The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) Read online

  “You shoot like a girl,” Striker said, removing a grenade with his free hand—his other hand was busy holding a rifle almost as big as he was. He armed the explosive with a twist and pull from his teeth, then lobbed it into the night.

  “You wouldn’t say that if Sergeant Hazel was down here.” Tick fired again, this time at a shape moving atop another boulder. Damn, those creatures were all around the camp.

  “Sure, I would. She shoots like a boy. Not like—”

  Whatever the rest of his sentence was, it was drowned out in the explosion from his grenade, which flashed white even as its boom made the ground shiver. Entire boulders flew into the air, and Kalish thought she spotted a big body writhing in the air among the mess.

  “Got one,” Striker cried with a fist pump.

  “It doesn’t count if you use a grenade,” Tick said, turning and shooting toward the rocks behind the tent. “That’s just making a mess. A real man has finesse and aim.”

  “Your finesse hasn’t hit anything except rocks yet.”

  “I just clipped one on the shoulder. Or whatever these lizards have.”

  “I think you clipped a cactus.”

  Sedge had his pistol out and watched the dark skyline, but he didn’t engage in the banter or move from Kalish’s shoulder. During a brief quiet moment between laser fire and explosives, he nodded to her and said, “Once the danger is past, I’ll patch up your wound. You doing all right for now? Not hurting too much?”

  “It’s not bad,” she said.

  He glanced down at the splotches of blood darkening the pale soil all around her. Maybe she shouldn’t have looked. There was more of it than she would have expected, especially since her shirt and jacket had to be absorbing quite a bit. His blatant concern and protectiveness made her feel guilty about lashing out at him. It wasn’t his fault he had been lying on that cot while she had been blathering to her mother. If she had wanted to have a private conversation she could have done it outside. Although, now that she knew what lived outside, she wouldn’t be in a hurry to go anywhere by herself out here. She had investigated the underground creatures they might face while flying through the caverns, but had done a poor job researching the species that inhabited the surface of the planet—maybe the twenty-foot-high wall the miners had around their compound had more to do with keeping the wildlife out than with thwarting spies.

  Sedge sneezed, then rolled his eyes at himself. His earlier medicine must have worn off.

  “Glad the LT is doing his part to keep us safe,” Striker said. “Planning to scare off our attackers with his nostril horns.”

  Sedge clenched his jaw, but didn’t otherwise respond to the teasing. Kalish had an urge to insult Striker back, or at least tell him to pay attention to what he was doing, but another screech sounded first, this one from behind them. She and Sedge spun at the same time, raising their pistols. A dark, scaly figure with four powerfully muscled legs leaped over their heads toward Tick and Striker. Kalish shot the creature’s underbelly at the same time as Sedge blasted at its throat. Its attack screech turned into a cry of pain.

  Tick and Striker jumped to the side, whirling in the air to blast it.

  “Look out,” Sedge barked, pointing behind them. Two more predators sprang out from behind boulders and raced toward the men’s backs.

  Kalish couldn’t shoot at the animals, not without hitting Tick or Striker. The first creature landed, wounded but not killed by her and Sedge’s laser blasts. The two men had moved to avoid it as it dropped, but it whipped a thick tail around, smacking Striker in the back and knocking him to the ground. Tick looked like he wanted to help, but he had dropped to one knee and was firing at the two racing toward the group.

  While Kalish was trying to find a target she could shoot without worrying about hitting any of her allies, a spacecraft flew out of the night, brilliant white lights illuminating the camp like a noon sun. A new terror clutched her heart, the fear that Striker’s grenades had allowed the miners to locate them. She almost jerked her pistol up toward the craft, but the lights were blinding her, keeping from seeing it, not that a handheld weapon would have done anything against a spacecraft. Besides, the predators were the more immediate threat.

  She had no sooner had the thought than the ship’s laser cannons fired.

  Kalish stumbled backward, her shoulder blades thumping into the boulder. She envisioned the entire camp and everyone in it blowing up. But the bursts of energy were short and precise, taking first one predator in the side and then the other. The third one had already fallen to Sedge’s steady fire. Striker had scrambled to his feet, another grenade in his hand, but he had nothing to throw it at.

  “Alpha squadron, this is Commander Thatcher,” came a calm voice over the mercenaries’ comm-patches. “I do not detect further lifeforms around the tent that are capable of attacking. Please clear the area so our shuttles have room to land.”

  The bright beams shifted in another direction, and Kalish could now see that one of the Mandrake Company shuttles hovered over the tent. She lowered the hand she hadn’t realized she had been clutching to her chest. The second shuttle flew into view beside the first and hovered, its lights sweeping the dusty ground.

  “Area’s clear, Thatcher,” Striker said. “Except for these carcasses, and I figure they weigh about five hundred pounds, so I’m not looking to push them around. You’ll just have to squish them when you land.”

  “Five hundred pounds?” came Val’s voice over the comm. “I thought you did biceps curls with that much weight in the ship’s gym.”

  “Nah, you’re thinking of squats. If you all want to load one of these lizard-cat-whatever things onto my shoulders, I suppose I could bounce up and down with it.”

  “Nobody wants to see you bounce with lizards,” Tick grumbled. “Or anything else.”

  Sedge touched Kalish’s shoulder. “I believe it’s safe to go inside and clean your wound. I—” His nose wrinkled, and he sneezed.

  “Need another pill,” Striker chortled, thumping Sedge on the shoulder as he headed over to where the shuttles were landing.

  Sedge sighed.

  Even though Kalish could see that the mercenaries teased each other ruthlessly and constantly, she gave him a sympathetic smile anyway. She was starting to get the feeling that he got more of it than the others, or perhaps that it was less deserved.

  Sedge picked up the camp lantern and headed for the tent. With the heat of the moment past, Kalish’s side was starting to throb with pain, so she ought to follow him, but she looked toward the shuttles, curious if either of the pilots had found an entrance to the caverns.

  “Ms. Blackwell?” Sedge prompted, holding the flap open for her.

  It was his use of her last name that made her move in his direction, a reminder that she had denied him the use of her first and that she should apologize for that. “Kalish,” she said as she passed him, ducking through the tent flap and wincing again because the slight bending of her torso brought pain from her side. Yes, she was definitely feeling that more now. She sat on the edge of the cot. “You’ve saved my life twice now. That’s almost as good as beating me at Crucible.”

  “Oh?” Sedge gave her a tentative smile. He probably wasn’t sure if she would snap at him again for relaying information to his captain.

  No, she would be more careful in the future. She had to remember that his loyalty would be to his company, not her. That went for all of the mercenaries. She would be wise to keep her mother’s words in mind, to remember that these people risked their lives and killed for money. Getting attached would be unwise, given that they might turn on her if she found the ruins and anything valuable remained after all this time.

  “Stay here, please,” Sedge said. “I’ll retrieve a first-aid kit.” He jogged for the tent flap, then paused. “You’ll need to remove your shirt. Would you be more comfortable if Lieutenant Calendula came and attended you? Yes, that would be more appropriate, wouldn’t it? I’ll bring her.”


  He left before Kalish could comment, but since she would have only agreed, there was no harm. Though she supposed if she had to have one of the men seeing her shirtless, Sedge wouldn’t be a bad choice. He was polite for a mercenary. For anyone, really. Tick wasn’t bad either, if rougher around the edges. She shuddered at the idea of Striker coming anywhere near her naked flesh.

  The three-dimensional map still hung in the air, the cartography analysis program she had purchased having completed its data crunching during the attack. Unfortunately, the readout at the bottom gave a long list of ore deposits of all kinds and exactly zero results in the case of alien ruins. It had identified a couple of structures and landing platforms that had been built by the miners but nothing more interesting. While she waited, Kalish issued a few voice commands, telling it to refine its search and try again.

  “And look for clumps of stalactites, stalagmites, and pillars in larger than typical quantities,” she added, remembering that her retired miner had mentioned seeing a “forest of dangly rocks” near the ruins. She wished she had recorded that conversation, since it had been over a year ago, but at the time, she had been in the middle of gathering data for another treasure hunt. She had not thought much of the miner’s tale until she had chanced across a news story about how an ancient alien outpost believed to have once been a refinery had been found in a cavern on one of the asteroids in the Brockian Band. The archaeologists had been all over that one in an instant, so there had been little point in exploring. But she had done some research and learned that the particular ore concentrations prevalent in that asteroid were found on a couple of planets and moons in the outer rim, including the one that her retired miner had spoken of.

  The tent flap opened, letting in a draft of icy air. Commander Thatcher and Val Calendula walked in, the latter carrying a first-aid kit that Kalish hoped had a nice painkiller in it. The bleeding of her wounds had slowed down—though her shredded clothing had stuck to the gashes, and she wasn’t looking forward to having it pulled away—but every time she shifted or even took a deep breath, a stab of pain came from the area.

  “Ms. Blackwell.” Commander Thatcher clasped his hands behind his back. “I must inform you that we were unable to locate cave openings in the areas you suggested.”

  “Not in any of them?” Kalish slumped, forgetting the pain that came with the movement. Even if maps of the privately owned planet weren’t widely available, she had paid well for one, and it had included several cave openings. She had assumed that finding them wouldn’t be a problem, only that they might have to check a number before locating one that led into the larger cavern system.

  “No, but it was suspicious,” Val said, waving for Kalish to take off her jacket. “At least one of your sets of coordinates looked like a blasting site, like miners had been in the area, blowing up parts of the mountain.”

  “That’s odd,” Kalish said. “Some of those caves were hundreds of miles from their operation.”

  “We surmised that the blasting may have been done to block the cave entrances,” Thatcher said.

  “Oh?” Kalish carefully peeled her jacket away from her injured side. “Like maybe the miners found out about the other doors into their operation and didn’t want people snooping around?”

  “We tried to blow our way into one, just to see,” Val said, “but once a cave has been, ah, caved in, I guess you would say, it’s tough to re-cave it.”

  “Re-cave it?” Thatcher frowned at her. “I do not believe that ersatz vocabulary is appropriate when reporting to an employer.”

  “Well, what would you call it?” Val raised her brows at him.

  “There is no geological term for reclaiming a cave. Once the speleothems and support structures have been demolished, the cave ceases to exist.”

  “Uh huh.” Val shifted back toward Kalish. “We couldn’t re-cave it.”

  Thatcher’s eyelids descended halfway, but he did not correct his lieutenant again.

  Val moved the desk and the light to get a better look at Kalish’s wound, ignoring the maps hanging in the air as she did so. Thatcher walked up to the image, though.

  “The size and complexity of this cavern system is fascinating,” he announced. “Given the dryness of the exterior of the planet, the amount of water that must have been required to hollow out such extensive caves is remarkable. Perhaps the climate has changed over the years—a result of a terraforming program that did not fully take? Or could not be sustained once abandoned? That might explain how such large predators could have evolved in such a dry and barren environment. It would be interesting to study—”

  “Gregor,” Val said. “Our employer is bleeding over here, something that you should also consider inappropriate. I’m sure she would like me to attend to her wounds without a man around to ogle her.”

  “It’s all right,” Kalish said. “He seems more interested in ogling the rock formations.”

  “Tell me about it,” Val muttered, pulling out a couple of wound-cleaning patches. “Put him in a room full of naked women and hang one model spaceship from the ceiling, and he won’t even notice the women.”

  Thatcher tore his gaze from the map. “What?”

  “Never mind. Why don’t you prepare a nice bed in the shuttle, so we can get some sleep soon?”

  “Very well.” Thatcher inclined his head, then ducked past the tent flap and disappeared.

  “You call your commanding officers by first name?” Kalish asked, though she had a hunch that they might be more than commander and subordinate.

  “Just that one. When he’s not being overly obtuse. And sometimes when he is.” Val winked and tapped her side with an injector, delivering a painkiller.

  Kalish studied the hologram while Val cleaned and sealed her wounds. She did her best to focus on the map instead of the three parallel gashes that creature had left in her side. Lamenting future scars probably wasn’t seemly when she could have lost her life tonight. She should thank Sedge for helping her—that backhand acknowledgment hadn’t been particularly gracious.

  The map hovered in the air, allowing her to skim through the different passages and levels, but it did not show any secret doors leading into the system. If all of the entrances had been blocked off, how was she going to get down there to search? The obvious solution would be to fly through the hole in the mining compound, but then there would be no point to her ruse. Unless the Mandrake Company shuttles could turn invisible, their passage would be spotted, and pursuers would follow them into the complex. They would be shot at every step of the way, and she wouldn’t have the time she suspected they would need to explore. Of course, if the mapping program didn’t return any positive results, none of it would matter anyway. The caves were too large to fly in and explore at random. Even with a couple of ships, it would take months to explore the entire area, if not years.

  “Is Sedge good at puzzles?” Kalish asked. Or maybe she should ask about Commander Thatcher. He definitely seemed like the cerebral type. But Sedge was the one beating her at Crucible, so his name came to mind. Of course, either one of them would report whatever they found to their captain. Asking for help was a risk, but so was staying in this tent and twiddling her thumbs until the miners found them. Or another pack of predators.

  “Sedge?” Val’s brows rose. “Lieutenant Thomlin?”

  “Yes. He told me to call him Sedge.”

  “Really? He’s never told me to do that, and we’re the same rank now.”

  Kalish wasn’t sure what to make of the comment, or those still-raised brows and the curiosity in the eyes underneath them. “I think he was afraid I would default to Sniffles instead.”

  Val snorted. “That’s a possibility.” She put the medical tools back in the kit. “Yes, I should think he would enjoy a puzzle. Gregor would too. They’re both in love with mathematics and logic, and I know Thomlin has done some studies on the ancient aliens. He helped Ankari and Lauren find a couple of digs for their project. I remember this because I was the o
ne who got to fly them down to the planet. In their pink shuttlecraft. Because Jamie was off on some vacation with our assassin, Sergei. That has got to be the oddest couple, but they seem happy enough together, I suppose.”

  Kalish had no idea who the people were that she was talking about, but her mind stuck on the ancient aliens comment. “Why would that matter?” she asked. “That he be familiar with the aliens?”

  “Oh, Gregor and I assumed you were looking for some ruins. What else would be down there except for ore? And if ore was what you wanted, there are plenty of asteroids out there with claims waiting to be staked. But some ruins, that would be a rarer find.” Val appeared slightly wistful.

  Maybe she would enjoy going along on this adventure. Then she cracked a yawn. Kalish fought the impulse to mirror it. Thanks to jumping all over the planet, they had all experienced a longer than usual night.

  “True enough,” Kalish said. “Then yes, I would like to speak to Sedge again, please. Thank you for your help.”

  “Welcome.” Val yawned again, then ambled out.

  Chapter 4

  Assuming it would take Val a few minutes to find Sedge and send him in her direction, Kalish dug into her pack for the only spare shirt she had brought from the ship. She hoped she could keep this one blood free. Had there been a garbage can, she would have tossed the torn shirt into it. At least the jacket had Gar-zymes in it; they should be able to mend the gashes by morning. She dug out a sani-sponge, squeezed it to moisten it, then washed away the blood on her side and hands. What a mess. Fortunately, the mercenaries’ first-aid kits were well-stocked.

  When a draft swept inside, Kalish was still washing herself and had not yet put on the new shirt. She reached for it at the same time as Sedge walked in.

  He halted, his eyes wide as they took in her topless state, then he blurted, “Ms. Blackwell,” and spun around to face the tent flap. “Pardon me. I’ll wait outside.”

  “Kalish,” she corrected, amused that he was flustered, but appreciating his manners as well. “Unless you’re certain you’re going to ultimately lose to me in our game.” She tugged the shirt over her head, glad she could do so without a stab of pain from her side now. It would ache in the morning, but she should be fit for ruin hunting.