Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (3 page)

“Someone get that shuttle down here,” Viktor
ordered.

He wondered if Frog was taking his time
because he was afraid of being chastised. At least their quarry
hadn’t escaped. That would have been annoying. This was nothing
more than a side trip to earn extra cash for repairs and new
equipment. He had never had any intention of chasing these women
across the system.

Viktor’s remaining captive, Markovich,
groaned again and tried to push her way off his shoulder. He put
her down, getting a face full of dark wavy brown hair in the
process. It had been tied back in a more practical ponytail
earlier, but it must have fallen out in the crash.

He fished out flex-cuffs and secured her
wrists behind her back before she had stopped blinking her eyes in
confusion—or perhaps that was less confusion and more an attempt to
focus them. He patted her down, checking her dusty khaki jumpsuit
for weapons. Full of pockets, the baggy outfit did little to
accentuate her figure, but his search revealed some nice curves. He
made himself keep the pat down quick and professional—he shouldn’t
be noticing a criminal’s curves anyway.

“Sir, she needs the doctor, not a prison
cell,” Sergeant Hazel said, waving to the flex-cuffs.

Probably so, but the old habits, those that
had been drilled into him in a previous life, had served him well
as a mercenary and kept him alive. Never underestimating enemies
and never leaving prisoners unsecured were two of those habits.

Viktor tensed when the woman stumbled against
his chest, though it was doubtlessly due to her barely being able
to stand rather than an attempt to get close to attack him. Though
his better judgment argued for it, he didn’t push her away. They
had been on the defense of Maritoba without relief for more than
six months. It had been a long time since the crew’s last shore
leave, and he hadn’t had anything softer than a gun pressed against
his chest for far too long. She smelled nicely feminine, too,
despite the dust and grime she had acquired mucking around in those
ruins, and he let his chin droop a bit, ostensibly to look her in
the eyes, but also because he was trying to identify the scent of
her shampoo. Lavender and... lilac? The scent surprised him with a
pang of nostalgia, as his brain stirred up memories of his
homeland, of walking through the gardens on the edge of the forest,
where such flowers had grown along the winding dirt pathways.

“What do you people want?” Markovich mumbled,
wincing as she looked up at him. A headache from hell, no doubt.
He’d been knocked out enough times to know how wonderful it felt
when you woke up.

Realizing he was staring at her, Viktor
quashed his memories of home, a home long gone now, and he also
quashed any sympathy that he might have otherwise felt toward a
woman in pain. She wasn’t someone to be empathized with; she must
have done something particularly vile to warrant a bounty so high.
Besides, “Captain Mandrake” was hardly known for showing sympathy.
His crew would think him under a witch’s spell if he treated this
woman differently than he would any other prisoner.

“We want you,” he said.

“Me? Why?”

“To collect your bounty.”

The look of utter confusion that crossed her
face was... a fine bit of acting.

“What bounty?” she asked.

He doubted very much that she didn’t know.
Still, he pushed her away from his chest, keeping a hand on her
shoulder so she wouldn’t pitch to the ground, and showed her the
holographic poster. Her mouth opened and closed a few times.
Nothing came out. She leaned toward it, squinting, but looked like
she was still struggling to focus her vision. She had caught the
gist though. That much was clear.

The shuttle finally reappeared, descending
from the stars to land on the hilltop. Its lights brightened the
path leading up to it.

Viktor folded the tablet and stuck it in his
cargo pocket. “Get moving.”

He turned his prisoner to face the shuttle,
its rear hatch already opening. She balked, or maybe she was
stunned, because in looking in that direction, she saw her
ship—what remained of it. Tension bunched her shoulders, and he
expected the outburst before it came. How could Frog be so good at
destroying enemy craft and so pitiful at disabling them?

“You destroyed our
ship
?” Markovich
spun back toward him. The shuttle’s landing lights offered enough
illumination that he had no trouble seeing the rage in her eyes.
“Do you know how long I saved, how much I gave up to come up with
the down payment, and how much I still
owe
? No, you wouldn’t
care, would you? You think I’m some criminal, and it would never
occur to you to double-check to make sure this wasn’t a mistake or
vicious prank or...” Her eyes drifted toward his cargo pocket, and
she wound down, finishing with, “Who the hell would put a bounty on
me? On all of us? We’ve only known each other for a few of months.
How could we have possibly committed a crime that quickly?” Then
her head jerked up, and she spun around again. “My partners. Are
they all right?” She spotted Sergeant Hazel and the woman she was
carrying over her shoulder and onto the shuttle. Jiang was walking
up the hill after her, his prisoner draped in his arms. “Lauren?
Jamie?”

“They’re alive.” Viktor didn’t think either
of them had regained consciousness. “When we dock, I’ll send the
doctor to the brig to check on all of you.”

“Well, aren’t you a thoughtful bounty
hunter?” Markovich grumbled.

“We’re mercenaries,” Viktor said stiffly. As
if it mattered to her. He wasn’t even sure why the distinction
mattered to him. Catching criminals, fighting wars. Was one
activity more virtuous than the other? They were both jobs, neither
the kind that was idolized by the entertainment industry and their
mindless dramas. Sometimes, very seldom, his company got hired to
help the side they truly wanted to help, the outnumbered and
beleaguered, but in the end, it rarely mattered. Those in bed with
the Galactic Conglomeration always won. He hadn’t even been able to
help his own people, and now only graves remained on Grenavine.
“Walk,” he said, not caring that his tone was cold, not caring that
it made her flinch. “Walk, or I will carry you.”

She threw back her shoulders, lifted her
chin, took a step... and her legs gave out. With her hands locked
behind her back, she would have fallen on her face, but he caught
her. Viktor might not be as young as he once was, but his reflexes
were still decent. He picked her up and carried her to the shuttle.
It had been a while since he swept a woman up to carry her
somewhere, but he was fairly certain that irked expression on her
face wasn’t a good sign. As if this was his fault. She shouldn’t
have annoyed Lord Felgard to the extent of a hundred thousand
aurums. The owner of Trak Teck Enterprises had deep pockets, but
that was a hefty bounty, even from him.

As he watched his crew strap in the prisoners
for the ride up to the
Albatross
, he wondered what they had
done to earn the powerful entrepreneur’s wrath.

“I don’t understand,” Jamie said, sitting
hard on the bench built into the back of the cell and crossing her
legs with a huff. “We haven’t
done
anything. You two have
been back in the lab with your noses stuck to your microscopes. How
could we possibly have done anything?”

Technically, Ankari had been reading books on
what her microbiologist was doing with her nose stuck to a
microscope, but all she said now was, “I don’t know.” She stood
near the front of the cell, gazing down the corridor to a security
desk at the end. All she could see was a pair of boots propped up
on it.

Ankari paced back to the bench and patted
Lauren on the back. “You doing all right?”

Blood stained the back of Lauren’s hand, and
the side of her face had been burned. She needed a doctor more than
any of them. Ankari hoped the captain hadn’t been lying, that he
would send someone with medical expertise to tend to them. If he
truly believed they were criminals, he had no reason to treat them
decently.

“My ribs hurt,” Lauren whispered. “And my
head. Is the ship really... gone? All of our equipment? Our
samples? My research?”

“The ship won’t fly again,” Ankari said. Nor
had she heard anyone give an order to bring it along, even if it
was only for scrap. The scavengers would be delighted to pick over
the remains—some of that equipment had to have survived the crash
and doubtlessly still had value. Her soul ached, knowing it would
all be gone by the time she and her partners escaped and made their
way back there.
If
they escaped. “I did see someone carrying
our packs to the shuttle. Probably because they want to cash in on
the aliuolite I gathered.” She snorted. “In case our bounty isn’t
enough.”

“Did you see who issued our bounty?” Jamie
asked.

“Lord Someone. Felgard, I think. I was seeing
about three blurry copies of the captain standing in front of me. I
could barely read what he showed me.”

“And to think I thought he was handsome.”

“The handsome ones always break your heart,”
Lauren said.

“And blow up your ship,” Ankari growled.
“Sometimes your head too.”

She probed the swollen knot at the back of
her skull. She still felt woozy and nauseated from smacking that
wall and wouldn’t mind some attention from the doctor herself. Even
more, she wanted access to the tablet the captain had shown her. If
she could get on the net, she could learn everything about the
bounty poster, and she could mail her friend, Fumio, programmer and
hacker extraordinaire, to find out who had created it. Was it truly
one of the self-proclaimed lords of finance, or had some enemy of
hers simply wanted to get her in trouble, making it
seem
like someone who had a lot of money wanted her? She allowed herself
a moment of smug pleasure at the idea of Captain What’s-his-name
showing up on the steps of some mansion’s front door, trying to
collect a bounty that had never been issued. But she couldn’t
imagine who would have gone through the trouble to arrange such a
farce. She was only twenty-six. How many enemies could she have?
She couldn’t even think of any, beyond old rivals on the streets
where she had grown up, but those people shouldn’t have the
resources to do this. And she couldn’t imagine many of them had
even thought of her once she had left.

“Wish I’d thought to steal his tablet,”
Ankari muttered. She had been a fair pickpocket once, much to her
father’s chagrin, but it wasn’t a craft easily undertaken when
one’s wrists were handcuffed. At least the thugs who had stuffed
them into this cell had removed their bindings before activating
the force field.

A door swooshed open, and the boots
disappeared from the desk. “They’re all there, sir.” Striker’s
voice floated down the corridor. “I haven’t been bugging them.”

“Good.” That was the captain’s voice, but the
first person to walk into view was an attractive woman with black
hair, one temple shot through with gray. She wore the same
civilian-style clothes that everyone on the crew favored, at least
everyone Ankari had seen so far, but her leather instrument bag and
a thin gray cardigan with bulging pockets gave her a doctorly
look.

The captain came into view next, though all
he did was put his palm on the wall lock outside of the cell to
drop the force field. Ankari took note of a small electric sensor
under the handprint pad. Was it possible to lower the barrier with
some kind of key as well?

The doctor walked in while the captain leaned
against the wall, watching everything. He wore the same clothes as
he had on the planet, though he had taken off the vest and eye
apparatus. His guns still hung in a holster at his waist. Ankari
had to try extremely hard not to let her loathing show on her face.
She still couldn’t believe he had ordered her ship blown up. Even
if money were no object, it would take forever to reacquire all the
specialized lab equipment they’d had inside, and money
was
an object. When wasn’t it?

She fantasized about blowing up
his
ship. He would be left with nothing except scrap metal. Maybe ten
thousand aurums worth, she calculated, judging how much the
recyclers might offer for the raw materials from this size craft.
That wouldn’t pay his crew’s wages for long. Of course, she would
need to find a way
off
his ship before blowing it up...

For now, she painted a bland expression on
her face. She might not have read any books on war and combat when
she was growing up, but she had a feeling one wasn’t supposed to
telegraph one’s hatred to one’s enemy. Better to take him by
surprise later on.

“I’m Dr. Zimonjic. Who’s first?” The woman’s
voice was pleasant. She smiled too.

“Lauren, please.” Ankari gestured to her
injured partner and turned her back on the captain. It would be
easier to keep that loathing off her face if she wasn’t looking at
what she loathed. “Where are your muscles, doctor?”

The woman’s brows rose. “Pardon me?”

“Everyone else we’ve seen here... bulges.
Even the women.” Speaking of bulges, Ankari wondered if any of
those lumps in the doctor’s pockets would be worth checking out.
Might there be something that could facilitate an escape? Though
she trusted the skills she had acquired in her sketchy youth, the
thought of trying to steal something with the captain watching made
her nervous. Her wanted poster might have said she was to be
delivered alive, but there were a lot of levels of aliveness one
could exist on. It
was
promising that he had brought the
doctor, but he had also had her ship destroyed with the wave of a
hand. She couldn’t assume that he would treat her well, no matter
what.

“It sounds like you’ve met Sergeant Hazel,”
the doctor said dryly, taking out a scanner. She waved the handheld
device over Lauren. “It’s true the women here all train as hard as
the men, the combat specialists anyway. And the pilots and
engineers, too, come to think of it. The captain seems to think
everyone should be fit enough to repel a boarding party with one
hand tied behind his or her back.” She smiled over her shoulder as
she said this, a playful quirk to her lips.