They had not taken more than two steps before a second explosion sounded, flinging burning shelves and merchandise into the air. Instead of being centered in the middle of the store, this time the bomb seemed to go off back near the checkout counter. Maybe that was why Viktor had run away—he had seen it coming.
The floor seemed to buck under their feet. Hoping that was an illusion and that the integrity of the structure was not truly in danger, Ankari shuffled toward the exit again, her gait wobbly. A hand rested on the back of her shoulder. Lauren, either offering support or staying close so she would not be lost.
Something overheated and exploded in a nearby aisle. The force hurled Ankari into Jamie, and they tumbled against the back wall. Somehow, Ankari kept her feet. Jamie gripped a shelf with a bloody hand, keeping herself upright.
“Go, go,” Lauren said from behind them. “People are coming in. I saw the guards.”
Ankari hoped that meant that no more explosives were coming in. Half crouching and half running, they finally made it to the back door. An alarm light was flashing on the control panel. Ankari snorted. Alarm. No kidding.
Thin vines dangled down from a hole in the ceiling above the doorway, a couple of leaves glowing feebly. Ankari hadn’t realized plants actually ran through the walls, but there was no time to marvel at the oddness of the station. She led the way into the utility corridor, not letting go of Jamie. As soon as she saw that Lauren was following, she took them toward the intersection that they had used before. Several times, she glanced back, expecting Viktor to charge out after them. But only smoke drifted from that open doorway.
“Back to the balcony?” Lauren asked. “Or go farther in this passage first?” She waved toward the narrow, gray corridor.
They could continue on, staying behind the stores, but Ankari did not have her map out and feared they would run into a dead end. Besides, if Viktor had not come out yet, he might be injured. Or he might have gone out the front. She couldn’t leave without checking on him.
“This way,” she said and turned for the balcony.
Before, the entire area had been dimmed for night, but the bright lights of a regular shopping day waited for them now. Ankari stumbled out onto the balcony, her legs still shaking. She wondered if she might have been injured and had failed to notice some twisted bit of metal or other shrapnel sticking out of her leg or back.
“Here,” she said, guiding Jamie to the railing. “Hold that.”
As soon as Jamie did so, Ankari turned back toward the front of the store. People were still nearby, but they had backed away from the entrance. Judging by the white gooey chemicals splattering all over the walkway in front of it, the sprinklers had finally gone off. That did not keep smoke from roiling out of the interior. A flock of birds flew out, perhaps some of the ones Ankari had freed. A chimpanzee leaped out to the railing, then flung itself into the trees, the silent sentinels watching this chaos from the center of the atrium. Snakes slithered out of the flames, also heading for the balcony and whatever sanctuary they could find in the atrium. Lizards of various sizes scuttled out on the floor, their tails flicking in agitation as they ran. People jumped aside, letting them pass.
The news crew was still there, if farther back, gesticulating excitedly as they recorded the mess unfolding. Several of the security people were approaching the smoking storefront, grabbing people outside and locking flex-cuffs around their wrists. Two men had already been pinned down, their arms pulled behind their backs and bound by irritated-looking guards. Ankari thought she recognized one man, his cheek smashed into the floor, as the one who had been yelling and waving his homemade bomb.
A tall, broad-shouldered figure strode out of the smoke with another person balanced over his shoulder. Even with the smoke shrouding his features, Ankari recognized Viktor. But who was on his back? He wouldn’t have risked himself to retrieve that body, would he have? No, that had to be the person from the vault, a slender limp figure with long hair that dangled down Viktor’s back as he strode toward the security team, the news crew, and also some paramedics that had just raced out of the elevator with hover gurneys.
Ankari bit her lip, tempted to hang back, since they had been illegally trespassing in the store. Wouldn’t it be better for them to disappear? But no, it would be cowardly to hide and leave Viktor here to deal with whatever ramifications might come.
With the appearance of the flex-cuffs, the crowd had started to disburse, and more than one person raced away from the news crew, back toward Ankari and her friends. Hoping she would not be mistaken for one of the rabble-rousers, Ankari headed toward the security men. More specifically, she headed toward Viktor. He had reached the team of paramedics and was laying the figure down on the gurney. It was a pale-faced woman, her hair snarled, her face covered with soot. She appeared unconscious—or dead. No, Viktor would not have risked himself for someone already dead.
When a guard frowned up at Ankari, she pointed and said, “I’m with him.”
Whether that would win her free passage or not, she was not sure, but Viktor at least appeared heroic for carrying that person out, whoever she was. And the news crew was recording it all.
“Are you all right?” Ankari asked, reaching Viktor’s side and touching his arm. All that soot she had worked so hard to rinse off him in the shower the night before had returned. He was as grimy as the person he had saved, with his long duster coat still smoldering in places.
“Yes.” He squeezed her shoulder.
The paramedics pushed the hover gurney away, and a reporter ran up to Viktor. Before an interview could commence, the nearby elevator doors opened, spitting out two security officers in fresh uniforms along with two Fleet officers in their humorless black uniforms. Everyone carried weapons, and one man had a suitcase that read,
Explosives Disposal Unit
.
“They’re late for the party,” Ankari muttered.
The men did not slow down when they witnessed the plumes of smoke or the security officers busy making arrests. Instead, two of them strode straight up to Viktor. Ankari’s first thought was that someone might reward him for his heroics, if only by giving him a pat on the shoulder, but the galaxy didn’t make that much sense.
“Viktor Mandrake?” one of the men said. “You’re under arrest.”
“Oh?” Viktor asked, his face unreadable.
Ankari sagged against the nearby railing. Even though they had all been illegally entering the building, surely this counted as mitigating circumstances. He had saved a life. What the security officers
should
be doing was figuring out who had stuffed that woman in a vault to begin with, and then they should arrest
that
person.
“We saw you on the shop cameras from our security headquarters,” the officer said. “Illegally entering the pet store. Are you going to resist arrest?” Even though he had three men to back him up, not to mention all of the other security guards on the balcony, he eyed Viktor warily.
A long second passed, but Viktor ultimately said, “No.”
Ankari pushed away from the railing, walked over and touched Viktor’s side, looking up at him. Grim-faced, he stared straight ahead, not making eye contact with her or anyone else.
“Good.” The officer waved his comrade forward. “Read him his station-law rights.”
The men shouldered Ankari aside. Feeling numb, she watched as the officers cuffed Viktor while the two Fleet men looked on, satisfaction riding their faces. Apparently, Captain Xu had not been the only one to receive a letter requesting that the Fleet do all it could to ensure Viktor was arrested. Ankari remained silent, aside from a few glances back toward her comrades. They were still on the opposite side of the store and all of the chaos. Lauren was standing beside Jamie, who looked very much like she wanted to throw up over the railing. That would make a mess on the atrium grounds six stories below.
Ankari fully expected to be arrested right alongside Viktor—after all, if Security had seen him on the cameras, it would have seen her, Jamie, and Lauren too. But after cuffing him, they led him toward the elevator without stopping for her. The Fleet officers fell in behind the group. Nobody paid any attention to Ankari. All she could do was gape after them, watching as Viktor strode into the elevator. Perhaps not wanting to draw attention to her, he never looked back.
She wished he would have, that he would have given her a don’t-worry-this-will-be-all-right nod. But the doors closed, and he disappeared from view.
Chapter 6
“I don’t understand,” Jamie said. “Why didn’t they arrest us too?” She had recovered from being struck on the head in the shop, though she still looked in need of medical attention. That blood stood out in her pale blonde hair, and more than one person had glanced in surprise at her when they had come out of the elevator.
Ankari shook her head as they started down the deserted corridor toward the shuttle bay that
Ladybug
shared with a dozen other small ships. “We’re nothing. They only wanted him.”
“Why is he something?” Lauren asked, still clutching her box of rats to her chest.
Ankari hoped those rats were extremely helpful and caused some great scientific breakthrough to be made, because nothing else this morning had been worth seeing Viktor arrested.
“He’s just a mercenary,” Lauren added, “one of thousands in the system. In a station this big, there must be a half dozen other mercenary ships docked here at any given time.”
“I don’t know,” Ankari muttered. “But I aim to figure out why Fleet is gunning for him.”
Maybe if she got Viktor out of jail, he would realize how valuable she was to him. He would realize that he couldn’t urge her and her partners to set up their business somewhere else. Mandrake Company needed them. He needed
her
.
She dipped her hand into her pocket, touching the slender device nestled at the bottom. She hoped Viktor would forgive her for taking it. Even as the security officers had been cuffing him, she had extricated the lock-picking contraption from his pocket. She did not know if it would be useful for breaking a man out of jail, and that wasn’t the first thing she wanted to try to get him out, but she would keep it in mind—and in pocket.
Ankari, leading the way into the shuttle bay, paused as soon as she stepped across the threshold.
Jamie bumped into her. “What is it? The depressurization light go on? Nobody should be leaving as long as the quarantine is in effect.”
“That’s not it,” Ankari murmured.
She extended her arm past the wall panel that would have been flashing if the space doors were going to be opened and pointed to their shuttle. Even though it was one of the small craft in the cavernous bay and six slots away from the door, there was no missing that pink nose sticking out of the row. Nor did she miss the two black-uniformed men standing in front of it. Fortunately, they were pointing at the craft and talking to each other, and neither looked toward the door.
Waving for her comrades to back up, Ankari scooted into the corridor again. “We have a problem.”
“Were those the same Fleet officers that were there to watch the captain get arrested?” Jamie asked.
Lauren, who had not walked into the shuttle bay, merely raised her eyebrows.
“No,” Ankari said. “But I recognized one of them. Captain Xu. The fellow whose tablet fell out of his pocket and into my hand.”
“So we can’t go in?” Lauren frowned down at her box.
“I most certainly can’t. I’m guessing that if you go in, you’ll be questioned. Perhaps incarcerated and interrogated.” Ankari grimaced. When she had stolen that tablet, she had been thinking of helping Viktor and had accepted that she might put herself at risk in doing so. She hadn’t considered that she might be putting her friends at risk too. Shortsighted. “I’m sorry.”
“I need to feed and water my rats. I don’t think anyone was tending them in the pet store.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that can happen when the owner is locked in a vault.”
Jamie peered into one of the air holes. “Did you end up paying for the rats with all that chaos going on?”
“I left my aurums on the shelf next to their cage. Whether the coins are still there or were blown up, I don’t know. I was busy attempting to not be blown up myself.”
“Tell me about it.” Jamie gingerly probed her scalp.
“Let’s go back to my room. There’s water there, and some of Viktor’s awful ration bars too.” Ankari only took a step before pausing again.
If the Fleet captain had traced her to her shuttle, might he have figured out what room she had reserved too? Hm. Maybe not. The station was privately owned by Midway 5 Incorporated, which presumably did not answer to the military. Whoever was leasing the space for the hotel should not have a reason to jump to answer to the military, either. At the least, there were enough layers that it should take Xu and his security buddies time to find her.
“We won’t stay long,” Ankari said, resuming her walk. “We’ll get another room to make our base until we figure everything out. In Jamie’s name. Or maybe I’ll comm a friend and see if he can reserve it in his name. Or a made-up name.” Ankari grimaced again. Her head hurt. Maybe she had hit it against the wall harder than she remembered during those bombings. Or maybe she was just thinking too much. She would have to face the law sooner or later, assuming Captain Xu had involved the law, because their shuttle wouldn’t be permitted to leave dock if one of its owners was wanted for a crime. Until she figured out how to get Viktor out of jail, she would do her best to avoid Xu. Maybe she would get lucky, and a war would break out nearby, and all of the Fleet ships would be called away.
“We have clients scheduled,” Lauren said once they had turned into the corridor that led to the hotel.
“I’ll get in contact with them, see about rescheduling,” Ankari said. “I doubt anyone’s going to want to show up for medical appointments when there’s a mysterious health threat in the air, anyway.”
“Actually,” Jamie said, “the comm was beeping every thirty seconds while you were gone. I was slightly perturbed that you weren’t there to answer it, given my lack of customer service skills.”