The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) Page 12

  “Hello, sir,” Sedge said warily.

  “You will be traveling with Ms. Blackwell’s crew?” Thatcher asked.

  “She requested it.”

  Something Thatcher, as Sedge’s commanding officer, could veto.

  “You will remember that it would not be fitting to press a romantic suit on our employer, correct?”

  “Yes, sir. Her mother and sister are her crew. I’m sure Ka—Ms. Blackwell won’t have anything except a professional arrangement in mind.” Unfortunately, he feared that would be the case. It was just as well. “If this place is half as dangerous as she implied, we would be foolish to think of anything else.”

  “Dangerous?” Thatcher’s brows rose. “You have been briefed on the caverns?”

  “Uh, yes. Did I not share that information with you? She told me some stories.”

  “You will relay any data that you have before joining her crew,” Thatcher said. “I am the commanding officer on this mission, and I must be kept apprised.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sedge glanced back and caught Kalish looking his way, a slight frown on her face. Had she heard? That he would need to relay all the information she had shared to his commander? The last time he had told Mandrake something, she had been irate. If not for the opportunity to rescue her from that creature, she might still be avoiding him.

  “Sergeant Tick,” Thatcher said, waving him over. “You are experienced with stealth and camouflage in a wilderness situation.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s me.”

  “The captain’s ruse aside, it is likely there will be ships searching for us.” Thatcher pointed toward the tunnel he had hollowed out. “Do you have any recommendations for camouflaging the entrance?”

  Tick’s mouth dangled open. “You want me to hide a hole in the side of a cliff? One big enough to fly a ship through? Sir, I can’t just toss a couple of branches across that.”

  “We could blow it up,” Striker said, ambling up and caressing one of the grenades on his belt as he did so.

  “Pardon?” Thatcher asked.

  “Didn’t you say someone had been blowing up all of the natural caves to hide the caverns? Maybe they would think that this is another spot they had closed up.”

  “You don’t see a problem with blowing up the only exit within a hundred miles?” Tick asked. “What happens if we need to leave in a hurry?”

  Striker shrugged. “Thatcher gets to practice penetrating things again.”

  Thatcher rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “We will leave the opening unsealed, in the event that we need to leave quickly. Sergeant Tick, please retrieve some of the security cameras from the shuttle and set up a system to monitor movement at the entrance and alert us if anyone else uses the entrance.”

  “If we’ve traveled deep into the mountains, the transmitter might not be strong enough to reach us,” Sedge pointed out.

  “A risk we will have to take. If we’re that far away, it should not matter if someone enters, as they should be too far away to track us.” Thatcher headed for the nearest shuttle and waved for Sedge to follow, wanting his briefing, no doubt.

  A soft rain started to fall from the clouds hugging the cavern ceiling as Sedge walked up the ramp. This was a strange place, one that was only likely to get stranger. He glanced toward Kalish again, but she had disappeared into her own ship. He hoped her dinner invitation was still valid.

  * * *

  Sedge had to turn sideways to keep from getting his pack caught in the narrow corridor of the Divining Rod. Protruding struts dotted the walls, and wires and conduits ran along on the low ceiling, with little attempt to hide any of it. The rest of the ship had a more inviting feel, though, with faded tapestries, framed sketches and poems, and quotations on landscapes hanging from the bulkheads. He didn’t know how long Kalish and her family had owned the vessel, but it definitely had a homier aesthetic than the stark gray corridors of the Albatross.

  “You can put your pack in there.” Kalish turned a wheel and opened a hatch. No automatic doors here. It reminded Sedge of a submarine he had been on back on Paradise. “It’s our guest room. Or guest closet, as Tia calls it.”

  A grinding lurch ran through the ship, and Sedge gripped the door frame for support. A groan and a rattle followed, then the deck tilted.

  “We’re taking off,” Kalish said calmly, raising an eyebrow at his alarmed expression.

  “Does it normally sound like that?” The deck tilted the other way, and he bent his knees, bracing himself to stay upright.

  Kalish put a hand out to steady him. “That was a relatively quiet take-off. Tia didn’t hit anything.”

  “Oh.” Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so excited about the dinner invitation. Or maybe he should have invited her to join him for a meal aboard one of the shuttles. Of course, the shuttles lacked in privacy, unless one counted the tiny lav behind the seats. Sedge had seen enough people throw up in there during stomach-tormenting combat maneuvers that he would never consider it a cozy place for romance.

  We’re not having romance here, either, remember?

  He sighed. Yes, he did remember, but having Kalish’s hand resting lightly on his shoulder made his mind wander in interesting directions.

  She lowered her hand and nodded toward the three narrow bunks bolted to the bulkhead. That was handy. The guest closet could accommodate multiple visitors. Sedge wondered if Kalish had her own cabin or shared it with her sister. They had walked through a spacious cargo area, but there were only a couple of hatches in the single narrow corridor that led to the bridge. The old freighter was designed to hold a substantial cargo, but not a substantial crew.

  Sedge set his bag on the bottom bunk. “Thatcher said he wanted to fly for a few hours before stopping for the night. Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime?”

  “You gave him the directions to the first location your program found, right?”

  “The closest one, yes. He’s less enthused about checking out the next two closest ones, because the maps suggest we’ll have to widen some passages and perhaps burn through some more walls to get the ships through, especially this ship.” Sedge waved to encompass the size of the freighter. As far as spaceships went, it wasn’t huge, but it was much wider than the sleek combat shuttles. “We brought extra fuel, since we didn’t know how long we would be down here or what exactly you had in mind, but the energy packs for the laser banks are expensive and awkward to change out in space, so nobody thought to bring extras.”

  “I’ve added weapons to the Divining Rod. We can do some of the blasting if necessary.”

  “Good. I get tired of hearing about Thatcher penetrating things.” He smiled.

  She smiled back, and he shivered, wishing she had left her hand on his shoulder. Or somewhere else.

  “We might as well have our dinner. I’ll introduce you to Mom and Tia, too.”

  “The rest of the crew?” He had heard voices coming from the bridge as they walked up here, but he hadn’t seen the other women yet.

  Kalish hesitated, looked in his eyes, then nodded. Maybe she had been thinking about lying, inventing some squad of infantry troops she kept hidden in the engine room, but they both knew the ship wouldn’t accommodate many more people and that she wouldn’t have hired the mercenaries if she had that many people at her disposal. “Yes, they’re it. It’s usually just me and Tia, actually, and... I had a colleague, almost a partner, not that long ago, too. Mom’s specialty is finances and stock trading, and she generally prefers to stay in her office back on Orion Prime, watching the stock tickers and listening to the pundits blather on ten different vid stations at once.” Kalish made a face.

  Sedge understood the sentiment. For a time, his parents had thought he might train in finances, to help with the family business, but he had never found accounting or listening to people speculate on the markets interesting.

  “Does your father have anything to do with your business?” Sedge asked, hoping for more information on his s
ituation.

  But pain flashed through Kalish’s eyes before she masked her features and shook her head once. “No. He’s a history professor.”

  Sedge should have dropped the subject, but he found himself wanting to help, to figure out what had happened to the father and what exactly Kalish needed to do to get him back. “Is he the one responsible for your love of history?”

  Some of the pain seeped back onto her face again, and she looked away, studying the faded green paint covering the corridor floor. “You could say that. He took me to work with him sometimes, at Cabo University, ostensibly so I could listen to the lectures and learn. But I was more interested in exploring the attics full of historically significant... dusty junk. For a while, I wanted to be a philologist or an archaeologist, working for one of the relic hunting corporations, but they all wanted someone with an advanced degree. We didn’t have a lot of money back then, so that would have meant taking on a lot of debt, especially to go to the really good schools that would have assured me the job I wanted. Mom was still in the Fleet then, so I figured I would join the Fleet, too, and get them to pay for my advanced schooling.” She hitched a shoulder. “That didn’t work out. So I decided to figure out a way to finance my own education. I went off on my first treasure hunt with fifty aurums in my pocket and a ticket to Novus Earth. To both of my parents’ surprise, I was successful. I found the landing site for one of the original colony ships that came to the system, one that had been considered long lost by the flow of a volcano. It was deep in a jungle, but still accessible. There were data banks on there that were still salvageable even after fifteen hundred years, thanks to being preserved under a few feet of ash and lava that had hardened. Anyway, a corporation paid handsomely for the data banks—people are always wanting information on their ancestors so they can trace their lineage back to Old Earth. I made enough with that one expedition to pay for a couple of years of school. I went out on other trips during the holiday breaks and had more success, enough that by the time I graduated, I was more interested in going off on my own rather than working for someone else.”

  A clank came from beyond the open hatch at the end of the corridor, the one that led to the bridge. A younger version of Kalish walked past the doorway, glanced curiously in their direction, then disappeared.

  “Sorry,” Kalish said, “I didn’t mean to ramble about myself. What were you asking about?”

  “I... don’t remember,” Sedge said, even if he did. He wasn’t sure if she had deliberately diverted the conversation away from her father or if it had been accidental, but he sensed that he wouldn’t get more from her on the subject. He hadn’t minded hearing about her past, anyway. It sounded adventurous. “It’s impressive that you’ve found so many things. Especially that wreck on Novus Earth. That planet has a population of five billion. It’s not as if it’s some remote, forsaken world. I’m sure people are out there hunting in that jungle all the time.”

  Kalish shrugged, almost shyly. “Dad used to say that I had a mind that thought sideways and made connections where other people didn’t see them. It wasn’t really a compliment, since I sometimes struggled to make the more obvious connections that everyone else saw.” Her mouth twisted. “Anyway, let me give you the rest of the tour.”

  The ship lurched again.

  “This place is creepy, Kay,” came the sister’s call.

  “I know. It’s a cavern. It’s supposed to be.”

  Kalish waved for Sedge to follow her to the bridge.

  Bridge was an optimistic term for it. Perhaps cockpit would be more appropriate, since it wasn’t any larger than the navigation space in the combat shuttles. Equipment running overhead as well as along the walls on either side of the pilots’ chairs made it feel more cramped.

  The woman sitting in the main chair leaned forward, using an old flight stick controller for navigation instead of a holo-interface. Sedge wondered if he had misidentified the freighter. Maybe it was even older than he had originally thought and had simply been upgraded over time.

  “Tia, this is Sedgwick Thomlin,” Kalish said. “An intelligence officer from Mandrake Company. Sedge, Tia.”

  “Hi, Sedgy,” Tia said brightly, glancing backward only for a moment.

  He had a glimpse of dimples and an easy smile before she returned her focus to the task. The walls of the cavern had narrowed to a couple dozen meters, and she had a tight grip on the flight stick as she followed the two shuttles through the space. Here and there rock formations rose from the depths or descended from the ceiling, and she had to dip or rise to avoid them. Up ahead, a massive pillar in the center meant she would have to tilt the entire saucer sideways to skim past. Sedge made a note not to distract her.

  Kalish winced at the bastardization of his name, but he didn’t mind. It was better than Sniffles.

  With one hand, Tia waved Kalish forward. Not taking her eyes from the view screen, she whispered, “He’s a salted caramel,” and winked. “Better than Mingus.”

  Sedge scratched his head, not sure what to make of the comment. Had it been a compliment? If so, the girl might change her mind once he broke out in hives in front of her, but with luck they would spend most of the mission in the ships, and that wouldn’t happen.

  “Tia is twenty, but still thinks she’s a kid,” Kalish explained to Sedge, looking faintly embarrassed by the comment. “She rates boys according to her favorite ice cream flavors. I believe salted caramel is third best.”

  “Nope, nope,” Tia said, tilting them to avoid the pillar. “It’s up to second. I got sick of black cherry chocolate.”

  Sedge braced himself against a wall. Whatever the ship relied on for artificial gravity, it wasn’t that reliable. He guessed they might only have ten or twenty percent of normal when in space.

  “What’s at the top of the list?” he asked.

  “Honey lavender,” Tia said.

  “Last I heard, there were only two men who rated that comparison,” Kalish said. “The vid star, Edgardo Garcia, and the zero-grav racquetball player, Nikolay Volkov.”

  “Yes. They’re delicious.” Tia sighed with longing, then glanced back again. “Kalish doesn’t appreciate how much I’m giving up to be here, flying in this pit for her. I could be back on Orion Prime, hunting for my own honey lavender.”

  “Uh huh. I’m paying you a lot more than you were making as a part-time lifeguard, and you’re getting college credits for this.”

  “But no boys on the last planet, and no boys on this one. Or if there are any, I never get to see them.”

  “Keep talking like that,” Kalish said, “and I’ll toss you to the miners on the way out. You’ll be lucky if any of them even rate as strawberry.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  Kalish nodded Sedge toward the corridor. “Now that you feel confident about the maturity of our pilot, I’ll introduce you to Mom. I think she’s in engineering.”

  They stepped into the corridor, and Sedge halted, a stern woman with braided blonde-gray hair standing no more than two feet away. He wasn’t sure what he had expected when Kalish had been explaining her mother’s career as a finance officer, but the lean woman with sleeves rolled up and tattoos covering her ropy forearms wasn’t it. She glowered at him with icy blue eyes in a hard, weathered face. A pistol, a dagger, and a multitool hung from her belt, and she wore a laser rifle strapped to her back as well. If Sergeant Hazel had lighter skin, Sedge would have believed this woman could be her mother.

  “Mom,” Kalish said. “This is Sedgwick Thomlin. Sedge, this is Tina.”

  “Tina?” Sedge managed to keep the shocked, strangled tone out of his voice, but barely.

  Her eyes narrowed anyway. She smelled faintly of some floral perfume or another. It seemed out of place, given her tough exterior, and it made his nostrils twitch.

  “They called her Tank in the Fleet.” Kalish winked.

  “Can I call her Mrs. Blackwell?” Sedge smiled, attempting to win the woman over, or at least make the iciness fade from
her face. It was hard to imagine the tough lady working in some high-rise on Orion Prime, with a corner office looking out over the city. Maybe she was one of those rare finance pundits who preferred an office in the back of a mechanic’s garage. Or a tattoo parlor.

  “Ms. Blackwell. And you better.” She frowned as she looked him up and down—they were almost the same height. “Sedge?” She sounded even less impressed by his name than he had been by hers. “You the mission commander?”

  “No, ma’am.” Ma’am seemed safer and less confusing than Ms. Blackwell, since they had already been calling Kalish that. That must mean the parents were divorced, or had never been married. He struggled to imagine this woman with a mild-mannered history professor, though he supposed not all professors were mild-mannered. “I’m the intelligence officer.”

  “He put together a program that located possible places for the ruins,” Kalish said.

  “We’ll see.” The woman pushed past Sedge, bumping shoulders with him even though he tried to move aside.

  Her perfume won the assault on his nostrils, and he loosed a series of sneezes, barely managing to get his hand up to cover his nose. She paused to frown even more deeply at him, then strode through the hatchway and onto the bridge. The hatch slammed shut with a clang.

  “I’m not sure she likes me,” Sedge said.

  “She’s never liked any of my bo—male friends.”

  Kalish turned down the corridor before he could catch the expression on her face, but Sedge allowed himself to feel hopeful at that slipup. What could she have meant to say besides boyfriend? Maybe he hadn’t imagined that connection on the shuttle when she had clasped his hand.

  She pushed open the last hatch in the corridor. “Here’s where we eat and make food. Have a seat, and I’ll see if anyone wants to join us.”

  As Sedge walked in and sat at the four-person table, he debated on that word, anyone. Since Tia was flying, as evinced by the dips and occasional shudders that ran through the ship, she wouldn’t be able to leave the bridge. That must mean dinner with Mom.