“Annoyance,” Sergei said, finally starting to catch on.
“You wanted them to come here and attack you?” Ankari frowned at him. “And you couldn’t tell me?”
Huh. Sergei had never seen Mandrake look sheepish before.
“Will you forgive me?” He lifted a hand to Ankari’s face, brushing her hair behind her ear.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, squinting at him. “You may have to paint another shuttle pink and give it to my team to make it up to me.”
Mandrake laughed, though it was short-lived. He grabbed his abdomen and grimaced. That bandage wasn’t all for show.
A squad of men ran into the room, battle armor on, laser rifles in hand. They fanned out, pointing around rather uselessly.
“You’re late,” Mandrake observed dryly.
One of the helmets came off, revealing Sergeant Striker’s spiky brown hair. His shoulders slumped. “We missed out completely?”
“Uh.” One of the men pointed at Sergei. Noticing that he wasn’t in his cabin where he was supposed to be?
“He wasn’t late,” Mandrake said.
Striker winced. Some of the others probably did, too, though the helmets hid their expressions.
Not certain he was entirely in the clear, Sergei resisted the urge to gloat or look smug.
A gray-haired doctor—Sergei didn’t know his name—poked his head in. His nose crinkled—smoke was still wafting from the destroyed lock panel. “What happened to my sickbay?” He thrust a finger toward the hole in the wall—it was almost as impressive on this side of the bulkhead as it had been in the corridor.
“Accident,” Mandrake grunted.
Sergei imagined him playing dead—or at least heavily sedated—as those two men blew a hole in his wall. He must have really wanted to ensure they got close enough so he could catch them and ensure they wouldn’t escape.
“It doesn’t bother you that your doctor is more concerned about his wall than his patient?” Ankari, an arm still wrapped around Mandrake, touched the edge of his bandage.
“Please,” the doctor grunted. “He’s tougher than the wall.”
Mandrake’s eyes glinted, probably pleased at this judgment.
Someone’s comm-patch bleeped. Mandrake sighed and reached over to a jacket hanging on the back of the doctor’s chair. He tapped the shoulder. “Mandrake.”
“This is Thomlin, Captain.”
“Thomlin, wasn’t there a message put out that I wasn’t to be disturbed?”
“Until you dealt with the assassin, yes, sir. I’ve been scanning the ship and have the sickbay camera up. I’m assuming the two dead bodies on the deck next to you mean the issue has been resolved.”
“Word gets out fast,” Sergei murmured.
“Got that right,” Striker said. “Think this means we can go back to bed? I was hoping to thump something.” He looked to his men, then considered Sergei.
“Try it,” Sergei said.
Striker didn’t.
“Two men are dead,” Mandrake said. “There may be others. I’d like to know when these got on and where they came from.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thomlin? What were you doing scanning the ship? Didn’t you already check for extra personnel yesterday?”
“Ah, yes, sir. But one of my men reported that your Jamie Flipkens stole a chip from the disassembled robot and ran off. I was looking for her.”
“Stole?” Sergei mouthed, looking at Ankari. She shrugged back at him.
“Her comm-patch isn’t working?” Mandrake asked.
“It’s working fine, but it’s also lying on the floor on Deck B.”
“I see. And how did she run off in such a way that your man couldn’t follow her and detain her?”
Thomlin cleared his throat. “Delgado said that she… threw Masseter.”
“Threw?” Mandrake asked mildly.
“Yes, sir. A judo throw. He landed on a table, made a mess, and she got away. We’ll find her though. Nothing to worry about, sir.”
Sergei probably shouldn’t have been smiling, especially if Jamie was in trouble and had gone into hiding, but his chest swelled with pride at this admission of men being hurled around.
“Flipkens threw someone?” Striker asked.
“That’s the little blonde girl, right?” one of the other men asked.
“The sexy-as-hell blonde girl,” another said, making Sergei want to stomp over, knock his helmet off, and shove it somewhere tight and painful. Maybe he would point the man out to Jamie later, so she could throw him onto a table. He smiled darkly.
“I need to find her,” Ankari said, lowering her arm and stepping away from Mandrake.
“I’ll let you handle that,” he said. “I need to figure out who these thugs were and if they were alone.”
“I have some ideas as to where she might be.” Ankari headed for the door.
Mandrake walked toward it with her and looked like he might change his mind and join her for the Jamie hunt, until the doctor pointed at his bandages and made a throat-clearing noise.
“Zharkov.” Mandrake pointed after Ankari. “Until we’re sure there aren’t any more bounty hunters.”
“Yes, sir.” Sergei had planned to go with Ankari, but he was pleased to officially be given the task.
Mandrake dropped a hand on Sergei’s shoulder on the way past and nodded at him before letting go.
Sergei nodded back, though inside he was even more pleased. They might not have dealt with the source of the bounty hunters yet, but the immediate threat was past, and Mandrake seemed to be saying he trusted Sergei. The rest of the crew might be another story, but Mandrake was all that mattered.
* * *
Jamie was yawning by the time the door to the grow room opened, and lights, which had faded to a nocturnal setting when she had stopped moving around, came up. Two displays floated in the air above her tablet, and she was ready to share her research, so long as someone was willing to listen. The business listed as the purchaser of the chip happened to be a business whose offices had shown up as one of the potential origins for the security camera Sergei had shot down. Another business owned that business, and it had taken some poking around before Jamie had found the link she had anticipated: their finance lady, Cyrille Laframboise, owned everything.
Still sitting behind the trees, Jamie debated on whether she should announce her presence. She didn’t want another battle with Scar.
Although… she hadn’t heard the thud of boots on the deck that usually announced the mercenaries. Aside from Sergei, not many of these big men were light of foot. Was it possible someone had opened the door, looked in, not seen what he was looking for—her—and left? Given how much of the room was hidden by the trees and plants, that seemed unlikely. Someone would have to at least walk the perimeter to see all of the nooks.
Jamie shifted uneasily. The lights weren’t falling back into nighttime mode. Maybe someone was walking the perimeter. Quietly.
She jabbed the air twice, and her tablet display turned off. She folded the device, stuck it in her pocket, and rose to a crouch, trying not to make a sound. Her current spot against the wall would be easy to find for someone walking around the room. The chip lay on the textured gray deck in front of her, and she grimaced at the idea of putting it in her pocket again, since she hadn’t taken the time to figure out how to deactivate the defensive zap yet. Even in her pocket, it had numbed the entire side of her thigh on her jog to the grow room.
The lighting dimmed infinitesimally for a minute, and she glanced toward her right. The overhead illumination hadn’t changed, but some of the tropical plants had individual lamps mounted over them. Someone might have walked in front of one. Someone who had yet to make a noise.
Jamie grabbed a tuft of moss from a nearby pot, used it for insulation to snatch up the chip, and dropped both into her pocket. She eased around the banana trees, wishing their trunks had a bunch of bushy foliage to hide her, and plotted a course for the d
oor. She didn’t know who was sneaking around in here, but it was time to find Ankari and share her findings.
She stepped over a cluster of pipes that supplied water to the various growing systems and darted for another grove of dwarf trees, not wanting to be caught out in the open. She kept glancing over her shoulder. Unfortunately, she missed seeing a dried leaf lying on the deck in front of her. Her heel came down on it with a crunch that sounded like a bomb going off in the silent room. Leaves rattled on a shrub somewhere behind her. Grimacing, Jamie squeezed in between a vertical vegetable patch and a refrigerator unit that provided annual chill hours to fruit trees. She paused with the cool metal at her back, listening hard. Her own breaths were audible, as well as the hum of the refrigeration unit, but she didn’t hear anything else. Was it possible this was all her imagination? She had taken off her patch, so nobody should be able to track her. Unless…
Her hand strayed to her pocket. Someone could be tracking the chip, such as the someone who had put it in that robot to start with. Jamie hated to give it up, but if someone wanted it, maybe the person would choose it over her, and she could escape unnoticed.
She dug it out of her pocket, wincing when another buzz of electricity ran up her arm, and dropped it under the leaves of a kale plant. Then she eased away from the refrigerator, looking all around. Vines, flowers, and green leaves filled her vision, but nothing was moving.
The door came into sight, but several clumps of planters and vertical systems blocked it. She crept in a semicircle to go around them. She had covered less than half the distance when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her shoulders hunched, and she couldn’t help but feel that someone was pointing a weapon at her. She tried to tell herself it was her imagination. But the feeling persisted, growing even stronger.
The door wasn’t that far. She broke into a run, darting past giant pots. When she rounded a big rack system containing plant starts, her hip clipped the corner. She scarcely felt the jab of pain, but the rattle of the racks made her wince. Fortunately, she had reached the wall beside the door, so she simply sprinted for the exit.
Something slammed into her. Jamie found herself spun around, her back shoved against the wall and a body pressed against hers, before she could react. A man’s face filled her vision, a sneer on his lips, a week’s worth of stubble on his jaw. She didn’t recognize him, but his dark eyes gleamed as they took her in.
“Going somewhere?” he whispered, leaning hard against her, using his larger mass to trap her. The hilt of a weapon—a dagger?—dug into her stomach, and he pressed something else hard into the side of her ribs. It felt like the muzzle of a pistol.
“Yes, the door if you don’t mind.” Jamie tried to calm herself, to think coherently, but fear scattered her thoughts. How did she get out of this? Sergei had shown her numerous ways to escape someone trying to snatch her arm and even to throw someone who grabbed her from behind, but what happened when she was already smashed against a wall and could barely move? He was too close for her to jerk her knee up and into his groin, not to mention that weapon pressed into her side suggested there would be unpleasant repercussions if she tried.
“Oh, I mind,” he said. “I came for the chip—can’t be leaving any evidence, now can we? Thank you for supplying it.” He lifted a black-gloved hand, showing the tiny gray square before he tucked it into a pocket. “I hadn’t realized there would be another prize here waiting for me.” His eyes flickered downward before coming back up to her lips. He smiled and shifted his weight, pushing himself harder against her, rubbing himself against her.
Horror joined the fear that was racing through her mind. Jamie tried to free her arms so she could push him away—punch him in the face. But he had her fully pinned with his body, which was as hard and muscled as that of any of the mercenaries. She pushed against the wall, hoping to use it for leverage, to find a way to thrust him away.
Her attempts to squirm free only excited him. “A fighter, are you?” he purred. “Good.”
He mashed his lips against hers so fiercely that he knocked her head against the wall. She reacted out of instinct, forgetting the pistol jammed against her ribs. She chomped down, catching his bottom lip and grinding back and forth as hard as she could. The metallic taste of blood spread over her tongue. It had to hurt him, and she hoped he would back away, give her an opening to escape, but he only pulled his head back enough to free his lip. Blood ran down his chin, but he grinned broadly, his eyes burning with lust. And pleasure.
“We can play like that.” He stuffed his pistol into his holster, and before she could think how she might use that to her advantage, he grabbed her breast through her shirt, twisting and digging in painfully.
She gasped, again trying to buck him away. His face lunged in like a viper, and he bit her lip as hard as she had bitten his, then sucked at it and rocked into her. Pain flooded into her, along with the terrifying realization that she might not be able to escape this, might not be able to avoid her fate. He tore her shirt with a rip, yanking half of it away and baring her breast. No, she couldn’t give up, damn it. She could still feel that knife, pressing into her even as he jammed his penis against her, panting with each thrust. He was rocking harder now, not enough to put any air between them, but maybe she could time it, get her hand over there…
His own hand came down to her waistband, his fingers curling into it. There was just enough space that she could move her arm out from under his chest. Her fingers brushed the hilt of his knife. But his hand came over hers in an instant, clamping down on her.
“No, no, girl,” he groaned. “Like your spirit, but I’ll be the only one using daggers here.”
Damn it, she needed something more sensitive than his mouth to attack. When he came back in for another kiss, she threw her head forward, hoping to smash his nose. But the wall kept her from pulling back far enough to gain momentum, and her forehead barely struck him hard enough for him to notice. He laughed again and bit her on the neck. The hand that had been restraining hers shifted to her waistband again. He started to yank it down, but the door slid open.
A surge of hope filled her body. She hoped he would be too engaged in his perversion and wouldn’t hear it, that someone would charge in and shoot him, but he stopped immediately, his head jerking in the direction of the exit.
Jamie tried again for the dagger and this time managed to get her fingers around the hilt. She yanked it free, but he knocked it out of her hand before she could jab it into him. His fist came out of nowhere, smashing into the side of her face. He had stepped back, and with nothing holding her upright, the blow was powerful enough to knock her from her feet.
She tumbled down, too dazed to worry about landing the way she had been taught. Crumpling on her side against the wall, she was barely aware of him running away. That dagger she had tried so hard to get lay on the deck in front of her. She wrapped her hand around the hilt, determined to be ready if he came back.
Then a new figure appeared in her peripheral vision.
“Jamie?” Sergei whispered, his voice thick with worry.
She pointed the dagger in the direction the man had run, but couldn’t find the words to articulate anything. She didn’t need to. Sergei must have seen enough. He leaped the rack of plant starts and disappeared into the foliage.
Hands shaking, Jamie pushed herself into a sitting position. Footsteps pounded the deck, heading toward her. She tensed, her hand tightening on the dagger, but it was only Ankari.
“Are you all right?” she whispered, crouching and offering a hand.
“Yeah,” Jamie croaked, then grimaced because she could feel blood dripping from her lip. She wiped her face and noticed her shirt, torn all the way down to the hem. “Animal,” she muttered.
“No kidding. He must be another bounty hunter. But why did he come after you? Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. We’ll get you to sickbay.”
“Wait.” Jamie pointed in the direction Sergei had gone. Even if she had pulled out h
is knife, that man had a laser pistol.
A crash came from the far side of the room, followed by a great shaking of leaves and snapping of branches.
“This way.” Ankari took her hand and tried to lead her to the door.
“He wanted the chip from the robot,” Jamie whispered, not letting herself be pulled away. If Sergei needed help, maybe she could do something, if only throw the knife at that thug.
“We’ll get more men down here to finish him off,” Ankari said.
More leaves rustled to Jamie’s right, and she jumped. Sergei stepped out from behind a few trees, his eyes gleaming with exhilaration. Blood spattered his gray shirt, but there weren’t any rips or gaps, so it couldn’t be his.
“Not necessary,” he said, smiling.
Then his gaze latched onto Jamie, and his pleasure at winning the fight disappeared from his face.
“Oh, Jamie,” he whispered and strode toward her, almost running. “I’m sorry we weren’t faster, sooner, something.” He wrapped her in a fierce hug that startled her. “I wanted to protect you.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I—I love you.” As soon as the sentence escaped, he leaned back and clasped a hand across his mouth, wincing.
The words stunned Jamie. Or maybe it was the hug. Her body was still on high alert, and she stumbled back, the memories of the thug attacking her flashing to the forefront of her mind. Sergei let her go, but it was all she could do not to push him away.
She was panting, the fear still there, refusing to relinquish its hold even as she groped to parse his words. She couldn’t, not right now. “I… I need…”
“The sickbay,” Ankari said firmly and frowned at Sergei. His shoulders slumped, and he hung his head.
This time when Ankari took her hand and led her to the door, Jamie followed, too scared to look back, not wanting… not wanting anything but to be left alone.
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 66
