“A healthier self-preservation instinct than you show around bombs that can blow up entire space stations.”
“Not true. I was just as quick to try to defuse those as I would be to stop—
sir
.” Azarov’s eyes widened as he looked toward the captain. “You’re not
petting
it, are you?”
“Just moving it to a less eventful locale.” Viktor took the plant and his eight-legged cargo into an empty office. He placed them on a shelf in a quiet corner, then strode down the hall toward the elevator doors.
Ankari had seen the bottom of that elevator blasted into warped pieces on the news, so she knew nobody would be using it. The pile of bodies that had been there before had not changed, but three more hostages had been brought into the area, white-haired and bald men kneeling amid the carnage, their mouths taped shut, and their arms locked behind their backs.
“They shy away from me.” Viktor nodded at the tied-up executives, then waved at the fallen combatants. Had he killed all of them? Had the hostages seen? No wonder they would find him a cause for concern. “I thought you should untie them, Ankari. A woman might be less alarming.”
“I’m not the one who saved their lives.” Ankari accepted his knife and knelt to cut the tape binding one man’s wrists behind his back.
Clanks and clangs came from the elevator shaft.
“I hope that’s Security. I think.” Ankari was ready to hand this situation over to someone else, but she worried that the news reporters would twist the truth again, make them seem like criminals instead of heroes. She might have made a mistake in sending Sergei to talk to—or threaten—some of them. Even if she had the impression that threats and blackmail were how things worked around here, what if someone held a grudge?
While she kept cutting, Viktor peered down the dark shaft, his weapons at the ready again. The clanks and clangs grew louder, and men’s voices drifted upward. Since Viktor did not shoot anyone, Ankari assumed the authorities were coming.
Azarov must have gotten over his spider shock, because he walked up the hallway and joined them.
“I turned off the sprinklers,” he said.
“Just when I was getting used to being wet,” Ankari said.
Viktor lifted an eyebrow in her direction. He didn’t say a word, but she blushed, anyway. She wished he
had
spoken, so she could parry with a witty response. It was hard to be witty to an eyebrow.
“Who
are
you people?” one man asked as soon as his gag was removed.
“It depends,” Ankari said. “Did you witness that big, brawny man doing heroic things to rescue you? Or were you knocked out or looking the other way, thus causing you to assume that we’re as criminal as the mafia thugs who captured you? Because if it’s that second thing, I believe we work for a fellow named Sherkov.”
Viktor snorted. Lights were bouncing off the walls below the elevator ledge, and he bent to lower a hand. A second later, he pulled a man up, a heavily armed man in a gray security uniform. Ankari shifted nervously, even if logically she could not have expected anyone else. The officer knelt by the edge and helped a second man up. They took turns staring at the bodies and looking up and down the hallways, then one tapped a comm-patch that said Midway 5 Security on its starry field.
“Sergeant? Yeah, it’s clear up here. Send up the paramedics in the propulsion boots.”
“And a bomb unit,” Viktor added.
The man looked at him.
Viktor pointed down the hall. “My people found and nullified some of them, but there could be more.”
Ankari winced at that thought.
“Weren’t we shooting at you earlier?” the second man asked Viktor.
Unfazed, Viktor said, “Irritatingly and inappropriately so, yes.”
A soft whoosh came from the elevator shaft, and a woman floated into view. Given the camera floating by her head and the business suit she wore, she was not likely a paramedic or an explosives expert.
She pushed herself away from the back of the elevator shaft, floated into the lobby, and pressed a button on her belt to deactivate the jetted boots. She landed next to Viktor, who watched her warily. She smiled broadly and touched his arm.
“Captain Viktor Mandrake, correct?”
He stared flatly at her and did not respond. Ankari sidled up to him and nudged him in the ribs with her elbow. She did not know if the appearance of this reporter was a good thing or not, but being personable might be a better idea for Viktor than being... himself.
“Captain Mandrake has singlehandedly slain the mafia brutes who were attempting to use these people as hostages,” Ankari announced, waving to the executives. She had untied one man, and he and the gray-haired woman were working at releasing their colleagues.
“I
saw
,” the reporter said with what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm. “Those are our cameras.” She waved at the cadre of black spheres that were floating around the area now. There had to be at least six. They kept whisking around, coming in for close-ups of people’s faces. “I saw it all. I just need a few words for the story if you don’t mind.” She glanced at Ankari, then beamed up at Viktor. That was impressive since he was wearing an unfriendly stone mask, broken only by his suspicious squint.
Figuring Sergei had reached the woman, or perhaps her boss, Ankari was less suspicious. She was starting to believe that the situation might work out in their favor, after all. At the least, she hoped they would be able to leave the station without arrest warrants trailing after them like bees to a spilled soda.
“I’m Mandrake,” Viktor finally said, after another prod in the ribs.
“You’re a mercenary captain, right?” the reporter asked, as more people floated out of the elevator shaft on propulsion boots. Some were security, some paramedics, and one more was a reporter. He went straight to the executives as the woman continued peppering Viktor with questions. “A mercenary, but nobody could have paid you for your heroics. There wasn’t time. What prompted you to come up here when all of the Station Security men were unable to find a way up? You could have died climbing those trees. That was very noble. What made you so desperate to help?”
“The idiots were trying to blow up the station. There may still bombs. This way.” Viktor met the security chief’s eyes, pointed down the hallway with his chin, and headed off. He didn’t seem to care whether the reporter came along or not. He probably wished she wouldn’t.
“Viktor,” Ankari called after him.
He looked over his shoulder.
“Happy birthday.” She grinned at him, amused at the dour expression he wore. Now that it looked like the media would tell the truth, she could afford the time to be amused. And to tease him. But maybe she had better visit that knife shop again before leaving. He might not appreciate this birthday present.
Indeed, his suspicious squint deepened as he looked to the reporter trailing him like a loyal pup and then back to Ankari. She could see the gears turning, the realization that she might have had something to do with the change in treatment from the reporters. Technically, she hadn’t done anything except ask Sergei to share Lauren’s evidence with them—forcefully, if necessary. She should wait to see Viktor’s private response to all of this before claiming too much credit. Still, she smiled and waved as he continued down the hallway with his new troupe at his back. The second reporter abandoned the executives and jogged after him too. The cameras zipped after them.
“We climbed the trees too,” Azarov grumbled, coming to stand beside her. “We don’t get to be heroes on the news?”
“Maybe a camera caught you flinching at the spider, and the reporters decided heroes don’t do such things.”
“Really, Ms. Markovich. I don’t think we’ve known each other long enough for you to tease me so.”
“No?” Ankari asked. “I thought trying to disarm bombs together was the kind of thing that accelerated the formation of a friendship.”
“This way, please,” one of the paramedics said, leading one of the white-haired executives to the elevator shaft. “We’re having hover gurneys sent up. Or if you would prefer to get down more quickly, you can grab on, and I’ll take both of us down, sir.”
The female executive peered into the empty black shaft. “Maybe we can wait for the elevator to be fixed.”
Ankari watched with some bemusement as the arrangements were made. None of the hostages—
former
hostages—thanked her or Azarov for helping. Oh, well. After the last couple of days, she would settle for not being thrown in jail.
When Viktor returned, he had shed a few of the security officers, but the reporters remained on his tail. The woman rushed forward and pointed down the elevator shaft.
“Can we get an action shot of you rappelling down?” she asked. “One final scene to close out the story.”
The expression Viktor shared with Ankari was somewhere between mulish and long-suffering.
“That’s the only way down, isn’t it?” Azarov waved to the ropes and rappelling harnesses that the dead mafia men were not going to need. “I don’t think anyone is going to send hover gurneys up for us.”
“Precisely,” the reporter said, smiling.
With Viktor and his collection of cameras leading, the team donned gear and descended into the dark shaft, a few lights visible, far, far below. After climbing the tree, Ankari supposed rappelling should be a simple matter, but she always found going down scarier than going up, so her heart was in her throat for much of the descent. She also worried that a squad of security officers might be waiting at the bottom to arrest her and Viktor. Just because one reporter had been watching the cameras and knew the truth did not mean the whole station had decided it could stop shooting at them.
The area at the bottom was packed with men and women—paramedics and security officers, as well as maintenance people who had already been brought in to start on repairs. Fortunately, the reporters on either side of Viktor served almost as bodyguards, and the crowd parted to let their group pass.
Viktor headed toward the atrium—or maybe he simply wanted to walk through it on the way to his ship. Ankari had no idea if the quarantine had been lifted. The people in charge might have been too busy worrying about everything else to consider it. Maybe Viktor planned to toss a few reporters at the androids guarding the airlock if they attempted to stop him.
He nodded to someone as they walked, and a minute later, Commander Borage worked his way into their group.
“I’ve been in contact with Zharkov, sir,” Borage said, after a few uncertain glances at the reporters. “He said he, Ms. Flipkens, and Dr. Keys will meet us at the airlock.”
“Good,” Viktor said.
Ankari watched the reporters, wondering if they would react at Sergei’s name. But neither of them did.
By the time they reached the atrium, the crowd had thinned, but there were new clumps of people there. A group of men in biohazard suits, complete with helmets, was prying the dead miniature dragon off the ground under the oak and wedging it into a case. Other men in suits were walking around the trees with nets.
“The mafia released the rest of their altered dragons when they captured the station owners,” the female reporter explained.
Ankari was relieved to hear the news people had the facts on that now.
“To deter people from doing exactly what you brave soldiers did,” the reporter added, beaming up at Viktor again.
She seemed to have developed more than a professional interest in him. Odd, since he had said less than five words to her. Of course, Viktor hadn’t been that chatty with Ankari in the beginning, either, and she had ended up smooching with him the first time they were alone together.
“Did we know about that ahead of time?” Azarov murmured to Ankari.
“Not until one tried to bite Viktor. Would you have gone up if you had known?”
“If I was ordered to, I guess.”
“Miniature dragons don’t rank up there with spiders as things to be avoided?”
“I haven’t been bitten by a dragon yet, so I haven’t had a chance to form an aversion.”
“Have you been bitten by a spider?” Ankari wondered if he had a reason for his phobia.
“Oh, yes. I was almost killed by the bite of a Roaming Inferno Spider as a kid. Technically, I did die. My heart stopped. They brought me back in the emergency room.”
“Ah, that makes your dislike of them understandable.”
“Does that mean you won’t tease me about it anymore?”
“Probably not.” Ankari smiled, deciding she liked the sergeant. If he wasn’t married—a few of the mercenaries were—maybe she could attempt to send Lauren in his direction. Of course, given Lauren’s disinterest in sex and her dismissiveness toward relationships, that might not be much of a prize for him. Perhaps she could find him another female acquaintance.
“Do you know why the mafia altered the dragons in the first place?” Ankari asked the reporter. “Were there some in the shopping area the whole time?” She shuddered to think that one might have sailed down to bite her during her numerous trips through the atrium. Most of them were as friendly as domesticated pets, but at least one was not.
“There were two modified ones, yes. It’s unknown how long they were in the atrium, but we do know that a couple of weeks ago, the mafia tried to get the shopkeepers to sign up for their special protection plan. Since Midway 5 is a peaceful station—
usually
—the shop owners weren’t interested in paying for this so-called protection. The mafia hoodlums must have anticipated that, because they had the dragons ready to release. From what we’ve gathered, they wanted people to mysteriously start dying around the shopping area, thus to scare away all of the customers and hurt the businesses. Then, they were certain, the shopkeepers would be more interested in signing up for protection services. What they didn’t anticipate was that Midway 5 would initiate a quarantine and that they would be trapped here themselves, with Fleet on the way. The Fleet would be quite pleased to utterly obliterate a mafia ship, whether it was in dock here or not. Apparently, taking hostages and blowing up half of the station in the process was a move of desperation. They had to escape or be killed.”