Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (19 page)

More shots fired below. Someone yelled, a
yell that switched to a bellow of pain in the middle.

“Fine,” Lauren growled, bumping and cursing
as she picked her way past the chairs. “You two are crazy though. I
want you to know that.”

“Maybe I’ll give you a bigger portion of the
company if we survive,” Ankari whispered with a smile. “We’re going
to have to climb down, but if we can use the trees, walking along
the branches for a while first, they won’t be able to see us from
below.”

“I’m not a squirrel,” Lauren said.

“At least you’re not injured,” Jamie
said.

“Come on, troops.” They would squabble all
day without moving if Ankari didn’t prod them along.

She eased closer to the door. The tree they
were perched in groaned. Ankari looked around the corner and found
a branch that appeared sturdy enough to accept her weight. She
stepped out on it and tried to find something to grip with her
hand. There was a vine. When she touched it, it moved. A snake. It
hissed with displeasure. She jerked her hand back, afraid it was
something else that wanted to kill her. The snake merely curled up
out of sight and slithered away.

“Going this way,” Jamie said from the other
side of the door. She must have found a more promising perch,
because she soon disappeared into the darkness.

The rifle fire had stopped below. Afraid the
men wouldn’t be distracted anymore, Ankari hurried along her
branch, grasping at smaller ones for support, until she reached a
thick trunk covered in ivy or whatever creeping foliage was native
to the moon.

“Lauren?” she whispered. Rain was still
smacking the leaves, but the wind had dropped off, and she worried
about her voice carrying. “There’s room this way.”

Two flashlight beams swung upward, finding
the shuttle. Ankari squeezed around the trunk of the tree, putting
it between her and the searchers below. She found a new branch to
stand on and sank low, trying to stay hidden by the foliage but at
the same time wanting a view of the people on the ground.

Their flashlights didn’t do a lot to
illuminate their faces, especially with the beams directed toward
the treetops, but she grew more certain that they weren’t men from
Viktor’s ship. If they had been, she might have given up and gone
down, choosing to fight another day in exchange for a way out of
the jungle. But these men, clad all in black, reminded her more of
the troops that had invaded the
Albatross
.

More flashlight beams combined, brightening
the hull of the ship. “Well, now, there’s a pretty girl. Looks like
you had a rough landing.” Neither the voice, nor the snickers that
followed it, sounded friendly.

Someone else spoke, his voice utterly hard
and cold. “Where are the men who were with you, woman?”

“You might as well come down,” someone else
said. “It’s not like your shuttle is going anywhere.” More
snickers.

“You want me?” Lauren asked. “Come up and get
me.”

“If I climb all the way up there, I’ll want a
reward from you.”

Lauren didn’t say anything. She gave a long
look in the direction Jamie had gone, then disappeared back into
the shuttle.

“Go get her,” the man with the hardest voice
ordered. “And keep your eyes open. There’s supposed to be two
others too. Not to mention the rest of our shuttle team.”

Ankari fingered her pistol, wondering how
many would climb up. If all of them did, she might be able to pick
them off, but if she started shooting, they would shoot back, and
she didn’t know how much protection this tree would offer her. She
leaned her forehead against the wet leaves. “What do I do?” she
whispered.

Only two men started up a tree. The others
waited on the ground, keeping their lights on the shuttle and the
nearby foliage. Ankari tried to make herself smaller in her spot.
If she and Jamie got away, maybe they could sneak in at a better
time and rescue Lauren. For now, Ankari dared not stay so close to
the shuttle, not if she didn’t want to be spotted. Careful not to
make a sound, she eased along a mossy branch, trying to reach the
next tree.

Leaves rattled as one of the climbing men
drew closer. Ankari made it to another trunk and stepped behind it.
Her heel slipped off, and she had to grab for a branch. Leaves
shook right beside her, and a twig snapped. She winced, looking
back.

The climber paused and stared in her
direction. She froze, hoping the darkness and the foliage hid her.
She wasn’t silhouetted by flashlight beams the way he was...

She rubbed the trigger of her pistol again.
She could shoot him, right there, when he was looking in her
direction, but what then? There were eight or ten more people on
the ground, and, like Lauren had said, she was no squirrel that
could scamper off into the canopy without ever touching the
earth.

The man continued his climb, turning his back
on her, and reached the shuttle. He stepped onto the open door,
lunging for the side since it was still tilted so drastically.
Between one blink and the next, some final branch broke and the
shuttle fell out of the trees. Ankari couldn’t stop herself from
gasping and stretching out a hand, as if she could halt its fall.
The man yelled. Lauren yelled. And then the shuttle smashed to the
ground.

A human scream pierced the dark jungle, a
different pitch than that of the raptor screeches that had been
assaulting Viktor’s ears. This was no animal; it was a woman.
Ankari? Could she have ended up down here? Kidnapped from the ship
and stolen away in that shuttle? He fumed at the notion that Bravo
squad hadn’t been enough to keep intruders from boarding the ship
and kidnapping people, and he slashed harder with the long serrated
knife he was using on the foliage. He needed a damned machete—or a
herd of ravenous goats.

Excited screeches erupted up ahead. If he
were in a cleared field, Viktor could have seen the raptors and
whatever they were attacking—the shuttle crew, he feared—but here,
he couldn’t see more than five meters in any direction. He, Tick,
and Hazel hadn’t even seen any of the noisy predators, though they
had been listening to the bloodthirsty cries as they cut their way
through dense foliage. The animal trail—and the tracks—they had
been following before had veered off in another direction, so they
had to slash through vines, clamber over massive logs, and push
through ferns that towered over their heads.

A laser weapon fired, several of them, and
Viktor halted, lifting his knife in the air to stop the others.
“I’ll go straight in, Tick you take left; Hazel, right. We’re
getting our shuttle back and our prisoners, if they have them.”

It irked him that he didn’t know who
they
were. Some team Goshawk had put together? Someone else?
He’d tried to contact the ship again, but hadn’t been able to get a
working link. He was beginning to think it might have less to do
with the storm and more to do with another ship jamming
communications. He had checked in with the rest of his team down on
the moon, at least. They had been busy with the fighting but had
reported that they could handle the situation without him.

“It sounds like there are more of them than
there are of us,” Hazel said.

Viktor gave her a flat so-what look.

“Just pointing it out,” she said.

“We can take them,” Tick said with a wink.
“But like usual, I’ll let the cap’n run in and macerate the meat up
a bit before I jump into the fray.”

Hazel grunted, then cut away from them, using
her own knife to slash at the foliage. Tick disappeared to the
left. Viktor continued on, straight toward the commotion. Though
the wind might drown out the sound of vines and branches being cut,
he slowed down anyway, just enough to be certain he could push
through without making much noise.

A great crash came from a hundred meters
ahead, like a building falling over, or maybe a tree slamming to
the earth. Cries of pain, both human and animal, followed on the
heels of the noise.

The first person came into view, standing in
mud and trampled vegetation, his back to Viktor. Wearing all black
armor, he wasn’t anyone familiar. A rifle in his hands was aimed
toward someone crawling out of...

Cold fire raced through Viktor’s veins. That
was his shuttle and one of his prisoners. Both were damaged and
caked with the mud, an absolute mess. Someone grabbed the girl—it
was the biologist, Keys—and hoisted her to her feet.

Viktor ought to wait for Tick and Hazel, give
them time to circle in from the left and right, but his rage, the
audacity
of these people, made him want to charge straight
in. He kept his head about him enough to stalk closer in silence,
knowing he should assess the odds before announcing his presence
with a barrage of laser fire. There were more than ten men out
there, all armed, and they were staggered, some half-hidden by the
snarls of undergrowth. He might not have accounted for everyone
yet.

His eye on the closest man, Viktor dipped
into the pouch of throwing knives he wore on his belt. Without
lowering his rifle, he hurled the weapon left-handed. It flew
through the air and found the bare flesh between the man’s helmet
and his armor, sinking into the back of his neck, severing
vertebrae. He crumpled to the mud without a sound. He was on the
outskirts of the group, and nobody seemed to notice. A
laser-scorched raptor laid near him, one of several creatures on
the ground, most unmoving, a few twitching as they died.

“What’d you do with our men, girl?” her
captor growled. Blood dripped from her temples, and her jumpsuit
was torn.

Where was Ankari? And the young engineer?
Viktor couldn’t tell if there were more people in the shuttle. The
door had been half torn off and, judging by the logs and splinters
of wood everywhere, the craft had hit every branch on the way to
the ground.

“And where are your friends? We need all of
you for Felgard’s bounty.”

Keys looked too dazed to answer, but the man
didn’t care. He growled, drew back his arm, and slammed the back of
his hand into the side of her face. She flew away from him, landing
in the mud.

Viktor choked down the urge to charge in
recklessly again, but he wasn’t going to dawdle, that was for
damned sure. He crept forward, another knife in his hand. He almost
threw it at the man hurling the woman around, but he was in the
center, and everyone would see it land. He chose another man on the
outskirts, targeting the side of his neck.

“Don’t ugly ’em up too much, boss,” one of
the bounty hunters said. “You said we could have our fun with ’em
before dropping them off.”

“Better find the others then,” someone else
said with a laugh. “Gets a bit crowded with just one girl.”

A frustrated screech came from the jungle, a
raptor annoyed it had been denied its prey.

“Aw, shut up,” one of the men yelled and
fired into the trees.

Taking advantage of their distraction, Viktor
threw his third knife. The black-painted blade arrowed across the
clearing without anyone glimpsing its passing, and it slammed into
the man’s neck. This thug, too, fell without a sound.

Viktor moved parallel to the group, trying to
find another man on the outskirts that he might pick off while he
waited for signs that Hazel and Tick were nearby. He kept the big
wet fronds and leaves between him and the enemy, careful not to
stir the foliage.

“Watch where you’re firing,” someone growled
from the trees behind the shuttle. “Some of us are out here
working. Finding prizes.”

Two new men in black squished through the
mud, one of them holding another woman in front of him, shoving her
so that she would have stumbled if he weren’t gripping her. That
was the engineer, Flipkens, her pale blonde hair a snarled mess.
Blood stained her torn clothes in several spots, and her eyes
bulged with fear as she was forced to join the cluster of men.

Viktor picked out his fourth target, a
grizzled brute who had noticed he’d lost sight of one of his
comrades, the first person Viktor had downed. He was walking in
that direction.

“Nice,” someone purred. “She’s prettier than
the other.” The big man strode forward to paw at Flipkens’s hair,
then run his hand down her chest. “We’ll have us some good fun
before dropping ’em off.”

The terror in the girl’s eyes and the leers
on the faces of the men were too much. Anger overrode wisdom, and
instead of hurling his weapon at his chosen target, Viktor flung
the blade at the man pawing Flipkens. The knife struck true,
landing in the bounty hunter’s eye. Nobody failed to see this
attack, and the men spun in his direction, raising their
rifles.

Viktor was already on the move. Their lasers
cut through nothing but leaves. Using a tree for cover, he fired
into the camp, short accurate shots rather than indiscriminate
blasts at anything that moved. Though anger might fuel his body,
sending barely restrained energy coursing through his muscles, he
kept his mind calm and analytical, as he’d been trained to do. He
fired, ducked and moved, found a tree or boulder for cover, then
fired again. The bounty hunters hustled for the protection of the
jungle. Viktor had no problem shooting them in the back, so long as
they weren’t near the women. Fortunately, Keys and Flipkens had
been smart enough to fling themselves on the ground once the
firefight started.

“He’s over there,” someone yelled. “Get
behind him, go.”

Viktor shot two more men before the rest
found cover behind the trees. He could hear them tramping through
the brush, trying to find a path to him. He let his rifle fall
about his chest on its harness and yanked out daggers. He could
have waited for the men to approach him, but he went on the hunt
himself. He picked his route more carefully, not making a sound as
he chose logs over mud and took to the trees to keep him from
squishing noisily on the damp ground.