The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance)

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  A beeping came from the control console in front of Jamie, and the navigation holodisplay flickered.

  Tick forced himself to focus on it and not on his ridiculous fantasy. That was an alarm beep, signaling a problem.

  He realized he’d been grabbing his crotch, rubbing himself through his trousers, and he jerked his hand away, shame heating his cheeks. What if Jamie or Ankari had looked back and seen? Then wondered what in all the galaxy he was doing on their fuzzy seat covers? He could have at least gone to the lav. Maybe he would do that, assuming that alarm wasn’t signaling anything important.

  “Problem?” Ankari asked as Jamie poked at the controls.

  “There shouldn’t be.”

  “But there is?”

  “We’re losing altitude.”

  “Uhm, why?”

  “I’m not sure. There’s no reason we should be.” Jamie pulled up several displays.

  “One of those bats didn’t bite a hole in our fuel tank, did it?”

  “If our hull were that thin, we’d never withstand the rigors of spaceflight,” Jamie said dryly.

  Tick thought about standing up to take a look, but he didn’t know a lot about flying, just that he didn’t care much for it—especially when alarms were flashing. Besides, he still had a liftoff problem of his own, and he didn’t want to jab either of the women in the back with his cock. Lauren, on the other hand… No, no, she didn’t want to be jabbed, either.

  He sighed at himself in irritation and tried to quell his libido.

  “Delta Shuttle,” came Commander Thatcher’s voice over the comm. “You are losing altitude prematurely. We are approximately eighty miles from our destination.”

  Ankari beat Jamie to the comm switch. “Ladybug,” she said.

  “Pardon?” Thatcher asked.

  “It’s been months since we changed the name of the shuttle to Ladybug. Captain Mandrake knows all about it.”

  The sound of a murmured conversation came over the comm, followed by, “Captain Mandrake asserts that the proper name of your craft is Delta Shuttle and demands to know why you’re diverting from course.”

  “We’re not trying to,” Jamie said before Ankari could fight further for the unofficial name of her pink shuttle. “Fuel reads at two-thirds, engine is within normal temperature parameters...”

  The rest of the checklist didn’t mean much to Tick, so he barely heard it. He leaned forward, not pleased that he could once again see the verdant green continent stretched out before them, the nose of their shuttle tilted toward it.

  Lieutenant Sparks, who worked in the engine room on the Albatross, came forward and frowned at the display. Tick hoped he could do something useful, but knew the officer’s specialty was weapons systems.

  “Thoughts, sir?” Jamie asked.

  “I’ll go do a visual inspection of the engine and lines, see if something came loose,” he said and trotted down the aisle, past the lab, and into the engine compartment.

  Jamie alternated cycling through displays and drumming her fingers on the console.

  “Ankari,” Jamie said, “watch the controls for a moment, will you? I’m going to look too. This alarm is quite certain there’s a problem going on back there.”

  “Does it say what that problem is?” Ankari asked as Jamie slid out of her seat.

  “No, it’s that vague, take-your-shuttle-to-an-authorized-service-specialist kind of alarm. I should have taken a look at the exterior after that bat attack. I didn’t think they were large enough to have done any harm, but that might have been a mistake.” Grumbling to herself, Jamie jogged down the aisle and into the engine compartment.

  Ankari gave Tick a bleak look. “She leaves me to monitor things, as if I’d know if something is wrong.”

  Tick pointed toward the view screen. “The fact that those trees are getting closer looks wrong to me.”

  “Give us an update on your status, Delta Shuttle,” Commander Thatcher ordered.

  “Lieutenant Sparks and Jamie are visually inspecting the engine,” Ankari said.

  “You’ll need to land in order to access everything.”

  “I’m aware of that, Commander.” Ankari raised an eyebrow toward Tick and mouthed, “I am now.”

  Tick managed a quick smile, though he was busy watching those trees and wondering where they would land if they had no option but to do so. And would it be a controlled landing? He imagined them crashing into the treetops.

  “Stop it,” he grumbled to himself.

  If nothing else, Jamie could follow Frog’s example and blow up enough of the jungle to make a landing spot for them.

  “Absolutely nothing wrong that we can see,” Jamie said, jogging back to the console, fresh smudges on the backs of her hands. She slid into the seat and lifted her fingers toward the controls, but then dropped them and huffed a disgruntled noise. “Sparks is still looking, but he thinks we’ll have to land and run a manual diagnostics check.”

  Ankari touched the comm, though the channel was still open. “You hear that, Thatcher?”

  “Find a landing spot,” Captain Mandrake said, probably leaning over Thatcher’s shoulder now and watching his pink shuttle on the sensors. “We’ll follow you down.”

  “Oh, no,” came Ms. Keys’ voice from the back of the shuttle. She strode forward, a dark frown on her face. “We cannot delay the mission, Captain.”

  “If the shuttle needs to land, it needs to land. Machinery doesn’t know or care about human urgency.”

  “Very pithy, Captain,” Keys said. “What I mean is that you and your other shuttle must continue on and search the second canyon I circled on the map. As you’ve seen, there are other people out here competing with us. Delays are unacceptable.”

  “Are they competing with us, Ms. Keys,” Mandrake said, “or are they trying to get to you?”

  “What are you insinuating, Captain? That I stole something, or that I’ve committed some other crime, causing random thugs to come after me?”

  Tick frowned at her. Mandrake hadn’t implied theft or criminal actions, so it was interesting—maybe revealing?—that she brought that up.

  “You tell me, Ms. Keys,” was all Mandrake said.

  An alarm blared, much louder than the soft beep of the other one. “Proximity warning,” the computer announced. “We are within forty meters of obstacles.”

  Jamie turned off the alarm before it could cycle through another warning. “I’m fully aware of that, computer.” She sighed and pulled up the landing program. “I’m looking for a spot to take us down, Ankari. You’re at the weapons station, so you can make a shuttle pad if we need one.”

  Ankari looked dubiously at the controls. “I’m not sure I have Frog’s talents in the explosives area.”

  “I’ll try to find a meadow.”

  A meadow? Tick hadn’t seen anything yet in the dense jungle that could qualify as a meadow.

  “Captain,” Keys said, “I assure you that the funds I’m paying with are completely legitimate, and I can provide you with a list of my backers, if you wish. All of my work is legitimate. I’m positive that the ships we’ve encountered here are only interfering because of my research. I’m sure they’re competitors. It’s very likely that they want my sister’s strain of bacteria and perhaps also to speak to the druids.”

  Mandrake did not answer.

  A shudder went through the shuttle.

  “Should we be concerned about that?” Ankari asked.

  “It’s me, fighting the system, trying to keep us up a little longer,” Jamie said. “I see a cliff top that we might be able to land on, but, uh, at our current rate of descent, we’ll be too low.”

  “Meaning we’ll be crashing into the cliff instead of landing on top of it?” Striker asked. He’d come up to the seat behind Ankari’s and was looking out the view screen with as much concern as Tick felt.

  Jamie flipped a few switches. “Not if I can help it.”

  Striker didn’t look reassured. Tick did not feel reassured,
either. The craft shuddered again, and the interior lighting winked out.

  “Now what?” Jamie groaned.

  It was still daylight outside, so enough illumination came through the view screen to see, but Tick found this second malfunction ominous.

  “I ran a complete maintenance service before we left the ship,” Jamie said by way of protest. “This is ludicrous.”

  “Any chance of sabotage?” Ankari asked so quietly Tick almost did not hear the question.

  He leaned forward, the words spurring a flood of new thoughts in him. Right away, the idea seemed sound. One systems failure might make sense—these things happened—but two?

  If someone had sabotaged the craft, maybe Tick could do something about it, as opposed to sitting there being unhelpful. As far as he knew, the shuttle had never been empty of personnel, so an outsider shouldn’t have been able to sneak inside when they had been out in the jungle. It was possible that sabotage had been done from the outside—what if the person Hemlock and the others had spotted had cut into some exterior panel and gained access to a critical part before the mercenaries had seen him? If the hull had been breached, there should have been alarms, but there were a few panels on the exterior, accessible only from the outside. If they had been removed and then replaced, there might not have been an alarm.

  Jamie, concentrating on steering as the craft skimmed above the trees, did not answer Ankari’s question.

  Tick shifted in his seat to look at the rest of the men. Even though an external saboteur seemed the most likely—who would diddle with the very craft he was riding in?—maybe somebody knew more than he had shared.

  The dice players had slid into seats, fastening their harnesses. Most of the men’s eyes were locked onto the view screen. Only Corporal Hemlock stood, leaning against the wall near the hatchway, his arms folded over his chest. He didn’t look nearly as concerned as everyone else. Odd...

  Hemlock met Tick’s eyes, his expression bland, then looked toward the view screen. His face didn’t speak of guilt or nefarious plans, but one of Tick’s flashes of insight came to him as he stared at the man. In the vision, Hemlock ran up the aisle as the shuttle was crashing. He snatched Ms. Keys, tossed her over his shoulder, and ran out of the shuttle and into the jungle.

  Tick couldn’t imagine why Hemlock would want the woman, but he had come to trust the accuracy of his insights. He unfastened his harness and spun toward the rear of the shuttle, turning his back on the cliff looming ahead of them. He almost opened his mouth to shout an accusatory, “You!” at Hemlock, figuring he could have used his dice-moving powers to tweak something in the control panel or the engine room. But Tick, realizing he might only cause the corporal to enact his plan early, kept himself from shouting out loud or even looking at him.

  “Lauren?” he called instead, striding down the aisle, making it look like he intended to check on the lab. “Are you all right in there? You better take a seat, strap yourself in.”

  Hemlock’s eyes narrowed, and he pushed away from the wall. Another glimpse into his thoughts rushed into Tick’s head, one of Hemlock talking to another man in front of a ship. The two were gesticulating and making a deal. A deal for Ms. Keys.

  Before Tick reached Hemlock, a gust of wind slammed into his chest. It knocked him back with enough force to send him stumbling into the nearest seat. The shuttle lights flickered, then the view screen snapped out. Blackness descended upon the interior.

  “What the—” Ankari blurted, even as Jamie cried, “Sensors are out too. I can’t see anything. I—”

  As Tick righted himself in the dark and ran down the aisle, hoping to plow into Hemlock, the shuttle struck something. The shock hurled him through the curtain and into Lauren’s lab. A feminine squawk told him that he’d landed on her. Damn it.

  “Sorry,” he blurted as he rolled away, trying not to stick knees or elbows into her gut.

  Tick wrinkled his nose as an acrid smoky odor tickled his nostrils. This time, he cursed out loud, recognizing the scent. An aerosol tranquilizer.

  He clamped his mouth shut, but feared it was already too late, especially if Hemlock had set it off at the back of the shuttle. Tick had taken that breath to apologize to Lauren. Still, he pushed off the deck, hoping he might catch the plotting corporal before he passed out.

  He didn’t make it further than his knees before the shuttle crashed.

  A thud sounded, the impact hurling him back to the ground, where he landed on something soft. Lauren, again? A jolt half threw him off her and into a cabinet. His head struck unyielding metal.

  An agonized scrape, like a thousand machines crying out in pain, filled his ears. Another heave jostled him, and he slumped to the deck. He cracked his head on something again, and stars danced before his eyes. They were all he could see, since the utter darkness had not abated. He had the sensation that the shuttle was falling, but the damned aerosol gas flitted up his nostrils, and he lost consciousness before the craft struck the ground.

  Chapter 10

  Lauren woke up in the dark, flat on her back, with something—someone—heavy sprawled across her. She blinked a few times, thinking the darkness had to do with her eyes, but her memories slowly trickled back to her. The lights had gone out before she’d lost consciousness, before they had crashed.

  Crashed! She lifted her head—it and her right foot were the only things that weren’t pinned down—but of course, she could see nothing. The back of her skull throbbed, like she had struck it against something as she fell, but she didn’t remember that. All she remembered were a few confused shouts, someone falling on top of her, the shuttle striking something, and then it falling.

  A hiss sounded, and light trickled inside, creeping under her curtain, which hung in disarray. Had someone left? She couldn’t imagine just walking out—the way the deck tilted under her, she envisioned them perched on a mountainside.

  A groan came from atop her.

  “Heath?” Lauren guessed, vaguely remembering that she had recognized his voice after he’d tumbled into her and apologized.

  She tried to wriggle out from under him, but he was dead weight and heavier than an ox. Well, technically, he was 187 pounds, as she recalled from the medical records she’d made him bring her, but it was all muscle without any fat, and that just made him seem heavier in this state.

  She poked him on the shoulder, hoping to rouse him fully. Gasps and moans of pain came from other areas of the shuttle. She needed to go check on people. Even though her hospital experience was scant, and had mostly involved her helping deliver a baby during grad school, she might be the closest thing to a medic in here.

  “Heath?” Lauren whispered again, lifting her hand from his shoulder to the back of his head. His face was pressed into her shoulder. She slid her hand through his hair, looking for a knot or blood. He had lost his hat. A silly thing to notice. “Sergeant Tick?”

  He was warm and definitely breathing, but he did not move. She felt a lump on the back of his head, perhaps similar to the one she sported, but her hand did not come away bloody. Wasn’t there some fairy tale from Old Earth about waking someone with a kiss? Too bad kisses were so unappealing. She slid her hand down his back, debating how to lever him off her, when a mischievous thought inappropriately and uncharacteristically appeared in her mind. Earlier, she had been admiring his butt. Now she had easy access to it—as easy as access could be while one was squished under a big man. She let her hand drift lower, cupped it, and gave a little squeeze. To check for injuries of course.

  There was nothing sexual about the gesture, but she held it for a moment, feeling almost possessive. Mine, the thought arose in the back of her mind. Not her sister’s.

  Though she acknowledged that the thoughts were silly—even if she could own another person, why in all of the galaxy would she want to?—she held him for a long moment, listening to the grunts and groans of other people rising, of a few mumbled questions. Everyone else sounded as confused as she.

  Heath
groaned, this time stirring slightly. Lauren yanked her hand away from his butt, as if she’d been caught doing something illicit. Or at least naughty.

  “Sergeant Tick,” she said. “I’d appreciate it if you would remove yourself from on top of me.”

  The next groan sounded more cognizant, with a questioning tone to it. His hands moved, patting around as he shifted his weight away from her. For a moment, his fingers rested on the side of her face, as if he were a blind and deaf man identifying her by touch.

  “Sorry,” he murmured, a wince in his voice—that lump probably made his head hurt when he moved. “But I thought I told you to call me Heath.”

  He rolled off her, and she inhaled deeply, her ribs pleased to be free, even if a part of her noticed the coolness of the air and missed the feel of his body against hers. How strange to miss discomfort.

  “I don’t think this is the time to worry about such things,” she said, trying not to feel like a hypocrite since she had been caressing his butt a mere minute earlier. As if it was the time for that.

  “Right, what happened?” He kneeled back, looking toward the curtain. “I remember—oh, shit.” He lunged to his feet, wobbled, and caught himself by grabbing the curtain, barely noticing when a couple of the bolts snapped free. He shoved it aside and hustled out of the lab.

  “Who went outside?” someone asked as Lauren pushed herself slowly to her feet, her head throbbing.

  “Viktor?” That was Ankari—contacting the other shuttles?

  Lauren gripped the edge of her counter, her surroundings barely visible in the daylight coming in through the hatch. She grabbed a couple of painkillers out of a cabinet before staggering through her curtain. Her hip had taken a bump, too, and the joint ached with each step.

  “Where’s Keys?” someone asked—Striker?

  “Here,” Lauren said, though right after she spoke, she realized he might be talking about her sister. A new feeling of alarm streaked through her nerves. Hailey wouldn’t have been foolish enough to run out into the jungle by herself, would she? And if so, why? They couldn’t have crashed on top of her druids.