Mandrake Company- The Complete Series

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “We’re planning to get the hell out of here and not worry about them,” Kalish said, her head bent over his wrist as she untied the rope.

  The other end was attached to a compact winch that she had mounted to the ramp of her ship. Some treasure-hunting gizmo from her pack? He immediately approved of it.

  Thatcher and Striker appeared out of the smoke, running backward and firing as they went.

  “Everyone on board,” Thatcher ordered. “Now.”

  “No arguing, sir,” Tick said, leaping to his feet. He offered Sedge a hand.

  “Kalish, are you coming?” Tia called from the ramp.

  “Take off without me.” Kalish released the rope, letting it spool in by itself, then waved and grabbed Sedge about the waist.

  His shoulder had been hit, not his legs, but Sedge could not bring himself to reject the support from both sides. They ran for the ramp of the shuttle, reaching it at the same time as Thatcher and Striker. They jerked their heads, shooing his group up first.

  Happy to comply, Sedge lunged up the ramp with Kalish and Tick. His legs, perhaps not so reliable as he had believed, collapsed as soon as Tick let him go, turning to fire a few more shots at the black figure striding out of the smoke.

  “I blew up one,” came Val’s voice over someone’s comm, “but there are still two walking.”

  “Leave them,” Thatcher said, running up the ramp.

  Striker fired one more grenade, then started up after him. The robot launched another blast of energy, but Val unloaded a torpedo into it at the same time. The blast flew astray, crackling through the air over the shuttle, as the robot was torn from its feet and hurled twenty meters before the torpedo exploded.

  Striker hit the close button, and the ramp came up, the hatch sealing. That was the last of the robots Sedge saw. It was enough. He stumbled to the hull beside the hatch and slumped down against it. He struck the back of his shoulder harder than he had intended, and fresh waves of agony ripped through his body. It was too much for his nerves. His vision went black, and he passed out.

  * * *

  Kalish dropped to her knees beside Sedge, placing a hand on his uninjured shoulder to keep him from falling over. His head had fallen forward, so she assumed he had lost consciousness. He was sitting against the hull, his legs stuck out in front of him, his shoulder still smoking from the robot’s bolt.

  “Can someone get me a first-aid kit?” she called.

  Thatcher had raced for the pilot’s seat while Striker stood by the closed hatch, a grenade in hand, as if he was still thinking about throwing it. Surely the shuttle’s weapons would be more powerful and effective.

  Tick waved a first-aid kit and jogged back toward Kalish and Sedge.

  “I may need assistance at the weapons,” Thatcher announced. “I must concentrate on programming a route back through the booby trap.”

  Striker jammed his grenade back into his bandolier and ran toward the front, bumping shoulders with Tick.

  The shuttle rose from its perch, spinning to face the platform. From her knees, Kalish could not see much of what was going on through the view screen, but she glimpsed the tops of the refinery buildings and a burst of blue energy splashing against the front of the craft. The robots had not given up yet.

  Sedge groaned, his eyes fluttering open. Tick dropped down on his other side, pulling out an injector.

  “That was the one he’s not allergic to, right?” Kalish asked.

  “Yup. Cut his shirt off, will you?” Tick handed her a laser scalpel. “A shame it got wrinkled out there. He won’t like that.”

  He chomped his gum as he withdrew a couple of repair kits, as if Sedge hadn’t almost lost his life, as if this was just another day on the job. For a mercenary, maybe it was, but Kalish’s heart was still slamming against her rib cage. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her hands as she ignited the scalpel and held the fabric away from Sedge’s torso so she could slice through it without nicking him. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him further. When he had fallen off the edge of the platform, sheer terror had poured into her, along with the certainty that she had lost something before realizing how much she had come to appreciate it, before realizing...

  “Want me to do that?” Tick asked.

  “No.”

  Kalish bent her head and focused on cutting off the garment. There was not as much blood as she had feared there might be, but only because the energy the robots shot worked much like lasers, cauterizing as it burned. The blast had gone all the way through the back of his shoulder, coming out on the other side, charring the flesh and incinerating muscle and bone. He was lucky the bolt had not gone through his heart. Even so, the repair devices would have a lot of work to do.

  She pushed the remains of his shirt aside and grasped Sedge’s hand on his uninjured side.

  “You want to be knocked out, buddy?” Tick waved the injector.

  Pain lines creased Sedge’s eyes, but he was looking at Kalish instead of his comrade. “She’s holding my hand, Tick,” he whispered.

  “Is that a no?” Tick asked dryly.

  Still gazing at Kalish, looking into her eyes, Sedge smiled. “Not yet.”

  She frowned, not wanting him to be in pain for no reason. “You should give it to him, Tick. I’ll hold his hand again later.”

  But Tick had set the injector aside and was fastening one of the pliable kits to the front of Sedge’s shoulder. It molded to his flesh, lights blinking on the side as it hummed quietly, sealing the wound, or perhaps sending nanobots in to repair the destroyed cells. Tick leaned him forward to affix a second device to the entry wound on the back side.

  The ministrations could not have felt good, and sweat gleamed on Sedge’s forehead, but he appeared to be in more of a state of bliss than of pain. Because of her? Kalish would not have guessed that her presence could have that impact on anyone, and she struggled not to grow teary-eyed under his gaze. She wanted to tell him how she had felt when he had tumbled over the ledge, but having Tick right there made her tongue shy.

  “Thank you for your help,” Sedge whispered to Kalish.

  “You’re welcome, buddy.” Tick slapped him on the thigh, winked at Kalish, and handed her the injector. “Stab him with that whenever you get tired of his blathering.” He stood up, leaving the first-aid kit on the deck and glancing toward the cockpit, where Striker and Thatcher stared intently out the view screen. Soft thrums went through the shuttle as weapons fired. “I’m going to check on Striker, make sure he doesn’t shoot the wrong thing.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kalish replied once Tick had ambled up the aisle.

  “I wasn’t sure,” Sedge said, his steady gaze faltering. He looked down at her hand, still clasping his. “After what I did, I thought maybe you would leave me there.”

  Kalish felt her eyebrows fly up. Had he honestly thought she was that angry with him? It was true she had felt betrayed by his poking into her files—and the revelations about his history had disturbed her as well—but she would never leave someone to die, certainly not him. Whatever questionable things he might have done in the past, he had been nothing but kind to her. More than kind. He had been useful, and that meant as much to her as kindness, if not more. They would not have made it this far without his help.

  “I’m sorry,” Sedge whispered. “It was unfair of me to consider that. Logically, I know you couldn’t be that cruel, but strange and terrified thoughts run through a man’s head when he’s on the verge of dying.”

  His expression grew bleak, and she wanted nothing more than to comfort him. But putting an arm around his shoulders would only hurt him, so she kept herself to stroking his hand. Tick had joined Striker and Thatcher, and he was probably not paying attention to their conversation, but Kalish still found it difficult to speak openly of her feelings in a shuttle that had grown quiet as the men concentrated. They must have escaped the robots, but they still had to escape the booby trap.

  “Letting you fall would have been incon
siderate of me,” she said, meeting his gaze and willing him to understand that she meant more than the light words implied. “You saved my life twice. It was my turn.”

  “Yes, thank you. Kalish? I’m sorry that I snooped—that I pried. I just wanted to help.”

  Help? How? “What were you looking for in my files?”

  Sedge hesitated. Afraid she would not approve? Or that she would grow angry with him again?

  “You can tell me,” Kalish added, trying to make her voice gentle. She had lashed out at him before and could understand why he might be wary of speaking his mind, but she wanted to know what he had meant.

  “I wanted to know who held your father. I thought maybe if I knew that, I could come up with a way to help, just in case this didn’t turn out the way you hoped. Or even if it did, I thought you should be able to keep the ship for your own gain instead of handing it over to some blackmailing, kidnapping pirate. I... I’m sure you won’t be pleased about this, but I sent the information to Captain Mandrake.” He avoided her eyes, grimacing a few times as the repair kit hummed, but that did not keep him from speaking rapidly, as if he had longed to confess this all along. “I couldn’t imagine what he could do while stuck in orbit here, since that biological agent would have needed to be delivered repeatedly or it would simply dissipate in the large caverns, but he’s been around the system for a long time, and I thought he might know the pirate or know someone who could deal with the pirate... something.”

  “So you know all about Dad, and the ship too,” Kalish said, struggling to process his words—and not to grow upset with him. That he had cared enough to help meant much, but she was not comfortable with the idea that the mercenary captain now knew so much about her. Still, if Sedge had thought Mandrake could help, was it possible he could? That even if they failed down here, some other solution might present itself? She might hope for that, but what if Mandrake Company took some action that resulted in her father being killed when he might not have been otherwise? She swallowed and closed her eyes.

  “I assumed you knew this already, that your mother had figured out which files I had been looking at,” Sedge said softly.

  “No, Mother stormed in because she had been looking up you.” Kalish opened her eyes, finding his again, longing to finally get the full truth about him. “And the fact that you were kicked out of the Fleet after killing—the article said murdering—your commanding officer.”

  He winced. “Oh.”

  “What happened?”

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. Had he not expected an invitation to explain? As if Kalish hadn’t wanted to know the truth since Mom had first thrust the information at her...

  “Captain Huntington was... the type of person to take advantage of his rank,” Sedge said. “He was a good tactical officer, so nobody above him paid too much attention to what others would consider crimes. Some were aware of them, since officers tended to report him after they had safely moved on to another ship and were in another chain of command, but they were usually crimes against civilians instead of against his fellow officers and soldiers. I had heard stories, and because of my, ah, snooping tendencies as you might call them—”

  He gave her a wary glance, but Kalish barely noticed, intent on listening to his tale.

  “I had seen some of the kinds of files he kept on his personal tablet,” Sedge continued. “He had quite a collection of child pornography, which is... more illegal in some places than in others, but frowned upon in the Fleet. What you have on your personal computer won’t get you kicked out, but he was said to, ah, do more than watch vids. It wasn’t until we were down on Dandarisk IX that I saw him do anything untoward myself. We were protecting GalCon’s agricultural interests from rebels who had arisen there, blowing up silos in an attempt to spite the government. Anyway, there wasn’t an official garrison there, so it was just our ship. It was a Python Saucer, so it could land on the farm fine. We had our quarters on board, and there was no reason to spend nights in the local community, but some of the men went out and found themselves women, and he went out and found himself... younger people.”

  Sedge looked away from her, his eyes locked on distant memories. “I was the officer on watch one night when a mother with a black eye came to report him to me. The sergeant of the watch said to ignore it, to not put it on the record or say a word about it. Maybe I could have pretended it wasn’t happening if that woman hadn’t come to the ship, but... I couldn’t. I was furious after her story, and when I picked up my pistol and stalked after her, I remember thinking that taking the weapon was a bad idea and that nothing good for my career would come of the night.”

  Sedge closed his eyes and let his head thunk back against the hull. He grimaced, his face tight with pain, perhaps from the memories as much as from his injury. Kalish wanted to tell him to take the sedative, that she could wait for the rest, but she could not bring herself to interrupt him. She wanted to hear all of the tale, and he seemed intent on finishing it.

  “I was right, but I did it anyway. When I walked in, I lost it. I didn’t even give him a chance to explain. What kind of explanation could there be for that? There wasn’t one. I shot him. My hand was shaking though. Fury, anger, all of that. So it wasn’t a killing blow. He roared and came at me. He was a deadly man, and if his trousers hadn’t been around his ankles, I might have been the one never to come back to the ship. But he tripped. We went down in a wrestling match. He pulled a dagger on me...” Sedge touched his abdomen, outlining an old scar on his bare abdomen. “That’s where he got me. But I had never let go of my pistol. I jammed it in his face, even as he was trying to kill me with his knife, and I fired. Right between the eyes. The result was... gruesome. I still have nightmares about that night.”

  He pulled his gaze back to Kalish, looking into her eyes, concern on his face, as if he still wondered if he had done the right thing. Or was he wondering if she believed him? She remembered Tick’s words, that in most cases a man would be killed for shooting his commanding officer and that there had to have been extenuating circumstances. Kalish nodded. This made sense. She believed him. More than that, she found a lump in her throat as she contemplated all the training and the promising career he had given up to take action where so many others had been too cowardly to dare.

  She could not find her voice, but she nodded solemnly at him.

  “Almost through,” Thatcher said quietly up front, reminding Kalish of the larger situation going on.

  She would need to check on her mother and sister, make sure their ship was being guided through the traps again too. But she was reluctant to leave Sedge’s side, to leave him alone with such grisly thoughts.

  “Have you told the whole story to anyone in your company?” Kalish wondered.

  “The captain knows. He does thorough research before hiring anyone, and I think he still knows people fairly high up in the Fleet, so he can get personnel files if he needs to. I explained things to him anyway though, because... well, obviously, I didn’t want him to think I made a habit of shooting my commanding officers. I also wanted to get his reaction, to make sure... I didn’t want to be put in that situation again.”

  “Have you pried into his personal files?” Kalish smiled, her amusement piqued despite the graveness of the tale.

  “As the ship’s intelligence officer and a part of the security department, I have full access to all of the personnel files.”

  “That was a yes, wasn’t it?”

  Sedge’s cheeks grew pink. As if she did not know by now that he was a snoop. Why be embarrassed?

  “Yes,” he admitted, “but he didn’t put much in there. Most of the original crew files are like that. I may have dug elsewhere too, though.”

  “I thought so,” she said, still smiling. “Tick did say that it was odd that you weren’t shot over the incident with your commanding officer. Is that because it was known what kind of things he was up to? It’s shameful to think that the military that’s tasked with protecting GalCon citize
ns would allow such crimes.”

  “I heard my name back there,” Tick called back over his shoulder. “You better be saying nice things.”

  “We were talking about the insect, not the tracker,” Sedge called back over the seats, but frowned at his shoulder, his movement sending a flash of pain across his face.

  He must be enduring much pain simply because he wanted to be here with her, to have this time together, instead of letting himself give in to unconsciousness. Kalish reached across his legs to pick up the injector full of sedative.

  “Ah, carry on then,” Tick said.

  “Works every time,” Sedge said. “As to the rest, an organization is only as good as the people in it. Yes, I believe a lot of the higher ups knew about the captain, but sometimes those from the right families or who know the right people have more power than they should for their rank. It takes some dumb lieutenant too naive to know better than to try and make things right. When I joined Mandrake Company, part of it was because there weren’t many people who would hire a dishonorably discharged officer, not to do the work I enjoy and that I was trained to do. But also, part of it was because I knew there were people who would think twice about taking on the whole mercenary company to get to me. I’ve tried to keep minimal contact with my family as well for the last couple of years, hoping that the brash choice I made won’t harm them in any way.” He looked down at his lap. “It’s been a lonely couple of years,” he added quietly.

  “I’m sorry,” Kalish said.

  “You shouldn’t be. I’m the snoop, remember?”

  “A snoop that needs some rest.” She squeezed his hand and held up the injector. “Ready for a nap?”

  He hesitated, frowning at his shoulder, and she thought he might object. But he shyly asked, “Will you hold my hand again when I wake up?”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I might even do more than that.”