Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Well, is it enough?” Tia asked.

  “Scan it, but I don’t think so. It looks like a fancy version of a mining cart. I would be shocked if it was capable of breaking orbit, much less faster-than-light travel.”

  Tia tapped at a few buttons.

  “Still, it may be worth dragging out of here,” Kalish said. “Especially if we can’t find something better. The few scraps of alien technology that people have uncovered over the years have always sold for a lot, and some have proven invaluable to scientists and engineers. We’ve made more than a few breakthroughs, thanks to the snippets we’ve glimpsed from their era.”

  “Lieutenant Calendula,” Thatcher said, “bring your shuttle to a stop while we more thoroughly assess the area.” His shuttle had already halted, disappearing to the side of the Divining Rod. “Ms. Blackwell, I suggest you stop as well.”

  “What kind of assessing are we doing?” Val asked at the same time as Tia looked to Kalish and said, “Are we stopping? I want to check it out. That place looks brilliant.”

  “There are millions of aurums worth of ore sitting there,” Thatcher said, “and this area is on the miners’ map, is it not, Thomlin?”

  Shit, that was a good point. Sedge gripped the back of Tia’s seat. “Stop the ship.”

  “But—”

  A distant metallic rasping sounded, something reminiscent of a knife being sharpened. It was loud enough that they heard it through the ship’s hull. Hundreds of spinning metal circles sliced across the cavern, gleaming as they zipped through the lights from the shuttles. An alarming crunch came from the cargo area of the ship, and Sedge jumped.

  “What the blast was that?” the mother demanded, her pistol in her hand.

  “Those are weapons,” Thatcher said, his voice calm. “Retreat now and raise shields.”

  Tia hunkered over the helm, her hands flying as she reversed the thrusters.

  Kalish’s mother ran down the corridor, and Sedge followed her, worried about that crunch. They pounded into the empty cargo area. If it had held more than a few crates tied to the walls, they might not have seen the foot-wide serrated disk that had lodged in the deck. Cursing, Ms. Blackwell aimed at the ceiling with a flashlight. Since it was dark outside, they couldn’t see any light shining through, but she spotted the entry point. A foot-wide missing slice stood out against the dark gray paint of the hull.

  “Unbelievable,” she muttered, then yelled, “This boat isn’t space worthy until I get this fixed.”

  Sedge jogged back to the front to warn the others. The spinning disks were still zipping past the view screen, some horizontally, some diagonally, and some vertically.

  “Those cut right through the hull, sir,” Sedge said, assuming they were still tied in with Thatcher and the others.

  “I saw,” Thatcher said. “They’re an unfamiliar alloy, traveling almost as fast as lasers, and spinning at hundreds of thousands of revolutions per minute.”

  “Will our shields protect us?” Val asked.

  “I’m running some calculations, but I suggest we not risk it. They’re different from the energy weapons that the shields excel at absorbing and deflecting.”

  “Should have had that thought earlier,” Kalish grumbled, thumping her fist on the control panel. “Of course the miners would have looted this place as soon as they found it if it wasn’t protected. Mom, are you going to be able to repair that? The gas readings outside aren’t dangerous, so a hole doesn’t matter right now, but it would be nice to leave this planet someday.”

  “I’ll fix it,” came the terse response. “Just stop next time when the mercenaries stop.”

  “Sorry,” Tia said meekly.

  “At least you have a new ancient alien artifact,” Sedge said.

  He smiled tentatively at her. Kalish gave him an annoyed who-said-you-could-talk look. He sighed. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut.

  “Can we go around?” Val asked.

  “Go around?” Striker asked. “With millions of aurums out there?”

  “It’s not as if we could carry it all out anyway,” Val said.

  “I bet I could fit a huge pile in my pockets.”

  “Probably true,” Tick said. “You don’t have much else down there taking up space.”

  “What? I got plenty down here.”

  Sedge tried to ignore them, especially when Striker started bragging about the size of his stalagmite, though he was vaguely impressed that Striker knew what a stalagmite was. Instead, he focused on the view screen. If Kalish had any interest in that mining ship, he would like to find a way to get it for her. It might not be the find they sought, but who knew if they would chance across anything better?

  He watched the disks zipping past the view screen, trying to spot gaps in their routes. Had he seen thousands of disks shooting across the cavern, or was he seeing the same hundred or two that were being reused in some cycle designed to keep anyone from approaching the platform? If the deadly ammo were spitting from the walls by the thousands, a ridiculous amount of storage space would be needed, and there should be disks sticking out of the rock all over the place.

  “Val,” Sedge said, guessing she might be the most likely to follow his suggestion. “Can you try to find the walls with your lights? See if you can figure out where those things are landing? If they’re landing.”

  “Uh, I can try. You’re fixing my hull if it gets breached, right?”

  “You’ve got Tick on your shuttle, don’t you?” Sedge asked. “He ought to be able to patch you up with all of that chewed gum of his.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Commander Thatcher,” Sedge started, intending to ask him to try to find the source of some of those disks.

  But Thatcher spoke first. “I believe I’ve traced the route of several of the weapons. They originally shot out of the ceiling, but now they’re on a course designed to provide a continuous fence around the platform. They’re either using amazingly compact and powerful batteries, or they’re employing some kind of perpetual motion technology. I would love to analyze one of those disks up close.”

  “Would you? I think we can arrange that,” Sedge said dryly. “From what I saw, it just looked like a metal disk. Kind of like a circular saw blade.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Kalish was looking at the view screen, and she drummed her fingers on the console. “They’re not actually flying that closely together. The cavern is huge, and they’re spaced out to cover all of the entrance routes to the platform, it seems. I wonder if there’s a pattern that we could figure out. The aliens were supposed to be fond of patterns, usually mathematically based. I’ve encountered a few of their booby traps before. Last time I was fortunate enough to have an astrophysicist with me. He discovered that the trap had been programmed based on... oh, what was it? The Fibonacci sequence. He was quite delighted to find proof that the aliens employed some of the same mathematics that have been a part of humanity’s understanding of the universe for so long.”

  “Too bad we didn’t bring an astrophysicist,” Tia said.

  “Really.” Thatcher sniffed.

  Sedge smiled at the offended tone. “Thatcher is our ship’s genius. I’ll wager he can solve any math problem that might be involved.”

  “A mercenary genius?” Tia asked skeptically.

  “I’ll send you my cryptography analyzer program, sir,” Sedge said. “There are hundreds of pattern sniffers on there. It would be an easy enough matter to feed some video of the disks into it and get an analysis.”

  “I will let you work with the program, Thomlin,” Thatcher said, his tone still a touch offended. Or perhaps the word was haughty. “I will attempt to solve this problem by hand.”

  “Oh?” Sedge took out his tablet. “Shall we see who can find the pattern first?”

  “Watch out, Sniffles,” Striker said. “Thatcher just took out a pad of paper and a pencil. You’re in trouble.”

  “Challenge accepted,” Thatcher said.

  Sedge
murmured a few commands into his tablet, brought up the display for the program as well as the keyboard so he could type. If the pattern was not too complex, Thatcher would have the advantage, since it would take a while for Sedge to enter the data and modify the sniffer. But if he wasn’t trying to break a code, the process to simply identify the pattern shouldn’t be too taxing.

  He caught Kalish watching his hands blur over the holo-keys and hoped she wasn’t thinking that those were the fingers that had hacked into her communications files.

  “It’s nothing to do with Fibonacci,” Thatcher said after a few minutes. “Unless... let me try the prime-free sequence.”

  Kalish leaned over Tia’s shoulder and murmured something. A moment later, Tia fired a laser. The beam lanced through the dark cavern, not hitting anything until it blasted into the far wall. She tried a couple more times, attempting to strike one of the disks, Sedge assumed.

  “Gregor already tried shooting a couple,” Val said. “He actually hit them, but they have some shielding or inborn protection. The laser didn’t even knock it off its path.”

  Kalish jogged off the bridge and returned a moment later with a toolbox. She pulled open a panel under the controls and crawled into a tight space between the two seats. She grabbed a canister and a couple of tools from the box. Though Sedge wanted to beat Thatcher to figuring out the pattern, he couldn’t help but glance over, curious as to what she was doing.

  A moment later, she knelt back. “Try now, Tia.”

  “It’s hard to hit them. Every time they zip through, they’re on a different line.”

  “I know. Here, watch the sensors instead of simply waiting for them to come into visual sight.”

  The lasers fired a few more times. Then Tia emitted an excited, “Hah, got it.” Her face fell soon after. “It just zipped away.”

  “That’s what I expected,” Kalish said. “But I put enough phosphorescence into the laser banks that it should be tagged. Can you see that on the sensors? We should be able to track its route now.”

  “Excellent,” Thatcher said. “I see it. Yes, that helps. Shoot a couple more.”

  “You’re not cheating, are you, sir?” Sedge asked.

  “Merely using the provided evidence to verify a hypothesis.”

  “You already have a hypothesis?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Bastard,” Sedge grumbled and returned his focus to the display, though there wasn’t much he could do except wait for the program to run. He had always done well at math in school, but solving problems like this in his head was too much to ask from his brain cells. Not that he would admit it to anyone. Especially Kalish. Not that she probably cared a whit about his brain cells now.

  His tablet beeped, and the display flashed a “pattern found” at him and invited him to enter the message to be decoded. Not quite what he needed, but they might be able to figure a safe route in with this information.

  “Got something,” Sedge announced, trying not to sound too triumphant as he sent the file to Thatcher.

  “Yes, that’s what I came up with too,” Thatcher said. “Good work, Thomlin.”

  Sedge propped a fist on his hip. “Striker, you’re the witness over there. Did he really find it before I did?”

  “Yeah, sorry, Sniffles. He tossed the pencil aside a few minutes ago, and he’s programming a route into navigation now.”

  “Transmitting the route,” Thatcher said. “We can go in with the shuttles, if you wish to stay back, Ms. Blackwell. Your vessel is approximately 7.75 times larger than our shuttles, so there will be less margin for error from your pilot.”

  Kalish’s eyes narrowed to slits, and Sedge winced, guessing what she was thinking. That her mercenary allies wanted to loot that platform of valuable ore and perhaps relics as well, while leaving her behind. Sedge knew Thatcher’s only interest in those valuables would be to peek at the alien technology, perhaps poking around in that derelict mining ship, but he was the last person Kalish would believe right now.

  “Unless you’re certain we’ll be perforated with those disks,” Kalish said, her eyes still slits, “we’ll come with you. Should we find anything worth salvaging, the Divining Rod has a much larger cargo area than your shuttles.”

  “A valid point, Ms. Blackwell,” Thatcher said. “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll send you a program to upload to your autopilot. Given the precision required to survive this route, it would be better to allow the computer to navigate. Lieutenant Calendula, I will transmit an autopilot program for you as well.”

  Val made a noise somewhere between a snort and a throat clearing. “Is this because of the bat, Gregor?”

  “This is not a condemnation of your piloting skills, Val,” Thatcher said, an atypical gentleness in his usually arrogant voice. Sedge couldn’t remember a time when he had used her first name, even if Val called him Gregor all the time. “I only wish to ensure that you will make it through unscathed,” Thatcher added.

  “Something we appreciate over here,” Tick drawled. “I’m not so married to the idea of looting riches that I’m looking to get sawn in half by some ancient alien throwing stars.”

  “And will you be relying on the autopilot?” Val asked, though she did not sound annoyed, not truly.

  Sedge would be happy to let a computer guide him through a minefield, but he knew pilots sometimes had issues with their egos.

  Indeed, Thatcher hesitated before answering. “Would that please you?”

  “Yes,” Val said. “I know it’s nearly impossible for you to imagine, but a bat could bounce off your view screen and startle you, too.”

  “I don’t think any bats would be stupid enough to be flying through this,” Tick said.

  “I will use the autopilot,” Thatcher said. “Sending the program now.”

  Sedge closed his tablet, pocketed it, and tried not to feel superfluous. He told himself it did not matter who ultimately solved the problem, so long as it was solved.

  “Got it,” Tia said a minute later.

  “Will it interface with our navigation computer?” Kalish asked.

  “Uhm.” Tia tapped a few buttons. “Looks like it will. He must have known which operating system the Divining Rod runs and adapted it in advance.”

  “Thank you, Commander Thatcher,” Kalish said. “You’re just as good as my astrophysicist was.”

  “Yes,” was all Thatcher said.

  Kalish snorted and whispered, “Just as arrogant too,” to her sister.

  Sedge stuck his hands in his pockets, wishing he had won that praise. He hoped something would come of the message he had sent to the company, fearing that it would take a joyous family reunion, one that he had arranged, for Kalish ever to talk to him again.

  “I will lead the way,” Thatcher said. “Your computers will inform you when the next cycle of safety has begun. Let them do the piloting.”

  “Yes, sweetie, we understand,” Val said.

  “Sweetie?” Striker snickered.

  “What do you call people you care about?” Val asked.

  “Uh.”

  “Striker hasn’t found anyone to care about yet,” Tick said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then he hasn’t found anyone to care about him yet.”

  “That... might be more true.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” Val muttered.

  While they were talking, Thatcher’s shuttle led the way, darting quickly out into the field of disk missiles, then stopping abruptly after thirty meters. The craft paused for several seconds, the nose rotating fifteen degrees, then it lurched forward again. Even though he trusted Thatcher’s brain for this, Sedge could not help but feel nervous as he watched. He felt even more nervous about crossing through the field himself. They might have survived having the ship pierced by one disk, but one could slice into the bridge and knock out something vital. Like someone’s skull.

  “Following,” Val said, her voice tense. Yeah, she was worried too.

  Sedg
e hoped they found something on that platform that would make this effort worth it.

  “Our turn,” Tia said a minute later. She wiped her hands on her trousers, then activated the autopilot.

  Sedge was glad the computer would be guiding them through that maze, especially as he watched the shuttles pass through the disk field, sometimes hovering in a spot as whirring blades streaked past less than two feet away. Even with that reassurance, he chewed on his knuckle when their ship burst forward. He had to catch himself on the back of Kalish’s seat when it lurched to a stop. She looked up at him, but did not meet his gaze for long.

  Clanks came from the cargo hold, Ms. Blackwell working on that hole. She was wise to remain back there, unaware of the nerve-wracking course they took through the disk field.

  “That one almost grazed us,” Tia muttered, alternately watching the view screen and the sensors. “You should get a sleeker treasure-hunting ship from whatever you earn here, Kalish.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Remember to pay your crew a nice bonus too.”

  A disk missed cutting the nose of the ship in half by a mere inch, and everyone jumped as it zipped past the view screen. Tia lost her smile and gulped.

  By the time the ship escaped the field, sweat dampened Sedge’s brow and dribbled down the sides of his ribs. “That was nerve-wracking,” he murmured, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his face.

  “No kidding.” Kalish stood up. “But now we get to land and explore.”

  * * *

  The disks stopped zipping all around the cavern soon after the ships landed. Most of the platform was covered in mountains of ore, but four raised docks waited at one end. The shuttles fit perfectly. The Divining Rod looked like a saucer balanced on a pencil top, but enough of the craft fit that it was stable. Kalish had tested the air while Tia navigated the landing and while the environment was not pristine, she had let everyone know that it wouldn’t be dangerous in the short term. Now she was walking down the ramp to the platform, her pack of treasure-hunting tools slung over her shoulder and excitement thrumming through her veins.