Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Them again?” Garland asked someone—his voice was distant now, as if he had turned from the comm. “Enough with the warning shots. Blow them out of the sky before they can get back into those clouds. And—” The rest of his words were lost, with Garland or someone else cutting off the comm.

  “I’m not entirely sure what’s happening,” Ankari said, “but we have to take advantage of the confusion. Get us down to Sturm, Jamie.”

  “I am. Actually I’m not, but we’re going anyway.” Jamie waved toward the view screen, which had changed as they rotated around, thrusters igniting to take the craft away from the Albatross. A glimpse of a black disk-shaped ship occupied the corner for a moment, then it weaved away, avoiding laser fire. The big round moon came into view next, its dense verdant green visible, even though they were heading toward the dark side of it. An angry band of reddish gray clouds smothered the lower half of the landmass the shuttle was pointed toward.

  “That’s all the wild side, I think,” Ankari said, punching up Sturm on the tablet. “Mostly loggers, miners, and a few outposts over there. That’s probably where those raiders are hiding out and where the captain and his people went. I’d much rather disappear into a city than a jungle. Anchortown is... that way.” She pointed toward the horizon where a halo of sunlight promised dawn.

  “I’m sure it is,” Jamie said, “but I don’t have any control of the shuttle.”

  “What?” Lauren asked.

  “I haven’t since I shut the door. Everything’s been automatic. At first, I thought it was part of the mercenaries’ automatic launch sequence, but something else must be going on.”

  Ankari stared at the ominous mass of storm clouds they were heading toward. As they drew closer, white spots flashed in them—lightning.

  “I think I’m beginning to see why that other ship was firing,” Lauren said. “They wanted us to get away, because they knew we were going... wherever they want us to go.”

  Ankari sank back in her chair. Lauren was right. If those men who had come to the brig had intended to kidnap her and the others, they must have planned to leave in the same shuttle they had come up in. So, Ankari had led her people into a trap. Why wouldn’t the shuttle be flying toward the other ship, though? The ship that was apparently harrying the Albatross?

  Even as the thoughts raced through her head, something streaked past to the shuttle’s right. With thrusters firing orange, the disk-shaped ship blasted down into the moon’s atmosphere. It was hard to tell if it had been damaged or if it was simply fleeing now that its task was done.

  Maybe the plan for the bounty hunters, or whoever was after Ankari’s team, was to meet up on the moon below. To meet up exactly where the shuttle had been programmed to land. Ugh.

  “We walked into a trap, didn’t we?” Jamie asked.

  “If so, it should just be a variation of the same trap we were already in,” Ankari said. “Except this time, we have weapons. Maybe we can shoot our way out, surprise the bounty hunters. They’ll be expecting us to show up in handcuffs and with the rest of their allies, not on our own.”

  “Maybe we can shoot our way out?” Lauren raised her eyebrows, reminding Ankari exactly how combat-ready most of her team was. She couldn’t claim to be an expert marksman, either.

  “Captain Viktor was actually hospitable, for a captor,” Jamie said. “What if our new captors aren’t?”

  “They have to keep us alive if they want the bounty,” Lauren said.

  “That doesn’t mean much.”

  “Can we stop giving up and throwing ourselves to the ground in front of these people before we’ve met them?” Ankari asked. “Jamie, see if you can figure out how to disable that autopilot. If we can gain control of the shuttle, we’re free women.”

  “All right.” Jamie hunted around the console, then opened a panel underneath it and peered inside.

  Ankari crouched to help her look, though she had no idea what she was looking for. It was better than watching the moon approach below them, that storm and whatever fate awaited them getting closer and closer.

  A shudder ran through the shuttle, and she pitched to the grated floor, her back thudding against a chair.

  “Is that Garland?” Lauren asked. “Did he shoot?”

  “I think it’s the storm,” Ankari said. They had descended into the clouds, and the flashes of electricity they had seen from above were all around them now. Great branches of white light streaked across the view screen. Wind railed at them, and the craft shuddered and heaved.

  “Is that better or worse?” Lauren hadn’t left her chair. She was strapped in—wisely so—her fingers like claws as she gripped the armrests.

  All sense of gravity or a controlled entry disappeared, and the ship plummeted straight down. Ankari was thrown across the small cabin, striking a wall and more chairs, pain erupting in her hip as it slammed against something hard. She tumbled onto the floor and wrapped her arms and legs around the bottom of a seat. Terror welled in her throat, along with the certainty that they were going to die. This hadn’t been what she had meant when she said they would be free women.

  Then the shuttle caught itself, correcting the fall with a lurch that would have heaved Ankari up to the ceiling if she hadn’t been holding on so tightly. As it was, something popped in her shoulder. She barely noticed.

  The craft leveled out and seemed to be flying mostly horizontal again, but still on a downward course. Always downward and toward its inevitable fate. They were under the clouds now, but the wind continued to beat at the craft. The engines ground and whined, struggling to keep them in the air. Maybe it was Ankari’s imagination, but they definitely didn’t sound as hale as they had in space.

  “Is everyone all right?” she croaked. She released her chair bottom, but only so she could return to her seat and strap herself in. Lauren hadn’t moved, but her face was whiter than a skeleton. Jamie pulled herself out from under the console—she must have wedged herself in there somehow.

  “Not really,” Jamie croaked, “but I did find this.” She lifted out a small black rectangle with wires sticking out of it. It looked more like something that might be jury-rigged from junk found in a spare parts bin rather than a sophisticated piece of technology. Jamie dropped it and climbed into the pilot’s seat, strapping herself in. “Let me see if...” Her fingers pressed buttons and threw switches. She glanced toward where she had kept the tablet, but it had flown off to who knew where.

  “Any luck?” Ankari asked. The roiling storm clouds made the night darker than pitch, but the vague outline of a mountain range was visible ahead, along with the undulating jungle below, trees and leaves waving under the harsh wind. She tried to decide whether it would be worse to crash into trees or into the side of a mountain... The trees might cradle them and keep them from being smashed into the ground. The mountains appeared less yielding, but the shuttle was determined to head toward them.

  “I think I have control back,” Jamie said, “but it’s not doing much good. We took some damage and—”

  The shuttle lurched, as if they were a ground vehicle and had driven over a huge speed bump. Ankari would have been thrown to the deck again if she hadn’t been strapped in. “We’re a little close to the trees, I think.”

  “There’s no place to land.” Jamie’s strained voice didn’t fill Ankari with hope. “We’re going to crash.”

  Another bump came from below. Branches scraped against the hull, and rain pelted the top of the craft. A bolt of lightning struck a tree right ahead of them, and the sky flashed a brilliant white for a moment, revealing the craggy silhouette of a black mountain rising from the jungle. They were closer to the range than Ankari had realized. She gripped the armrests. There was little else she could do, except pray the shuttle had devices built in to protect its crew in a crash landing.

  After another lurch, something shorted out, sparks flying from the open panel beneath the console. An acrid smoke flowed into the air. The view screen snapped out, and darkness desc
ended on the cabin.

  * * *

  Rain fell from the broad plant leaves in waterfalls. Viktor was already drenched, so it hardly mattered, but the worsening visibility was making it harder to follow the trail. The mud was turning to a river of dirt, the prints obscured, but Tick led the way without hesitation.

  “You’d think those two men would have taken shelter at some point and that we’d catch them,” Sergeant Hazel yelled, her voice at the top of its range so she could be heard above the heavy rainfall.

  Viktor merely shook his head, not in the mood to yell. His clothing was sticking to his body beneath his armor, and his balls were swimming in a pond. He was in the mood to shoot people.

  “There’s a rise ahead,” Tick called back. “We can get a look around, get our bearings.”

  The trail they were following was a meandering mess, but Viktor’s Eytect promised they were still going in the direction of the mountains. Still, given the unreliableness of his equipment tonight, he wouldn’t mind a look at the landscape. He found it hard to believe men would have walked ten miles through the jungle to ambush that shuttlecraft. They had to have a closer camp. Striker hadn’t been on the ground for that long before he had called up, reporting the shuttle missing.

  Tick led the way to a basalt outcropping sticking up out of the trees. It was mossy with a few plants managing to find purchase, but the greenery faded halfway up. Lightning streaked across the sky, making Viktor rethink their climb to higher ground, but he continued up nonetheless, passing Tick along the way. At the top, the jungle stretched in all directions, and he grimaced, not seeing much in the way of clearings or potential spots for camps, nothing large enough that provided a break in the canopy anyway.

  The wind gusted so hard, it threatened to knock him off the rock. He spread his legs, bracing himself, and squinted through the rain toward the mountains. Not much there. He couldn’t see the lights he had picked out on the way down earlier.

  The wind shifted directions, bringing the sounds of artillery weapons firing in the distance. His men attacking. It must be, though they hadn’t brought any big weapons, preferring swift infiltrations to drawn-out sieges.

  “How much farther should we follow the tracks, sir?” Hazel had heard the weapons, too, and she doubtlessly wanted to be with the rest of the company, the same as Viktor did.

  “What do you think, Tick? How much longer can you track in this?”

  “I can track forever, Cap’n. You know that.”

  Viktor frowned down at him, wanting a more serious answer. The rivers of rainwater flowing down the animal paths weren’t going to leave the tracks visible indefinitely.

  Tick chewed thoughtfully on his wad of gum before shrugging and answering. “I can keep on it a while longer. Lots of broken branches, not just footprints. Someone hacked through with a machete in spots.”

  “Sir, look.” Hazel pointed past Viktor’s shoulder at the same time as lightning flashed through the sky, one bolt striking a tree not far away.

  She wasn’t pointing at the lightning, but at what was flying through it. A sleek black shuttlecraft, its hull gleaming with moisture as it streaked through the sky like a bullet. Its running lights were out, and it skipped off the treetops, the pilot struggling to maintain altitude. He had to be looking for a place to land. But he who? Who was flying the shuttle now?

  “That the same one that’s missing?” Tick yelled as the wind picked up again.

  “Yes.” Viktor had caught the nomenclature on the side during the lightning strike, not that he had expected any of the other three shuttles to randomly fly overhead. Not when two of the pilots were busy doing math problems with each other. But if this shuttle had been up at the ship, what was it doing back down here? He wished his conversation with Garland hadn’t been so garbled.

  Viktor stood on his tiptoes, straining to keep track of the craft. It was heading toward the mountains. First the tracks and now the shuttle. Someone had a base over there. Maybe that temple wasn’t full of monks after all.

  “He’s not going to make it,” Tick said.

  Viktor shook his head, annoyed by the whole night and annoyed that he was about to lose a perfectly good shuttle.

  He’d no more than had the thought when the craft slammed into an ancient tree rising higher than the surrounding canopy. It caromed off like a marble smacking into a wall, then dropped, disappearing into the jungle.

  “Let’s go.” Viktor scrambled down the rock hill.

  The shuttle was only a couple of miles away, but if the terrain between here and there was anything like the terrain they had been tramping over thus far, they wouldn’t be able to take a direct route.

  Viktor jumped the last six feet, spattering mud in all directions as he landed. A screech emanated from the trees, making him pause. Answering cries came from the jungle. They made the hair on the back of his neck rise as some primordial warning system went off in his mind. Danger. An ancient danger. He’d heard the sound before and recognized it. Those raptors Tick had been talking about. A pack of them. He had assumed they would be bedded down for the storm, but the shuttle crash must have roused them. Predators always knew to take advantage of wounded prey.

  More bloodcurdling screeches came, one from nearby. Something rustled in the leaves. Viktor’s rifle, strapped across his chest, was always close at hand, and his finger found the trigger in the darkness. He flipped the night scope to illumination.

  By the thrashing of branches, he tracked the creature’s movement. It wasn’t heading toward them, but in the direction of the crash. Maybe the raptors could smell blood even two miles away.

  “They better keep that shuttle door closed,” Tick said, squishing into the mud next to Viktor. “The critters sound hungry.”

  Nobody pointed out that the three of them didn’t have a shuttle door to close.

  “Eyes open,” Viktor said, though Tick and Hazel were experienced and hardly needed the warning. He led the way into the jungle, not worrying about the tracks now. The screeches of those raptors would tell him where they needed to go.

  8

  Ankari remained conscious for this, her second crash of the week. Her head slammed into the back of her seat and the harness dug into her shoulders, chest, and legs. Maybe consciousness was overrated. It was utterly dark in the shuttle, and all she knew was that they were dangling in the air—in the trees probably—the nose pointed down. She knew that because only her harness was keeping her from dropping out of her seat. With the power and view screen still out, she couldn’t tell if they were three feet above the ground or three hundred. Rain pummeled the hull with such power that it sounded like they had landed under a waterfall.

  An unearthly screech came from somewhere below them. The wind? Some animal? Ankari wished she had been able to finish reading about Sturm. For now, getting out of this shuttle had to be the primary concern, especially if there were people out there who had been waiting for it to land.

  “Lauren? Jamie? Are you alive?”

  A groan came from below her, toward the nose of the craft.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” Ankari said. “For at least one of you. Jamie?” She was the one who should have been in the cockpit.

  “Yeah.” Jamie groaned again.

  “Lauren?”

  “How can you be so calm?” Lauren demanded, her voice somewhere between a rasp and a soft screech. She was probably afraid someone—or something—would hear them if they yelled. That was a possibility.

  “I trembled, cried, and lost control of my bladder while we were crashing,” Ankari said. “I’m past that now.” Not exactly true, but she was willing to tamp down desires to scream frantic curses if there was a chance staying calm would get them out of here before anyone with guns found them.

  “Really?” Jamie sounded less panicky than Lauren. Good.

  “More or less.” Ankari didn’t think she had peed on herself, but only because things had happened to quickly for her to succumb to total and utter fear. �
��I’m going to unstrap myself, try to find our packs—” not to mention the pistol that she had dropped a few eons ago, “—and see about opening that door. It doesn’t look like we’re getting emergency power, so I’m hoping there’s a manual override.”

  “There is,” Jamie said. “I saw it when we came in.”

  “Good.”

  “We’re hanging,” Lauren said. “Jostling things around might not be a good idea.”

  Another screech came from outside.

  “Staying here sounds like an even worse idea,” Ankari said.

  “If we stay in here, whatever’s making those noises won’t be able to get to us.”

  “Maybe, but the bounty hunters or whoever planned all of this will. They probably saw us crash.”

  Lauren grumbled but didn’t object further.

  “Once I get the door open and we can see around, we can judge things better.” Ankari’s feet fell toward the nose as soon as she released the leg half of the harness. This was going to be a challenge. How was she supposed to climb up to the door at the back of the shuttle when they were dangling nose first above the ground? She would worry about collecting their gear from the bottom—nose—first.

  She unfastened the rest of her harness, though she didn’t want to let go until she had something to stand on. She probed in the darkness with her foot and tapped something.

  “That’s my head,” Jamie said.

  “Oh. Am I close to the—” The cracking of wood came from outside, and the shuttle plummeted. It crashed to a stop again almost as soon as it started, but that ten-foot drop and lurch was enough to send Ankari’s heart into her throat. “I might pee myself yet,” she whispered.

  “Not when you’re above me, please.” Jamie’s humor sound strained, but at least she was trying.

  Ankari brushed the console with her foot, found a place to stand, and let go of her harness. She wobbled but crouched and caught her balance. She patted around, located one pack and—yes, the laser pistol. One of them at least. “You two still have your weapons?”