Mandrake Company- The Complete Series
Page 46
All too soon, one of the men cleared his throat noisily, and Val broke the kiss, though she left her hand on his hip and didn’t step away immediately. “Captivity makes you randy, I see.”
“You make me randy.”
She rose on her tiptoes, so she could whisper in his ear. “If my chat with the base commander doesn’t work, I’ll find a way to break you out. There’s no way I’m waiting two years to get in your pants.” Her husky tone and fervent promise sent a rush of heat through him, and when she finished by sucking on his earlobe, it was all he could do not to charge over to the bed with her in his arms, the guards be damned.
But Val pulled away after that, her back to him as she headed for the door, and he was left with his arm outstretched, his body aching with desire once again. She gave him a long look over her shoulder before disappearing down the hallway, and he knew he would have to be content with that for now, with the knowledge that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
* * *
Val woke up when the auto-hammer clunked to the deck. It was the third time she had dozed off and dropped the tool. She didn’t even know why she was holding it, since nothing needed to be hammered.
Jamie, the only one of the engineers still in the hangar and working, glanced over from her position under the navigation console. She was running tests on parts they had replaced earlier. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”
A yawn interrupted Val’s first attempt to respond. She wiped her eyes and said, “I told you. I want to stay up late enough that I can catch the base commander alone. The last time I went to the latrine, she was still in a meeting with Summers and a couple of other people. He’s been like a tick, stuck to her side all night. If I have to, I’ll wait until she’s gone to bed, then go to her room and wake her up to tell her the truth. I trust Summers isn’t sharing her bed. His tastes seem to run much younger.” Val scowled, looking around for something to hammer, but most of the panels had been closed, the wiring and components hidden away where they belonged again. Maybe she could simply beat against a wall for a while.
“Yeah, he’s creepy,” Jamie said, her words punctuated with soft beeps from her testing device. The noise seemed loud in the quiet hangar. It was after midnight, and most of the lights outside of the shuttle had been turned off or dimmed. The soft glow from their interior lighting didn’t spread much farther than the bottom of their ramp. “He’s given me some speculative looks from across the room,” Jamie added. “I would have fallen apart if he’d cornered me in a shuttle. Probably just stared at him with big rabbit eyes and let him maul me.” She scowled at her device, though whether it had to do with the test or with her opinion about her self-defense abilities, it wasn’t clear.
Even if none of the locals knew the real story yet, Val hadn’t held back from sharing the details with the rest of the mercenaries. To her relief, they had all believed her, even if it had less to do with their faith in her word and more to do with them figuring something truly crazy must have happened for their straight-laced commander to beat someone up in a fit of rage. She’d been a little chagrined when Lieutenant Frog had grinned and nodded at her, as if he knew all about Thatcher’s interest in her. She and Gregor must not have been hiding their feelings well.
“You seem too tough for that,” Val said. “You probably would have clobbered him with a wrench.”
“I don’t know. I get real nervous with men. I’m not used to all the attention I’ve been getting on the ship and, uhm, everywhere this past couple of months.”
“You’re not?” Val stared at the girl, her own problems forgotten for a moment. With her gorgeous blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and curvaceous frame, Jamie was striking. She dressed conservatively, in long sleeves and coveralls, but the clothes didn’t hide everything, and certainly not her face. Val couldn’t believe she hadn’t had men ogling her since she’d hit puberty.
“Well, boys back home maybe, but I grew up in a rural area, so there weren’t many boys per square mile, and the ones I knew were all afraid to do anything except talk. My dad’s so protective that he made it real clear that anyone who touched me would have some body parts lopped off. He was a Crimson Ops soldier before settling down with Mom, and he’s still pretty fierce looking. Real strict too. He only let me date boys that he was sure would be too afraid to kiss me, especially since his idea of dating was letting me sit on the porch with the boy while him and Mom were inside, within hearing range. It’s a little different here. It’s been great and I’ve learned lots, but like I was saying, I haven’t known how to deal with the men on the ship. Lots of them are handsome to look at, but they’re all so rough and, uhm, brazen.”
Val scowled, imagining someone like that Striker cornering Jamie in a hallway and trying to convince her to let him explore her tunnel of love. Wasn’t that what he’d called it? What an idiot. “I can see where it would be daunting, going from that lifestyle to this one, but you just need to learn how to defend yourself. Don’t be afraid to smack someone whose hands stray or give him a push back if he’s too close. Let them know that you like some space around you. You going to any of those unarmed-combat classes on the ship?”
“Not… yet. I wasn’t sure I wanted to put myself into a position to get pinned by big men.” Her mouth twisted.
“The instructor ought to put you with someone close to your size.”
Jamie’s “hm” was noncommittal. Oh, well. She would figure things out on her own given time.
“I’m going to get some sleep.” Jamie turned off the testing device and put it back in its case. “You staying here?”
“A little while longer. You want me to work on anything?”
“Not that involves hammering. You could go around the hull outside and make sure all of the panels have been tightened. It looks like we’re done out there.”
“Will do.” By the time Val finished, it ought to be late enough that Anstrider would be in bed.
After Jamie left, Val replaced her hammer with a multitool and grabbed a flashlight. She stuck a laser pistol into her holster, too, in case Summers decided to wander out and harass her again.
An unexpected creak came from the darkness as she walked down the ramp. She paused at the bottom, listening. Had it come from the hangar or from one of the adjoining tunnels? All except one of the half dozen passages leading from the big chamber had been dimmed for the night. The noise definitely hadn’t come from the lit one, which led to the kitchen and sleeping quarters. It had come from the opposite side, perhaps from the big tunnel that the aircraft used for a runway to exit the mountain. There was a door down there that was closed when it wasn’t in use. Maybe someone had left it open, and some draft had caught it, causing it to move and creak. Either way, the noise didn’t come again.
“Probably nothing,” Val muttered, though she decided to check the panels on the right side of the shuttle first; it was the side not visible from most of the tunnels or from anyone passing through the middle of the hangar. She kept her flashlight off, relying on touch and the dim illumination of the hangar to find the corners of the panels. The buzz of the sonic screwdriver made her wince, and she turned it off, using the manual option instead.
A soft scraping sound drifted across the hangar, as if someone were unscrewing the lid on an old jar. Val bit her lip. The first noise might have been nothing, but the second? She wasn’t alone in here. Maybe someone had left something out here and had come to retrieve it, but that first creak had left her uneasy. Nobody ought to be able to simply walk into the base from one of the tunnel entrances in the mountainside—there were people on duty out there, along with a shield that protected the mountain and denied access via that tunnel. Still, the noise had seemed to come from that direction.
Val peeked around the back of the shuttle, squinting into the gloom. Something moved at the edge of her vision, but when she faced in that direction, she didn’t see anyone. Had she been too late? Had someone slipped into the tunnel? Or had it been her imagination?
Val thought of the bombing that had been going off earlier. What if that had been part of a distraction? Something designed to let a person slip in unnoticed while the defenders were busy in the sky? Was that possible?
Val touched the grip of her pistol and eyed the tunnel. She should go check on things, but the idea of wandering back there armed made her nervous. Since Anstrider had forbidden anyone try to break out Gregor, would people assume that was what Val was doing if they found her skulking around with a weapon? Was it possible she would make things worse for him? And for herself? Maybe she should stay in her shuttle and do nothing. She sure wouldn’t cry if Admiral Asshole was killed. Except these people needed him. And, the Gregor-Summers problem aside, they had been decent to her. She didn’t want to see anyone here buried under the mountain if those bombers finally succeeded.
Growling to herself in frustration, Val headed for the lit tunnel. She would stop at Anstrider’s room and ask about the defense shields. Then the woman would know Val wasn’t plotting some breakout. And she would know how to check to see if the defenses had been deactivated or if someone had slipped in somehow.
As soon as she reached the tunnel, Val slowed down. It stretched out ahead of her, and she didn’t see or hear anyone, but she didn’t want anyone to hear her coming. If there was an assassin, he or she would doubtlessly be better trained than Val at combat.
Ears straining, her pistol in hand, she crept toward the first intersection. Going straight would take her to the kitchen and dining hall, but she assumed nobody would sneak into the facility to steal the mushroom burgers. The tunnel to the left led to the sleeping quarters. Val peeked around the corner. The passage stretched away to stairs at the far end, with at least sixty metal doors to either side before them. She had never bothered to look upstairs, since the Mandrake Company people had all been given lodging down here, but there were supposed to be more rooms up there. The Admiral was on that upper floor, she was fairly certain, but Anstrider was in one of the closer rooms, near the rest of the complex if anyone needed her in a pinch. Since Val had eyed the door a couple of times that day, in the hopes of catching the woman alone, she knew exactly where it was, the second on the right. Surprisingly, it stood open.
Was Anstrider still at that meeting? The tunnel leading to the admin offices and briefing rooms had been dimmed, so Val had assumed everyone had gone to bed. Even if Anstrider was at a meeting, why would she have left the door to her private room open?
Keeping one eye on the end of the tunnel, Val walked to the door. She raised a hand to knock, realized she was still holding her pistol, and stuffed it into her belt before stepping up to the doorway. Showing up at the base commander’s bedroom with a weapon in hand might be misconstrued.
As she drew even with the threshold, she realized with numb shock that it wouldn’t have mattered. Anstrider lay on a bloodstained beige rug, her gray hair spread out around her face, her eyes wide open but unseeing. Blood was still dribbling from the gaping gash at her throat, but it was too late to help her. Those vacant eyes said as much.
Val bit down on her fist, her plan of action shattering into a thousand pieces. She had the presence of mind to step inside and put her back to the wall, lest someone try to sneak up behind her, and she scanned the room twice before letting herself believe that the killer had left. The space was better furnished than her own, but no bigger, so her perusal didn’t take long. Then she stared back at the body. Damn. Now what?
“Get out of here before someone thinks you did this,” she whispered, “that’s what.”
She stepped back into the hallway, more to distance herself from the murder than because she had a plan as to what to do. She didn’t know who was second in command. Squadron Leader Zimmerman? Which room was hers? One in the middle, Val thought, but she hadn’t paid attention to the number when she had seen Zimmerman come out once. Maybe she should start knocking on random doors, alerting base personnel, except what happened if she ran into the assassin that way?
Gregor’s guard, that was who she should talk to. She belatedly realized that the man wasn’t at his post outside of Gregor’s door. Fear fluttered in her gut—if he wasn’t there, did that mean someone had stalked into Gregor’s room too? Just because she hadn’t thought the Mandrake Company mercenaries would be targeted by an assassin didn’t mean it was so.
Her pistol in hand again, Val crept in that direction. She resisted the urge to run, knowing her boots would clomp on the cement floor. It was quieter than death in the tunnel now, and any noise she made might float right to the intruder. Wherever he was.
She glanced at each door as she passed by, making sure no others were open or ajar. The last thing she wanted was for some assassin to jump out behind her. Though with the image of Anstrider’s slit throat now imprinted indelibly on her mind, she wasn’t sure she would have the courage to look into any more rooms.
But she might not have any choice. Before she reached Gregor’s room, she spotted dark dots on the floor in front of it. Blood? What else could that be? Not his, she prayed. His door was still shut. And locked, she hoped, with him safely inside. The door on the opposite side of the hall, the one leading to her room, was shut too. If the guard had left the blood—she couldn’t imagine who else’s it would be—where had he gone afterward?
A faint hum emanated through the walls, and she jumped, her finger so tense on the trigger of her pistol that she nearly fired. It was a generator or fan clicking on somewhere, nothing more. Assassins didn’t hum like machinery. Unless they were android assassins, but no, she was fairly sure androids didn’t hum, either.
“Focus,” she whispered to her racing mind.
Val gripped Gregor’s doorknob. It was locked. She hadn’t wanted to find it open, with him dead inside, but she scowled at the keyhole, anyway. Before, she had been worried someone would think she was trying to break out Gregor when she wasn’t, but now, she couldn’t imagine continuing on without his help.
She could melt the lock—and most of the door—with her laser pistol, but the whine would be louder than footsteps. She eyed the blood spots on the floor again. There was a smudge in front of her door, as if a boot had been dragged through a bigger drop.
Val set her jaw, bracing herself for what probably lay inside, then turned the knob on her door. It didn’t swing open all the way. The body on the floor blocked it. As she had suspected, it belonged to the guard. He must have been killed, simply because he was in the hallway. There was a stun gun on the floor next to his open hand, so he’d had an opportunity to pull a weapon before being jumped, but he must not have had a chance to fire or yell out a warning. The assassin had either run the twenty, thirty meters to the center of the hallway in a flash, or maybe he had been so good the guard hadn’t noticed him until the last second.
Though it made her squeamish, Val dug into his pocket, looking for Gregor’s key. She worried she was taking too long, that by the time she reached Admiral Summers’s room, he would already be dead. Fortunately, she found the keychain. She pulled it out carefully so it wouldn’t jingle and crossed the hallway again, checking in each direction four or five times as she went. She didn’t want to join that guard, dead on the floor because she had been in someone’s path.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open, her finger already to her lips. She expected Gregor to be sleeping, but in case he wasn’t—he might have heard the struggle with the guard—she wanted to warn him not to make noise. But he was in bed, breathing heavily, as if he had just flopped down after doing a few hundred jumping jacks. Oh, that wasn’t quite it, she realized, as she stepp
ed inside and the light from the hallway slashed across him, catching him with his pants down—literally—and the most embarrassed expression blooming on his face. Hah, someone else must have been having vivid dreams.
Later, she would tease him, but for now all she did was close the door, turn on the light, and whisper, “There’s an assassin on the base. Anstrider is dead.”
In an instant, his face shifted from an expression of chagrin to one of cool professionalism. He donned his clothes in seconds, asking, “Anyone else know?” as he dressed.
“Not yet. I was alone, working late, and thought I heard something. Turns out I did.”
“Admiral Summers may be a target, as well.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Val handed him the laser pistol, keeping the guard’s stunner for herself. Relieved to turn the lead over to him, she was glad when he headed for the door first.
After checking the hall, he eased outside, but had taken no more than a step when he halted, his hand raised. Still in the doorway, Val glanced both ways and didn’t see anything. A second later, she heard what he must have heard. Footsteps. Running footsteps. They weren’t coming from the stairs but from somewhere beyond the intersection.
She assumed someone else had figured out there was trouble—there was no way the assassin would be making that much noise—but she readied her stunner in case she was wrong. A familiar blonde figure ran around the corner, almost caroming off the opposite wall in her rush. Jamie. And she carried a black laser weapon that Val didn’t recognize. She spotted them and stopped, her top lip rearing back in confusion.
Val lowered her stunner and waved Jamie toward them, patting the air to tell her to slow down and try not to make noise. Jamie figured it out. Gregor poked his head into Val’s room when he noticed the guard’s legs sticking out from behind the door.
Not wanting to talk in the hallway, Val waved again, this time for everyone to go into her room. She whispered, “What happened?” as soon as the door closed behind them.