The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) (16 page)

Before Heath made it to the front of the shuttle, his apparent destination, Striker, who sat behind Ankari and Jamie, stuck his leg out. Heath nearly fell over it.

“What?” he asked, turning an exasperated look on Striker.

Striker curled his index finger, gesturing for Heath to lower his head.

“Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it,” Heath said, though he did bend down.

Striker made a fist and rapped his knuckles on Heath’s forehead. “Hello? Is anybody home in there?”

Heath knocked the arm away. “What are you talking about?”

“A pretty woman hit on you. You didn’t even have to chase her, or get her drunk. And you ran away?”

“Grow up, Striker.” Heath shoved his leg away and continued past. He flopped down in the seat behind Jamie and slouched low, his head disappearing from Lauren’s view.

She couldn’t tell if he called the captain or not. It didn’t matter. She was just pleased that he hadn’t accepted Hailey’s offer. A part of her wanted to casually stroll up there and sit next to him, but she didn’t know what she would do or say if she did. She certainly wasn’t going to start stroking his thigh. It wasn’t as if she wanted to arouse him or have sex with him. She just… didn’t want him to have sex with her sister. Or anyone else. That wasn’t foolish, was it?

“Of course it is,” Lauren muttered to herself, pulling her head away from the curtain.

She returned to the druid files, determined to put thoughts of Heath, butts, and sex completely out of her mind. What a silly waste of mental energy.

• • • • •

Tick hunkered low in his spot behind the pilot’s seat, pretending to read his book, but mostly wishing the lights had been dimmed for night and that he had a private spot where he could masturbate. He kept trying to think non-sexual thoughts, to ease the erection that had started when Ms. Keys touched him, but he kept thinking about
Lauren
touching him. He knew she wasn’t interested in doing anything of the sort, and maybe that was what made the thoughts so appealing. The idea of her sauntering up the aisle in her lab coat, her breasts pushing against the thin shirt she wore underneath it, and having her bypass all of the other mercenaries, her eyes only for him. She would sashay over to his seat, press her hands against his shoulders, and straddle him. One of the rare smiles he had teased out of her earlier would return to her lips, along with a sultry, hungry look in her eyes. She would run her tongue along her lower lip as she settled onto his lap, her hot core pressing against his aching erection. He would grab her ass, pulling her hard against him, ignoring everyone else in the shuttle. Let them watch as he tore off her clothes and—

A beeping came from the control console in front of Jamie, and the navigation holodisplay flickered.

Tick forced himself to focus on it and not on his ridiculous fantasy. That was an alarm beep, signaling a problem.

He realized he’d been grabbing his crotch, rubbing himself through his trousers, and he jerked his hand away, shame heating his cheeks. What if Jamie or Ankari had looked back and seen? Then wondered what in all the galaxy he was doing on their fuzzy seat covers? He could have at least gone to the lav. Maybe he would do that, assuming that alarm wasn’t signaling anything important.

“Problem?” Ankari asked as Jamie poked at the controls.

“There shouldn’t be.”

“But there is?”

“We’re losing altitude.”

“Uhm, why?”

“I’m not sure. There’s no reason we should be.” Jamie pulled up several displays.

“One of those bats didn’t bite a hole in our fuel tank, did it?”

“If our hull were
that
thin, we’d never withstand the rigors of spaceflight,” Jamie said dryly.

Tick thought about standing up to take a look, but he didn’t know a lot about flying, just that he didn’t care much for it—especially when alarms were flashing. Besides, he still had a liftoff problem of his own, and he didn’t want to jab either of the women in the back with his cock. Lauren, on the other hand… No, no, she didn’t want to be jabbed, either.

He sighed at himself in irritation and tried to quell his libido.

“Delta Shuttle,” came Commander Thatcher’s voice over the comm. “You are losing altitude prematurely. We are approximately eighty miles from our destination.”

Ankari beat Jamie to the comm switch. “Ladybug,” she said.

“Pardon?” Thatcher asked.

“It’s been months since we changed the name of the shuttle to Ladybug. Captain Mandrake knows all about it.”

The sound of a murmured conversation came over the comm, followed by, “Captain Mandrake asserts that the proper name of your craft is Delta Shuttle and demands to know why you’re diverting from course.”

“We’re not trying to,” Jamie said before Ankari could fight further for the unofficial name of her pink shuttle. “Fuel reads at two-thirds, engine is within normal temperature parameters...”

The rest of the checklist didn’t mean much to Tick, so he barely heard it. He leaned forward, not pleased that he could once again see the verdant green continent stretched out before them, the nose of their shuttle tilted toward it.

Lieutenant Sparks, who worked in the engine room on the
Albatross
, came forward and frowned at the display. Tick hoped he could do something useful, but knew the officer’s specialty was weapons systems.

“Thoughts, sir?” Jamie asked.

“I’ll go do a visual inspection of the engine and lines, see if something came loose,” he said and trotted down the aisle, past the lab, and into the engine compartment.

Jamie alternated cycling through displays and drumming her fingers on the console.

“Ankari,” Jamie said, “watch the controls for a moment, will you? I’m going to look too. This alarm is quite certain there’s a problem going on back there.”

“Does it say what that problem is?” Ankari asked as Jamie slid out of her seat.

“No, it’s that vague, take-your-shuttle-to-an-authorized-service-specialist kind of alarm. I should have taken a look at the exterior after that bat attack. I didn’t think they were large enough to have done any harm, but that might have been a mistake.” Grumbling to herself, Jamie jogged down the aisle and into the engine compartment.

Ankari gave Tick a bleak look. “She leaves me to monitor things, as if I’d know if something is wrong.”

Tick pointed toward the view screen. “The fact that those trees are getting closer looks wrong to me.”

“Give us an update on your status, Delta Shuttle,” Commander Thatcher ordered.

“Lieutenant Sparks and Jamie are visually inspecting the engine,” Ankari said.

“You’ll need to land in order to access everything.”

“I’m aware of that, Commander.” Ankari raised an eyebrow toward Tick and mouthed, “I am now.”

Tick managed a quick smile, though he was busy watching those trees and wondering
where
they would land if they had no option but to do so. And would it be a
controlled
landing? He imagined them crashing into the treetops.

“Stop it,” he grumbled to himself.

If nothing else, Jamie could follow Frog’s example and blow up enough of the jungle to make a landing spot for them.

“Absolutely nothing wrong that we can see,” Jamie said, jogging back to the console, fresh smudges on the backs of her hands. She slid into the seat and lifted her fingers toward the controls, but then dropped them and huffed a disgruntled noise. “Sparks is still looking, but he thinks we’ll have to land and run a manual diagnostics check.”

Ankari touched the comm, though the channel was still open. “You hear that, Thatcher?”

“Find a landing spot,” Captain Mandrake said, probably leaning over Thatcher’s shoulder now and watching his pink shuttle on the sensors. “We’ll follow you down.”

“Oh, no,” came Ms. Keys’ voice from the back of the shuttle. She strode forward, a dark frown on her face. “We cannot delay the mission, Captain.”

“If the shuttle needs to land, it needs to land. Machinery doesn’t know or care about human urgency.”

“Very pithy, Captain,” Keys said. “What I mean is that you and your other shuttle must continue on and search the second canyon I circled on the map. As you’ve seen, there are other people out here competing with us. Delays are unacceptable.”

“Are they
competing
with us, Ms. Keys,” Mandrake said, “or are they trying to get to
you
?”

“What are you insinuating, Captain? That I stole something, or that I’ve committed some other crime, causing random thugs to come after me?”

Tick frowned at her. Mandrake hadn’t implied theft or criminal actions, so it was interesting—maybe revealing?—that she brought that up.

“You tell me, Ms. Keys,” was all Mandrake said.

An alarm blared, much louder than the soft beep of the other one. “Proximity warning,” the computer announced. “We are within forty meters of obstacles.”

Jamie turned off the alarm before it could cycle through another warning. “I’m fully aware of that, computer.” She sighed and pulled up the landing program. “I’m looking for a spot to take us down, Ankari. You’re at the weapons station, so you can make a shuttle pad if we need one.”

Ankari looked dubiously at the controls. “I’m not sure I have Frog’s talents in the explosives area.”

“I’ll try to find a meadow.”

A meadow? Tick hadn’t seen anything yet in the dense jungle that could qualify as a meadow.

“Captain,” Keys said, “I assure you that the funds I’m paying with are completely legitimate, and I can provide you with a list of my backers, if you wish. All of my work is legitimate. I’m positive that the ships we’ve encountered here are only interfering because of my research. I’m sure they’re competitors. It’s very likely that they want my sister’s strain of bacteria and perhaps also to speak to the druids.”

Mandrake did not answer.

A shudder went through the shuttle.

“Should we be concerned about that?” Ankari asked.

“It’s me, fighting the system, trying to keep us up a little longer,” Jamie said. “I see a cliff top that we might be able to land on, but, uh, at our current rate of descent, we’ll be too low.”

“Meaning we’ll be crashing into the cliff instead of landing on top of it?” Striker asked. He’d come up to the seat behind Ankari’s and was looking out the view screen with as much concern as Tick felt.

Jamie flipped a few switches. “Not if I can help it.”

Striker didn’t look reassured. Tick did not feel reassured, either. The craft shuddered again, and the interior lighting winked out.

“Now what?” Jamie groaned.

It was still daylight outside, so enough illumination came through the view screen to see, but Tick found this second malfunction ominous.

“I ran a complete maintenance service before we left the ship,” Jamie said by way of protest. “This is ludicrous.”

“Any chance of sabotage?” Ankari asked so quietly Tick almost did not hear the question.

He leaned forward, the words spurring a flood of new thoughts in him. Right away, the idea seemed sound. One systems failure might make sense—these things happened—but two?

If someone had sabotaged the craft, maybe Tick could do something about it, as opposed to sitting there being unhelpful. As far as he knew, the shuttle had never been empty of personnel, so an outsider shouldn’t have been able to sneak inside when they had been out in the jungle. It was
possible
that sabotage had been done from the outside—what if the person Hemlock and the others had spotted had cut into some exterior panel and gained access to a critical part before the mercenaries had seen him? If the hull had been breached, there should have been alarms, but there were a few panels on the exterior, accessible only from the outside. If they had been removed and then replaced, there might not have been an alarm.

Jamie, concentrating on steering as the craft skimmed above the trees, did not answer Ankari’s question.

Tick shifted in his seat to look at the rest of the men. Even though an external saboteur seemed the most likely—who would diddle with the very craft he was riding in?—maybe somebody knew more than he had shared.

The dice players had slid into seats, fastening their harnesses. Most of the men’s eyes were locked onto the view screen. Only Corporal Hemlock stood, leaning against the wall near the hatchway, his arms folded over his chest. He didn’t look nearly as concerned as everyone else. Odd...

Hemlock met Tick’s eyes, his expression bland, then looked toward the view screen. His face didn’t speak of guilt or nefarious plans, but one of Tick’s flashes of insight came to him as he stared at the man. In the vision, Hemlock ran up the aisle as the shuttle was crashing. He snatched Ms. Keys, tossed her over his shoulder, and ran out of the shuttle and into the jungle.

Tick couldn’t imagine why Hemlock would want the woman, but he had come to trust the accuracy of his insights. He unfastened his harness and spun toward the rear of the shuttle, turning his back on the cliff looming ahead of them. He almost opened his mouth to shout an accusatory, “
You!
” at Hemlock, figuring he could have used his dice-moving powers to tweak something in the control panel or the engine room. But Tick, realizing he might only cause the corporal to enact his plan early, kept himself from shouting out loud or even looking at him.

“Lauren?” he called instead, striding down the aisle, making it look like he intended to check on the lab. “Are you all right in there? You better take a seat, strap yourself in.”

Hemlock’s eyes narrowed, and he pushed away from the wall. Another glimpse into his thoughts rushed into Tick’s head, one of Hemlock talking to another man in front of a ship. The two were gesticulating and making a deal. A deal for Ms. Keys.

Before Tick reached Hemlock, a gust of wind slammed into his chest. It knocked him back with enough force to send him stumbling into the nearest seat. The shuttle lights flickered, then the view screen snapped out. Blackness descended upon the interior.

“What the—” Ankari blurted, even as Jamie cried, “Sensors are out too. I can’t see anything. I—”