The Assassin's Salvation (Mandrake Company)

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  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 his 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.

  Chapter 12

  Sergei stared at the whorls in the real wood table, struggling to focus on Mandrake’s words. Sergeant Hazel, Commander Garland, and a tracker, Sergeant Tick, were also in the briefing room. They were talking about the assassins and some information Jamie had shared from sickbay—that the chip had been purchased by people working for that finance lady back on the planet. Sergei was supposed to be listening, supposed to be ready to share his plan when prompted, but he couldn’t stop dwelling on that horrible ten seconds with Jamie over and over again.

  What had he been thinking? She had just been mauled. He had seen that as soon as he ran in, and it had filled him with so much fury and loathing that he had barely been able to think, to remember his training, when he had stalked the bastard who had done it. It had felt so good to leap down on his prey from the pipes overhead, to smash him to the ground, and to cut his throat. When he had run back to find Jamie, he had been full of the satisfaction of the kill, that feeling of triumph, and he’d had a distinct image in his mind of Jamie throwing her arms around him and proclaiming him her hero. He had wanted… what Mandrake had. Ankari had thrown her arms around him without hesitation. But Ankari hadn’t just been beaten up and almost raped. Sergei should have realized right away that Jamie was too scared and hurt to think about heroes. But he hadn’t been able to stand back, to give her the room she needed, not when she had been slumped there, bleeding, her clothes torn, her eyes full of fear and confusion. All he had been able to think was to hug her, to make her feel better, to assure her the threat had passed. He hadn’t meant to blurt out his love for her. Of all the horrible timing… He shouldn’t have said that, and he certainly shouldn’t have hugged her, not then. She must have felt trapped all over again. She must hate him. She probably felt tricked by him. Love, God, he’d never even warned her that he had any kind of feelings for her. He wanted to crawl under the table and disappear.

  “Zharkov,” Mandrake said, his tone dry.

  Sergei lifted his head. Judging by all the f
aces turned toward him, that hadn’t been the first time Mandrake had said his name.

  “Yes, sir?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t been asked a question too.

  “Ankari said you have a plan for dealing with this Laframboise woman. People wiser than I have implied that flying the Albatross down there and blowing up the woman’s entire floating island wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “There are a thousand innocent people living there besides her, Captain,” Sergeant Hazel said dryly.

  “Yes, sir.” Sergei struggled to put Jamie out of his mind for the moment, though that was going to be hard since this had all been her plan—what if she had no interest in going down there with him now? How was he going to fake his way through an interview about maintaining robots? “There are job openings on Laframboise’s island, and there’s going to be a job fair this weekend. We, ah, Ms. Flipkens and I…” He paused, looking warily around the room, especially at the captain and Sergeant Hazel. He feared Ankari had already shared the details of the grow room incident with them. Sergei had taken a few minutes to wash off the blood and to change clothes before coming up here, and everyone had already been here. Neither Hazel nor the captain frowned at him or looked irritated, though, so maybe Ankari hadn’t shared all of the details. Yet. “I’m not sure if she’s still interested in helping, but we were both going to apply for the jobs of robot maintenance experts that are open. I was going to be tough and thuggish and scare away the other applicants.”

  Hazel snorted but didn’t comment on how easy that should be for him. The tracker was cheerfully chomping gum and watching, as if this were the most exciting show on the ship. At this late hour, maybe it was.

  “If we were the only people who applied for the job, and it was clear Ja—Ms. Flipkens had the knowledge, we figured we’d be hired and then taken to the island on one of Laframboise’s personal transports. Research tells us she shoots anyone unauthorized who tries to land on her island.”

  “She could try to shoot the Albatross,” Commander Garland growled. He must have shared Mandrake’s vision of going down there and attacking openly.

  “Once on the island and hopefully in Laframboise’s house itself,” Sergei went on, “I would leave Ms. Flipkens somewhere safe, then go in and… convince the woman to remove the bounty on Captain Mandrake’s head.”

  “Convince her, eh?” Sergeant Tick winked. “Like with a dagger slid between the ribs and into a critical organ?”

  “Bounties are removed from the guild bulletin board when it’s clear that the host party can no longer make the payment.”

  “On account of fatally perforated critical organs?” Tick asked.

  Sergei spread his hands. He might not say so outright—not with Sergeant Hazel sitting over there, doubtlessly prepared to comment on the ethics of assassins—but he wasn’t going to deny that he intended to kill the woman. Before, it had simply been a matter of helping Mandrake with a problem. After one of Laframboise’s thugs had mauled Jamie, Sergei would relish killing the woman.

  For once, Hazel wasn’t frowning at him. “I wouldn’t mind perforating that woman right now too,” she said.

  “Yeah. You taking any muscle along to help, Zharkov?” Tick slapped the back of his hand against Mandrake’s chest. “We can’t have anyone out there trying to kill our cap’n here. System wouldn’t be nearly so sunny and cheerful without him.”

  Mandrake eyed Tick’s hand and gave him a flat look. Tick smirked.

  “Unless you know something about robot repair, I don’t know how we could take more people,” Sergei said.

  “I fixed a robot once,” Tick said.

  Mandrake gave him another flat stare. “Using a piece of chewing gum to secure a loose battery unit isn’t fixing something.”

  “I don’t see how not.”

  Sergei wouldn’t care if more people came down in the shuttle and waited on the government island for backup, but he didn’t want anyone else trying to sneak in with him. He preferred to work alone; he couldn’t trust others to be as quiet and circumspect when infiltrating the enemy fortress. Or palace, as it was more likely to be. “It’ll be sketchy enough getting myself invited along based solely on my ability to hand Ms. Flipkens wrenches and parts convincingly.”

  “Any of our engineers would be qualified for the job,” Mandrake pointed out.

  “The opening is only for two people.”

  “One of which must be you. But one of my combat-trained engineers would be a better choice to go along with you on the mission than a twenty-year-old girl.”

  Sergei sank back in the chair. Oh. That was what Mandrake was angling for.

  Sergei’s first instinct was to reject the notion outright, to point out that this had all been Jamie’s plan. But she had come up with it when she and he were the only ones working on getting to the bottom of this bounty mess. Jamie might not even want to go back down to the planet now, and who could blame her? Besides that, Mandrake had a point. A more experienced man would be better if a fight broke out. Even if Sergei planned to leave Jamie somewhere safe, such as in the kitchen, tinkering with the dishwashing robots they would be there to handle, there was always the possibility that something would go wrong. What if Laframboise figured out who she was, and that Jamie had been present when her buddy—lover—Felgard had been killed?

  “She’s somewhat combat-trained now,” Hazel said, smiling. “According to Thomlin’s men.”

  Mandrake grunted. “She almost got speared by one of those bounty hunters less than an hour ago.”

  Sergei straightened, affronted by the suggestion that Jamie could have clobbered that thug if she had more training. “Those bounty hunters were giving you some trouble when I walked into sickbay, sir. One of them, anyway.”

  Mandrake’s eyebrows twitched.

  “Judging by the one I fought, they were very well trained,” Sergei said.

  “The one you took out in three seconds?” Hazel asked. Apparently, Ankari had given a thorough accounting of what had happened in the grow room, after all.

  “I’m well trained too,” Sergei said tightly.

  “I’m not belittling her,” Mandrake said. “I just don’t see why you want to take a young civilian when you can have a trained mercenary. Commander Borage could make you a robot from twigs, spit, and piss.”

  “Commander Borage, the sixty-year-old, gray-haired chief of engineering?” Sergei asked. “Who’s going to believe someone like that is applying for an entry-level job?”

  “Lieutenant Chang or Howler then.”

  “Look, can I talk to her about it first?” Sergei asked, then grimaced, realizing Jamie might not want to talk to him for quite some time. “Or ask Ankari to talk to her about it? If she doesn’t want to go, I’m fine with picking someone else, but quite frankly, if the person doing the hiring is male, all she’ll have to do is smile at him to get the job. Beauty aside, she’s clever and comes up with ideas quickly. I’ve been working with her this last week, too, so I know her better than I know any of your engineers. This was her plan. I’d hate to just shove her to the side now.” He was speaking quickly and saying a lot, wasn’t he? Trying too hard? He gripped the edge of the table with his hands, bracing himself in case someone accused him of letting his feelings get in the way. To think, just over a week ago, he had been wondering if Mandrake was letting Ankari have too much influence over him and the company.

  Hazel and Tick exchanged long looks, but didn’t say anything. Good.

  “Fine,” Mandrake said. “It’s your mission. We have to make our delivery to the planet tomorrow, so I’ll be busy down there. Talk to her. See if she’s in. If not, let me know who you want to go with you.” He waved toward the door, signaling the end of the meeting.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Mandrake showed his appreciation for Sergei’s gratitude in his usual way, by grunting and walking out.

  Tick and Garland followed him out the door. Surprisingly, Sergeant Hazel lingered. Probably to tell him not to ta
ke Jamie into a dangerous situation. He had released the table and gotten to his feet, so he didn’t have anything nearby to grab to brace himself.

  Hazel walked over and faced him, her chin up as she met his eyes squarely. “Look, Zharkov, I’m not good at this.”

  “Er, what?”

  She looked to the side, a hint of exasperation in her exhale, then met his eyes again. “Apologizing. It looks like neither of you had anything to do with the attacks, and the captain said… Well, I have a feeling I’ll never know the whole story, but he said he trusts you and has all along.”

  The tension seeped out of Sergei’s body. Mandrake had said that? That he trusted Sergei? That he’d never had any doubt?

  “I do think you should listen to him and choose someone else for your mission,” Hazel added. “You’re letting your feelings get in the way of logical thinking here.” Ah, there was the chastisement he had expected earlier. Somehow, it didn’t sting as much now. “Chang or Howler would be better choices here,” she said. “Either one of them can take care of himself. And if you truly care about Jamie, wouldn’t you rather have her up here, somewhere safe, while you’re running around killing people? She’s already dealt with enough, and she doesn’t need to see that.”

  Sergei lowered his gaze to the table, staring at those whorls in the worn wood boards again. He hated to admit it, but mumbled, “You’re probably right.” And maybe by the time he went down, completed the mission, and came back, Jamie would have forgotten his utter fumble in the grow room. Or she would have at least recovered from the trauma of the whole experience. She was resilient—as she had shown after the spa experience. She might be able to forgive him and laugh about it in a couple of days.

  “Of course I am,” Hazel said. “One other thing. When you get back to the ship, ask her on a date, will you? See if she’s interested. Quit stalking around after her, radiating lust.”