Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “And you got her out of that spa,” Ankari added more quietly, though by now, she was frowning at the door instead of looking at him. She waved at the sensor again. The faint ding of the inside chime was audible, but nothing happened.

  Sergei flushed more deeply, wondering if Jamie and Ankari had engaged in a girl-to-girl talk about that event at some point.

  When nobody answered the second chime, Ankari dug out the key again and laid it against a small sensor eye beneath the palm-activated lock panel. The door opened. The cabin was empty.

  “Huh,” Ankari said. “I thought she had been ordered to stay in her room too. I guess we try sickbay without her.”

  Sergei nodded and followed her, but he gave the cabin a long look over his shoulder as they left, hoping Jamie hadn’t gone somewhere that she might need thorns without him.

  * * *

  The robot had already been disassembled with the parts labeled and resting on a table in a machine shop on the lowest deck. The other two cleaning units from the shuttle bay were there, as well, though they hadn’t been taken apart, beyond what was normal for maintenance. A control CPU lay on one corner of the table, a diagnostic computer hooked up to it. Thomlin’s intelligence people had either given up on the project or had taken off for the day, because Jamie had the shop to herself. She was glad, because she didn’t want a bunch of engineers with far more experience than she glaring at her as she poked around.

  She looked over their work first. They had removed a firing apparatus from the arm of the robot, and it lay next to the CPU. The shell of the arms, both of them, had been cast into a box beside the table. It didn’t take an expert to tell that the firing apparatus had been jury-rigged and wasn’t made from the robot’s typical parts. She scanned through the diagnostic program that had checked the CPU, frowning because nothing there indicated that it had been tampered with. According to its log, it thought it had been squirting soap out for cleaning the floors.

  Jamie grabbed an Eytect unit from the wall, looped the frame over her ear, and called up the magnifying power of the lens. She picked up a pair of tweezers, resigning herself to going over everything in intimate detail. But she couldn’t help feeling she was simply repeating the same research that Thomlin’s team would have already done. And, given the degree to which the robot had been disassembled, they had been thorough, especially in regard to the CPU and the firing mechanism.

  “But what about those arms?” she muttered, turning off the magnifying lens and poking into the box of discarded parts. They represented the shell of the robot, so she could see why they had been dismissed, but maybe someone hadn’t looked inside them as closely as they should have, especially if they had been focused on the CPU.

  “Ah ha, what’s this?”

  She squinted into the shell of the robot’s long upper arm. The firing mechanism might have been stripped out, but something was attached to the inside. She grabbed it, but a zap of electricity ran up her arm before she could think of removing it. She yelped, almost dropping the part in her haste to pull her hand out and shake away the pain.

  “That is not typical.” She grabbed a blowtorch.

  She cut a line around that small attachment, but felt uneasy, knowing that she was doing a little more than “research” now. The intelligence team would know someone had been poking around and might be irritated at the destruction. But the captain had given her permission to come down here, right? And Thomlin knew she was there. So what if nobody had given permission for blowtorch usage?

  Once she had cut an incision around the piece, Jamie dumped it on the table, nudging it with a plastic scalpel to keep the current from running up through her arm again. Electricity crackled in the air at the intrusion, but it didn’t hurt her this time. She managed to flip over her new find. A secondary CPU. There weren’t any wires coming out of it, which was probably why the others hadn’t noticed it, but it could easily have the capacity for wireless control built in.

  “Which explains why the robot’s main CPU didn’t know what its arm was up to…” But who had put it there? Unlike the firing mechanism, which looked like it had been made from two-dozen spare parts, including something that looked suspiciously like the end of a fork, the secondary CPU was sleek and new, clearly straight from a manufacturer. It had been purchased somewhere, and if she could locate the record, maybe…

  She plugged into the network through the diagnostic computer and typed in the model number and manufacturer. Intent on her work, she didn’t hear the door open behind her.

  “Well, well,” a man said, and Jamie jumped, spinning around. “What’s wandered into our little lab?”

  Two men had come in, and both were scowling at her, their fists on their hips. She recognized both of them, but they worked the night shift, and she hadn’t seen them around much. The speaker was a Corporal Delgado, and he worked intelligence and communications on the bridge at night. The second man, she didn’t know by name, but he had the build, brawn, and scars of one of the infantry soldiers, with one of those scars cutting across the side of his cheek, some old laser burn that must have come close to taking his head off. Maybe he helped with the intelligence department’s interrogations. If so, Jamie supposed she should be glad it had been Thomlin who had come to her cabin. This brute would do far more than take notes and sneeze at a plant.

  “The captain said I could come down here,” Jamie said.

  “Oh, really? The captain who’s laid up in sickbay and who hasn’t been seen since yesterday?”

  “Yes… He called Thomlin right in front of me.”

  “Lieutenant Thomlin,” the scarred man said, his scowl deepening.

  “All right…” Jamie said, though she was tempted to point out that she was a civilian and not in their chain of command.

  “What are you doing down here, Flipkens?” Delgado looked at the table, his face hardening. Maybe he had been the one working on the project earlier, and had noticed that things had been moved around.

  “I found a secondary CPU in the arm sleeve,” Jamie said, hoping he might be intrigued by this new mystery and forget his ire over her presence. “I’m trying to figure out where it came from. The model number implies Novus Earth origins, a big manufacturer on the northern continent there. But it’s two years old, so it could have sat in a shop on a shelf anywhere between there and here for a while since then.”

  Delgado’s shaggy brows rose, and he did appear interested. His buddy was another story. While Delgado had walked up to the table, the other mercenary had moved closer to Jamie and stood only a couple of feet from her now. He looked down at her, his expression one of hostility rather than the lust she sometimes got from the men. She wasn’t sure this was an improvement.

  “It hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice, girl,” Scar said.

  “What’s that?” Jamie asked, thinking over Sergei’s defense moves in her head, deciding what she would do if he grabbed her wrist or her shoulder. Sweat had broken out on her hands, and she wiped them on her trousers and tried to stay calm. Nobody had touched her yet; this man was just looming intimidatingly. The mercenaries all did that well. It must be a job requirement.

  “That you get a lot of special treatment around here.”

  “Pardon?” Jamie eased a few steps closer to the table, though she would have preferred to ease herself out the door. But she hadn’t figured out who had purchased that chip yet. Delgado had looked at it, set it down, and was studying the readout from the diagnostic she had run on it. She needed the model number to have a chance at tracking down the buyer, and she hadn’t thought to memorize it, thus she needed the chip. And, afraid she was about to be booted out of the mechanics room, she wanted to take that chip with her.

  “You heard me.” Scar followed her, not letting her have any space. “You’re cute and perky, and all the men fall over themselves to accommodate you. Lieutenant Sequoia and Lieutenant Chang have been teaching you everything they know, and for what? You never joined the company. You don’t have a
ny loyalty to us. You’re not one of us.” He raised a finger and pointed it at her chest. “Might be, you’d sell us all out to the highest bidder.” This time he tapped her with his finger, prodding her in the shoulder. “Might be, you already sold out the captain. Or worse.”

  “I’m trying to help the captain,” Jamie said, though she doubted the thug would listen to reason. Delgado was still studying the readout, so she laid her hand on the table next to the chip. She would risk another shock to slip it into a pocket and get out of there.

  “I’ll bet you are,” Scar growled.

  He tried to grab her shoulder, but Jamie skittered back, evading the grasp. Unfortunately, she bumped into the table and couldn’t go as far as she would have liked. But she was right next to the chip now. And Delgado wasn’t paying attention. She laid her hand on the chip, gritting her teeth as the electrical charge crackled up her arm, and slipped it into her pocket.

  She tried to watch Scar while she did this, but he lunged for her again, and she wasn’t fast enough to get away. This time, he caught her around the wrist. The move she had practiced with Sergei jumped into her mind, and she performed it more by reflex than by conscious thought. She stomped on his instep at the same time as she twisted her wrist to escape his grip. She grabbed his arm and lunged in close, turning her back toward his hip. He probably wouldn’t have been startled against a male opponent, but he must not have expected her to step in—he stumbled and didn’t react quickly enough. She crouched and shoved her weight back into him, even as she grabbed his arm with both hands to haul him over her shoulder, throwing him into the table.

  He was a good fifty pounds heavier than Sergei, and she almost didn’t get him over her—and the effort elicited a staggering torque of pain from her back—but the table made the landing particularly impressive. He smashed onto it, and robot innards flew everywhere.

  Delgado cursed, grabbing at the diagnostic computer to keep it from being hurled off the table. Jamie didn’t know what the repercussions for her move would be, and she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She sprinted out the door, caromed off the corridor wall, and raced for the nearest ladder well. She tossed her comm-patch on the floor, so she couldn’t be tracked easily, then ran for the grow room. She doubted it would take the company long to find her if they put their resources into looking—the computer could locate people by more than comm-patches—but if she had a quiet half hour, she thought she could solve her problem.

  Jamie scooted into the brightly lit grow room and followed a wall filled with flowering and fruiting vines, ducked around complex hydroponics systems and berry bushes in soil-filled pots, then squeezed into a corner behind a grove of banana and plantain trees. She sat on the floor, her back to an empty spot in a wall otherwise occupied with a vertical lettuce garden. She yanked out her tablet and plugged in the chip number, crossing her fingers that the answer was on the network, and further crossing her fingers that nobody would walk in on her before she finished researching. She had already spent time in the brig and had no interest in returning to it.

  11

  Sergei stepped out of the ladder well closest to sickbay, ready to dodge a laser beam if need be. But the door Ankari had promised was guarded… wasn’t. The corridor stood empty.

  “Nobody’s there,” Sergei said.

  Ankari let go of the ladder and joined him. “Strange. Did I break you out of prison for no reason?”

  “Oh, there was a reason,” he said.

  “You were tired of ab crunches?”

  “Among other things.”

  She took a step, but Sergei held out a hand. He would go first, in case there was trouble.

  “Technically, I’m still your bodyguard,” he said.

  She gave him a flamboyant version of a military salute and waved for him to go first.

  When the sickbay door didn’t open automatically for him, Sergei placed his palm on the lock pad next to it. It felt oddly warm to his touch, as if some sunbeam had been shining on it for the afternoon, and the door failed to open. “I was keyed to the ship’s system before we left last week,” he said. “This should open for me.”

  Ankari tried it with the same result. “Me too.”

  She pulled out the master key and waved it at the sensor. The door still didn’t open.

  “That’s unexpected,” she said with a frown. “Jamie, where are you?”

  “Maybe you should try her comm-patch again?” Sergei put his hand on the pad, trying to figure out what that warmth signified. He leaned close and sniffed a few times, wondering if—

  He pulled back, jerking his head up.

  “What is it?” Ankari asked.

  “Something’s burning. Or was. I wonder if someone melted the lock.” He looked at Ankari—she wore a suede jacket that covered her belt. “Any chance you have a weapon? They took my pistols shortly after I was stuck in my cabin.”

  Ankari slipped her hand behind her back, then held out a compact laser pistol. “Given what’s been going on, I thought it would be a good idea to walk around armed.”

  “Yes.” Sergei accepted the weapon and waved her back a few steps. “Mind if we blame you if I’m overreacting and there’s nothing wrong?”

  “I don’t know. How much damage are you going to do?”

  But Sergei was already shooting the panel. If someone had just melted the lock from the other side, there might still be time, but he worried that they were already too late. How long did it take to kill an injured man wired to a bed in sickbay? Especially if someone on the inside had helped ensure that injured man was in a sedated stupor…

  Sparks and melted chunks of the wall flew in all directions. Smoke filled the air, and Sergei winced, knowing a fire alarm would go off before long. The panel melted into a gooey mess, its innards dripping to the deck. The air stank. But the door still hadn’t opened.

  “Here.” Sergei stopped firing and handed the pistol to Ankari. “I’m going to try to force it.”

  He placed the flats of his palms against the door and tried to slide it sideways, hoping the destruction of the lock panel might allow it to release more easily. His muscles strained and his joints creaked, but he didn’t make any progress.

  Instead of shooting at the wall some more, Ankari poked her nose into the new hole in the bulkhead. He had almost burned through it. He had burned far enough to see damage that had been made by whoever had been cutting in from the other side. If this were an old-fashioned door, they almost could have reached through and unlocked it from the inside.

  Ankari prodded something in the smoking wall with the tip of her pistol. The door released so abruptly Sergei almost flew to the deck.

  Later, he would lament that all of the girls on this ship were smarter than he was, but he was still afraid time was of the essence. Without a word, he leaped inside, landing in a soft crouch, ready to charge in any direction. Three empty beds stuck out, perpendicular to the wall ahead of him, one with a rumpled blanket atop it and the holodisplay active above it.

  A thump came from Sergei’s right. He lunged in that direction, rounded the end of a bed, and almost tripped over two figures wrestling on the floor. One was Mandrake, and the other was a stranger clad in a black sensor-scrambling suit. Something cracked. Bone? Someone’s head? The men were writhing in a blur that Sergei had trouble following.

  He crouched, ready to pull the man off Mandrake as soon as there was an opening. If he’d had his knife, he could have ended the confrontation much more swiftly. Or maybe not. Everything was moving so quickly, it was like cats fighting. The men rolled, slamming into the bottom of the bed, then twisted, nearly knocking Sergei off his feet. He finally got his chance, as the intruder’s arm came back for a punch. Sergei pounced, grabbing that arm and yanking.

  The man twisted in the air, slashing at him with a dagger. Sergei reacted instantly, batting the weapon aside. He slammed his forehead into the man’s face, trying to stun his foe before he found his feet and could put up more of a fight. He exp
ected to have to do more, but the man’s body jerked and then he froze, his mouth open in a cry of pain that never came out.

  After a second, Sergei realized he was the only thing holding the man up. He let the black-clad intruder tumble to the deck next to the captain. Mandrake was on his knees now, his torso bare, aside from a regenerating bandage stuck to his abdomen. He pulled a bloody knife out of the dead man’s back.

  “Thank you, Zharkov,” he said, his voice deadpan, as if this had been nothing more than some training exercise that hadn’t demanded much exertion. “I wasn’t expecting two.”

  “Two?” Sergei asked at the same time as a clatter sounded near the door.

  Ankari had dropped her pistol and was charging toward them. Sergei scooted back, lest he be mowed down. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around Mandrake. He lowered his dagger and returned the hug, his hand cupping the back of her head gently.

  Sergei looked away, not wanting to interrupt their moment. He took a few paces back toward the door and, remembering Mandrake’s comment, looked farther. A second black-clad figure lay crumpled on the deck beside the bed with the blanket on it. His lack of movement—and the pool of blood beneath him—suggested he wasn’t going to be a problem again.

  “They wouldn’t let me in to see you,” Ankari said into Mandrake’s shoulder.

  “I know. That was my order. I apologize.”

  She leaned back. “Your order?”

  Sergei rubbed the back of his neck, still trying to puzzle out the situation. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. He hadn’t done much to help Mandrake, but he hoped the fact that he had come in late and unarmed would show that he hadn’t had anything to do with this attempt.

  “Yes,” Mandrake said. “Thomlin had already run an interior scan of the whole ship and not found any extra personnel—” he waved to the sensor suit on the closest man, “—so I was trying to think of a way to lure the would-be assassin in. I told the doctor to start a rumor that I was more injured than I was. I didn’t know who had programmed the robot, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t an inside job. I wanted your… concern—or was it annoyance at not being let in?—to be authentic to anyone who might be watching.”