Mercenary Courage (Mandrake Company) (12 page)

As he had been talking, Ankari had kept stroking his head, rifling her fingers through his hair and rubbing his scalp. Soothing him. It helped. Telling the tale and admitting his faults agitated him, but her warm, gentle hands smoothed some of the knots in his bunched muscles. It was just as good as whaling on a punching bag. Perhaps better. He rested his forehead on her shoulder, letting her stroking hands continue to work the tension out of his body, but eventually, he remembered how he had wanted to please her instead of simply taking from her. The words she had spoken to her mother, that some men were worth dying for, floated into his mind. He might argue whether he was one of those men, but he appreciated that she thought so. That made him feel guilty about putting off the discussion he knew they must have.

“You need a distraction, Viktor.” Ankari kissed him on the mouth, then wiggled out of his lap to lie back on the bed. “You said you were open to receiving some instructions?”

Even though she had dressed, she pushed up her shirt, resting her hand on her bare stomach and tapping it as she watched him through her eyelashes.

He swallowed. Perhaps he had been hasty in putting all of his clothes back on. They might yet enjoy some time together. But no, he could not continue to spend time with her, knowing what he had to bring up. The message from her mother only convinced him that he had been right, that it was selfish of him to keep her with him.

“I’m open to instructions, yes, but there’s something we need to talk about. You can decide afterward if you still want to order me around.”

Her brows rose. “Did you hear my conversation with my mom?”

“Part of it. Enough to realize... No, I had
already
realized this.” Viktor took a deep breath. Odd that talking to a woman one cared about was more daunting than charging into battle with laser fire blasting overhead. “A mercenary ship isn’t a suitable place for a medical lab. It’s not safe. And you can’t reach clients reliably, working around our schedule. Your business should be set up on a planet or space station, someplace unlikely to be thrust into battle.”

He stared at his knee as he spoke, but he watched her out of the corner of his eye, concerned she would react poorly, that she would feel rejected. Would she think he did not want her anymore? As if anything could be further from the truth.

“Lauren has pointed out the same thing a couple of times,” Ankari said, surprising him. Had she already been thinking of this herself? Maybe
he
was the one who should feel rejected. “Usually when the
Albatross
is being fired upon, and her test tubes are rattling around like the rocks inside of Striker’s head.” She smiled, but the gesture was fleeting. Uncertainty replaced it. “Are you thinking of cutting us loose?”

“When we made our deal, I worried that more finance lords or other greedy miscreants interested in your business might be after you, but nobody has bothered you recently. We, on the other hand, have seen several battles since then. I think you would be better off on a planet. Or even in your own ship, if you prefer the option to be ambulatory.”

If she had her own ship, maybe she would come out to visit him, and their paths would cross more often. He looked at an aquarium resting against a far wall, not wanting her to see the feelings that tightened his face, not wanting to show that the idea of only intermittently crossing paths distressed him. He wanted her at his side all the time. Even with the distraction of long shifts and battles to plan, he had noticed her absence keenly during the lonely nights in his cabin over the last two weeks.

“Our own ship?” Ankari asked. “We don’t
have
a ship.” She didn’t mention that he had blown up the last one, not this time. It had been a while since she had.

“Perhaps in the future, you will.” He thought of offering her the shuttle, but it lacked the fuel tanks for long-distance travel, so it would not be suitable for interplanetary trips.

“Viktor, we have a
deal
.” For the first time, she lost some of the calmness in her voice. “You agreed to protect us as part of your twenty percent of the company.”

“Yes, I did.” Viktor was glad she was arguing now, since it showed him that she cared, that she was not ready to walk away from him. “But by taking you into battle, I put you at risk. Nimbus—”

“Sounds like it was awful. But you sent us away before the danger began in earnest.”

“Something that won’t always be possible. We were fortunate that this station was at the edge of Delta Shuttle’s range.”

“
Ladybug’s
range.” Ankari quirked her eyebrows at him. “Are you sure you just don’t want your shuttle returned to you so you can repaint it in a more manly color?” This time, the smile was even more fleeting. Her face appeared to be on the verge of crumpling, and that distressed him more than he wanted to admit.

“No,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.

“How would you protect us from across the system?”

“Someone could be hired.” He winced, because her point was not invalid. Part of the deal
was
that his people protect hers. How could he do that from afar? “Or... I could give you back your shares.”

It was the wrong thing to say. She looked like she had been punched in the gut.

“I—” Her comm unit beeped again, and she grabbed it, looking relieved.

Viktor regretted bringing this up, but wouldn’t it have been cowardly to have waited?

“What is it, Lauren?” Ankari asked, rolling to the side of the bed and leaning her elbows onto her knees. She avoided his eyes, avoided looking in his direction at all.

Viktor caught something about lab rats, but she had lifted the unit to her ear and was not using the speaker.

“You’re doing what?” Ankari sat up. “It’s five in the morning, Lauren.”

A moment later, she closed the link and stood up.

“I have to go. Lauren has talked Jamie into some rat-acquisition scheme, and I’m afraid they’re both going to end up arrested.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Ankari held her palm out toward him. “Don’t bother. It sounds like I’m going to have to get used to watching my own back again.”

Viktor rose to his feet, ignoring his sore muscles, and caught her wrist before she could turn away. He wanted to say that he would
always
watch her back, that she would be able to rely on him for help, the same way he had relied upon her the night before. But he ended up standing there with his mouth hanging open. The truth was that if he sent her—her business—away, he
wouldn’t
be able to watch her back. Depending on where in the system the ship was and where she settled, he would be weeks away at best, a month or more at worst. What kind of trouble could he help her with if it took a month for him to reach her?

Ankari waited for several long moments, but when he did not speak, she pulled her hand from his grip and strode to the door. He dropped his arm, his shoulders slumping.

Chapter 5

As Ankari strode through the deserted corridors, their lights still dim for the night cycle, a turmoil of emotions roiled within her. Even though having Lauren call at five in the morning would usually be inconvenient, she had welcomed the excuse this time.

Viktor wanted her to leave. She couldn’t believe it. After last night, she had been certain he had finally come to see her as an indispensable ally, as someone he wanted on his ship—and in his life—long-term, if not permanently. True, they had never spoken of marriage or anything permanent, but as soon as she had found some furniture for his cabin, she had thought to think of it as home. And of
him
as home. Family.

Had he been thinking of telling her the business had to go for a long time? Or was it because of how stressful and dangerous the Nimbus mission had been? Had he been influenced because he had lost men and nearly lost others? Or, even worse, could it be because he had overheard her mother’s objections? Just because Mom didn’t understand how good of a man he was didn’t mean Ankari felt that way. Even her mother had objected more to the ship and the lifestyle it enforced on Ankari than Viktor himself, especially after she had pointed out how much he meant to her and how much she cared for him.

She turned the corner into the corridor that led to the atrium, but almost smacked into the shoulder of a security guard.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, belatedly realizing that however Lauren and Jamie had found their way onto the floor with the pet supply store it had not been through the main entrance.

“This area is off-limits for the investigation, ma’am,” the guard said, his voice hollow. He wore a mask that covered his nose and mouth, with a filter cartridge resting against his jaw.

“Yes, I forgot.” Ankari peered past his shoulder. Whatever investigating was going on, it was not apparent. The atrium lights were also dimmed, with only a few leaves on trees exuding a soft nighttime glow. The usual squawk of the birds and those miniature dragons silent. The creatures had either been gathered up and stored somewhere else, or they were sleeping for the night. She did not see any people inside the area. “Thanks,” she added, and turned back the way she had come.

Any route out of the main elevator would likely be guarded. Remembering the cargo elevator, Ankari wound through the corridors, trying to recall its location. Not all of the floors were laid out the same, however, and she had to stop to pull out her tablet to call up a map.

“The cargo elevator? Or the stairs?” came Viktor’s voice from behind her.

She jumped, nearly dropping her tablet. For a big man, Viktor had a knack for stealth.

By the time she turned to face him, she had composed her face. “I thought I told you I didn’t need your help.” She sounded bitchy, and she knew it, but his words had stung her, and she could not bring herself to apologize.

“Perhaps not,” Viktor said, “but do you deny that your microbiologist does?”

“I hope she doesn’t.” Ankari grimaced. Lauren
had
sounded like she was either in trouble or in the process of getting herself in trouble. It was so out of character for her meek friend, that Ankari wondered if whatever scheme they were engaged in had been Jamie’s idea. Either that, or Ankari had underestimated how badly Lauren needed those rats. She couldn’t imagine
why
they were that important. Hadn’t the testing moved beyond rats? She could have sworn Lauren had mentioned something about starting human trials.

Viktor’s brows twitched upward slightly.

The familiar gesture—unless he was truly furious, he always showed only the slightest of displays of emotion—tugged at her heart. Damn him. Why had he started talking about kicking her off the ship when things had been so wonderful? At least, she had
thought
they had been wonderful. Maybe he had come to mean more to her than she did to him.

“The cargo elevator,” Ankari said tersely.

“This way.” Viktor stepped past her, leading the way around a corner and down a new corridor.

“How is it that you know your way around when you just got here and I’ve been here for two weeks?” she snapped, more irritated at the morning as a whole than at his willingness to help. Wasn’t it too early in the day to have decided the morning as a whole had gone to hell? No, not in this case.

“I saw the elevator yesterday when I was on this floor,” Viktor said without looking back. “The hospital takes up most of the starboard side.”

Ankari’s step faltered. She felt like an ass. Viktor had been through hell lately, and she was giving him more hell. She took a deep breath and tried to lock her emotions—her hurt—into a closet in the back of her mind.

Viktor had reached the cargo elevator and called it to their floor by the time she caught up. Wordlessly, they stepped inside. Though they stood side-by-side, facing the doors, they did not speak. It was much different than their previous elevator experience.

On the sixth floor, they stepped out into a black corridor. At their movement, the opaque ceiling panels began to glow softly, but this area definitely had not seen visitors in a while. Viktor took them through a number of narrow, gray service corridors, glancing once at his tablet—ah, he did need a map, after all, for the floors he had not been on. They came out on the balcony overlooking the atrium and the tiers of shops below them, all closed, the lights dimmed. In the weeks Ankari had been on the station, she had never seen this area deserted. They were only one floor down from one of the casino levels, which were busy places at any hour of the day. Though a few beeps and dings drifted down from machines up there, she didn’t hear any signs of human activity. She recalled the guard’s mask and tried not to shudder.

“Over there.” Viktor pointed to the far side of the balcony.

Even on the sixth floor, the mighty oaks, aspens, and Grenavinian pines growing up from the bottom had thick trunks, with branches and leaves or needles filling much of the center space in the atrium, so Ankari had to take a couple of steps to the side and stand on her tiptoes to see through the foliage to where he was pointing. A throng of people had gathered in front of one of the shops. Even though the illumination was dim over there, flashlight beams danced about.

Someone yelled, “We’re not going anywhere, not until the vermin inside there are incinerated, with the ashes jettisoned out an airlock.”

“Uh,” Ankari said. “I’m starting to get a notion of why Lauren might be up here.”

Why a crowd of people wanted to incinerate vermin, she had no idea, but if the only source of lab rats was in danger....

Ankari jogged along the balcony, heading for the two-dozen men and women gathered in front of the pet store. Even if she had told Viktor she did not need his help, she was glad for his silent presence trotting along behind her. She had not missed that he had taken the time to snap on his weapons belt before following her into the station.

As soon as she rounded the foliage and had a better view, Ankari recognized Jamie’s two blonde braids at the back of the crowd. The straight, dark, shoulder-length hair beside her had to belong to Lauren, though she was not wearing her usual white lab coat. Rather, it looked like she had come out in her pajamas.