Free The Tracker's Dilemma: (A Mandrake Company Science Fiction Romance) by Ruby Lionsdrake Page A

been illegally placed.
    “Don’t worry,” Ankari told Lauren. “You can stay in the shuttle while we search.”
    “The shuttle won’t be landing a hundred feet up in a tree this time, will it?” Lauren asked.
    “That’s not the goal, but the jungle side of this moon does have a dearth of desirable landing spots.” Jamie flicked a blonde braid over her shoulder and winked at Ankari, not noticeably alarmed by the notion of a tree-branch landing.
    Lauren groaned again. Tick wondered if she might like a big, strong arm wrapped around her for comfort.
    More wind battered the shuttlecraft, and he grimaced. He might need a big, strong arm wrapped around him right now. Once they reached the ground, he would cheerfully fight mercenaries, pirates, and raptors, so long as his feet were on solid earth. Until then, he would try his best not to imagine them crashing into the treetops.
    “Pink Shuttle, this is Alpha Shuttle,” Lieutenant Frog’s voice came over the comm. “I’m going to make us a nice landing spot. Follow us down.”
    “What do you mean make ?” someone else in his shuttle asked.
    “You’ll see.” Frog’s grin came through in his voice.
    “Do not take undue risks,” a new speaker said—Commander Thatcher from the third shuttle. “We can find a suitable landing place, even in the jungle.”
    “Of course we can, sir,” Frog said, that grin still hanging on his words.
    Lauren walked back to the rear and buckled herself into the seat Striker had vacated earlier, pulling the harness tight enough to cut off circulation. Tick wasn’t surprised, not with Frog’s reputation for blowing things up.
    “Don’t like flying?” he asked, nodding toward her fingers, which tightened around the armrests, not unlike his own.
    “I don’t care for crashing.”
    “It is alarming. Especially the way Frog does it. Be glad we’re not flying with him.” Tick smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. He wondered if it meant anything that she had chosen to come back and sit next to him. Maybe just that she was avoiding Striker, who had strapped into the first seat behind Jamie, Ankari, and Ms. Keys, and was pointing at flashes of lightning in the fast-approaching clouds.
    “Jamie taught herself to fly by reading technical manuals,” Lauren said.
    “That was months and months ago,” Jamie said over her shoulder. “I’ve had plenty of lessons with Lieutenant Sequoia since then, and Commander Thatcher has given me all manner of flight equations to solve and memorize.”
    “Are equations useful for avoiding trees?” Ankari asked.
    “Of course .”
    A powerful gust of wind battered the shuttle again, and Tick wondered how useful mathematics could be when trying to survive a storm.
    Rain pelted the hull, and the visibility grew foggy beyond the view screen. Jamie switched to looking at instrument panels, probably trusting the sensors more than her eyes. She and Ankari did not speak again as the wind railed at the craft.
    Another gust nearly tipped them on their side. Lauren clenched Tick’s hand. He blinked, his own fear washed away by the abrupt awareness that she was touching him. Sure, it was a talons-sinking-into-one’s-flesh grip rather than a loving caress, but he couldn’t help but think it might mean something. She could have chosen to sit by Hemlock.
    A distant boom sounded outside.
    “Was that thunder?” Ankari asked.
    “Uhm, I think that was Frog,” Jamie said as a series of booms followed the first.
    A flash of light brightened the interior of the shuttle for an instant, the illumination oddly distorted by the fog outside.
    “ That was lightning,” Jamie said. She lowered her voice and added, “We’re close to the treetops.”
    “Should we be?” Ankari asked.
    “I’m following Frog. It looks like there’s an opening now beside that river. We—”
    A scrape-thump sounded as a jolt went through the cabin. Jamie’s fingers flew across the controls as she stabilized them. Lauren’s grip on