The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (43 page)

The first mate turned to someone to the side of the camera’s pickup. He nodded. “Get him.”

It might have been the static on the view screen, but he appeared frazzled, with a fresh scar tracing the side of his face. Whatever the pirates had been doing out here, it must have involved more than sitting in the nebula, sipping rum until Kalish finished her mission.

“
Their weapons are hot,” Tia murmured.

“
And aimed at us?”

“
Perhaps not yet, but that wouldn’t take long.”

“
Ms. Blackwell,” the first mate said. “You said you have the item. I’m waiting to see it.”

Kalish leaned back in her seat. She wanted to see her father before she showed the goons anything, but maybe she should appear to go along. She turned, as if to order Sedge to fetch it, but Tia stirred in her chair, muttering something under her breath.

“
What?” Kalish whispered.

“
Another ship.”

“
Fleet? Pirate?” Kalish met Sedge’s eyes, as if he might know.

“
I can’t tell,” Tia said. “It’s coming up behind the pirate ship. It’s—”

A boom sounded in the distance; it came over the comm channel, Kalish realized. The first mate ran out of sight. The transmission cut off.

“
What is—” Kalish started to ask, but words coming over the open comm made her pause.

“
Good to see you, sir,” Val said.

Kalish had forgotten the mercenary shuttles were coming to the same rendezvous point. But who were they talking to? The other ship? Was that the Mandrake Company vessel?

Another boom sounded, this time reverberating through the icy vacuum of space.

“
They’re firing on the pirate ship,” Tia said. “The pirates are returning fire, but they only have one laser bank working. Oh, look. The backside of their ship is all scarred up. They’ve already
been
in a fight.”

Before Kalish could respond, a brilliant flash lit the nebula. Even with the cloud haze, she had to lift her arm and shield her eyes. When she was able to blink away the colored dots still dancing in front of her pupils, she nearly fell out of her seat at what hovered in space ahead of them. The pirate ship had been completely obliterated, with wreckage flying off in all directions. At the center of it all floated the bird-of-prey shape of the
Albatross
.

“
Dad,” Kalish whispered, too shocked to say more.

* * *

“
The docking clamps are—” Tia broke off with a yawn, “—being secured.”

Sedge stood next to the hatch in the cargo bay, his pack over his shoulder. He should be ready to return to his cabin—his home—on the
Albatross
, but as he gazed at Kalish standing in the center of the hold, her hands in her pockets and a lost expression on her face, all he wanted to do was stay. To make things right for her. She believed her father had been aboard that pirate ship when the
Albatross
had destroyed it. He did not know if that was true or not—both vessels had appeared damaged, as if they had been in the nebula, playing cat and mouse with each other for some time—but he hoped the man had been held somewhere else and that it would be possible to retrieve him. Perhaps even without trading the artifacts Kalish had worked so hard to find.

Striker distracted him with a jab to the shoulder. “Looking forward to going home, Sniffles?”

“
Are you?” Sedge asked. The proper response to a question one could not or would not answer was to deflect it.

“
I suppose. Since the little sister has been too busy or tired to notice my virile attributes and slip off into a cabin with me. Haven’t missed P.T. though. Or getting smashed into the judo mat by the captain.”

“
And Sergeant Hazel,” Tick said, winking as he walked up, his gear also slung over his shoulder.

“
She does
not
beat me,” Striker growled.

Tick arched his brows.

“
More than one in three times,” Striker amended.

“
I thought the head-to-head went the other way.”

“
It does not.”

A
clank-thunk-clank
came from outside the ship.

“
We’re clamped in, and it’s safe to cross through the tube,” Tia said.

Striker spun the wheel on the hatch, and strode out without hesitation. Tick ambled after him. Sedge hesitated. Ms. Blackwell had come to join her daughter, putting an arm around Kalish’s shoulders. Would they come aboard the
Albatross
? Or stay here?

Even though the timing would be inappropriate, Sedge couldn’t help but think of inviting Kalish aboard with him for dinner and a tour that ended in his cabin. But sex would be the last thing on her mind while her father’s fate was in question.

His comm-patch beeped. “Lieutenant Thomlin,” the captain said.

“
Yes, sir?”

“
You’ll want to bring our employer over with you.”

“
Yes, sir.”

Kalish had heard, turning her head in his direction. Sedge lifted an arm in invitation. He might not get to entice her back to his cabin, but he could spend a few more hours with her at least. She murmured something to her mother, then followed Sedge through the short tube connecting the
Divining Rod
to the
Albatross
.

They emptied out into a cargo hold next to the shuttle bay, a dim area stacked high with interlocking plas-mesh crates. Several people had come down to meet them, including the captain himself. To his side stood a black-skinned man with tattooed forearms, short salt-and-pepper hair, and quirky, asymmetrical glasses with one of the lenses cracked.

“
Dad?” Kalish whispered.

The man smiled, stepped away from the captain, and spread his arms. Kalish nearly stumbled as she rushed across the hold to embrace him.

Sedge watched in surprise, pleased the man had been retrieved, but bewildered as to how the company had managed it. He walked over to the captain, hoping for an answer to that question. Striker and Tick were already ambling for the corridor, but Sergei Zharkov, the ship’s assassin, remained behind the captain’s shoulder. Sedge gave him a curious look, but the man’s perpetually saturnine expression did not change.

“
Lieutenant Thomlin,” the captain said, his face not much easier to read, “care to explain why an armada of Fleet ships has this nebula surrounded?”

“
It’s... surely not enough to qualify as an armada, sir. Perhaps a flotilla.”

Mandrake stared at him, no hint of humor on his face.

“
As to the why, I thought you might know more about that than us. We’ve been down in the caverns for several days. I thought they might have been nearby for some other assignment when the miners sent out a distress call.”

“
We were monitoring the compound’s communications. The miners never sent out a distress call.”

“
No? I would have thought they found your biological agent distressing.” Not to mention the explosions Thatcher’s team had set off in their compound the first night.

“
They’re used to being self-sufficient. They rarely receive help way out here, even when they call for it. But the Fleet showed up in the area shortly after the pirates did. It’s possible they were pursuing Cometrunner.”

“
Ah, yes,” Sedge said, glancing at Kalish and her father. They were still embracing and talking rapidly between each other. Tears glistened in both of their eyes, and he felt a twinge of homesickness. Perhaps he would find a reason to visit his own family soon. If only they didn’t surround themselves with those infernal plants all the time. “What happened to Cometrunner, sir? Was he on the ship when it blew up?”

“
Technically, yes,” Sergei said.

The captain’s eyebrow twitched.

“
Unless they jettisoned the body,” Sergei added.

Some of Sedge’s confusion must have shown on his face, because the captain finally explained.

“
Shortly after your message about Cometrunner and his prisoner—” Mandrake jerked his chin toward Kalish’s father, “—we spotted his ship coming into orbit around the planet. To spy on Ms. Blackwell’s progress, I assumed. Since you implied we could win the contract simply by retrieving the father, we called him and offered the alien technology we had already retrieved from the ruins, for a suitable price. I told him we had heard he was a buyer.”

“
Technology you had already retrieved from the ruins? I had no idea you were a collector, sir. Or did you mean the fossilized fecal matter our new microbiologist collects?”

“
I bluffed that we had part of an alien ship, since that seemed to be what he wanted. Offered it to him for a half a million aurums and invited him to come over and look at it before deciding. He was suspicious but agreed to meeting on an asteroid out here. He came with a squad of his best men. Sergei went with a squad of
our
best men.” His eyes narrowed, a slight gleam in their emerald depths. “Our men were better.”

Sergei inclined his head once, but gave no other indication of smugness or satisfaction.

“
Conveniently, Cometrunner had also brought Mr. Blackwell along, since he’s a historian and could identify genuine artifacts. About five minutes after that meeting started, Cometrunner was dead, along with a number of pirates, and we had the kidnap victim back. As soon as the pirate ship realized what happened, it fled into the nebula. If you had been here, you would have informed me that there was a reward for blowing it—and its crew—up. It seems this isn’t Cometrunner’s first kidnapping. I didn’t think to look that up right away, but once we figured it out, we gave chase. The nebula made it difficult to find them, but we had a squabble with them a few hours ago, right after we had transmitted those coordinates to you. They left us battered and injured, or so they believed. We had deliberately used an easy to break encryption in the hopes that they might show up there and try to get to Ms. Blackwell’s treasure—if she actually found a treasure.” Mandrake looked expectantly at Sedge.

“
Yes, sir. Two engines from ancient alien ships, ones that hadn’t even been installed yet, and a computer that can create some impressive holodisplays.”

Mandrake’s eyes grew unfocused as he turned them toward a distant corner and scratched his jaw thoughtfully. “Good. Yes, good.”

“
Sir?” Sedge did not think the captain had any interest in the alien civilization, but he seemed to have some new plan in his head.

“
Later,” was all Mandrake said. “In the end, you were our bait. The pirates believed us too injured to reach the rendezvous point in time and thought they could slip in and salvage something. They couldn’t, and we’ll be paid handsomely by those who had a bounty on that ship. And presumably by Ms. Blackwell as well.”

Sedge hesitated, wanting to ask the captain to refuse payment, to not charge Kalish for their services, but that would not sit well with a ship full of mercenaries, mercenaries who expected to be paid for their time. Besides, if Kalish could find a way out of here with her relics, she ought to earn more than enough to finance the mission. The only problem was that she and her family might be deemed criminals forever after.

“
Yes, sir,” Sedge said. “Thank you for taking the risk of going after the pirates.”

Kalish, clasping her father’s hand, pointed back toward the airlock, saying that Tia and their mother would want to see him. Smiling, he let her drag him toward the smaller ship. Kalish glanced back and waved at Sedge before ducking into the tube.

Her happiness pleased him, but he couldn’t help but stretch out his hand, as if to recapture something he had lost.