“Gregor,” Val said. “Our employer is bleeding over here, something that you should also consider inappropriate. I’m sure she would like me to attend to her wounds without a man around to ogle her.”
“It’s all right,” Kalish said. “He seems more interested in ogling the rock formations.”
“Tell me about it,” Val muttered, pulling out a couple of wound-cleaning patches. “Put him in a room full of naked women and hang one model spaceship from the ceiling, and he won’t even notice the women.”
Thatcher tore his gaze from the map. “What?”
“Never mind. Why don’t you prepare a nice bed in the shuttle, so we can get some sleep soon?”
“Very well.” Thatcher inclined his head, then ducked past the tent flap and disappeared.
“You call your commanding officers by first name?” Kalish asked, though she had a hunch that they might be more than commander and subordinate.
“Just that one. When he’s not being overly obtuse. And sometimes when he is.” Val winked and tapped her side with an injector, delivering a painkiller.
Kalish studied the hologram while Val cleaned and sealed her wounds. She did her best to focus on the map instead of the three parallel gashes that creature had left in her side. Lamenting future scars probably wasn’t seemly when she could have lost her life tonight. She should thank Sedge for helping her—that backhand acknowledgment hadn’t been particularly gracious.
The map hovered in the air, allowing her to skim through the different passages and levels, but it did not show any secret doors leading into the system. If all of the entrances had been blocked off, how was she going to get down there to search? The obvious solution would be to fly through the hole in the mining compound, but then there would be no point to her ruse. Unless the Mandrake Company shuttles could turn invisible, their passage would be spotted, and pursuers would follow them into the complex. They would be shot at every step of the way, and she wouldn’t have the time she suspected they would need to explore. Of course, if the mapping program didn’t return any positive results, none of it would matter anyway. The caves were too large to fly in and explore at random. Even with a couple of ships, it would take months to explore the entire area, if not years.
“Is Sedge good at puzzles?” Kalish asked. Or maybe she should ask about Commander Thatcher. He definitely seemed like the cerebral type. But Sedge was the one beating her at Crucible, so his name came to mind. Of course, either one of them would report whatever they found to their captain. Asking for help was a risk, but so was staying in this tent and twiddling her thumbs until the miners found them. Or another pack of predators.
“Sedge?” Val’s brows rose. “Lieutenant Thomlin?”
“Yes. He told me to call him Sedge.”
“Really? He’s never told me to do that, and we’re the same rank now.”
Kalish wasn’t sure what to make of the comment, or those still-raised brows and the curiosity in the eyes underneath them. “I think he was afraid I would default to Sniffles instead.”
Val snorted. “That’s a possibility.” She put the medical tools back in the kit. “Yes, I should think he would enjoy a puzzle. Gregor would too. They’re both in love with mathematics and logic, and I know Thomlin has done some studies on the ancient aliens. He helped Ankari and Lauren find a couple of digs for their project. I remember this because I was the one who got to fly them down to the planet. In their pink shuttlecraft. Because Jamie was off on some vacation with our assassin, Sergei. That has got to be the oddest couple, but they seem happy enough together, I suppose.”
Kalish had no idea who the people were that she was talking about, but her mind stuck on the ancient aliens comment. “Why would that matter?” she asked. “That he be familiar with the aliens?”
“Oh, Gregor and I assumed you were looking for some ruins. What else would be down there except for ore? And if ore was what you wanted, there are plenty of asteroids out there with claims waiting to be staked. But some ruins, that would be a rarer find.” Val appeared slightly wistful.
Maybe she would enjoy going along on this adventure. Then she cracked a yawn. Kalish fought the impulse to mirror it. Thanks to jumping all over the planet, they had all experienced a longer than usual night.
“True enough,” Kalish said. “Then yes, I would like to speak to Sedge again, please. Thank you for your help.”
“Welcome.” Val yawned again, then ambled out.
4
Assuming it would take Val a few minutes to find Sedge and send him in her direction, Kalish dug into her pack for the only spare shirt she had brought from the ship. She hoped she could keep this one blood free. Had there been a garbage can, she would have tossed the torn shirt into it. At least the jacket had Gar-zymes in it; they should be able to mend the gashes by morning. She dug out a sani-sponge, squeezed it to moisten it, then washed away the blood on her side and hands. What a mess. Fortunately, the mercenaries’ first-aid kits were well-stocked.
When a draft swept inside, Kalish was still washing herself and had not yet put on the new shirt. She reached for it at the same time as Sedge walked in.
He halted, his eyes wide as they took in her topless state, then he blurted, “Ms. Blackwell,” and spun around to face the tent flap. “Pardon me. I’ll wait outside.”
“Kalish,” she corrected, amused that he was flustered, but appreciating his manners as well. “Unless you’re certain you’re going to ultimately lose to me in our game.” She tugged the shirt over her head, glad she could do so without a stab of pain from her side now. It would ache in the morning, but she should be fit for ruin hunting.
“No,” Sedge said. “I mean, I don’t know. Er, it seems like we’ve been too busy to finish it.” He kept his eyes locked to the front of the tent, toward the ceiling actually, as if he worried she would start running naked circles around him, and he risked getting another eyeful.
She hoped he was simply being polite and that he hadn’t been horrified by the experience of seeing her topless. She doubted that was the case, as she didn’t usually have trouble finding interested male parties, but she did sometimes feel self-conscious about the extra padding around her waist.
“Yes, and I have more work to keep you busy,” Kalish said. “You can turn around now.”
He rotated slowly, but even with a long-sleeved shirt covering her torso, he paid assiduous attention to the map and didn’t meet her eyes. Well, the map was what she wanted him to focus on anyway.
“Val said you were good at puzzles.”
Sedge lifted his chin, seemingly pleased by this statement. “I enjoy puzzles very much. I—”
The tent flap was pushed aside and Striker ambled in. He set a small control device on the table. “Tick and I incinerated the corpses and put up a perimeter. An alarm will go off in the shuttle and in here—” he waved to the device, “—if any more animals amble in with dinner thoughts in their heads.”
“Good,” Kalish said. “Thank you.”
He gave her a lazy salute, letting his eyes drift downward to her chest for a moment. The man had all the tact of those grenades he liked to hurl. “We’re hitting our racks, if you don’t need anything else. Only a few hours until local sunrise.”
“That’s fine,” Kalish said, her mind lingering on the memory of Striker’s grenade going off and those boulders flying into the air. Hm, just because there were no natural entrances to the caverns remaining didn’t mean the mercenaries couldn’t make one.
“Night, Lieutenant Sniffles.” Striker grinned and backed out of the tent.
Sedge did not answer him, but Kalish didn’t miss the tightening of his jaw. If Striker hadn’t already left, she would have shooed him away. For some reason, she felt the urge to defend Sedge from his bullies, even though he was certainly old enough to defend himself. Probably old enough to decide that it was better to ignore the men who taunted him. But Kalish knew well that jests that might be ignored outwardly could still stick in one’s memory
for a long time. She still recalled the taunts of her drill instructor at Fleet boot camp, the one who had assumed that by teasing her about her food choices that she would slim down enough to make the weight requirements. As if she hadn’t already been trying to do that.
“As I was saying,” Sedge went on, “Commander Thatcher gave us a briefing of what he found—or didn’t. Do you need help identifying a new place where it might be possible to enter the caverns?”
“Actually, I think I’ve got that taken care of. If I can study the elevations for a few minutes, I might find a place where the caverns are near the surface.”
“You intend to make a new entrance?” Sedge guessed.
“I assume your combat shuttles can deliver some powerful explosives.”
Sedge tilted his head toward her. “A correct assumption. You are fortunate Lieutenant Frog wasn’t flying one of them tonight, or it’s likely that some new craters would have been formed while he was shooting at the predators. Thatcher’s aim is more precise.”
“So long as he won’t be insulted if I assign him to aiming at rocks instead of enemies.”
“He’s not easily insulted. Perhaps because he rarely realizes he’s being insulted.” A wistful expression crossed Sedge’s face, as if he wished for some of that obliviousness himself, but he turned back to the map. “What’s the puzzle you need me for?”
“As everyone seems to have guessed, I’m looking for alien ruins that are purported to be inside.”
Sedge nodded. “Ruins you believe the miners have noticed but passed by because there wasn’t anything obvious of value?”
“Ruins the automated mining ships passed by because the specific things they are programmed to look for, the various ores in the mountains, weren’t apparent. A man I talked to, a retired miner, happened to be monitoring the videos before an... incident occurred.”
“An incident?”
“He said the automated ship had drilled into a new area, glimpsed some ruins on a raised cliff on one side of the cavern walls, but was destroyed shortly thereafter. The craft disappeared into a chasm and the wreck was never recovered. Based on what the miner saw on the video, it was decided not to attempt to salvage the destroyed ship.”
Sedge tilted his head, his eyes warm with curiosity, but he didn’t prompt her for more. She debated whether to share what else she knew. If the mission sounded too dangerous, would the mercenaries say forget it and pack up and leave? They didn’t seem the types to shy away from danger—she pictured Striker flinging insults and grenades again—but what that miner had seen had been enough to convince him to retire early and get the hell off the planet before any trouble came.
“First off,” Kalish said, “there are some predators down there. Those pencil sketch maps didn’t hint of it, but from what I’ve heard and read, there’s a fairly vibrant ecosystem down here, with all niches being filled. There are plants adapted to take energy from the heat that comes up out of the core of the planet and the animals of course subsisted on them. And each other. The miners have caught some giant creatures on video. This isn’t a secret. The images are out there on the network. Some of them are bigger than the mining ships and there are records of humans being caught and killed quickly and violently. There’s a reason why much of the deep mining is done with automation now.”
Sedge was listening intently. He looked more intrigued than alarmed.
“The creatures aren’t what happened to that ship though. Again, this is just what I was told, so all I’m doing is relaying that miner’s story, but he said there were some booby traps still in place. The ship stumbled across one of them, and that’s what destroyed it. There was a burst of light, a crash, and that’s all that was captured on the video before the feed disappeared. That and the existence of some ruins, which he suggested weren’t all that ruined. They’ve been preserved well in the caverns.”
“Ten-thousand-year-old booby traps?” Sedge leaned against the desk and stared thoughtfully at the dusty floor. “It’s impressive that they would still work. To get a glimpse of the technology... That would be intriguing. Perhaps even useful. I know the archaeologists are always curious about where the aliens originally came from, why they left this system, and where they went from here, but our scientists and engineers would love to study more of the technology they left behind. From the way they terraformed the planets, we’ve always believed they were far more advanced than our original settlers, and many believe they were more advanced than we are even today after fifteen hundred years of technological improvements and innovation.”
“Yes,” Kalish murmured. She found the topic exciting and could have talked about it with him all night, but he was drifting closer to the true purpose of her mission, of what she believed existed down there, based on the ore present in the caverns and the metal alloys that had been discovered nearly a century earlier when the one and only documented alien spaceship wreck had been found. The craft had been pulverized in the asteroid field and so little remained that scientists hadn’t gotten much more than those alloy identifications from it, but it had long been believed that the aliens had possessed something humans never had: faster-than-light-speed engine technology.
“I’m sorry,” Sedge said. “I was rambling. So the puzzle is to find these ruins, based on the information we have? Information we can’t assume is reliable?”
“Yes.”
He dug his tablet out of his pocket, unfolded it, and brought up a list application. “You said creature sightings had been uploaded to the network? I’ll see if I can download some and see if anything unexpected shows up in the backgrounds. The ore deposits themselves might be a clue. We know there are certain types of metals the aliens favored, so perhaps they would have built their facility close to large concentrations of tripytarium and titanium.” He had brought up a keyboard as he was speaking and began typing, his fingers moving faster than he could have dictated words to the tablet. He mumbled further, but barely seemed to be aware of the words he uttered—or of her.
Kalish sat on the cot, focusing on the simpler task of finding a spot where they could break through. They worked at their respective tasks for a half hour or more, but Kalish kept yawning, and her eyes felt tired and gritty. After she had identified three spots, she set her tablet aside, remembering Striker’s warning that daylight wasn’t that far away. She was about to lie back on the cot, leaving Sedge to work however late he wished, but a soft bleep came from his tablet, and he lowered it.
“I’ve got a program running,” he said, “one I’ve used before to detect patterns and try to find matches or correlations with limited data. We should have an answer one way or another by morning. Of course, it’s most likely that we’ll have multiple answers, or possibilities if you will. But even a dozen possible places to check would be better than flying around at random down there.”
Kalish tried to say that she agreed, but a yawn came out instead.
“Ah, my apologies. You need to go to bed. I’ll leave.”
Kalish almost told him that there was another cot that hadn’t been unfolded yet, and that he could stay in the tent, if he wished, but he must have comfortable lodgings with the rest of his team. And the shuttles were more easily climate controlled than her drafty tent.
“Good night,” she said, “and thank you for your help.”
He smiled at her, then walked out. The memory of his smile lingered. He was a handsome man, even if she thought it amusing that his shirt and trousers still appeared clean and pressed after he had been tussling in the dirt with animals.
“No, that was you, girl.” She snorted at herself. Sedge had remained upright.
She lay back on the cot and ordered the camp light out. She expected to fall asleep promptly, especially now that the mercenaries had installed that proximity detector, but only a few minutes passed before a tapping came at the tent flap, along with an apologetic clearing of a throat.
“Ms. Blackwell? Kalish?” Sedge asked.
“Yes?” She
hadn’t taken any clothes off, so there wasn’t any chance of him walking in on something interesting, but from the hesitant way he said her name, he must think there was.
“Would it be possible for me to sleep on the floor in your tent? My usual accommodations are... unavailable.”
Kalish sat up in the dark. By now, she didn’t suspect Sedge would engage in games to try and get into bed with her—or get into a tent with her—but it seemed like an odd statement from a man who had access to two shuttles.
“What do you mean?” she asked. Remembering how cold it was out there, she added, “You can come in.”
The tent flap stirred, and some of that cold air whispered in along with Sedge. She shivered and rubbed her arms. It must have dropped another twenty degrees since the animal attack.
“I usually bunk with Commander Thatcher on away missions,” Sedge explained, a strange note to his voice. He sounded... embarrassed? Was that the emotion? “We are similarly, uhm, have similar... well, we don’t irritate each other. But lately, well, he and Lieutenant Calendula, you see, are...”
“Bumping bellies?” Kalish suggested, waving for the light to come up to a low level.
Sedge stood a step inside the entrance, his pack slung over his shoulder. Had the men tossed it out before locking the shuttle? “I... yes. That’s one way to say it. Even though I question whether that is appropriate while on a mission, but it’s not my place to comment.”
Kalish rubbed her eyes and smiled. It was probably only inappropriate to those who didn’t have the option.
“Needless to say, they have locked the shuttle,” Sedge said. “Thatcher suggested I bunk with Tick and Striker. This would be tolerable if not ideal, but when I attempted to contact them, they told me they were asleep and kept their hatch locked as well.”
Mandrake Company- The Complete Series Page 85
