Mercenary Instinct (a science fiction romance) (17 page)

“I’m sure it is,” Jamie said, “but I don’t
have any control of the shuttle.”

“What?” Lauren asked.

“I haven’t since I shut the door.
Everything’s been automatic. At first, I thought it was part of the
mercenaries’ automatic launch sequence, but something else must be
going on.”

Ankari stared at the ominous mass of storm
clouds they were heading toward. As they drew closer, white spots
flashed in them—lightning.

“I think I’m beginning to see why that other
ship was firing,” Lauren said. “They wanted us to get away, because
they knew we were going... wherever they want us to go.”

Ankari sank back in her chair. Lauren was
right. If those men who had come to the brig had intended to kidnap
her and the others, they must have planned to leave in the same
shuttle they had come up in. So, Ankari had led her people into a
trap. Why wouldn’t the shuttle be flying toward the other ship,
though? The ship that was apparently harrying the
Albatross
?

Even as the thoughts raced through her head,
something streaked past to the shuttle’s right. With thrusters
firing orange, the disk-shaped ship blasted down into the moon’s
atmosphere. It was hard to tell if it had been damaged or if it was
simply fleeing now that its task was done.

Maybe the plan for the bounty hunters, or
whoever was after Ankari’s team, was to meet up on the moon below.
To meet up exactly where the shuttle had been programmed to land.
Ugh.

“We walked into a trap, didn’t we?” Jamie
asked.

“If so, it should just be a variation of the
same trap we were already in,” Ankari said. “Except this time, we
have weapons. Maybe we can shoot our way out, surprise the bounty
hunters. They’ll be expecting us to show up in handcuffs and with
the rest of their allies, not on our own.”

“Maybe we can
shoot
our way out?”
Lauren raised her eyebrows, reminding Ankari exactly how
combat-ready most of her team was. She couldn’t claim to be an
expert marksman, either.

“Captain Viktor was actually hospitable, for
a captor,” Jamie said. “What if our new captors aren’t?”

“They have to keep us alive if they want the
bounty,” Lauren said.

“That doesn’t mean much.”

“Can we stop giving up and throwing ourselves
to the ground in front of these people before we’ve met them?”
Ankari asked. “Jamie, see if you can figure out how to disable that
autopilot. If we can gain control of the shuttle, we’re free
women.”

“All right.” Jamie hunted around the console,
then opened a panel underneath it and peered inside.

Ankari crouched to help her look, though she
had no idea what she was looking for. It was better than watching
the moon approach below them, that storm and whatever fate awaited
them getting closer and closer.

A shudder ran through the shuttle, and she
pitched to the grated floor, her back thudding against a chair.

“Is that Garland?” Lauren asked. “Did he
shoot?”

“I think it’s the storm,” Ankari said. They
had descended into the clouds, and the flashes of electricity they
had seen from above were all around them now. Great branches of
white light streaked across the view screen. Wind railed at them,
and the craft shuddered and heaved.

“Is that better or worse?” Lauren hadn’t left
her chair. She was strapped in—wisely so—her fingers like claws as
she gripped the armrests.

All sense of gravity or a controlled entry
disappeared, and the ship plummeted straight down. Ankari was
thrown across the small cabin, striking a wall and more chairs,
pain erupting in her hip as it slammed against something hard. She
tumbled onto the floor and wrapped her arms and legs around the
bottom of a seat. Terror welled in her throat, along with the
certainty that they were going to die. This hadn’t been what she
had meant when she said they would be free women.

Then the shuttle caught itself, correcting
the fall with a lurch that would have heaved Ankari up to the
ceiling if she hadn’t been holding on so tightly. As it was,
something popped in her shoulder. She barely noticed.

The craft leveled out and seemed to be flying
mostly horizontal again, but still on a downward course. Always
downward and toward its inevitable fate. They were under the clouds
now, but the wind continued to beat at the craft. The engines
ground and whined, struggling to keep them in the air. Maybe it was
Ankari’s imagination, but they definitely didn’t sound as hale as
they had in space.

“Is everyone all right?” she croaked. She
released her chair bottom, but only so she could return to her seat
and strap herself in. Lauren hadn’t moved, but her face was whiter
than a skeleton. Jamie pulled herself out from under the
console—she must have wedged herself in there somehow.

“Not really,” Jamie croaked, “but I did find
this.” She lifted out a small black rectangle with wires sticking
out of it. It looked more like something that might be jury-rigged
from junk found in a spare parts bin rather than a sophisticated
piece of technology. Jamie dropped it and climbed into the pilot’s
seat, strapping herself in. “Let me see if...” Her fingers pressed
buttons and threw switches. She glanced toward where she had kept
the tablet, but it had flown off to who knew where.

“Any luck?” Ankari asked. The roiling storm
clouds made the night darker than pitch, but the vague outline of a
mountain range was visible ahead, along with the undulating jungle
below, trees and leaves waving under the harsh wind. She tried to
decide whether it would be worse to crash into trees or into the
side of a mountain... The trees might cradle them and keep them
from being smashed into the ground. The mountains appeared less
yielding, but the shuttle was determined to head toward them.

“I think I have control back,” Jamie said,
“but it’s not doing much good. We took some damage and—”

The shuttle lurched, as if they were a ground
vehicle and had driven over a huge speed bump. Ankari would have
been thrown to the deck again if she hadn’t been strapped in.
“We’re a little close to the trees, I think.”

“There’s no place to land.” Jamie’s strained
voice didn’t fill Ankari with hope. “We’re going to crash.”

Another bump came from below. Branches
scraped against the hull, and rain pelted the top of the craft. A
bolt of lightning struck a tree right ahead of them, and the sky
flashed a brilliant white for a moment, revealing the craggy
silhouette of a black mountain rising from the jungle. They were
closer to the range than Ankari had realized. She gripped the
armrests. There was little else she could do, except pray the
shuttle had devices built in to protect its crew in a crash
landing.

After another lurch, something shorted out,
sparks flying from the open panel beneath the console. An acrid
smoke flowed into the air. The view screen snapped out, and
darkness descended on the cabin.

* * *

Rain fell from the broad plant leaves in
waterfalls. Viktor was already drenched, so it hardly mattered, but
the worsening visibility was making it harder to follow the trail.
The mud was turning to a river of dirt, the prints obscured, but
Tick led the way without hesitation.

“You’d think those two men would have taken
shelter at some point and that we’d catch them,” Sergeant Hazel
yelled, her voice at the top of its range so she could be heard
above the heavy rainfall.

Viktor merely shook his head, not in the mood
to yell. His clothing was sticking to his body beneath his armor,
and his balls were swimming in a pond. He was in the mood to shoot
people.

“There’s a rise ahead,” Tick called back. “We
can get a look around, get our bearings.”

The trail they were following was a
meandering mess, but Viktor’s Eytect promised they were still going
in the direction of the mountains. Still, given the unreliableness
of his equipment tonight, he wouldn’t mind a look at the landscape.
He found it hard to believe men would have walked ten miles through
the jungle to ambush that shuttlecraft. They had to have a closer
camp. Striker hadn’t been on the ground for that long before he had
called up, reporting the shuttle missing.

Tick led the way to a basalt outcropping
sticking up out of the trees. It was mossy with a few plants
managing to find purchase, but the greenery faded halfway up.
Lightning streaked across the sky, making Viktor rethink their
climb to higher ground, but he continued up nonetheless, passing
Tick along the way. At the top, the jungle stretched in all
directions, and he grimaced, not seeing much in the way of
clearings or potential spots for camps, nothing large enough that
provided a break in the canopy anyway.

The wind gusted so hard, it threatened to
knock him off the rock. He spread his legs, bracing himself, and
squinted through the rain toward the mountains. Not much there. He
couldn’t see the lights he had picked out on the way down
earlier.

The wind shifted directions, bringing the
sounds of artillery weapons firing in the distance. His men
attacking. It must be, though they hadn’t brought any big weapons,
preferring swift infiltrations to drawn-out sieges.

“How much farther should we follow the
tracks, sir?” Hazel had heard the weapons, too, and she doubtlessly
wanted to be with the rest of the company, the same as Viktor
did.

“What do you think, Tick? How much longer can
you track in this?”

“I can track forever, Cap’n. You know
that.”

Viktor frowned down at him, wanting a more
serious answer. The rivers of rainwater flowing down the animal
paths weren’t going to leave the tracks visible indefinitely.

Tick chewed thoughtfully on his wad of gum
before shrugging and answering. “I can keep on it a while longer.
Lots of broken branches, not just footprints. Someone hacked
through with a machete in spots.”

“Sir, look.” Hazel pointed past Viktor’s
shoulder at the same time as lightning flashed through the sky, one
bolt striking a tree not far away.

She wasn’t pointing at the lightning, but at
what was flying through it. A sleek black shuttlecraft, its hull
gleaming with moisture as it streaked through the sky like a
bullet. Its running lights were out, and it skipped off the
treetops, the pilot struggling to maintain altitude. He had to be
looking for a place to land. But he
who
? Who was flying the
shuttle now?

“That the same one that’s missing?” Tick
yelled as the wind picked up again.

“Yes.” Viktor had caught the nomenclature on
the side during the lightning strike, not that he had expected any
of the other three shuttles to randomly fly overhead. Not when two
of the pilots were busy doing math problems with each other. But if
this shuttle had been up at the ship, what was it doing back down
here? He wished his conversation with Garland hadn’t been so
garbled.

Viktor stood on his tiptoes, straining to
keep track of the craft. It was heading toward the mountains. First
the tracks and now the shuttle.
Some
one had a base over
there. Maybe that temple wasn’t full of monks after all.

“He’s not going to make it,” Tick said.

Viktor shook his head, annoyed by the whole
night and annoyed that he was about to lose a perfectly good
shuttle.

He’d no more than had the thought when the
craft slammed into an ancient tree rising higher than the
surrounding canopy. It caromed off like a marble smacking into a
wall, then dropped, disappearing into the jungle.

“Let’s go.” Viktor scrambled down the rock
hill.

The shuttle was only a couple of miles away,
but if the terrain between here and there was anything like the
terrain they had been tramping over thus far, they wouldn’t be able
to take a direct route.

Viktor jumped the last six feet, spattering
mud in all directions as he landed. A screech emanated from the
trees, making him pause. Answering cries came from the jungle. They
made the hair on the back of his neck rise as some primordial
warning system went off in his mind. Danger. An ancient danger.
He’d heard the sound before and recognized it. Those raptors Tick
had been talking about. A pack of them. He had assumed they would
be bedded down for the storm, but the shuttle crash must have
roused them. Predators always knew to take advantage of wounded
prey.

More bloodcurdling screeches came, one from
nearby. Something rustled in the leaves. Viktor’s rifle, strapped
across his chest, was always close at hand, and his finger found
the trigger in the darkness. He flipped the night scope to
illumination.

By the thrashing of branches, he tracked the
creature’s movement. It wasn’t heading toward them, but in the
direction of the crash. Maybe the raptors could smell blood even
two miles away.

“They better keep that shuttle door closed,”
Tick said, squishing into the mud next to Viktor. “The critters
sound hungry.”

Nobody pointed out that the three of them
didn’t
have
a shuttle door to close.

“Eyes open,” Viktor said, though Tick and
Hazel were experienced and hardly needed the warning. He led the
way into the jungle, not worrying about the tracks now. The
screeches of those raptors would tell him where they needed to
go.

Ankari remained conscious for this, her
second crash of the week. Her head slammed into the back of her
seat and the harness dug into her shoulders, chest, and legs. Maybe
consciousness was overrated. It was utterly dark in the shuttle,
and all she knew was that they were dangling in the air—in the
trees probably—the nose pointed down. She knew that because only
her harness was keeping her from dropping out of her seat. With the
power and view screen still out, she couldn’t tell if they were
three feet above the ground or three hundred. Rain pummeled the
hull with such power that it sounded like they had landed under a
waterfall.