The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) (3 page)

“We could use work,” Mandrake said, eyeing his captive. “What is it?”

“Lauren’s sister contacted us from Dock Seven. She wants to hire us to take her on an expedition.”

“Lauren? Dr. Keys?”

“My microbiologist, yes,” Ankari said. “I believe you’ve met her five or six hundred times.”

Mandrake snorted. “Yes, but she only acknowledged my presence two or three of those five hundred times. I don’t think she knows who I am.”

“Oh, she knows. She’s waiting for you to sign up for her trials. She has a fondness for Grenavinians, you know.”

Tick felt some of the blood drain from his face.
He
was Grenavinian, the same as the captain. They had both been off planet and serving in the military ten years earlier when their world had been destroyed. He didn’t know why that would make his people special, but he rested his hand on his abdomen, imagining millions of alien bacteria rooting around in his intestines, doing strange things to his body—to his
mind
. Why had he let himself sign up for those trials? All because he’d wanted to get closer to Lauren?

“You know damned well that was why,” he grumbled under his breath.

The shuttle’s weapons fired again.

“Another direct hit,” Thatcher announced. “That may be enough to—ah, yes. His engines are damaged, and he’s losing altitude.”

“Nice shot, Thatcher,” Hemlock said, pumping a fist.

“
Commander
Thatcher.”

“Yes, sorry. Sir.” Hemlock made a face.

“The sister have money?” Mandrake asked over his comm-patch. “We’re back up to a hundred men. We can’t afford to do charity assignments—or expeditions.”

“My understanding is that she does have funding and can afford your rates, but we’ll have to return to Dock Seven to pick her up and get the details.”

“Picking up women hasn’t gone well for me of late,” Mandrake said, giving the trader another look.

“Maybe you’re out of practice,” Ankari said. “I’ll give you some pointers tonight.”

He snorted and signed off.

“Tick,” Mandrake said.

“Sir?”

“What exactly did you see when you were walking around the lake?”

“Sir?” More unease stirred in Tick’s gut—he had a feeling he knew precisely where the captain was going with his question.

“When you were tracking. You must have seen something on the ground that told you there was a shuttle hiding in the lake.” Mandrake gazed steadily at him, his green eyes piercing.

Tick chewed on his gum and tried for some of his usual ease, but that ease was eluding him today. “Wish I had seen something, sir, but it was just… a hunch.”

“A hunch that we were about to get attacked, just then?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mandrake raised an eyebrow toward Farley, but he didn’t bring up Tick’s unlikely knowledge about the coercion scheme. Instead, he said, “Why don’t you go visit Dr. Keys when we get back?”

Tick swallowed. Captain Mandrake, as big and muscular as Striker, always looked more like a brute than a thinker, but Tick had learned long ago that his captain knew how to rub his brain cells together and make sparks.

“I will, sir,” Tick said quietly.

“
Gladly
he will,” Striker said. “He’s still hoping to get that itch scratched.”

“Striker, why don’t
you
go visit a library when we get back?” Mandrake asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

Chapter 2

Dr. Lauren Keys recorded the statistics as A27 ran on the treadmill, maintaining faster than a twelve-mile-per-hour pace, his breathing steady and even, despite the sweat dripping down his bare chest. Why her test subjects always insisted on taking their shirts off when they ran for her, she didn’t know. She certainly did not require it. She had performed complete physicals on all of them before the testing began, and it wasn’t as if she would gauge their health and improvements by studying their biceps or pectoralis major. A couple of the men
had
proudly shown her that their muscles had increased in size since starting the inoculations. They had seemed disappointed when she had turned down their offers to “squeeze them and see for yourself.” That hadn’t kept a few of them from asking her to share a meal in the mess hall. The blunter ones had simply asked her to have sex with them. Multiple times.

The specimen currently on the treadmill had only asked once—about dinner, not sex. He never leered at her chest when he came for his checkups. By the standards of the mercenaries on the ship, he was inordinately polite, calling her Doc or ma’am, and would remove the odd fur cap he often wore, giving her a slight bow whenever he came in. She did appreciate that, though that didn’t mean she had any desire to engage in sex with him, or with any of the other men on the ship.

“You can stop,” Lauren said. “You’ve taken another eleven seconds off your two-mile time.”

He turned off the treadmill and stepped down, saying nothing as he grabbed a towel and mopped himself off. Lauren crinkled her nose as he tossed it into a sweat-scented hamper full of other towels. She was glad it made sense to perform the stamina and strength tests in the ship’s gymnasium, rather than in her laboratory. The idea of sweaty towels being flung onto the pristinely sanitized countertops would make any scientist shudder.

As he grabbed his shirt, A27 did not engage in any of the idle chatter that usually flowed out of his mouth. Lauren had made several notes regarding his garrulousness—she made notes on
everything
regarding her specimens—so she found this odd.

“Are you experiencing any discomfort?” she asked.

A27 had been about to don his shirt, but he fumbled and dropped it. “What?”

“Are you experiencing any inexplicable discomfort or side effects that I should know about?” she clarified.

He stared at her, his mouth dangling open. Though he had attractive and symmetrical features, with a cleft chin, a straight nose, and clear green eyes, this particular expression wasn’t that flattering. If she hadn’t performed an IQ test as well as a battery of physical exams on him, she might have thought him daft.

“No. Yes.” He plucked his shirt off the deck. “Sort of.”

“Explain in detail, please.” Lauren had put away her tablet computer, but she withdrew it and unfolded it again, then turned on the recorder and held it toward his face.

“Uh.” His stare shifted from her to it, and then he glanced over to the group of men working out with the weight machines on the other side of the gym. “Are you going to share what I say with the captain?”

“With Captain Mandrake? Unlikely.”

He looked relieved. Odd.

Since she didn’t want him to falsely believe that everything would be kept confidential, she added, “I do, of course, intend to share all of my data with my colleagues in my field, and I’ve started writing articles that may appear in peer-reviewed journals. Given the incredible results we’re already seeing, I wouldn’t be surprised if journalists wished to access my work to share the findings with the popular press.” She sneered slightly at that idea. Journalists were as inevitable as death and taxes, and she accepted them as a necessary evil, but they so often misinterpreted the data, either intentionally, to sensationalize their stories, or out of pure ignorance.

“Oh,” A27 mouthed. “You know, now that I think about it, there hasn’t been any discomfort. Or side effects.” He yanked his shirt over his head. “I’m fine. Really.”

“A27,” she said, lifting a hand.

“Sorry, I’m supposed to be on duty in a few minutes. I have to go.” He brushed past her, almost running for the door. He forgot to snatch his fur cap off the rack he had tossed it on when he entered, but he came back for it and plopped it on his head. The ringed tail of whatever creature it had once been twitched agitatedly between his shoulder blades as he jogged out.

“Odd man,” Lauren said, and turned off the recorder.

It occurred to her that she should have assured him that all of her reports to outside entities would be anonymized, with the men’s specimen names being used, rather than identifying data. She would have to correct what might have been a misconception on his part the next time he reported for testing.

In the meantime, she had to prepare for an event far less pleasant than running tests and acquiring data. She had to get ready for her sister’s arrival. She wrinkled her nose again, and this time it had nothing to do with sweaty towels.

• • • • •

Ankari and the captain were already waiting outside the shuttle bay when Lauren turned into the corridor, her tablet open in her palm and her research floating in the holodisplay above it. Some of the mercenaries in her trial were in their eighth and final week and had just received their last inoculation of the intestinal microflora that had been native to the ancient aliens who had inhabited this system long before humans showed up. All through the tests, the results had been promising, and she looked forward to seeing how many of the benefits lasted weeks and months after the inoculations ceased. In theory, the intestinal microbiota should self-propagate, the colonies surviving as long as the host did nothing to eradicate them. She was so engrossed that she struggled to tear her eyes from the charts her program had generated with this last round of data. She—

An “Ommpf” escaped her lips as she ran into someone’s shoulder.

Oh, the captain. Right.

“Dr. Keys,” Captain Mandrake said, his greeting dry.

“Captain,” Lauren said.

It crossed her mind that she should apologize for running into him, but he probably hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t moved when she bounced off his meaty shoulder. Besides, Ankari spoke before Lauren finished debating if engaging in such a social convention was necessary.

“Lieutenant Frog dropped off that trader on the station and just arrived back on board with your sister,” Ankari told her, entirely too perkily, as if she looked forward to this meeting. Lauren couldn’t imagine why. “We’re waiting for the shuttle bay to pressurize.”

That would take at least two minutes. Lauren lifted her tablet again, intending to study the charts while they waited.

“Aren’t you excited to see her?” Ankari asked.

“No.”

She and Mandrake exchanged the sorts of long looks that Lauren had grown accustomed to from people around her. She knew she wasn’t normal when it came to social situations—or social anything—and she had stopped caring years ago. She was almost thirty-five and no longer worried about the opinions of others, unless those others happened to be peers evaluating her research and methodology. Her
research
mattered. Social situations did not.

“She sounded excited to see you,” Ankari said, insistent on involving Lauren in a conversation.

Lauren sighed, folded her tablet, and placed it in her pocket. She would have to wait until she was alone to get back to her work. With luck, this wouldn’t take long.

“I don’t know why I have to be here for this greeting,” Lauren said, mostly to herself, though Ankari’s raised eyebrows meant she had heard.

She spotted one of her test subjects walking down the corridor toward them, A27. He did not appear as tense or distracted as he had at the gym three days earlier. His easy smile was back on his face as he chomped on his caffeinated gum, apparently having no interest in, as she had suggested, refraining from mind- and body-altering substances during the weeks of the trial.

“Aren’t you interested in why she wants to hire us?” Ankari asked Lauren.

“I’m sure it will be something foolish and a waste of time.”

“Sibling rivalry?” Mandrake asked.

It took a moment for Lauren to parse Mandrake’s question. She was familiar with the term, of course, but what could sibling rivalry have to do with what she had been saying? Did he believe that she dismissed Hailey’s research because of jealousy? Hardly that. What was there to be jealous about? Hailey’s research was laughable, her chosen field of study even more so. Why such a smart woman would pursue something so frivolous… it had always boggled Lauren’s mind.

“Not in the least,” she replied.

Mandrake grunted, the answer apparently enough for him.

He wasn’t a big talker, something Lauren actually appreciated about him. She felt so awkward around the mercenaries who tried to draw her into conversations, as if she wished to discuss guns and grenades and killing people with them. She knew most of them hoped to lure her into their bunks, and she found the notion incredibly unappealing. As if she wanted to waste her life performing bedroom acrobatics when there was so much fascinating research to study out in the system, not to mention going over the results of her own work.

“She mentioned some kind of research related to our business,” Ankari said. “I thought you might be working together on something.”

Lauren sniffed. “We are not. You don’t need to befriend her on my account, I assure you.”

Ankari tilted her head, looking puzzled.

“I predict you’ll dislike her,” Lauren said.

A27 stopped next to Ankari and the captain instead of continuing down the corridor. Lauren groped for his name in case a conversation arose in which she was expected to use it. Sergeant… Tick, that was it. A loathsome sobriquet. No wonder she always forgot it—pushed it from her memory was more like it.

“Don’t care for your sister, Doc?” Tick asked. “I had three older brothers that tormented me to no end when I was growing up. Parents were usually busy around the farm or were chasing after my wanderlust-stricken sister and weren’t around to put a stop to it. Used to have to hide out in the woods to escape their beatings. That’s how I got interested in nature and hunting and tracking and such. The trees and varmints didn’t typically beat on me, so I preferred their company.”

Lauren stared at him as he spoke, wondering if she would be expected to remember this information at some future date. It did not seem important. She also wondered if he was experiencing any intellectual improvements as a result of the new intestinal microflora.

According to archaeological research, the ancient aliens had been physiologically similar to humans, but they had lived twice as long, been healthier, stronger, and smarter.
Her
research had suggested that the bacteria native to this system, specifically those residing in the aliens’ digestive tracts and using them as hosts, may have had an impact on their extreme health and longevity. After all, it had long been proven that gut flora could play a huge role in human gene expression and overall health. Humans had brought some of their native microbiota with them, entirely accidentally of course, when they had migrated to this system fifteen hundred years earlier, but other bacteria had been native to the planets and moons here, and nobody was certain if the species that now inhabited human guts were optimal. Her preliminary research suggested there was much room for improvement and that by inoculating humans—or rats, as she had started with—with the same mix the ancient aliens had hosted, human health might be improved.