeared, going right through them.

Crimson and orange laser fire lit up the night, streaks chasing the bats around the sky. The agitated animals kept attacking, even though a number of them had fallen. Instead of joining the fray, as Tick had intended, he clambered across the rocks that rose out of the water at the base of the waterfall and ran toward the cliff. The bat had disappeared some twenty feet above the ground, but he patted all around, thinking some optical illusion might be hiding a cave.

“No, we’re fine,” Striker yelled over the whine of laser fire. “You stand over there and hug the rocks, why don’t you?”

Frowning, Tick looked over at him. He had little doubt the comment was for him, so he started to lift his rifle to help. To his surprise, the number of bats in the sky had doubled, with dozens and dozens of them swooping down and attacking. Mandrake and the men stood back to back, remaining calm as they fired into the winged hordes and keeping Keys safe within their circle. But the numbers were so great that even with their expertise, some of the creatures made it past their laser fire. A corporal cried out as fangs bit into his forearm, and his rifle tumbled from his grip. Keys squatted down, her eyes round with fear.

Even as Tick took aim at one of the creatures, frustration surged through him. This made no sense. Why would natural creatures, even creatures that had been created by alien terraforming and experimentation, hurl themselves to their deaths? Piles and piles of them lay around the circle of mercenaries.

“Go home,” he shouted, willing his anger and frustration to reach into the bats’ little brains and make an impression.

Not expecting that to happen, he fired at one diving toward Sergeant Hazel. It halted mid-flight. They all did, flapping their wings and spinning a hundred and eighty degrees. They broke off the attack and flew back into the air. In seconds, aside from the dead, not a single one remained.

Some of the mercenaries lowered their weapons. Others kept them up, as if expecting a second wave of attackers.
All
of the men looked over at Tick, their expressions ranging from alarmed to shocked to wary.

He wished the Eytect unit did not allow him to see such details. He hadn’t truly done anything to those bats, had he? More likely, they had realized they were outnumbered and had finally given in. But the way they had all turned away in the same instant… that had been strange. Almost eerie.

Mandrake led the way to the wall, or at least he tried. Ms. Keys charged past him.

“Did you send them away?” she asked, running up and latching onto Tick’s arm.

“No, I just yelled at them.”

“We yelled at them too,” Mandrake said dryly. “They didn’t leave.”

“Maybe your yell wasn’t fierce enough,” Tick said.

“Really.”

Tick didn’t like the way the rest of the men hung back. What, did they think they would catch some disease if they got close to him? Maybe he could have Hemlock show them his dice trick when they got back. That was far eerier than shouting at big bats.

“You find something over here?” Mandrake asked, looking at the ferns edging the base of the cliff and at the rock wall itself.

“I saw a bat fly into the wall up there.” Tick pointed. “It didn’t bounce off. It went right through.”

“You saw or you
saw
?”

Tick tapped his Eytect unit. “Might be an opening behind some clever camouflage here.”

He poked at the wall with the tip of his rifle barrel while trying to ignore the whispered comments from the men. His name was coming up frequently, and he doubted it was because they were admiring his hat.

Mandrake and Keys poked around too. The others stayed back, keeping watch—or avoiding Tick.

“Who seeks entrance to the Hidden Grotto?” a mechanical voice asked after Mandrake tried twisting a nub.

“Aside from a wounded bat?” Tick muttered.

“
I
seek entrance,” Ms. Keys said, bouncing in place, not noticing the mud squishing beneath the heels of her boots. “Hailey Keys.
Keys.
With a surname like that, how can you not let me in?”

The voice did not respond.

“If it’s dry in there, I wouldn’t mind coming in,” Tick said.

That also did not receive a response. He suspected that only people who were on the guest list would be invited in.

“Me and my grenades would like to come in,” Striker said, ambling up with one of the explosives in hand. “One way or another.” He winked at the captain.

Mandrake, still standing with his hand on the nub, ignored him. “Willow Mandrake,” he said quietly toward the cliff.

Tick doubted that would be any more effective than the other comments, but a beam of green light burst from the wall, forming a cone of illumination around Mandrake. His finger touched the trigger of his rifle, but he did not otherwise move. A soft hum came from the cliff as the light seemed to scan him.

“I love it when he confesses to that name,” Striker whispered to Tick.

After several long seconds, during which Mandrake remained utterly still, the beam of light disappeared. Tick thought he would be denied access, too, but then a portion of the cliff disappeared, revealing a cave. It was dark inside, aside from a few blinking green lights in the distance, but the Eytect unit picked up computer equipment along one wall and plants growing in raised garden beds in rows along the even floor.

“You got some druid blood we don’t know about, Cap’n?” Tick asked, trying to gauge how far up the cliff the large entrance went. Had that bat chanced upon some break in the barrier that camouflaged the door? It had been a solid wall, or a forcefield at least, because he had poked all around this area with his rifle barrel.

Mandrake shook his head. “I’ve done some work for druids in the past. That’s it.”

“The weird technodruids of Midway 5?”

“No, I’ve only heard of them. And broken out of one of their jail cells.”

Keys started to walk into the cave, but Mandrake blocked her way. “Me first, then Tick and Striker.”

“Whatever you say, Captain.” She produced a powerful flashlight and shone the beam inside.

The light flared like a sun in Tick’s Eytect unit before it dampened the night vision aspect down. He grimaced, blinking a few times and removing the device. He stuffed it in his pocket as he followed the captain inside.

Lights came on overhead, vining plants stretching along the cave ceiling with some of the leaves glowing with whitish green intensity, enough to drive the shadows back to the corners. Tick had seen the leaf-lights before on Midway 5, so wasn’t too startled by them, but he still found them odd.

As he’d noticed before, banks of computer equipment lined one wall, while the grow beds stretched a hundred feet or more to the back of the cave. Under the brighter light, Tick could identify various edible and medicinal plants stretching up to different heights. He recognized a lot of them from the gardens of his childhood, and he knew many were annuals. Floating misters hovered over the vegetation, and the farming process appeared largely automated, but someone must have been by this year to plant the beds.

Despite the captain’s insistence that he lead and Ms. Keys follow, she was only a step behind him, and she quickly veered off to explore. A holodisplay popped into existence above the computer terminal, and she started pressing buttons. A cross-section of some plant appeared in the air.

While a frowning Captain Mandrake walked over to join her, or maybe to berate her, Striker found the bat that had flown through the wall. It lay unmoving in a bed of gigantic strawberries, one wing draping over the edge.

“It’s dead,” Striker said. “And it’s bleeding on those strawberries. Gross.”

“You shouldn’t have been so inconsiderate as to shoot it,” Tick said.

“Not everybody can holler and make hordes of man-eating predators fly away.”

“How do you know they were man-eating?” Tick asked, wanting to distract him—distract everyone—from what he may or may not have accomplished with his shout. He still thought that might have been a coincidence.

“One tried to take a bite out of my favorite shoulder.”

“You have a favorite shoulder?”

“The one that I tuck Thumper against.”

Tick snorted. That was the grenade launcher, if he recalled correctly. Striker had names for most of his weapons.

Striker found an unbloodied strawberry and plucked it. “Think these are safe to eat?”

“No idea.”

Tick walked the perimeter of the cave, looking for threats—or clues as to what Keys sought back here. He couldn’t imagine that stumbling across a greenhouse would further her research greatly. Still, she murmured happily to herself from the computer terminal, swiping her finger through the holodisplay, bringing images of other plants to life.

“Tick,” Mandrake said and waved him over. He stood behind Keys, half-watching as she zipped through the data. It didn’t look like the druids had password-protected their computer. Maybe they figured protecting the cave had been enough.

Tick joined him. “What is it?”

“Why don’t you get Dr. Keys, so she can take a look at this too?” Mandrake tilted his head toward the computer.

Ms. Keys hadn’t seemed to hear him. She was leaning into the console, perusing a single page of data now, something with a lot of text along with some DNA double helixes. Tick wasn’t close enough to read any of the words, not that they would have made sense to him, but she had clearly found something that interested her.

“So our scientist can enlighten us?” Tick asked softly, having already guessed that Ms. Keys wasn’t sharing everything with the captain—or her sister, either.

Mandrake nodded once. “I don’t know why I was the key to the front door, but—” He twitched one of his broad shoulders. Feeling uncertain that he had helped Keys get in?

“I’ll get Lauren—Dr. Keys.” Tick headed for the cave entrance.

Mandrake’s eyebrow moved ever so slightly at the first name familiarity, but all he said was, “Take some men with you.”

“‘Course, Cap’n. You don’t think I’m silly enough to wander off alone through a jungle of man-eating bats, do you?”

“Yes.”

Tick snorted and chomped on his gum as he headed back outside. He grabbed Striker on the way, who had propped his rifle against one of the grow beds and was collecting strawberries.

“We’re going to collect reinforcements,” Tick said at his questioning look.

“The men outside?”

“Dr. Keys.”

“That’s not a reinforcement, Tick. That’s a burden. You’ll have to pull her kicking and screaming from her microscope.”

“She’s
not
a burden,” Tick said firmly, not arguing Striker’s other point. Lauren
had
made it clear that she didn’t care for the field. Well, it was less than two miles back to the shuttle. He could carry her out here if he had to—though Ankari would probably be able to talk her into a nature walk, especially if the captain commed ahead and warned her.

Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, but wind still howled across the canyon, rattling foliage. The bats had fallen silent, but other hoots, growls, and screeches came from the trees.

Hazel and the rest of the team were alert, patrolling the area around the falls and occasionally looking toward the canopy. Here, over the pool and the waterfall, the sky was visible through the branches in spots. It had grown lighter, albeit not much. The clouds remained, gloomy and oppressive.