The Ruins of Karzelek (The Mandrake Company series Book 4) (9 page)

Kalish looked toward Sedge, not as engrossed in her computer work as one might have hoped. She glanced down his form for an instant before looking back to the hologram. Sedge headed outside so nobody would see the way his cheeks reddened at the thought of her imagining his penis as some bloated whale with thorns sticking out of it. Or maybe it was the thought of her imagining his penis at all that flustered him.

“
Didn’t they have manners where you grew up, Striker?” Tick asked. “Some sort of notion that there are things you shouldn’t say in the presence of women?”

“
Nah, grew up on Frontier Colony. The women there are tougher than bullets and curse twice as much as the men. They also chew fenwad and spikes, not sissy strawberry gum, like a ten-year-old girl.”

“
You’re insulting my gum? It’s got adrenocharge in it. See if I share a hit with you the next time we’re humping it through a jungle with a hundred pounds on our backs.”

That was the last of the conversation that Sedge heard. He fished his tablet out of his pocket, thumbed on the flashlight feature, and powered up the hand warmer as well. It had dropped well below freezing after nightfall, and he hoped the captain wouldn’t want to talk for long. He didn’t have that much information to share anyway. He hoped the captain would not be disappointed. He didn’t want to make excuses about being unconscious for however long that had been.

Sedge saw the thorny white cactus and avoided it, choosing a less prickly spot to take care of biological needs. As soon as he finished and moved far enough from the tent that nobody would overhear, he tapped his comm-patch. He kept the video from displaying, not wanting to attract attention if anyone else wandered out of the tent to relieve himself—or herself—though given the temperature, the prudent person might hold it until morning.

“
Mandrake,” came the curt answer. The fact that the transmission wasn’t routed through anyone on the bridge told Sedge that the captain had indeed been waiting, perhaps not all that patiently.

“
Thomlin reporting, sir.”

“
Yes, what more do you know? Thatcher has been flying around all night and had little to report. You’re in Blackwell’s camp, right?”

“
Yes, sir. I was injured.” Sedge wasn’t sure why he added that information. He had not intended to make an excuse, nor ask for sympathy, but he wanted the captain to know he hadn’t been relaxing on duty. “Kalish—er, Ms. Blackwell—is being cagey about what she reveals.” He wished he could see Mandrake’s face to know if he had reacted to that slipup. On second thought, maybe he didn’t want to see. “But I find it likely she’s seeking ancient alien ruins rather than ore. She has a historian’s background, and I believe she either has the specific coordinates of a site that hasn’t been documented and explored, or she has a good idea as to where the location might be. She must expect to find valuable artifacts, because I heard her speaking about making enough to come out ahead after paying off the company.”

“
So long as she
does
intend to pay the company.”

“
Yes, sir. She seems...” Sedge thought of Kalish’s distress over the miners they had shot. “Honorable.”

Mandrake grunted.

Sedge couldn’t tell if it was a grunt of skepticism or merely one of acknowledgment. He rubbed his hands together, wishing he had thought to find some gloves before coming outside, and debated whether to share the other information that he had overheard, the fact that Kalish’s father seemed to be under duress somewhere. It was personal and certainly not something she would want shared. But it could end up affecting the company.
That
was where his loyalty lay, he reminded himself.

“
Anything else?” Mandrake asked.

Even if he felt like he was betraying Kalish, Sedge said, “It may not have any impact on us, but it sounds like someone might be holding her father hostage, perhaps in return for whatever is believed to be in the ruins.”

“
Noted. Report in as soon as you have more intel.”

“
Yes, sir.” Before he finished speaking, Sedge was turning back to the tent, his hands stuffed under his armpits. A flashlight came on not ten feet away from him, highlighting the ground in front of a pair of rugged brown boots. Rugged brown boots that belonged to Kalish.

She stared at him, her dark eyes flinty. “If you’d like to call him back with more
intel
,” she said, her voice even frostier than the night, “I
don’t
have specific coordinates. I have vague directions from an old drunk miner that I’m trying to match with those pathetic hand-drawn maps in there.”

Sedge opened his mouth, but nothing came out. How had he failed to notice her approaching? And why hadn’t Striker or Tick
warned
him that she had left the tent? Had they truly thought he had been gone this long, doing nothing more than watering the local flora?

“
As for my father, he’s of no concern to you, and he’s certainly not of any concern to your captain. The next time you’re unconscious around me, I’m going to stab a knife into your thigh to make sure you’re out.” She spun, her slender braids of hair whipping across her back, and stalked back toward the beige outline of the tent.

“
I’m sorry, Kalish,” Sedge tried. “I’m the ship’s intelligence officer. Gathering information is what I do.”

“
You didn’t win our game,” she snapped over her shoulder.

For a moment, the words confused him, but then he remembered. She had offered him the right to use her first name, but only if he beat her at Crucible.

“
I—”

An ear-splitting screech erupted from nearby, from no more than ten feet away. The alien cry hammered Sedge’s nerves and made him want to flee. A dark shape crouched atop a boulder right beside Kalish, its silhouette huge against the pink smear of the nebula in the night sky. It sprang from its perch, aiming to land on her.

* * *

Kalish spun at the noise, instinctively reaching for the pistol she carried on her belt. But she was too late. A massive shape leaped off a boulder and barreled into her before she could pull out her weapon. She tried to lunge away, but it crashed into her, and claws dug through her jacket, piercing flesh. Pain erupted from her side, even as she was smashed to the ground under hundreds of pounds of weight.

Laser fire shrieked. She hadn’t managed to pull out her own weapon, though she had a hand on the grip, and her first thought was she had shot through the holster at some worthless target. Like her own foot. She tried to yank the weapon free, but whatever had landed on her had her pinned. Her flashlight had been knocked away, and she couldn’t tell what had attacked her, but she could smell its fetid breath as rocks ground into her back. Something splashed against her cheek. Saliva?

She bucked, trying to free herself, to shove the writhing creature away. A laser fired again, and she realized one of the men was helping her. That gave her the strength to push and shove, almost frenzied in her rush to escape those claws. Finally, she squirmed free. She rolled away, yanking out her pistol and pointing it back in the direction of her assailant.

Sedge stood over the hulking predator, a flashlight in one hand and his pistol in the other, both pointed at the creature. The big, sand-colored, scaly figure wasn’t moving, and Kalish, in reviewing the last few seconds, realized it had probably been dead before it fully landed on her. There was no doubt its claws had dug in and drawn blood—she dropped a hand to her side, wincing at the light touch—but Sedge must have hit it while it was still in the air.

Footsteps pounded behind her, Tick and Striker rushing out of the tent.

“
Damn it,” Striker said, “we missed the fun?”

Sedge shifted the flashlight, focusing on the blood spotting the dirt for a second, then lifting it to Kalish’s torso. “You’re injured,” he said, stepping around the fallen beast and toward her. “How badly? Here. Let me help you back into the—”

A second screech rang out from the boulder field, and then a third. From the same creature or another? Kalish couldn’t tell.

“
The tent,” Sedge finished, grimacing into the darkness.

“
Something that big will crush those walls,” Kalish said, but she headed for the tent anyway. If nothing else, there were better lights in there that they could use.

“
You two, go in there,” Tick said. “Get us some lights.”

“
That’s right.” Striker patted his belt, which held a row of grenades as well as ammo pouches with backup laser packs. “Let the Chief of Boom keep out the wildlife.” His eyes gleamed, as if this were a game he couldn’t wait to play. Kalish hoped his confidence wasn’t misplaced.

Another screech sounded, this time from boulders on the other side of the tent.

“
That’s a lot of wildlife,” Tick said, taking up a back-to-back position with Striker as Kalish and Sedge ducked into the tent.

“
This will make a great addition to my comic strip,” Striker announced.

“
Assuming you live to draw it,” Tick said.

“
Captain said he’d finish it if I ever got killed during a real epic battle.”

Kalish shuddered as she grabbed the lamp from the desk, regretting that she had sent all the ships away. Right now, she would much rather have a thick metal hull between her and the elements than a fabric wall. She took the lamp outside and set it on the ground, turning it to its highest power in the hope that such brightness might scare away the predators. At the least, it would let the mercenaries see what was coming for them.

“
Over here,” Sedge said, taking her arm and nodding toward a rock formation that rose well above their heads. Another screech came, almost drowning out the words.

Kalish got the gist though and joined him there. They put their backs to the boulders. Blood trickled down her rib cage inside of her shirt, but fear was charging her veins with adrenaline, and she didn’t feel much pain yet. She hoped the injury wasn’t bad enough that she needed to worry about blood loss.

Tick fired at the tops of a trio of boulders in the distance, short laser bursts that lit up the night beyond the light’s influence. Rock exploded, with shards flying everywhere, but he didn’t hit anything moving.

“
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.