Mercenary Courage (Mandrake Company)

by Lionsdrake, Ruby

  There was no time to tie up prisoners, and he refused to worry about enemies at his back. Besides, he recognized the gasping man as the one who had been covering the escape of his comrades in the docking bay, the one who had been blowing up androids and security officers. He shot the man between the eyes without remorse.

  He glanced down the hallway and did not see anyone else rushing out, though people could have been hiding behind any of the dozen open doors that stretched ahead of him. The gloom also made it hard to pick out details, though he got a sense of potted plants and furnishings lining the lushly carpeted space. Out in the atrium, the light from below—and the light from the trees themselves—had not gone out with Borage’s sabotage, but the office area lay dark.

  Viktor was tempted to plow in on his own, trusting in his reflexes to handle the situation, but he reminded himself that he had a team, and his team members were sometimes brighter than he was. All right, often that was the case.

  “Any ideas?” he asked, expecting Azarov to have joined Ankari right behind his back. His sergeant, however, had stopped several paces back and was squinting at something high up on the wall.

  “Azarov may have one,” Ankari whispered. “Either that, or he’s admiring that snazzy no-throwing-anything-from-the-balcony sign.”

  A soft tink came from within the hallway. Viktor would not have heard it, except that someone had finally turned down the alarm pounding through the station. Maybe the assault teams had decided they needed to be able to communicate with each other to be effective.

  Viktor squinted into the gloom, his pistol lifted. He expected to catch someone trying to sneak up on them, but something rolling along the carpet caught his eye. Not certain it was the smart choice, he shot at it before it could reach them. He leaned away from the opening, expecting gas or an explosion. He was not disappointed. Fire roared out of the hallway, an orange inferno shooting past him. Even though he had backed up, pushing Ankari behind him, heat scoured his face. The corpses lying in the mouth of the hallway took the brunt of the attack, skin and clothing charring and melting before the flames died out.

  “Erg,” Ankari said, covering her mouth with her hand at the sight—or maybe the smell.

  He shifted slightly, so he would block her view with his body. It probably did not matter—they were going to have to walk over the charred corpses to get inside, anyway—but if he could alleviate some of her discomfort, he would do so.

  The whine of laser fire sounded behind them. Azarov was shooting the wall. No, a sensor high up on the wall, above the sign Ankari had mentioned. He held the shot, his crimson beam at first bouncing off the wall, but eventually heating it enough to bite into the metal and melt it.

  “Azarov,” Viktor said. “What are you—”

  The wail of a new alarm sounded around them. An instant later, sprinkler heads popped out of the ceiling in the hallway, and a mix of fire-stifling chemicals shot out in moist droplets.

  “Another distraction,” Azarov said, joining them.

  “Let’s go,” Viktor said, knowing the spatter of chemicals wouldn’t distract the mafia men for long. “Time to end this.”

  Chapter 13

  Ankari followed Viktor around the corner, grimacing as she stepped over the burned bodies. She was glad the men had been dead before the blast struck them—nobody deserved that kind of excruciating pain.

  With Viktor in front of her and Sergeant Azarov right behind her, Ankari did not know how much help she would be in this battle, but she gripped two pistols in her hands, ready to protect the men’s backs if she could. That might be a challenge with the damp chemical concoction spraying down from the ceiling and plastering her hair to her head. She used the back of her sleeve to shove strands out of her eyes.

  “We may have to revisit the double shower head, Viktor,” Ankari whispered. She didn’t expect a reply, not with the focus she had seen burning in his eyes.

  “Promise?” he murmured without looking back.

  “Only if you agree not to kick me off the ship for at least another six months.”

  They were getting close to the first set of doors, one opening on either side, and he did not respond. He flicked a finger for Azarov to come up and check the right while he took the left. The men disappeared inside, and Ankari pressed her back to the wall, watching both ends of the hallway, in case someone came out. That was her intention, anyway. When a cacophony of laser fire and shouts arose from Viktor’s room, she almost lunged in after him. But the outburst was brief, the noise replaced by the continuing splatter of fire-extinguishing chemicals landing on everything.

  Azarov stepped out. “Mine’s empty.”

  He looked curiously toward the other open door. Viktor stepped out before he or Ankari ventured inside.

  “Mine’s empty,” he said, turning back into the hallway. “Now.”

  Ankari told herself not to look inside as she passed it, but her gaze was drawn through the doorway. She spotted several dead men on the floor, some in business suits and some in darker clothing with weapons belts around their waists. Presumably, the mafia men had killed the business people and Viktor had killed the mafia men. Another armed man who had been shot in the forehead sprawled across a desk littered with fuses, along with a sack full of bulging disks. Bombs? If the mafia men had been preparing more, Ankari was glad Viktor had taken them out first. She spotted a couple of vaults in the back of the room, the design similar to the one that had been in the pet store—she hoped nobody had been locked inside these, but made a note to remember them in case they didn’t find the hostages anywhere else on the floor.

  The hairs on the back of Ankari’s neck stirred. Uneasy, she glanced back the way they had come, afraid someone might be sneaking up behind them. They were being followed, but not by a person. One of the cameras—maybe the same one that had startled her on the tree and almost caused her to fall—floated after them.

  “We’re sure those are news cameras, right?” she asked. She and Azarov had discussed this on the way up the tree. “And that the mafia people aren’t spying on us?”

  “If they were spying on us, they’d be doing a better job of fighting us up here,” Viktor said.

  They passed two more open doors, but the rooms were empty of everything except furnishings and decorations, some quite extravagant, even though the offices themselves were not large or ornate. Perhaps the druids who had built the place had not been thinking of satisfying the needs of highly paid executives.

  “No sign of hostages yet,” Viktor said, following a curve in the hallway and approaching another set of doors facing each other, these two closed.

  The shadows had grown deeper since they left the balcony, and Ankari thought about pulling out her flashlight. But that would make them targets if someone lurked in the darkness ahead.

  “Is it possible they took them down one of the elevator shafts while we were climbing up?” Azarov asked.

  “Possible. But it looked like all of the stairs and elevator shafts were guarded.”

  Viktor waved at the door sensors, but neither opened. He pressed his ear to one, then the other.

  “I don’t hear anything. We’ll come back and force the locks if we don’t find anything else in the other rooms.”

  “Wait.” Azarov had pressed his hand to one of the doors. “This is warm.”

  “Not from fire.” Viktor glanced toward the ceiling. The spatters had slowed down but not yet stopped.

  “I wouldn’t think so, but the warmth is worrisome.”

  “You still have the Lock Master, Ankari?” Viktor asked.

  “Yes.” She pulled it out of her pocket.

  “You two check it, then catch up.” Viktor jerked his chin toward the hallway. They had not come to the elevator yet, but the route ahead continued to curve. There were more doors in that direction too.

  The idea of splitting up did not appeal to Ankari, but she pressed the device to the door. It should not take long to check the room. Instead of sticking, the L
ock Master plopped to the floor.

  “Er.”

  Azarov used his sleeve to wipe the surface free of the slick white-green chemicals flecking it. “Try again.”

  The second time, the device attached itself to the door. Ankari shifted from foot to foot while it worked.

  Gunshots came from up ahead—not the laser fire of Viktor’s weapons. She almost raced after him, but she hadn’t seen which room he had disappeared into.

  “He probably doesn’t need help,” Azarov mumbled, but he glanced back and forth from the lock-picking device to the hallway, as if he was also struggling with whether to stay or whether to go.

  More gunshots rang out, this time accompanied by the whine of laser fire. Ankari could not tell how many people were shooting, but it sounded like a battle between platoons rather than between a few men. She shifted in that direction, but the lock picker clicked before she had gone a step. Azarov removed it, and the door slid open. Warmth, smoke, and the stench of something burning flowed out.

  “Hell,” Azarov whispered, staring inside. “All the hells in all the galaxies...”

  Not sure she wanted to see what he had uncovered, Ankari leaned around the corner. At first, all she noticed was the burned carpet in front of a big desk and a huge sooty spot on the ceiling. Azarov shone a flashlight into the smoke, and light pushed through the haze, revealing several electronic devices balancing on a massive wooden desk. They were linked by wires, forming a ring. A potted plant sat innocuously in the center, and for a stunned moment, all Ankari could think was that its little leaves were going to be blown to the closest moon when all of those explosives went off.

  “Hurry,” Azarov said, stepping into the room. “It’s probably meant to go off as a distraction so the men can get to the docking bay without being stopped, but—” he glanced at the ceiling, “this could demolish the whole top of the station. I don’t know what those fools are thinking. If they don’t get to their ship first, they could be killed too.” He had fallen to his knees in front of the one of the devices before he had finished talking. He dropped his weapons and yanked out his tablet.

  “Hurry, how?” Ankari swallowed, trying to control the squeaky note of panic in her voice. “How do I help?”

  “We have to defuse them.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “Not yet.” Azarov was swiping through his holodisplay, mumbling orders into his tablet. He glanced bleakly back at her. “I usually get called in after the bombs go off.”

  Ankari’s return stare had to be equally bleak. “Would it be better just to run?”

  Ankari could hear laser fire still squealing from somewhere down the hallway. Maybe running would not be an option. If all of the elevators and stairwells had been destroyed, they would have to climb back down the trees. There might not be time.

  “I don’t think it’ll matter where you run, unless you can get onto a ship and get that ship off the station. Those bastards.”

  She had been afraid of that. “How much time is there before they go off?”

  “Uhm, six minutes.”

  A professional bomb disposal unit would be hard-pressed to defuse that many explosives in that time, assuming they knew exactly what they were doing. Ankari shook her head slowly. There was no way this was going to work.

  “I’m going to try something else,” she said, backing out of the room.

  Azarov, flipping through wiring diagrams, did not acknowledge her. As much as she admired him for trying, she couldn’t imagine him finding the instructions on the network. Those looked like homemade bombs, not military ordinance. They would be unstable, unpredictable.

  Ankari ran back to the room she had seen with the vaults. There were three of them against the back wall. She darted inside, jumping over one of the men Viktor had killed, and tried the handles. They were all locked.

  “Of course this couldn’t be easy,” she muttered, running back into the hallway. “Hope those dead people on the floor weren’t the only ones who knew the combination.”

  More laser fire came from ahead of her, and Ankari forced herself to slow down, even though she wanted to scream that fighting was pointless now. They had a far bigger problem to deal with.

  “Viktor?” she called as she passed more doors and drew closer to the noise. She didn’t want to distract him, but she also did not want him to think she was an enemy coming up from behind and shoot her. “I need that CEO and I need him alive.”

  Laser fire answered her. Wonderful.

  With her own pistol in hand, Ankari crept forward, hugging the curve in the wall. The elevator came into view, an emergency light flashing a sickly yellow over a sobering amount of carnage. At least eight men lay in a jumble on a carpet that had been beige, but was now stained crimson with blood. Ropes were tangled about the bodies, and several of the fallen wore harnesses for rappelling. Ankari thought she recognized a few mafia faces from the firefight in the docking bay.

  A gray-haired woman sat on her knees against a wall beside a potted tree, her wrists bound behind her and a gag in her mouth. Her head was bent toward her lap, either because she felt sick or because she was trying to avoid being sick by not acknowledging all of the dead people around her. Laser fire continued to whine from farther down the hall, and clouds of smoke stirred in the air.

  Eyeing the doors on either side, Ankari ran forward. She was torn between her desire for caution—and to stay alive—and the knowledge that she had to hurry. The woman cringed toward the wall as she approached. She wore a business suit and did not have any weapons, so Ankari assumed she was one of the hostages.

  She crouched beside the woman, then cursed because she did not have a knife. One look at the snarled tangle of a knot on the bindings told Ankari that it would take more minutes than she had to free the hostage. Instead, she yanked down the woman’s gag.

  “Do you know the combination for the safes back there?” Ankari asked without preamble. “It’s an emergency.”

  Tears streaked the woman’s face, and her eyes were bloodshot, but she glowered up at Ankari with impressive fierceness. “I’ll just bet it is, you snot-nosed thief. Go burn yourself in a supernova.”

  “That’s what we’re all going to do if you don’t give me the combination. Look, give me the one for a vault with nothing in it. I just need the vault, not any of your belongings.”

  More laser fire came from down the hallway, along with the crash of something—or someone—being hurled across a room.

  The woman flinched at the noise, but turned her glare back onto Ankari, clamping her jaw shut.

  “Come this way, then,” Ankari said, resisting the urge to shove the woman into the wall. That wouldn’t prove that she wasn’t a snot-nosed thief. “I’ll show you what I need it for.”

  She hauled the hostage to her feet without much gentleness. She was all too aware of the timer counting down in that room with Azarov. The woman tottered and slumped against the wall. Before Ankari could pull her upright, movement at the corner of her eye made her whirl.

  One of the men she had presumed dead had lifted his head. He was raising a pistol toward Ankari—or maybe toward the hostage. Ankari fired without hesitation, blasting the thug between the eyes. This time when he collapsed, he did not move again.

  “You’re not with them?” the woman wondered, staring at the dead man.

  Ankari didn’t bother answering. She dragged the woman back down the hall to show her the bombs. Maybe then she would understand. The station executive or board member—whatever she was—stumbled and did not move nearly fast enough for Ankari, but they finally reached the open door. Smoke still drifted out.

  Inside, Azarov still knelt before the desk. He had opened the casing of one of the homemade bombs and held a laser scalpel up, the blade on the narrowest setting. A wiring diagram floated in the air above the desk, courtesy of his tablet, and it looked like it might be helping, but there were less than four minutes left on the timer, and he was still on the first bomb.
/>   Hearing them, Azarov glanced back. Beads of sweat were running down his face, but his eyes brimmed with determination.

  “I need help,” he said, turning back. “I think I can do it, but not alone. I need...” He trailed off, slicing through a wire.

  The tangled maze inside that bomb filled Ankari with fear. “There’s not enough time. Find a tray, Azarov. Get them on something mobile. We’re moving them. All of them.”

  The gray-haired woman was rooted in the hall, staring inside. “Dear Buddha,” she whispered, her eyes round.

  “Move them where?” Azarov asked, snipping another wire. “There aren’t any airlocks up here, are there? There’s no time to—shit.”

  “What?” Ankari demanded.

  “Wrong wire. I...” His voice tightened. “We have less time now.”

  “Get them on a cart, a tray, a robot. I don’t care. Just do it.” Ankari spun toward the woman, grabbing her arm. “Lady, I need a vault combination. Do you know it, or not?”

  And what were they going to do if the answer was not?

  The woman jerked her head in a short nod. “I know them.”

  Not letting go of her arm, Ankari dragged her charge down the hallway to the room with the vaults.

  “That one.” The woman nodded to the one on the end. “It’s mostly empty. I need my hands free to open it.”

  Ankari looked around for a knife or a letter opener—anything—but didn’t see one. “Just tell me. I have a horrible memory. I swear I’ll forget it in ten seconds.”

  “It’s not a combination you can punch in. It’s a retina scan, plus a pass phrase. There’s voice recognition.”

  “Well, not to be rude, but—” Ankari nudged the backs of the woman’s knees with her boots, and helped—pushed—her to her knees in front of the vault. “Open it, and I promise I’ll find a knife to cut you free.”