Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (5 page)

The captain looked back at her. “With the
earnings from your pre-revenue startup? I’ll pass.”

Ankari flushed. “I
might
be willing to
negotiate in shares, but I was thinking in terms of straight cash.
I can muster up ten percent now and pay the rest back as a loan
with a fair amount of interest based on the current prime rate.”
Never mind the loan she was already going to have to pay back for
her ship... There was no way her insurance was going to cover her,
not when she’d taken the
Marie Curie
to that dangerous,
parasite-laden planet.

The captain grunted. Not exactly a sign of
interest, but he wasn’t walking away.

“We have tremendous potential,” Ankari tried.
“After we do the clinical trials, we’ll have customers lined up for
our services, whether we get GalCon approval right away or not.
We’ve already had amazing results on mice. You could be one of the
first to receive a transplant. What do you think? Would you like to
gain greater strength and stamina than you’ve ever had? Live an
extra hundred years?”

The captain hadn’t been receptive to start
with, but at this question, his face shut down like a reactor gone
critical. “That sounds like a punishment rather than a reward,” he
muttered. He didn’t explain why. He simply turned his back and
headed for the exit.

“Would you at least consider returning our
packs to us so we can continue our research?” Lauren called after
him.

He disappeared without responding.

“I’m eager to examine the specimens you
gathered,” Lauren explained when Ankari looked at her.

“We’re trapped in the brig of a mercenary
ship, being delivered to what could be our deaths, and that’s your
primary concern right now?”

“Well, I thought you were working on that
part of the problem.” Lauren waved to Ankari’s pocket.

Ankari snorted. Lauren was either more
observant than she would have guessed, or her sleight-of-hand
skills weren’t as good as they had once been.

“We’ll see.” Ankari walked to the corner of
the cell, turning her back on the force field. Hoping to avoid the
security camera, even if she had no idea where it was located, she
slipped her stolen find out of her pocket. It wasn’t a toothbrush.
She had been right; it was a combo syringe. Now she just had to
figure out what was housed in it... and how she could get close
enough to someone to use it.

* * *

Viktor’s tablet bleeped, letting him know he
had a request for voice communications. Lord Felgard. It looked
like it came from the man’s personal account too. Not that of some
secretary. Huh.

It had been less than an hour since Viktor
had transmitted the fact that he had acquired the three women, and
it was the night cycle on Felgard’s private island, wasn’t it? The
stamp on the message said three a.m.

“You want to beat on each other in the gym
for a while, sir?” Striker asked. They were walking the corridors
from the brig to the mess hall, neither on duty now. It was the
night cycle here too.

“Later, yes. I’ve got to answer this first.”
Viktor waved the tablet, then veered into an alcove to take the
ladder up to his deck.

Striker surprised him by following, his boots
clanging on the rungs. “Sure thing, sir. But I’ve got a question
first, if you don’t mind.”

“
I
don’t mind.
Felgard
might
wonder why I’m being delayed.”

“Aw, that rich old crotch sock, I’m not
worried about him.”

“I’ll let him know that.”

“Go ahead. Just, uh, don’t use my name when
you tell him. Or my description. Or anything about me.”

“What about your comics?” Viktor asked,
referring to Striker’s legendary—at least among the crew—drawings
that depicted everyone and their adventures. Striker was still
waiting to acquire galaxy-wide recognition.

“Oh, you could tell him about those. Maybe
he’d find me a publishing deal with one of the media empires,
eh?”

“What’s your question, Striker?” They had
reached the door to Viktor’s quarters. It recognized him and slid
open.

“It’s about those girls. Can I foist them off
on Tems, or am I still responsible for them?”

Viktor had assigned Sergeant Striker to watch
them on the shuttle, more as a punishment for losing one of them on
the planet than out of a fear that they would escape in front of so
many soldiers. He hadn’t specified that this watching should
continue once they were in the brig. If he had, he’d be annoyed
that Striker had left his post to rush after him with questions. He
might be annoyed anyway. He hadn’t decided yet.

“Tems is security chief. I’ve notified him of
their presence. He’ll make sure someone keeps an eye on the
brig.”

“Oh, good,” Striker said. “I don’t think they
like me. ’Course I like them fine.” His eyebrows waggled.

“I’m sure you do.” Viktor stepped inside,
expecting the door to shut and for Striker to leave.

Striker slapped his hand against the jamb to
keep it open. “They’re real cute. Especially the young one.”

Jamie Flipkens, Viktor’s mind supplied. He
had memorized every detail of the women’s poster before going down
to retrieve them. Flipkens was twenty and had been some whiz
mechanic in her little farming community. How that translated to
becoming a ship’s pilot and engineer, he could only imagine, but
her record hadn’t contained much more information than that. There
hadn’t been much on Ankari Markovich, either, though the
microbiologist had a long list of publishing credits, and it wasn’t
clear why she’d left academia to join the other two nuts. The
Ankari nut, specifically, since she was clearly in charge. She must
have been smoother when recruiting the others than she had been
when trying to inveigle someone over to her side down in the brig.
Viktor wasn’t sure why he had listened as long as he had. Probably
because she was attractive and her inveigling attempts had been
moderately entertaining. But only an idiot would allow himself to
think of a prisoner as anything other than a prisoner. An idiot...
or a horny combat sergeant.

Striker was still standing in his doorway,
waiting for an answer.

“Sergeant,” Viktor said, putting an edge in
his voice. “You have a mission to plan.”

An edge that Striker was, as usual, oblivious
to. “Yes, sir. But can I have the young one to, uhm, I mean I can
watch her real good when I’m off shift, and put her back in the
brig when I’m on.”

Viktor faced the man, letting Striker see the
hardness in his eyes. “You know we don’t rape or otherwise molest
prisoners.” He had seen enough of that bullshit when he was in the
GalCon army, especially on those outer core duty stations where
soldiers thought nobody was watching, that nobody cared. “We may be
mercenaries, but we can choose to act with honor, and that means
with prisoners, not just on the battlefield.”

“Oh, sure, sir.” Striker lifted his hands, an
expression of purest innocence widening his eyes. “I wasn’t
thinking rape... exactly, but I’m a handsome fellow; you can’t deny
that.”

Viktor said nothing.

“What if she
willingly
wants to come
with me? She’s got to be bored down there, and maybe tortured in
her head listening to that science woman prattle on. Might be I’m
an appealing alternative.”

Viktor doubted it.

“Come on, sir. I haven’t been any trouble of
late. I’ve worked real hard for the crew, for you. I took that
bullet on Vasquelin, remember?” He tapped his side. “And we haven’t
had leave in months and months. I’m tired of nothing but my hand
for company. I was so desperate last week, I tried to get Sergeant
Hazel to come see my gun collection, and you know how she responds
to that kind of thing.” Striker’s hand twitched protectively toward
his groin. “Can I at least
ask
that girl? If she says no, I
won’t be any trouble to them. I swear.”

Another bleep came from Viktor’s tablet.
Damn, Felgard was in an insistent mood. Viktor wasn’t one to jump
at anyone’s summons, but if there was more information to be had or
a change to the deal, he needed to know about it promptly.

“They’re prisoners, and they’ll be looking
for ways to escape,” Viktor said. “I don’t want them taken out of
the brig. You can go down there if you want, and if you can get her
to jump your gun in there with both of her friends watching, I
don’t care. But no force.”

Striker grinned, as if this posed no problem.
“Thank you, sir.”

Viktor snorted as the door shut. He shouldn’t
have agreed to even that, but none of those girls was going to
willingly do anything with him. Striker could get himself a little
excited then go off and have another date with his hand.

Viktor tossed his tablet onto his standing
desk, and the three-dimensional video display came to life.
“Felgard,” he said, letting the computer handle the
connections.

While he waited, he added water to the
reservoir for the system that fed the dwarf apple trees potted in a
grow station along one wall of his cabin. Two were flowering and
needed pollinating, but his comm pinged first. In less time than he
had expected, especially given the lag as the request for
communications was relayed across six planets and a whole lot of
empty space, Felgard came into view.

A reed-thin man with a protruding jaw and
wispy gray hair sticking out from beneath a top hat, the legendary
entrepreneur had keen gray eyes framed by old-fashioned spectacles
that doubtlessly camouflaged some state-of-the-art technology. An
expensive and much more sophisticated version of Viktor’s Eytect
scanner, maybe.

Viktor folded his arms across his chest and
waited for the other man to initiate the conversation, so he could
get a feel for his thoughts and attitude. He had never spoken to
the lord of finance before, nor had any direct dealings with any of
his employees, but he
had
once blown up a munitions platform
that belonged to Trak Teck Enterprises as part of a raid by a
competitor. That had been more than five years ago. He would find
out how fine Felgard’s memory was, and if he was the type to hold a
grudge.

“Captain Mandrake,” Felgard said. “I wasn’t
expecting you to be the one to capture those criminals. You don’t
usually deal in the bounty collection business.” Felgard smiled and
waited for his words to transmit.

The words came across as polite, almost
friendly, but Viktor knew Felgard was letting him know how much he
knew about the business of Mandrake Company. Given that there were
hundreds, if not thousands, of mercenary outfits spread across the
system, many much larger than Viktor’s, this meant Felgard had done
some research. Five years ago likely. At the time, he must have
decided retaliation wasn’t worth it—especially when he had been
busy dealing with an upstart competitor—but now? Who knew?

“Lord Felgard,” Viktor said, managing not to
show how much it grated on his nerves to call someone a lord, as if
he were some Old Earth descendant with noble blood rather than
someone who had simply earned enough money to be listed as a lord
of finance in the
Rothmore Journal
. “You’re correct.
Collecting bounties wouldn’t keep a crew of one hundred plus in
armor and rations, but your offering was particularly lucrative,
and we were quite literally on the way past the planet where your
villains were hiding.” He raised his eyebrows slightly as he said
villains, to let Felgard know he was wondering what those three
women had done. He wasn’t going to ask. Bounty hunters who wanted
to live long enough to spend their earnings didn’t pry into their
patrons’ business. Still, he found himself hoping for an answer as
he waited for his words to transmit and for Felgard’s response.

“That is fortunate for me. I trust you’re en
route with them now?”

“We have business on Sturm and a few repairs
to make, then we’ll head straight to your planet.”

For the first time, Felgard’s polite smile
faded, and his eyes hardened. A blue light blipped on the frame of
his spectacles. Accessing some report, was he? Probably finding out
what was happening on the mining and lumber moon of Sturm.

“You plan to engage in a manhunt for that
self-proclaimed Robin Hood who’s supposed to be hiding out there?”
Felgard asked.

“Sisson Hood is the name he’s taken. He’s
stealing from the rich, pocketing ninety percent, and spreading the
other ten amongst the poor, trying to gain their support. But he’s
also kidnapping young women when he’s dropping off the money and
returning them somewhat used to their families. The local
government isn’t pleased, nor is the Buddhist temple there. They’ve
each offered to pay us for getting rid of the problem.” Viktor
wouldn’t normally explain so much of a coming mission to someone
who had nothing to do with it, but he suspected Felgard already
knew all the details.

“Noble work, I’m sure,” Felgard said. It
actually
was
nobler than many of the assignments Mandrake
Company was offered, and Viktor was looking forward to it,
especially after seeing the images the temple had sent, the
battered faces of some of the ravaged women. If it had only been
the government sending these images, he might have expected a hoax,
that the Robin Hood angle was truer than they were admitting, but
he respected the monks more than the representatives of most of the
religions in the system. They were always so adamant about not
taking money from corporations, and he had rarely been led astray
by anything they said. “But,” Felgard went on, after a delay that
might have been his own or might have been a lag in the connection,
“that could keep you for weeks. I must have my prisoners.”

“It won’t take weeks, my lord. My people are
good.”

“Any delay is unacceptable. You must bring
them immediately to me if you wish your payment, and then you may
go on your other mission. Sisson Hood isn’t going anywhere, I’m
sure.”