Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Not now, Striker,” Tick said. “We’re almost there.”

  Thatcher veered, heading for a particular section of the wall. There weren’t any gates or other entrances along this stretch, but Kalish had not expected to stroll in through a door anyway. She had brought booster frames for her boots, and the mercenaries all had something similar. Everyone had donned them before heading across the field.

  Thatcher touched Kalish’s shoulder, pointed upward, then did the same to Tick and Sedge. Time to get serious.

  Kalish would have gone first—it was her mission after all—but she admitted a modicum of relief when the men activated their boots and drifted upward ahead of her. The jet boosters issued a faint hiss, but it shouldn’t be audible over the constant whistle of the wind gusting across the open field. Somewhere inside, an open door banged against a wall. She hoped that was a sign that most of the people were sleeping or busy down in the mines, and nobody was around to hear noises.

  When she reached the top of the twenty-foot wall, Kalish caught the lip at the same time as she turned off the boots. She came down on a wide parapet, almost landing on an unconscious man. She clamped her mouth shut before a startled gasp could escape.

  One of the men touched her shoulder, waving her down into the shadows of the low wall beside the walkway.

  “Ran right into that one,” Tick whispered. “He almost got to be a hero for his people. But I knocked him down and gave him a shot.” He waved a medical injector, the kind with multiple charges held in the handle, its silhouette visible against the lights in the courtyard. In addition to lamps glowing at the corners of intersections and on buildings, automated mining carts full of ore rolled along tracks, headlights gleaming at the front of each little train. “He’ll be out for an hour. That long enough? The captain said not to kill people down here if we didn’t have to, but we can hoist him over the side and let him accidentally break something vital if we have to.”

  Something vital? Like what? A neck? Kalish shook her head, then realized he wouldn’t see the gesture in the dark. “An hour should be fine. We need to go that way.”

  “Yup, saw the map,” Tick said. “Follow me down.”

  Sedge waved for her to go down first. He hadn’t said a word to her since they had left the shuttle. Maybe he had realized he had said far too many words to her inside. Although she supposed that under other circumstances she wouldn’t have minded listening to him talk. He seemed pleasant enough, and she ought to try to gain a good standing with these men. Their job was to keep her alive, but if she irked them, they might decide the money wasn’t worth it and leave her to deal with her problems on her own. Maybe she shouldn’t have glowered at Sedge so much during their word game. She had never been a good loser, and it would grate even more to lose to some... smudgy mercenary. Even if he was an educated smudgy mercenary.

  Tick walked openly past a train of mine carts—they must not have a security purpose or the means to notice intruders—then waved for them to follow him into the shadows between a smelter and another brick building, this one without chimneys. He wore a sensor over one eye and was receiving readings that she and Sedge were not.

  They had no sooner flattened their backs to a cool corrugated metal wall than a door slammed open. Two men stalked out in the middle of a conversation.

  “Round up some workers. Get the lights on around the warehouses.”

  “I was on shift in the control room earlier. Didn’t hear anything about any ships coming into orbit.”

  Kalish didn’t breathe as the pair of men strode past the mouth of their alley.

  “Not openly,” the first speaker said. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s used the nebula to sneak up on us from the other side of the planet. Go, hurry up. I have to check on that missing detector.”

  “Dumb of the company to put a mine next to a nebula.”

  His buddy grunted. “Right, they should have picked a more conveniently located barren rock. Don’t matter whether there’s ore or not.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  The rumble of another train of carts drowned out the rest of the conversation. The men had moved out of sight, so Kalish wouldn’t have heard much more anyway. Any thoughts she’d had of slipping in and out without being noticed had been thoroughly dashed at this point. She hoped they could still get to the maps.

  Tick led them back out onto the street, though he hugged the shadows alongside the buildings, something that grew harder a moment later when floodlights came on. Most of the illumination originated on the other side of the compound—as Sedge had suggested, the miners seemed intent on guarding their vaults of metals over anything else—but their brightness stole shadows from all over the place. Kalish imagined the brilliant bank of lights being visible from space.

  They rounded a corner, and she paused to gape at a massive hole in the ground that took up the back third of the complex. Wooden platforms extended out over it in places, each holding several compact mining ships, most with huge cylindrical drill heads on the noses. The rails those carts had been following originated on one side of the hole, and even as she watched, another train rolled into view, laden with freshly blasted ore.

  “That’s a powerful big hole, isn’t it?” Tick whispered. “Bet the whole Albatross could fly down there.”

  “I told you the caverns were extensive,” Sedge whispered.

  “I didn’t doubt you. Is that the only way in?”

  “There are supposed to be some natural cave entrances here and there around the planet,” Kalish whispered. She almost added that she had been searching for ones large enough to fly their shuttles in before remembering that she wasn’t planning to tell them about Stage Two yet.

  A dog barked on the other side of the hole. Tick waved for them to continue, and they jogged onward, doing their best to find shadows. More men appeared, walking out of buildings, and a tram came out of the hole and delivered more workers to one of those platforms. Workers being called off shift to address the security breach? Kalish grimaced.

  A shuttle flew by overhead, searchlights waving back and forth. She was beginning to doubt her chances of finding those maps and escaping. Her mother’s concerned words floated into her mind, about what fate a female intruder might suffer here. Of course, the miners might simply shove all the intruders down that hole, male or female, and let gravity solve their security problem.

  Tick stopped at the corner of a building, the back end of the hole to their right. Worried about the paucity of shadows, Kalish halted right behind him. The scent of his gum—something that smelled of berries made in a lab rather than under the sun—wafted to her nose. She imagined some hound tracking them by the odor.

  “We’re getting close, aren’t we?” Tick whispered.

  “Yes,” Sedge said before Kalish could. “Second story of that third building.”

  “The one with the guard standing at the bottom of the stairs?” Tick asked.

  “I was hoping that was an off-duty miner out for a smoke.”

  “I don’t know. He’s caressing his pistol a lot for someone off-duty.”

  “Striker caresses his pistols day and night, on-duty or not,” Sedge said.

  “Yes, but he has that insecurity issue. Let’s try to sneak around to the back.” Tick looked both ways down the road, then trotted across.

  Kalish hurried to follow, wincing when someone called, “Who’s that?” from the shadow of a doorway.

  Tick waved cheerfully to the man, then ducked into an alley. Kalish hustled after him. She was too nervous to muster the cheekiness to communicate with the locals. Cheeky or not, Tick was hustling too. She had to sprint to keep up with him. She grimaced at the sound of her boots striking the pavement. Tick was wearing similar boots, but he didn’t make a sound. Maybe he was a stealth expert, or whatever Val had claimed. Sedge wasn’t quite as quiet, but they made it through the alley without anyone bellowing down from windows.

  The next street was dark and empty, backing th
e perimeter wall. Good, maybe they could escape that way once they scanned the files. Tick led them to the building they had observed, stopping at the bottom. There weren’t any stairs on this end, not so much as a fire escape, nor was there a door.

  “We can use our boots,” Sedge whispered. “Go up and through the window. It should be that one.”

  A shout came from the alley they had just exited.

  “You two go up,” Tick said, backing away. “I’ll keep anyone from bothering you.”

  “I thought that was Striker’s job,” Kalish whispered.

  “I’m sure he’ll do something too.” Tick waved to them, then ran back toward the alley.

  “We better hurry.” Sedge tapped his remote to activate the propulsion system on his boots again.

  By the time Kalish floated up to the second story with him, he already had an electronic device resting against the window pane. It beeped a few times while he bobbed, the boots keeping him aloft. A thunk came from inside. He removed the device and tugged open the window. He slipped inside first, but Kalish was right on his heels. She climbed into the dark room, deactivated her boots, and pulled out her tablet, thumbing on the flashlight application.

  A utilitarian office surrounded her, a few framed nebula pictures on the walls and an inactive floor-cleaning robot nestled in the corner next to a potted plant. Kalish hoped Sedge wouldn’t have a sneezing fit. He had already found the computer terminal, a bigger version of the tablets most people had, this one likely providing the local network for all the equipment on the base.

  Kalish left dealing with it to him. Doubting a virus could do anything to cover their tracks at this point, she headed for the file cabinets along a side wall. It seemed that no matter how much technology came along, people insisted on keeping permanent papers on the important things. She tugged at an oversized cabinet, thinking the maps might be larger than standard. Unfortunately, it didn’t open. She shone her light onto a fingerprint sensor. Great.

  An explosion sounded outside. The floor shuddered, and the windows rattled. Kalish gripped the file cabinet for support, but it wobbled toward her. Visions of being crushed beneath the heavy furniture flooded her mind. She shoved it back harder than she needed to, and it thudded heavily against the wall. She hoped everyone else in the building was too busy worrying about that explosion to listen for intruders.

  “Was that your people?” she asked, tugging at the handle again, vainly hoping that the lock might have been jostled open. It still didn’t budge.

  “Given the location, likely so.” The glow of the holodisplay was reflected in Sedge’s focused eyes.

  Kalish felt bad about distracting him, but she had one more question. “Any chance that gadget of yours opens filing cabinets as well as windows? Otherwise, I’m about to have to get violent with the furniture.” She tapped the hilt of her pistol.

  Sedge frowned in her direction, maybe wondering why a would-be thief hadn’t brought tools for thwarting locks. Because it was her first heist...

  He tossed her the device. “Front side handles electronic locks. Try the back for anything old or magnetic.” His gaze shifted back to the glowing display, but he added, “Furniture mutilation would be a sure sign that we were here.”

  Kalish fumbled with the slender black rectangular device, having never seen one before. She turned it to the back side, thumbed on a button, and pressed it against the handle near the latch, where the fingerprint sensor waited for something more appealing than her own digits. The device attached itself and hummed softly.

  “I’m not sure it’ll be possible to hide that we were here,” Kalish said. “Explosions being hurled around the streets suggest intruders. Or disgruntled employees.”

  “We may still be able to hide what was taken.” Sedge met her eyes across the office. “That’s important, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Kalish said without hesitation. As botched as this heist already was, it would make her mission easier if they could keep the miners from knowing why she had been here.

  Sedge’s fingers danced in the air, interfacing with the display. His own tablet lay open next to the computer. Transmitting the virus?

  A soft clunk came from the filing cabinet. Kalish tugged on the latch. This time, it opened. Excitement thrummed in her breast when she pulled out the drawer, revealing long rolled scrolls bound together by rubber bands. There were at least two dozen wedged in the cabinet, and she scooped them all out. Her hands shook as she pushed off the first rubber band. If this was it, maybe there would still be time to scan the information she needed and escape.

  “Put down your weapons and halt,” came a robot voice from outside the building, the amplification carrying it through the walls.

  Kalish’s first thought was that the order was for her, but how could anyone on the ground see in here? No, the instructions had to be for Tick. That wasn’t comforting, knowing he had been spotted, but she went back to work, hoping she had a few more minutes. She pushed open the scroll and found a faded pencil drawing, two of them. A side elevation and an overhead representation of swirling tunnels. Cavern 1373-A. This was it.

  “Primitive as hell,” she muttered. Didn’t they have robots and computers capable of handling the mapping? Even as she wondered this, she switched to the scanner program on her tablet, shining the light at the same time, afraid the faded pencil work wouldn’t be captured.

  As soon as it beeped, she moved to the next map, then the next. Some were done in pen and some in pencil, and the hands changed over the years—each was dated and signed down in the corner, as if someone had intended to sell these as artwork one day. They might actually fetch a decent price in an auction catering to treasure hunters. Not that the company that owned this mining outfit and the claim for this part of the planet wanted anyone snooping around in its caverns.

  As she scanned map after map, she didn’t see anything that might signify alien ruins. What if the miners had never truly encountered them? What if nothing but rumors had brought her all the way out here? No, her retired snitch had claimed to have seen them for himself and she had known enough about the aliens to question him, to make sure what he had described sounded like an authentic ruin site.

  Another boom sounded, this time from the other side of the building. As with the other explosion, it wasn’t more than a half a block away, and the floor and window shuddered again. The cabinet drawer slid out farther, only a hitch inside keeping it from dropping out on Kalish’s head. She imagined the foreman charging up here and finding her unconscious amongst his pile of maps. Yeah, the miners might do more than drop her in the hole if that happened.

  This time return fire answered the explosion, the buzz of laser cannons. Kalish gulped, praying she wasn’t condemning Tick or any of the other men to death on her behalf. Even Striker didn’t deserve that.

  “Thomlin?” a tinny voice asked.

  Sedge slapped his comm-patch. “Here.”

  “You about done in there? Because we’ve got all sorts of problems out here. Did you know these mining ships had cannons?”

  Thomlin looked over at Kalish, and she shook her head. Would he believe her? At least some of the mercenaries had to be wondering if she had been holding back information. She hadn’t, but she was starting to feel guilty about the inaccuracy of her research. Maybe she had been misdirected. Maybe the miners deliberately wanted people to believe this operation was less sophisticated than it was, for exactly this scenario. So intruders would easily be captured.

  “I’m done.” Though her instincts told her to race for the window and get out of the complex, she forced herself to grab the maps, roll them back up, and push the rubber bands around them again.

  “So am I.” The room dimmed as Sedge shut down the computer display and pocketed his tablet. He joined her, helping roll and fasten the documents. “Were these maps what you needed?”

  “They’re maps of the cavern, yes.” She jumped to her feet, stuffing scrolls back into the drawer. “Whether they were wh
at I need remains to be determined.” She would have to take a long, slow look at each of the maps later, when she got out of here and had time. If she got out of here and had time.

  “You’re looking for alien ruins?” Sedge asked.

  Kalish looked sharply at him. She hadn’t told him that. He had to have guessed. She didn’t deny his question, but she didn’t answer it either.

  “Here.” She closed the drawer and handed him the lock-picking device. “Thanks. That was helpful.”

  Laser fire whined outside, and a beam as thick as Kalish’s arm streaked past their window.

  “Uh. Are we still planning on going out that way?” She stayed back, but she could see the movement of lights down in the street. A search team? More lasers fired somewhere out front.

  “Thomlin,” came the voice from the comm—Tick’s? Or was that Thatcher? “Get onto the roof of that building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sedge opened the inside door and peeked out. “It’s dark,” he whispered. “Come on.”

  Kalish feared they would simply be trapped if they climbed out on the roof—hadn’t they seen search ships flying over the complex on the way in?—but she ran after him. What other choice did she have? That back window wasn’t an option anymore.

  They ran through a hall, the walls made of the same stylish corrugated metal as the outside. This facility might have high-tech security, but nobody would accuse the architecture of having the same quality. They climbed to the third story, then found a ladder leading to a trapdoor in the roof.

  A door slammed open somewhere below them.

  “I think the smoker woke up,” Kalish said.

  More doors slammed open, and something thudded against a floor. Footsteps echoed up to them, many footsteps.

  “I think a lot of people woke up,” Sedge said, and sighed. He climbed the ladder but paused before pushing open the trapdoor. “You ready for us, Commander?”

  “The sooner the better,” Thatcher said.

  Sedge drew his pistol, slid the trapdoor open, and poked his head out a few inches. The whine of laser fire made Kalish want to run the other way and find a nice closet to hide in.