Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (33 page)

A sparkling blue ocean stretched beneath the
shuttle while a cloudless azure sky filled the air above. They
zipped past small islands, but the craft did not slow. Ankari,
sitting beside Lauren and Jamie, watched Viktor for cues.

He occupied a seat across from her—apparently
his standing-only preference had to give in to the
seats-and-harnesses-required rule of shuttle flight. He appeared
grim and fierce, clad in his mesh battle armor, with pistols and
knives strapped at every imaginable access point. The butt of a
laser rifle sat on the deck between his legs. The soldiers at his
sides were similarly armed and sat in similar positions, none of
them craning their necks to see out the front of the shuttle like
Ankari was. Nor were any of them wiping damp hands on their
clothes. Jamie and Lauren were the only other people displaying
signs of nerves. Lauren had the look of someone who needed a paper
bag to breathe into, and Jamie kept fiddling with the straps of a
backpack. She and Lauren had supposedly managed to cobble together
some booby traps.

“Did you ever find out what happened to our
generator?” Jamie whispered.

“It didn’t come up,” Ankari said.

“You were gone all night.”

“Not talking about generators.” At Jamie’s
disapproving frown—more for the lack of a generator update than the
fact that Ankari had spent the night with Viktor, she was
sure—Ankari asked, “Captain? I suppose it’s too late to do anything
about now, but we were wondering why one of your people took our
portable generator.”

“I had it sent to my engineer and worked on,”
Viktor said.

“Worked on?” Jamie asked.

“It should take down a brig force field now,”
Viktor said. Ah, yes, he
had
been reviewing that security
footage after all. “That may come in useful down here.”

“I hope we can avoid being thrown into
cells,” Ankari said. Maybe that was a delusional hope.

Viktor gave her a quick, tight smile that she
didn’t know how to read.

Ankari and her friends couldn’t carry any
weapons of their own in, not when they were supposed to be
prisoners. She had objected to that, but Viktor had pointed out
that they would likely be funneled through a security screening and
that he, too, might be deprived of his weapons. He had growled a
little at that notion. Maybe that would keep him from trying to
kill Felgard. Ankari didn’t know how good of an idea that was. Even
if a finance lord could buy all the lawyers in the system and thus
get away with committing crimes, that didn’t make him a criminal in
the eyes of the law. If it were known that Mandrake Company had
made the man disappear, there might be... retribution.

“Looks like we’re going to have an escort to
the coordinates, sir,” the shuttle pilot said.

“Not surprising,” Viktor said.

“What? Old Felgard thinks we might ignore his
landing instructions and drop down on his rooftop instead of in his
shuttle port?” Tick asked. The tracker sat beside Viktor, chomping
on his gum and stealing occasional peeks through the porthole
behind him. He had muttered a few longing words about tropical
beaches and rum.

“Maybe we could just drop the girls out in
chutes and take us a nice long dip in one of his swimming holes,”
Striker, who was sitting on the other side of Tick, said.

Joke or not, Ankari wasn’t sure she liked
that attitude from one of Viktor’s elite men, chosen to help
protect her team. “I guess he’s gotten over his interest in you if
he’s willing to dump us so easily,” Ankari muttered to Jamie.

“I’m fine with that.”

The shadow of wings flashed past a porthole
behind Viktor’s head.

“Mandrake Shuttle,” a voice sounded over the
comm. “This is Starstrike Alpha. Proceed to the assigned
coordinates. We will escort you.”

“And my guess is proven correct,” the pilot
muttered, then raised his voice to respond with a clipped,
“Acknowledged.”

“Starstrike?” one of the soldiers near the
back said.

“Someone has an inflated opinion of the
ferocity of his civilian security craft,” someone else
muttered.

The nose of the shuttle dipped, and a lush
green shoreline came into view, lined with a sandy white beach.
Trees of impressive stature rose from the verdant inland, some
hundreds of feet tall. Ankari thought she saw structures in some of
them, but maybe they just had interesting branches and foliage. She
had never been to Paradise, but had heard about it, one of the only
planets in their trinary star system that had been
hospitable—pleasantly so—for human life
and
showed no sign
of the past terraforming. Her pre-mission reading had told her
Felgard’s island had been a global park and wildlife preserve for
most of its history, until he had found some loophole, dumped a
whole lot of money, and purchased it.

“That’s an
island
?” someone asked.

“Looks like a continent to me,” Tick
said.

“It’s just under a million square
kilometers,” the pilot said.

Tick grunted. “Oh, is that all?”

“Must be nice to have all that money. Think
of all the women you could buy.” Striker eyed Jamie, having
apparently not forgotten about her, after all. “Or maybe women
would throw themselves at you, on account of the lavishes you can
give them.”

“You don’t
give
lavishes, you idiot,”
Tick said, “you lavish someone. With things.”

“Whatever. I bet women are jumping on
Felgard’s dick every hour of the day, hoping for lavishes.”

Tick elbowed Striker. “Try harder to be
crude, will you? It’s not coming through as clearly as it could.”
He gave Ankari, Lauren, and Jamie apologetic looks.

“What crude? I can’t talk about dicks because
there are females listening?”

“Quiet,” Viktor said, his voice soft, but
cutting through the snickers and whispered speculation. “We’ll be
landing shortly.”

A soft beep came from Ankari’s pocket. Her
tablet. Paradise must have planet-wide net coverage. She almost
ignored it, figuring it was something mundane, like her mother
wanting to know why she hadn’t written lately, but decided to check
it in case it was important. Her own research hadn’t brought up any
more interesting information on Felgard, but she had sent Fumio a
note that morning, letting him know that she was going to confront
the finance lord and asking if he had found out anything new.

When she pulled up the message program, she
did, indeed, find a response from her friend.

No time for a long chat, Sweet Cakes, but I
had a fresh thought on the way to work this morning, and took the
liberty of investigating. We’ve been focusing on Felgard, not his
companies. Felgard’s past has been shrouded and obfuscated, and his
present isn’t all that clear, either. But in a testament to how
much the corporations take preeminence in the system, it’s harder
to obscure the records of a company than it is to hide a man. I’m
not sure if it’ll mean anything to you, but his first company, Trak
Teck Enterprises, originated on Spero. Standing by, Fumio.

Ankari stared at the words. She hadn’t
thought to look up the company, either, not beyond the basic
information out there on the public exchange, but should have poked
deeper. Spero. Just a confidence? Or did it mean something? That
Felgard came from the same planet as she? If that were true, then
wouldn’t they be all the more likely to be allies rather than
enemies? The new information was interesting, but Ankari didn’t
know how it could help her, especially at this late stage in their
plan.

Aware of Viktor’s gaze upon her, she handed
him the tablet. He read the message in silence, then handed it back
to her. If he found anything enlightening, it didn’t show on his
face, which remained as hard and grim as ever. Even if Felgard did
prove to be a victim of a destroyed world, nothing in Viktor’s eyes
said he was interested in extending the same solicitude to the
finance lord that he had to her.

“Landing, sir,” the pilot said.

Ankari put her tablet away. She was out of
time for speculation.

Tall green grass waved in the ocean breeze as
the craft touched down on a brick landing pad next to a hangar. The
bricks looked to be gold-plated; they gleamed beneath the strong
equatorial sun. At least twenty armed men waited outside, all
wearing crisp white uniforms, and there were ambulatory robots as
well, with built-in protrusions that looked like weapons. They
floated a couple of feet above the landing pad, idling at the
corners.

Ankari took a deep breath. This was it.

Viktor unbuckled his harness and stood behind
the pilot for a moment, looking alternately at the view screen and
the displays on the console.

“Big welcoming party,” the pilot said.

“Big island,” Tick said. “You’ve got to have
a big staff, or people will just think you’re scrimping.”

Ankari eased out of her seat. At least the
security men—and robots—didn’t look like they were preparing to
shoot anyone who stepped out of the shuttle. No, of course not. She
was wanted alive. All three of them were. She probably wouldn’t be
shot until
after
she rejected Felgard’s demands.

“We’re clear, sir,” the pilot said.

“Drop the door. I’ll go out first. Striker
and Tick after, then Ankari and the others. Sergeant Aster, follow
with your squad. Keep them protected.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You keep the engine running, Sequoia. I’ll
be in touch if we need one of your special pick-ups.”

The pilot glanced back, a hint of a smile
stretching a face that was oddly boyish and unscarred for a
mercenary. “Yes, sir. I packed the parachutes and thruster bikes,
just in case.”

“Good.”

Viktor was all business, none of the humor
from the morning on his face, but he gripped Ankari’s hand and met
her eyes before passing her and heading out of the shuttle. Ankari
was glad he hadn’t suggested that she and her friends be
handcuffed. She might not have a weapon, but she wanted to be able
to act if she had to, even if that just meant running and hiding.
With all the hulking soldiers, Viktor must have assumed it would be
believable that they wouldn’t bother binding their prisoners.

After he went out, the rest of the men herded
Ankari, Lauren, and Jamie after him. Ankari tried not to feel
useless surrounded by the sea of armed soldiers, but all she could
do was clasp her hands behind her back and walk across the brick
landing pad—it
was
gold-plated. How superfluous. The scenery
stretching around them was beautiful, though, palm trees, a beach
in the distance, and the brilliant blue sea beyond. The thick
vegetation inland reminded Ankari uncomfortably of Sturm—she hoped
there weren’t raptors—but the trees were different. Towering
hundreds of feet in the air, they were amazing, some with trunks
broader than the shuttlecraft. Long vines snaked down the sides
from branches that stretched for what seemed miles to either side,
creating a latticework between the trees.

There wasn’t much speaking between the two
teams of men, Viktor’s squad of twelve and Felgard’s
white-uniformed contingent of over twenty. A hover truck waited,
and with a few grunts, Mandrake Company and its prisoners were
ushered into the big cargo bed in the back. Viktor sat beside
Ankari. He was busy scanning the foliage for danger and keeping an
eye on the Felgard men, who had also climbed in the back with them,
so he didn’t make eye contact with her, but she appreciated his
solid presence, the reassuring touch of his shoulder against
hers.

The truck wound into the darker interior of
the island, following a gravel road, even though the hover feature
would have allowed it to go anywhere. The trees grew up all around,
the wide bases of their trunks blocking out the horizon and the
tall thick shafts stretching up like skyscrapers. An
innuendo-tainted joke floated into her mind, and she would have
shared it if she were alone with Viktor, but she was well aware of
all the eyes watching him, those of his people and those of the
white-clad men, as well. Prisoners probably weren’t supposed to
trade penis jokes with their captors.

When the truck stopped, it didn’t seem as if
they had arrived anywhere. They were still on the road and in the
middle of the forest. A couple more armed men stepped out from
behind the closest tree. For a moment, Ankari thought they had been
dragged out into the woods to be shot, but the men waved the truck
off the road. It stopped beneath a square of green moss that didn’t
quite fit in with the rest of the forest floor. Before she could
lean back and examine it further, the truck started rising. Fast.
She grabbed Viktor’s arm, realized what she was doing, and tried to
find a spot on the bench to grip instead. Of course, Lauren was
grabbing
her
arm, so maybe no one would think twice of her
alarmed snatch.

With speed that inspired vertigo, the entire
craft rose two hundred feet, then halted next to a wooden platform.
An entire city of platforms spread out on multiple levels with
myriad pathways leading between them, some lined with huge potted
plants and others with stark, narrow stretches without so much as a
railing to protect one from the fall.

“Felgard lives in a tree fort?” Striker asked
as the truck floated onto the closest platform, a large loading and
unloading area that included a vehicle garage. “That’s not in line
with the kind of super villain abode you usually see in
literature.”

“You’ve read literature?” Tick asked.

“Yes.”

“Was it graphically represented?”

One of the other men snickered, muttering
about Striker’s extensive comic collection.

“Every panel has sentences on it, you
meatheads. It’s literature.”

“Ooooow-splat isn’t a sentence,” Tick
said.

Ankari tried to decide whether she was
reassured that Viktor’s men were calm enough for this banter or if
she was concerned that they weren’t taking Felgard as seriously as
they should.