At the end of the long bridge, a big building with numerous conical wooden roofs rose up from an elevated platform. Felgard’s mansion?
Once all of the soldiers were gathered on the platform, the guide nodded to the men with the buckets. They exchanged long looks with each other, took deep—bracing?—breaths and inched out onto the bridge. Each man stabbed a fork into his bucket, pulling out what appeared to be fresh raw steak. Ankari stared, puzzled, until the trumpet-flowers rotated toward the men, revealing sharp protrusions that she could only think of as teeth. Fangs.
One of the flowers lunged, taking a proffered steak with a strange undulation, not unlike a jaw snapping shut. Others descended on the steak-carrying men. Ankari had heard of plants that ate insects, but this was crazy.
“Hurry,” the guide said, waving for them to follow. “They’re not sated for long.”
As the guide hustled forward, staying in the middle of the bridge, his shoulders hunched inward, his nervousness didn’t seem like it was for show. One of the men leading the way, feeding the plants, jumped in surprise as a flower snapped close to his arm. He thrust a steak at it, and the trumpet shifted, swallowing the offering and leaving him to hurry onward.
Lamenting her lack of a weapon more now than before, Ankari trotted after the mercenaries—they were all hustling now, crowding the guide and the men doing the feeding. Those steaks disappeared with alarming rapidity. A big serrated dagger had appeared in Viktor’s hand, in addition to the rifle strapped across his chest.
Halfway across the bridge, someone behind them snarled, a mixture of rage and pain. One of the flowers had clamped onto a mercenary’s shoulder. He jerked back, shooting at the trumpet point blank. More plants reared and undulated toward him, like sharks roused by the scent of blood. A huge flower from the other side of the bridge darted in, clamping onto the mercenary’s ribcage.
“Keep going, keep going,” Viktor said, pushing Ankari and the others toward the far side even as he raced back toward the attack. All of the men around the victim were helping, shooting and slashing at the plants.
Ankari felt cowardly for running away, but what could she do to help? A side kick to the stem wouldn’t harm the flexible foliage—though it might piss it off. A kick to its pot might do more, but the huge containers must weigh hundreds of pounds each. No, she didn’t know how to help. Not from within the mess. Ankari raced through the closing tunnel of greenery, dodging as a trumpet whipped toward her. Even though its attack missed, the snap of fangs inches from her ear filled her with fear, and her run turned into a dead sprint.
Lauren and Jamie made it to the platform ahead of her, but she tumbled out on their heels, almost crashing into one of the men with the buckets. Zookeepers, that’s what they were.
A couple of raw steaks slumped in the bottom of the closest man’s bucket. Ankari grabbed them and hurled them into the swirling mess of plants and men. Not waiting to see if it helped at all, she rushed from zookeeper to zookeeper, grabbing any leftover steaks and flinging them onto the bridge. She didn’t pause to watch the effect until she had thrown the last one. It spun through the air, droplets of blood flinging, and splatted against someone’s chest. Viktor’s. Oops.
The mercenaries had escaped from the fray, leaving severed vines and scorched trumpets on the bridge boards. Many of the plants still writhed, twitching in irritation like cats’ tails, but they let the men finish crossing. Something about those twitches made Ankari certain the plants were only saying, “Until next time.” The man who had been attacked was dripping a trail of blood as he walked, but his curled lips proclaimed his anger more than they proclaimed his agony. Viktor’s people would probably die before admitting to pain.
“Conscientious of you to assist your captors,” the guide said mildly, standing next to Ankari’s shoulder.
He was watching her through slitted eyes. The zookeepers were, too, and she had the distinct feeling that they would have been pleased if the mercenaries were all devoured on the bridge, since Ankari’s team had made its way through.
Ankari mustered all the righteous indignation that she could when she said, “Nobody deserves to die that way.” Yes, that was the only reason she had helped...
“Felgard somewhere in this maze?” Viktor asked, planting himself in front of the guide. “Or are you just taking us on the grounds tour in the hope that we won’t make it to our meeting with him?” He still carried the wicked serrated blade—viscous green plant juices dripped from it—and looked like he was contemplating a throat slitting.
The guide eased back a couple of steps. The zookeepers disappeared down side bridges, none of which were lined with plants.
“He is waiting for you inside.” The guide waved to a ramp leading up to the large platform that held the mansion. “This way.”
As the man scurried up the ramp, Viktor bumped Ankari’s shoulder. With a smirk in his eyes, he murmured, “If you throw raw meat at your friends, I wonder what you do to enemies.”
He was gone, striding after the guide, before Ankari could come up with a good answer.
“Be careful, Ankari,” Lauren whispered. “These people might figure out beforehand that we’re not exactly Mandrake Company prisoners here.”
“Was I supposed to let the mercenaries be eaten by plants?” Ankari headed up the ramp.
“Maybe just some of them,” Jamie muttered, walking behind her.
“A few more minutes and the ruse will be over. One way or another.”
16
Not surprisingly, Viktor and everyone else were funneled through a security screening tunnel before being granted entrance to the big house. Bored-looking guards pointed toward cubbies where guns, knives, and nail files—Keys carried one of those—could be tossed into baskets and “picked up later,” or so the promise went. Viktor hated disarming himself, but he had expected it, so he unstrapped everything the security personnel pointed at. He had hoped he might sneak his bone dagger in—sometimes it didn’t show up on scans programmed to look for higher tech weaponry, but they found it, as well. It took nearly a half hour for his team to pass the checkpoint, and they left the cubbies overflowing with gear.
The delay grated on Viktor’s nerves, but he hoped it was irritating Felgard, as well. Irritated and impatient enemies were more likely to make mistakes, after all.
The guide finally led them to the front door of the mansion. Even though Viktor had seen the blueprints to the Felgard estate, he expected to have to endure another maze inside, perhaps with more ill-disguised booby traps. Those plants had not been mentioned on the maps Thomlin had dug up. But the cool, climate-controlled home was open and spacious, with large rooms, high ceilings, and windows in every direction, providing views of the forest on three sides and the ocean in the distance. The guide led the squad past a computer area and a dining room, then up a ramp to a circular chamber that took up the entire top floor. Here, the windows were tinted and doubled as screens with financial news and tickers scrolling down them. One displayed a talking head reporting on an economic upheaval in the southern province of Novus Earth. The sound was muted, but the words scrolled through the air below.
A few white-uniformed guards were stationed around the perimeter of the room, armed and fit. They gave Viktor hard stares. Viktor thought his people could handle them, even starting out unarmed, but the ten Prodigal 700 androids were another matter. The stony-faced humanoids were fleet issue and designed for combat—he’d seen them in action with the robots, cyborgs, and droids units in the army. They could withstand short bursts of laser fire and deflect knives and bullets; they could be knocked down by physical force, but would simply rise up again. The laser pistols holstered at their waists were a threat, but so was the way they could rip human limbs and heads right from their bodies.
Victor gave Sergeant Aster a long look as he came up the ramp. Aster had been carrying the generator that his team had modified. It was supposed to be able to affect anything with a circuit board now, at least momentarily.
It was back in the cubby with all of their weapons, but Viktor wanted his sergeant to know he still expected him to try to get to the equipment and use it if a fight broke out.
Aster glanced at the androids and grimaced—probably doubting if the generator would work on them—but nodded once. Viktor doubted it would, too, but they could hope.
At the center of the room, a man sat in a reclining chair, his legs tilted up off the ground, his arms supported by fancy rests with data input devices at his fingers. A holographic display hovered at the perfect angle to be readable by the occupant. Though Viktor had only spoken to the reedy man through the net, he recognized Felgard promptly. He wore the same top hat tugged over his gray hair as before, along with the old-fashioned spectacles with the bleeping light on the frame. A black suit suggested he rarely strolled into the tropical warmth outside of his home.
“How’s that chair?” Tick whispered to Striker. “In line with what the comic literature suggests for a super villain’s furnishings?”
“If it can shoot lasers out of the armrests, it will be,” Striker whispered back. “I might add it to Volume 237.”
Viktor took note of a balcony door behind the fancy chair. It and the ramp they had walked up were the only visible exits to the room, but the windows might be openable, as well. He didn’t look at Ankari or her friends or the rest of his men as they joined him in the room, fanning out and ready to fight, whether they had their weapons or not, but he was aware of their presence.
“Welcome, Captain.” The chair rotated, seemingly of its own accord, so that Felgard faced the group. “I’m glad you weren’t overly delayed by your Sisson Hood mission.”
“The bounty hunters attacking my ship and trying to raid my brig were more of a delay than Hood.” Viktor didn’t bother subduing the growl in his voice; Felgard would expect him to be irked about that.
“It seems they inspired you to come promptly though and that you’re unharmed. Mostly.” Felgard frowned at Rowan, the man who had been maimed by those weird predator plants. “That fellow is bleeding on the floor. Beaumont.” Felgard flicked his fingers.
The guide who had led Viktor’s team through the maze sighed and jogged down the ramp. He returned shortly with a rag.
“We’ll take our two hundred thousand now,” Viktor said, “and leave the girls for whatever you want them for. They’re trouble. You’re welcome to them.”
“Trouble?” Felgard regarded Ankari and the others mildly. “Hard to imagine.”
“If you didn’t think they were trouble, you wouldn’t have offered so much to have them delivered.” Viktor tried to make that sound like a leading question. He still wondered why Felgard hadn’t simply sent his own men out to find Ankari and her friends, not that they had been easy to find on that remote planet. It had been luck and Thomlin’s restless net explorations that had led Mandrake Company to them.
“Hm,” was all Felgard said.
“The money,” Viktor prompted again. He wasn’t in a hurry to leave Ankari in here, but Felgard would expect this attitude from him. He wondered if the finance lord would try to get away with a hundred thousand, his original offer. He expected it, in truth. Or he expected the man to give him nothing, except a guide to lead them past even deadlier traps on the way out. He hadn’t missed the way the guide had stood by while Viktor’s team dealt with the bridge attack.
“Yes, yes, the money, of course,” Felgard said. “If you and your hulking men will return to your shuttle, I’ll have it delivered on a truck. Solid gold, right? Isn’t that what you bounty hunters always want? No flimsy digital money?”
Viktor hesitated—a lot of bounty hunters and mercenaries did require physical payment, gold being the only constant in a galaxy where GalCon was always fiddling with the amount of fiat currency out there, causing the value of an aurum to change from day to day. But if Viktor accepted a transfer of funds into the company account, there would be no reason to return to the shuttle to accept delivery of anything. They needn’t leave the women’s sides until they knew why Felgard wanted them.
“Gold isn’t necessary. Transfer the funds directly to the Mandrake Company account, and we’ll leave promptly.”
“Ah?” Felgard tilted his head, watching Viktor through those quirky spectacles. “I’m afraid the physical gold has already been prepared. It is how you’ll be paid. As soon as you arrive at your shuttle.”
“I have a man at the shuttle. You can deliver it to him while we wait.”
“You’d trust a mercenary not to fly off with that much gold? And your shuttle?”
“I trust my men, yes.” Viktor met Ankari’s eyes. He didn’t give her anything so obvious as a wink, but she had been watching him, waiting for his signal, and she stepped forward immediately. It was doubtful whether Felgard intended to deal honestly, so Ankari might as well ask her questions sooner, rather than later, before Felgard tried to force Viktor and his men to leave.
“Lord Felgard,” Ankari said. Her voice came out steady, even though she must be nervous. She met his eyes, and Viktor allowed himself a moment of pride before returning his focus to watching Felgard and the guards. “You’ve gone to great lengths to bring us here.” Ankari gestured to her friends. “And to say you’ve inconvenienced us would be an understatement. These gun-happy clods blew up my ship.” She might have forgiven Viktor for that—though he hadn’t actually asked—but she wouldn’t ever forget, that was a certainty, and there was nothing feigned about the aggravation in her voice. “If you’re done chitchatting with the bounty hunters, I’d sure like to know why.”
Felgard sighed at her, as if she were some tedious gnat batting about his ears. “I suppose I must talk to you since you started the company, but I’m far more interested in discussing things with your microbiologist.”
The Keys woman looked more like she wanted to step back than to step forward. She glanced at the armed men around the room, swallowed, and didn’t say a word.
“I want these thugs out of here first though,” Felgard said. “I have no interest in discussing business matters in front of gun-happy clods as you rather politely called them.” He smiled at her.
Viktor wanted to punch him, but the chair was a good twenty feet away. He would be shot countless times before he could cross that distance.
Felgard’s eyes flickered, issuing some command via the spectacles, and the androids came to life. They strode toward the group of mercenaries.
Viktor hadn’t planned to make threats until later, but he lunged to the side and wrapped his hand around Keys’s neck. “Stop them, or she dies,” he barked.
He hadn’t disclosed this contingency to the women, and Keys’s eyes widened with believable fear. So long as Ankari didn’t think he meant it.
“Please, Captain,” Felgard said. “You’ll be dead before her body hits the ground. The rest of your men will soon follow.” Despite his words, he had ordered the androids to halt.
“So long as whatever nefarious plan you’re concocting is thwarted too.”
“As if you care about my plans. This is about you not believing I intend to pay you, is that it?”
“You are being shifty about it,” Viktor growled.
“Very well.” Felgard’s eyes twitched a few times.
The tablet in Viktor’s cargo pocket bleeped.
“You’ll want to take a look at that,” Felgard said blandly.
“Tick,” Viktor said. He wasn’t going to release Keys’s neck; the androids probably had orders to shoot him the instant he did.
Tick unbuttoned the pocket and withdrew the tablet. He unfolded it and held it up so Viktor could see it. An alert informed him that a deposit for the full amount had been dropped into the company account. That was unexpected. And not particularly desirable, because he now had no reason to stay.
“Take it and the men back to the shuttle,” Viktor said. “I’ll stay to make sure you don’t meet with trouble on the way.” He glanced back, finding Aster and meeting his eyes again. Only for a hear
tbeat.
“Really, Captain,” Felgard said. “Are you going to stand there with your hand around that woman’s neck for the next hour?”
“Only until I’m sure my people have safely left your compound. Someone seems to have installed booby traps.”
“If you’re referring to the results of my botanical hobbies, I assure you those are merely pleasant decorations.”
Rowan, the man who’d been bitten twice by those botanical hobbies, scoffed loudly.
“They do keep the staff on their toes,” Felgard added with a smile.
Viktor tilted his head toward his men. They hesitated, but finally trooped out. He was relieved they cared enough not to want to leave him, but he definitely had the feeling Felgard wasn’t going to talk about his hopes and ambitions—or problems—in front of so many. With just Viktor there alongside the women, maybe he would. Especially if he had plans to eliminate Viktor, which, given the pest Viktor was making of himself, he might.
“You’ve been paid, Captain.” Felgard’s tone was harder now, his eyes cooler.
“Release my new microbiologist.”
* * *
“Your microbiologist?” Ankari asked, noting that Viktor’s fingers didn’t leave Lauren’s throat. Lauren looked as nervous at that as she was about Felgard. Ankari didn’t dare signal her that she would be fine, at least insofar as Viktor was concerned. “Do you think that you’ve bought us, Lord Felgard? As if we’re exotic pets on sale to the highest bidder?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, girl. You’re not that exotic.”
Viktor’s eyes narrowed, as if he wanted to punch the man for the insult. Or kill him.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 26
