The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) Page 13

  He tried not to feel bleak at that thought but didn’t quite manage.

  Chapter 7

  Kalish set three places at the table, using the magnetic plates that stuck to the surface, since the ship kept tilting and trembling. The silverware was more likely to go flying, so she stuck it in a magnetic cup and turned that into a centerpiece. Usually, nobody bothered with plates or forks, since the ration bricks were designed to be eaten out of the package, but she had found a batch of her mother’s favorite apples and heated them up, so they would have a side dish with their bricks.

  She smiled ruefully, remembering the expression on Sedge’s face when he had run into her mother. After Kalish had promised a woman who baked apples, he must have been expecting someone more domestic looking. Bringing men to meet her mother was always a fraught activity, so Kalish was relieved she had merely introduced him as the mercenary intelligence officer. That’s all he was after all. That had been a silly slipup when she had started to call him a boyfriend. Of course, she had only meant a friend who was a boy. She didn’t even know when he had become that. Somewhere between the first and second time he had saved her life, perhaps.

  He was sitting in a chair and talking to Commander Thatcher now. Kalish listened in as she heated the apples in the galley and chose three of the more appealing prepared meals. Ham and Mercrusean sprouts. That sounded vaguely nutritious.

  “No, sir,” Sedge said. “I don’t have anything new to report. I’ve met the crew and we’re about to have dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Thatcher sounded like he had never heard of the meal. “Now? Aren’t you watching the caverns? We’re passing a great deal of fascinating terrain, excellent examples of cave coral, helictites, and flowstones, and I believe there are creatures in here that have never been documented before. The giant glowing anthropods hanging from the ceiling were chittering, almost as if they have their own language.”

  “That does sound interesting, sir.” Sedge smiled through the pass-way at Kalish. “Any alien ruins sighted yet?”

  “No, but we’re thirty miles from the first checkpoint on your list.”

  “It’s possible there might be some elsewhere in the cavern. And those booby traps could be anywhere.”

  “Booby traps?” Thatcher asked.

  “Ah, did I not mention that? Kalish shared the information with me. It’s not confirmed.”

  “I expect more thorough reports, Thomlin. You have been distracted on this mission.”

  Sedge grimaced and tapped a fingernail on the table. Kalish tried to give him an encouraging smile, but he was too busy staring at the table and looking abashed. She had been worrying about whether she could trust him fully; it hadn’t occurred to her that she might be some kind of bad influence.

  “Sorry, sir. I’ll share anything else I find out.”

  “Do so. We’ll continue for a couple more hours, then find a place to set the ships down for the night. Lieutenant Calendula has informed me that some pilots require more than three hours of sleep at night.”

  “I’m sure that’s true, sir. Thomlin, out.”

  Kalish brought out the pot of apples and the heated ham-and-vegetable slabs. They could be eaten cold, but they were moderately more appealing when hot.

  “May I see the package?” Sedge asked, waving at the meal brick.

  Oh, right. His allergies. There had been a number of food ones. Kalish retrieved the wrapper for him. “The apples just have cinnamon, brown sugar, and lemon.”

  “Sounds good. Thank you.” He read the ingredient list, then set it aside. “No strawberries or mangos. I should be safe from the food. From your mother is another matter.”

  “Are you worried by the number of weapons she carries around? She was a mechanic on an infantry ship for a lot of her time in the Fleet.”

  “Actually, it’s her perfume. It was making my nose itch in the corridor.” Sedge tilted his head toward the hatch. “I would like to imagine that I can handle a fifty-year-old woman in battle, though perhaps that’s arrogance on my part.”

  “She’s pretty good in a fight. And if she stuffs her hair up your nose, you’ll be in trouble.”

  Sedge gave her a quizzical look.

  “That’s her shampoo you’re smelling,” Kalish explained. “Tropical Allure or something like that. I can’t stand the smelly stuff, myself. Or pleasantly fragrant, as Mom calls it.”

  “I appreciate your disinterest in smelly stuff.” Sedge started to smile, but it faltered. “That was perhaps not the most eloquent way I could have said that.”

  “I’m just tickled you use words like eloquent. My last, uhm, my former business partner couldn’t manage words over three syllables.”

  “Eloquent only has three syllables.”

  “Yeah, but there’s a Q in there. That makes it trickier.”

  Sedge snorted.

  “That reminds me,” Kalish said. “We should finish our Crucible game later. I have a Q I’m looking forward to sticking someplace irritating.” She imagined sitting on the bridge, admiring the impressiveness of the cavern as they took turns. Too bad Tia would have to be there. Kalish could man the helm when it was on autopilot and make slight adjustments when necessary, but Tom Mingus had been her last pilot. She had limited flying experience and wouldn’t dare attempt the obstacle course these caverns provided.

  “I would like that,” Sedge said.

  Kalish slid into the seat across from him and uncharitably hoped that her mother did not join them. She knew so little about Sedge, and she would enjoy having an hour or two to talk to him without other mercenaries—or family members—around.

  But the hatch soon opened, and her mother stepped in, the frown she had been wearing since Sedge came aboard still stamped on her face. She sat down beside Kalish and fixed her stare on him.

  “Good evening, ma’am,” Sedge said politely, as if he wasn’t noticing the glowers.

  She grunted. “Intelligence officer, huh?”

  Sedge’s nose crinkled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s a mercenary intelligence officer do?”

  Kalish sighed as she ladled apples onto her plate. Mom was in interrogation mood. It was understandable, given what had happened with Tom, but this wasn’t the way Kalish had imagined learning more about Sedge. She had pictured wine, dim lighting, and perhaps some flesh touching. When that had started being the image in her head, she didn’t know. She should be up on the bridge, sitting next to Tia and watching the caverns. Some of the features and creatures Thatcher had described sounded interesting, and she did want to see them, but she had invited Sedge for dinner, and she would try to make it a hospitable one before heading up to the bridge.

  “I have similar duties to a Fleet intelligence officer.” Sedge lifted a finger to his nose. He looked like he was trying not to sneeze. Maybe Kalish could make her mother’s shampoo disappear later and replace it with one of her unscented varieties. “I have a linguistics background and specialized in cryptanalysis when I was at the New Seattle Academy on Paradise. It’s not uncommon for the small militias we fight to encode messages, so I get practice deciphering them. I also do background checks on people we deal with.” He spread a hand toward Kalish. “To make sure they can pay for our services and that they’re not trying to set us up to get killed. Mandrake Company has a few enemies and some ruthless competitors.”

  “You were Fleet?” Mom asked, seemingly ignoring everything else Sedge had said.

  Sedge hesitated. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “The rigidity didn’t suit me. I did four years, then left.”

  “Only four years,” Mom said. “After spending four years for your degree and what must have been... What, three years of extra schooling for linguistics and cryptography?”

  “Four years.” Sedge crinkled his nose again, lost the battle he had been fighting, and turned his head to sneeze. “During my last year, I took an alien language elective.” Was that an attempt to divert the conve
rsation? “I’m quite interested in this assignment and hope we’ll find some ruins.” He nodded toward Kalish.

  Her mother’s eyes hardened, and Kalish winced, wishing he hadn’t brought that up, since—

  “You told them?” Mom demanded.

  Kalish prodded her meal. “They figured it out early on.”

  “Everything?”

  Kalish winced again. Now her mother was giving away intel, confirming that there was an everything. Judging by the careful way Sedge was feigning disinterest as he cut into his ham slab, he hadn’t missed what that word might connote.

  “Just that there are ruins down here and we hope to make some money from the relics,” Kalish said.

  Her mother leaned back in her chair. She jabbed an apple with her knife and stuck it in her mouth.

  “Mom? Kalish?” Tia’s voice came over the speaker at the same time as Sedge’s comm-patch chimed. “You might want to come up here.”

  Mom headed for the hatch right away. Kalish hesitated, torn between wanting to hear what Sedge’s people reported—or what he reported to them—and wanting to know what Tia had to say. Maybe all of the ships had seen the same thing.

  “Yes, sir?” Sedge answered.

  “If you’re done schmoozing that woman over dinner, you might want to look out the view screen,” Tick said.

  Sedge grimaced, either at the suggestion of schmoozing or at the fact that he had wasted a “sir” on the sergeant. All he said was, “On my way.”

  Kalish jogged out ahead of him. Her mother had already joined Tia, sitting in the other seat. Kalish stood behind them, her eyes locking onto a ledge halfway up a cavern wall. As with the first one they had landed on, some fuzzy green plants adorned this one. Unlike the first one, it also supported a wrecked ship. Judging by the grime and water stains on the hull, it had been there for a long time. A broken drill on the nose identified it as a mining craft, though it appeared to be a different model than those currently in the compound. It must have been at work in the area before crashing. The natural limestone walls had ended, replaced by pockmarked rock dotted with drilled tunnels.

  “The mercenaries invited me to join their comm channel,” Tia said and tapped a button.

  “...going down to check it out or keep going?” Val asked.

  “It might be useful to find out what caused it to crash,” Tick said. “That big gaping hole in the side looks about as promising as having a sore tooth yanked out by a tech-hating gypsy.”

  “Hole?” Kalish whispered. She wasn’t sure whether they were transmitting or just listening, but she didn’t want to interrupt the conversation.

  Tia shrugged. “I’ll see if I can get us closer.”

  She tapped the port thrusters, and the ship sidled closer to the shuttles.

  “I concur,” Thatcher said. “It appears unlikely that an equipment malfunction caused that orifice. We will spend a few minutes gathering data.”

  Kalish walked to the environmental controls and sensor panels at Tia’s side. “Check the atmosphere,” she told the computer. She had been in enough caves to know the conditions could vary widely, even in the same complex. A readout hovered in the air, the back darkened so she could read it.

  “Tia,” she said, “let them know that there’s ethylene in the air, displacing some of the oxygen. We shouldn’t need enviro suits, but we don’t want to stay out there for long, either.”

  “We hear you, Ms. Blackwell,” Thatcher said. “My readings are similar. Tick and Striker will investigate.”

  “Tick and Striker?” Tia crinkled her nose. “Are those names of people or dogs?”

  Sedge had joined Kalish, standing beside her and considering the wreck in thoughtful silence, but he smiled at this question. “Their species is open for debate.”

  Tia looked at Kalish, not finding that answer satisfying apparently.

  “Tick is easily a salted caramel,” Kalish said. “I’d say chocolate for Striker’s exterior, but he has the personality of oyster ice cream.”

  “Oyster? That’s the worst.”

  “Yes.” Kalish suspected Sedge would agree and gave him a nod.

  He wore a faintly horrified expression. Maybe he hadn’t encountered oyster ice cream. That one was popular in a couple of the predominately Chinese cities on Novus Earth.

  “You rank Tick a salted caramel?” he asked.

  Ah, he hadn’t been thinking of oysters at all.

  “You don’t think he’s handsome?” Kalish asked.

  “No. I mean... I just thought... when I got that ranking... it was more of a compliment.”

  Kalish snorted and thumped him on the chest. “Tick’s good looking, despite that awful name.”

  “I’m still not positive we’re not talking about dogs,” Tia said.

  “Do dogs get ice cream ratings too?” Sedge asked.

  “Nah.”

  Mom was giving everyone a baleful look for this ridiculous conversation. “I’ll go out with you, Kalish.” She tapped her rifle. She had leaned Carl against the control panel when she had sat down, but the weapon was never far from reach. “I’m assuming you want to look.”

  “Yes. Take us down, please, Tia.” Kalish ducked into the corridor, heading for the exit hatch in the cargo bay.

  “Take your weapons,” her mother said. “I’m sure there are more than glow bugs and bats out there.”

  A good point. Kalish had been more worried about the air quality, but she diverted to her cabin and grabbed her weapons belt. Sedge was waiting for her by the hatch when she stepped out. He was also armed.

  A few minutes later, they were standing by the exit hatch when the ship ran into something. The deck heaved, pitching Kalish into Sedge. He caught her, bracing his back against the hull.

  “Tia,” Kalish yelled toward the corridor at the same time as her mother walked out of it.

  “Sorry,” Tia called back from the bridge. “It’s not like there are airstrips out here. I was trying not to hit that squatty tree thing and scraped the bottom.”

  “Does she actually have a pilot’s certification?” Sedge asked dryly. He was still gripping Kalish’s arms, and he smiled down at her to smooth any insult the words might have offered.

  Kalish wasn’t insulted. Her sister was a... challenging employee. “Sort of. She’s been taking lessons in the summers since she was twelve, but mostly on one-man ships. I love the Divining Rod, but she’s a barge.”

  “I see.”

  Mom cleared her throat, her eyes closed to slits as she regarded the way Sedge was holding Kalish. He let go, his hands spreading innocently, at the same time as she stepped back. Kalish hit the open button and didn’t comment. She was old enough that she didn’t need her mother’s approval on boyfriends, but she didn’t disagree with any of the arguments Mom would bring up if they discussed it, starting with that this wasn’t the right time and ending with he was a mercenary and who knew what motivated him.

  Sedge sneezed as soon as the first whiff of plant life wafted in.

  He grumbled about alien ecologies, then led the way down the ramp, his hand resting on his pistol. The ground was uneven beneath the verdant fuzz, and Kalish almost tripped as soon as she tried to walk across the bumps. She recovered quickly, not wanting Sedge to have to catch her and give her mother another reason to glare. She picked a route between the tough plant burrs, kicking one on the way and finding out that they didn’t have any give. Some small animal or lizard skittered away, but she never caught sight of it.

  Tick and Striker were already at the wreck, Striker staring at something on the hull that Kalish couldn’t yet see, and Tick wandering around, his gaze toward the ground.

  Curious as to what Striker was gaping at, she walked toward him first. The smell of foliage teased her nose. Knowing that the ethylene probably accounted for the flower smell, she tried not to inhale deeply. Her wound had healed nicely, so she had no need for a painkiller, especially not one that might mess with her mind. She wasn’t close enough to the edge t
o see how far the drop was, but she was certain the fall would kill a person.

  When she and Sedge joined Striker, Kalish could understand the reason for his gape. The entire port side of the craft had been torn open, more than six inches of hull and all of the wiring and panels underneath it. The bare insides of the ship lay open to the elements, a big pile of ore still loaded in the back.

  Wordlessly, Striker pointed at something between the ore and the short corridor leading to the cockpit. A human skull lay on the deck, flesh and muscle long since decomposed—or picked clean by scavengers.

  “Where are the rest of the bones?” Kalish asked.

  Tick walked up, holding a femur that had been gnawed clean. “All over the place. There’s another skull over there. Must have been two pilots.”

  “I thought the miners were sending unmanned ships in here to do their work,” Sedge said, walking around the exterior of the wreck. He touched the hull, where a few identification letters remained, barely visible beneath the grime. He took out his tablet and recorded them.

  “Maybe they used to send manned ships,” Tick said. “Until too many miners got eaten.”

  “You see any footprints?” Striker asked.

  “Just from small creatures. Nothing that could have done this.”

  Kalish looked at him sharply.

  “You think an animal did this?” She pointed at the hole. She would have guessed the craft had run into a stalactite or other formation and then tried to fly to safety before crashing. But... she had to admit, she didn’t see any ominous terrain features leering out of the darkness.

  Tick touched the ragged edge of the hole. “Yup.”

  She leaned closer, trying to see what he saw. It was an irregular hole, but did that mean something’s teeth had done this?

  “Teeth marks,” Tick said, shining a flashlight on the hull for her.

  Kalish cursed softly, spotting the long gouges under the better light. “I knew that there were animals down here, but I guess I didn’t believe that they would be big enough to eat a ship.”

  The mining craft was sturdy, too, clearly meant to deflect wayward rocks and handle a beating in tight tunnels. She didn’t know if her freighter would be any tougher, and this hadn’t been tough enough.