The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) (12 page)

“Redoubtable, huh?” she asked. “Did I mention I was impressed that you knew what a speleologist was?”

“Because mercenaries are all stupid?” Tick asked, though he felt more pleased than insulted. He had
impressed
her? Truly?

“Not… all of them.”

Tick couldn’t manage to feel affronted on behalf of his comrades. A lot of them
were
dimwits. She was probably thinking of Striker specifically. Tick was no scholar himself, but he could usually understand what Thatcher was talking about when he started hurling his vocabulary around like a medicine ball.

“I read books,” Tick said. “Sometimes they have fancy words in them.”

“What kinds of books?”

“Some history books, but mostly novels. Lots of post-devastation stories where a lone man has to lead people into the wilderness to protect them, and saves the day using his clever survival skills.” He grinned back at her. “Bet you can’t imagine why I’d like those.”

She looked at his forehead. No, wait—that was his cap she was looking at. He decided she wouldn’t likely be impressed if he told her he’d caught the critter, skinned it, and made the headwear himself. He hadn’t met too many women who went weak-kneed over that kind of thing.

“I can see why you’d like stories with survivalist heroes,” she said slowly, “but the rest of it… Doesn’t it bother you reading about stories of death and destruction when you grew up on Grenavine?”

“I guess it just gives me more of an appreciation for heroes dealing with the loss of their own worlds. And they’re not all death and doom. Ever read Volkov? He’s got some humor in his stories.”

“Ah.”

Her gaze shifted toward the stream and the trees again, and he sensed that she would let the conversation end there. He’d so rarely heard her talk about anything except her work that he was reluctant to end their chat. The peek into outside-the-lab Lauren was rare.

“Do you like to read?” He pushed aside a thorny branch, holding it so she could pass without getting whacked in the face.

“I follow many of my peers’ publications and keep abreast of the latest discoveries in my field.”

So, not a big reader of fiction, he wagered. “Sometimes, when I’m reading in my bunk at night, I wish I had someone to share the good bits with.”

“I’ve had that thought too,” Lauren said.

“You have?” Tick hopped over a fern to take the lead again. “I didn’t realize science publications had, ah, good bits.”

“Clearly, you haven’t read many.”

“Clearly.”

The roar of the waterfall had increased, so he called out, “Sergeant Tick incoming,” not wanting anyone with a twitchy trigger finger to see movement and shoot. Most of the people in the company were better trained than that, but there was no reason to take chances.

To his surprise, nobody answered. He pushed through the foliage, crinkling his nose as the smell of the charred, dead bats reached his nose. Soon, he stepped out of the brush, and the pool and waterfall came into view. The circle of dead bats remained, but the mercenaries were gone.

“Hm,” he said as Lauren came up beside him. An uneasy feeling flitted through his stomach, but he added, “They must have gone into the cave.” Maybe that ship had cruised overhead, and the company had needed to take cover to avoid notice.

“What cave?”

Tick started to point to the entrance, but the forcefield had gone back up, camouflaging the rock face again. “It’s behind that. We’ll have to figure out how to open it again. Or maybe knocking will work.” Presumably, the captain and the others were inside.

Lauren wore a dubious expression, but she followed him across the stream and past the field of dead bats. At least the carnage did not seem to bother her. A scientist had probably seen plenty of death, dealing with the short lives of lab rats, if nothing else.

Before Tick reached the cliff, he spotted a few pockmarks and gouges in the earth and veered over to look at them. Had the company made them while fighting the bats? Earlier, it had been too dark to see the ground well, but now that daylight had come—however smothered with clouds the sky was—he could make out much more. The trampled vegetation, dead bats, and boot marks in the mud all made sense, but the pockmarks and gouges? He crouched beside one, stretching his hand over it to help estimate the size.

“What is it?” Lauren asked, sticking close to his side.

“Damage done by large weapons. Ship’s weapons.” Tick swiped his finger through the dirt. It was still warm. He lifted his finger to his nose.

“Perhaps I should have brought my electron microscope, after all.”

“Hm?”

“To help with the identification.”

“No need.” Tick touched his finger to his tongue, tasting the charred dirt. “Laser weapons. And judging by the angle...” He squinted along the line toward the top of one of the cliff walls. “The attacks came from up there. Might have been a flyby.” He chewed thoughtfully on his gum, though the minty flavor and caffeine had long faded. He was tempted to climb to the top of the cliff to see if the ship might have landed up there, or if there were other clues, but he couldn’t imagine that his own people had gone that way. “Let’s see if the rest of the men went inside to avoid the attack.”

He jogged to the cliff and rested his hand on the nub Mandrake had touched earlier.

“Who seeks entrance to the Hidden Grotto?” the same mechanical voice asked.

Lauren stepped back, looking curiously up and down the cliff.

“Sergeant Tick.” He remembered that Mandrake had used his real name and added, “Heath Hawthorn.” Maybe the thing was programmed to open for Grenavinians.

The beam did not turn on to examine him. He tried knocking on the damp surface, but it felt as if his knuckles bumped against solid rock. “Convincing door.”

If the others were inside, they may not have heard the sound through the barrier.

“You’re sure that’s the spot?”

“It was an hour ago.” He tried twisting the nub.

“Who seeks entrance to the Hidden Grotto?” the voice repeated.

“Willow Mandrake,” Tick tried with a shrug.

To his surprise, the light beam appeared as it had before, enveloping him. Some kind of energy scan made his body tingle. He had no idea why the captain’s name would work as a passcode, but he hoped the beam wasn’t smart enough to realize that a different Grenavinian was using it.

“Willow?” Lauren quirked an eyebrow.

“You didn’t know that was his real name? I thought Ankari might have mentioned it.”

“She calls him Viktor.”

“He
prefers
Viktor.”

“Do you prefer Tick? To Heath?”

“Not really. It’s what I’m used to, but I’ll answer to either. I, ah, wouldn’t mind if you called me Heath.” He’d made the offer the day before, and she’d said she would, but she hadn’t yet.

“Good.”

The light winked out. Tick sighed and stepped back, figuring he had failed to pass the test, but after a moment of apparent consideration, the forcefield disappeared, revealing the cave once again. Three things had changed. First, full day had come, and natural light filtered down from skylights that he hadn’t noticed before. The plant-based illumination had dimmed. Second, more gouge marks had bitten into the floor, leaving shattered pieces of cement everywhere. Two of the grow beds closest to the entrance had been decimated. Lastly… no one was there.

Tick stepped inside. “Hello?”

Nobody responded.

Chapter 8

Lauren rubbed the back of her neck. She had been reading through files in the computer Tick had directed her to for at least an hour. Her upper back ached, right along with her neck. The hard cave floor lacked the cushioned ergonomic mat she stood on when she worked in her lab on the shuttle or on the ship. In addition, she was already tired. Yawns kept bringing tears to her eyes as she scrolled through pages of data, most of it on plants the druids had experimented on. What had her sister found so fascinating here?

She yawned again and swiped to the next file. Her internal clock was off since the moon and the
Albatross
were not on the same day-night schedule, but she guessed it was nearing midnight on the ship.

“Doing all right?” Tick asked, coming up behind her.

He had been poking all around the strange indoor-greenhouse-cave, examining the laser damage and trying to figure out where the others had gone. As far as she knew, he hadn’t found another exit yet. He had been grumbling about how the bare cement floor did not leave prints. His only clues were missing strawberries—apparently, Striker hadn’t been the only one munching on them—and the damaged grow beds near the entrance. If the men had run into the cave, a maneuverable ship might have lowered into the canyon and found an angle from which it could shoot at them.

“I’m fine.” Lauren lowered her hand, realizing she had been kneading her back and stretching her neck. “I’m not seeing what excited my sister.”

“Nothing about ESP?”

“Not unless the strawberries are particularly prescient.” Lauren nodded toward the laser marks on the floor. “Any luck figuring out where the others went?”

“Not yet. I did find a half-smoked cigarette on the floor by the rear wall.”

“Maybe they got cornered back there and had to surrender.”

“Surrender?” he asked as if he didn’t know the meaning of the word. Since he knew about redoubtable mercenaries, she found that unlikely.

“They could have been captured.”

“If the captain had been backed into a corner, he would have had our people blow up the whole mountain to deter his enemies and keep that from happening. Haven’t you seen Striker’s grenades?” True, Striker hadn’t been there, but Tick had seen other men with bandoliers of grenades. The Chief of Boom wasn’t the only infantry grunt in the company who slung explosives around.

“I try not to look at Striker’s grenades.”

“An amazing number of women say that.” Tick smiled, but it did not last as he gazed pensively around the cave.

Lauren found herself glad to have his company. Usually, she didn’t want to be disturbed when she researched, but this place was strange, and howls and hoots occasionally drifted in from the jungle, reminding her that she was a long way from home. Not that she’d ever had much of a home, since work had kept her busy and there’d never been family to invite over. Still, she’d once had a nice flat near the university in Orion Prime’s tech corridor. She’d had colleagues to talk to and her cat Youyou for company at home. It had been over a year since she spent any time alone with a male friend—or a male colleague, as it had been. With some bemusement, she realized she could come to consider Tick a friend. She rarely spoke of her parents and her past to anyone, but it had been easy to open up to him on the ship the other day, maybe because he hadn’t been leering at her breasts like the other mercenaries. Or maybe because he was Grenavinian, and she knew he’d lost much too.

Strange to think she could befriend anyone who toted guns around and was named after a bug. Of course, he
had
invited her to call him Heath. Being named after a plant was slightly better than being named after a blood-sucking arachnid.

She turned back to the computer, stretching her neck and wishing for at least the tenth time that the druids had left chairs around their greenhouse.

“Have you changed your mind about that massage yet?” Tick asked.

“What?”

He shuffled closer and leaned his rifle against the computer console. “Your neck is telling me it wants it.”

“My neck is talking to you?” Lauren bit her lip and stared straight ahead at the columns of text floating before her eyes, though she wasn’t that fascinated with the discussion of manipulating plum trees to thrive in the volcanic soil on Grenavine’s southern continent, especially since that continent was no more.

“You didn’t know? Probably because you’re lacking these new ESP talents. Have you tried inoculating yourself with your own experimental gut bugs?”

Gut bugs. She snorted. That was what Ankari called them. So unscientific.

Tick rested his hands on her shoulders, not moving them at first. Silently asking if she objected?

She didn’t know if her neck truly had anything to say on the matter, but a massage
would
feel good. She just didn’t know if she should encourage such intimacy. After all, she had just been admitting that she could see herself calling him a friend, but if past experiences proved an indicator of future—or present—events, he might see this as some segue to sex. And if she rebuffed him again, he might withdraw his interest in her as a person and as a friend. It wasn’t as if she was that fascinating of a companion—she knew that. She almost always preferred her work to social activities, and she didn’t have any clue how to discuss other subjects. She ignored popular culture, politics, religion, and news. Did mercenaries talk about such things? She didn’t even know. From her experience, they spent an inordinate amount of time talking about sex, and she didn’t have much of a frame of reference for engaging in those discussions, either.

Realizing that her thoughts were spinning in circles, and oddly coming back to the matter of sex numerous times, she took a deep breath and flipped to the next file on the computer. Tick’s hands moved. Not away from her, as she thought they might when she didn’t make a sound of contentment or acceptance. Instead, his thumbs started working on the tired muscles at the base of her neck while his hands kneaded her shoulders.

“If I’m annoying you, feel free to tell me to go away,” he said quietly, his mouth not far from her ear.

“It’s all right,” she heard herself say, though she didn’t know if it was an honest statement. Did she truly not mind him there? Or was she more interested in not offending him? So long as his hands didn’t start roaming to other spots, she supposed she didn’t mind this closeness. The kneading
did
feel good. Very good. She gripped the edge of the console to keep herself from leaning back into him. She could smell the mint of his gum and the scent of the jungle that lingered about him after their tramp through the foliage. She wondered what she smelled like. She wouldn’t mind some of her lab sanitizer to wash her hands with, or an entire shower to wash everything with.