“Alisa,” Leonidas gasped from across the bridge, pain seeping into his voice. “Do it now.”
“I will,” she said.
She darted out into the center of the bridge. Navigation had to be in the middle, in one of the stations near the captain’s chair. There.
As she lunged for the controls, she almost tripped over another downed chasadski, this one not moving at all, his eyes frozen open. She forced herself to look away. As Leonidas had said, these people all made their choices.
A flashing indicator on the panel warned her about the proximity to an energy anomaly. Since the rift wasn’t visible to the naked eye, she appreciated that. It would show her where to steer this boat.
She batted away smoke, studying the layout of the controls as rapidly as she could. Normally, she would have needed a lot longer to familiarize herself with a strange helm, but this ship had been built in the same era as the Nomad. It shared many similar features, and her hands were soon darting across the panel. She hurried, doing her best to ignore the thuds and cracks from the side, from where Leonidas battled at least two chasadski, if not more.
“Course laid in,” she muttered to herself. “And…go.” She reached for the button that would kick the relic into motion, but a hand reached out of the smoke and latched onto her wrist.
She looked up. Tymoteusz stood on the other side of the control station, that staff glowing hungrily in his other hand. Sweat dripped down his face and from his chin, but he had the strength to sneer fully at her.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “And now, you die.”
Alisa tried to jerk her arm away, thinking he might be surprised by the power her armor gave her, but her great yank barely moved him. He did not let go of her wrist. She couldn’t kick him or lash out effectively with the control station between them, but she launched a punch with her left hand. His eyebrow twitched, and her blow never landed. Her fist hung in the air between them, and she could neither push it forward nor pull it back.
A pounding started behind her eyes, some kind of freakish headache. It intensified quickly, and she felt like her brain would soon explode, bursting out of her ruptured skull. Tymoteusz stared at her, the sneer still there. Once again, she tried to yank her arm free. Once again, it did nothing. The pain increased until she was gasping, tears springing to her eyes. She couldn’t kick him, so she kicked the console. Her boot broke through the casing, but it did nothing to stop his attack.
Dad, if you have anything left, Alisa thought, trying to project the thought out into the cosmos, now would be a good time.
She feared that having Tymoteusz standing in front of her, his attention on her fully, meant that Stanislav had already been defeated. The thumps and thuds of Leonidas’s battle had grown quiet. Maybe there was no one left to help her.
Then Tymoteusz’s sneer turned into a frown, and his lips parted, as if he might say something. His grip loosened on her wrist, and Alisa finally yanked her arm away. She lifted her blazer, hoping he was too distracted to defend himself. But before she could shoot, a red form blurred in from the side.
Leonidas crashed into Tymoteusz, taking him to the deck.
Alisa hammered the button to engage the engines. The mining ship groaned but rumbled into motion.
Leonidas flew upward so hard and so high that he hit that domed ceiling. Alas, not hard enough to break it. Tymoteusz grabbed the rim of the console to pull himself to his feet, but Leonidas landed right next to him and kicked out. Tymoteusz was hurled several meters, the staff flying from his hand.
Alisa activated her helmet comm as she worked her way around the consoles, hoping to get to the weapon. It lay on the deck between two stations.
“Mica?” she asked.
“Still here, Captain.”
“You’re clear of the ship?” Alisa asked.
“Hiding behind it, actually. Looks like you’re going somewhere. That intentional?”
“For the moment. Look, I want you to find the dome on top of the mining ship and fire at it, preferably in a way that won’t blow up the people standing right under it.”
“That’s asking a lot, both of my piloting skills and my aim.”
“Do your best.” Alisa scooted closer and reached for the staff as Leonidas flew past, some invisible force striking him.
“You really should be over here to perform this fancy maneuver yourself.”
“I’ll be there next time. Promise.” Her fingers closed around the staff, but someone grabbed her armored calf.
She yelped in surprise, jerking her leg free as she whirled around. One of the fallen chasadski had risen to his knees. He reached for her again, this time stretching out his fingers, and she felt another attack starting on her brain. She lunged forward and kicked him in the shoulder. He’d been too busy attacking to raise his defenses, and she connected solidly. He skidded across the deck and crashed into a bulkhead.
Alisa snatched up the staff and sprinted for the doors. “Leonidas,” she barked over her comm. “Get off the bridge. We’ve got an attack incoming.”
Even as she spoke, a shadow fell across the bridge—the blocky form of the Nomad floating over the dome.
“Hurry,” she yelled, pausing in the doorway.
But Leonidas and Tymoteusz were down on the deck, the chasadski atop him, his open hand gripping Leonidas’s faceplate, as if he were an android with the power to crush it.
Alisa stepped back inside and fired at him. But Tymoteusz wasn’t as distracted as the other chasadski. The attack bounced off an invisible barrier erected around him. Still, he paused just long enough to glare in her direction. It was enough, and Leonidas bucked him free, sending him into the air.
“Go,” Leonidas said. “I’ll keep him from getting away.”
“I don’t give a damn about him. I want you to get away.”
“Fire incoming, Captain,” Mica said over the comm.
Leonidas leaped up and took a step toward the doors, but Tymoteusz wasn’t done. He rose behind Leonidas and flung his hands outward. Once again, Leonidas flew across the bridge, struck by a blast of wind that was strong enough to send Alisa stumbling into the corridor outside the bridge. Her back slammed against the bulkhead. She took a step back toward the bridge, but then remembered Mica’s warning.
“Wait,” she blurted on the comm. “Mica, give him a—”
White light flashed through the bridge as the attack came. An instant later, the thunderous boom sounded, ringing in Alisa’s ears as she was hurled down the corridor again. Her shoulder hammered against the wall—or was that the ceiling?—and she dropped to the deck, skidding a dozen meters. Before she could leap to her feet, before she could run in and find Leonidas, a great wind whipped through the corridor. At first, she thought it was another chasadski attack, but as she was lifted into the air and sucked toward the bridge doors, she knew what had happened. The Nomad’s blow had breached that huge domed porthole.
It was just what she had wanted, but sheer terror flooded her body as she was sucked through the doors, her helmet clunking hard on the jamb. She almost lost the staff, but she tightened her fist, determined that whatever happened, Tymoteusz would not get his hands on it again.
Her armored back smashed against the remains of the dome, its center now blown out, and then she bounced through the hole, away from the ship and into nothingness. She almost collided with a flailing chasadski, utter terror flashing in the man’s eyes as the icy vacuum of space engulfed him.
Alisa toppled head over butt as she floated away from the ship, and she couldn’t stop her ridiculous cartwheel. Ships were all around, everywhere she looked. And—her gut clenched—there was the station. And the rift would be right behind it. By all that was holy, what if, after all this, she ended up cartwheeling right into it?
The radiation indicator in her suit flashed an angry warning.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she muttered at it, even as she craned her head, looking for Leonidas. Had he survived being right under
that dome when it blew?
She spotted his red armor, lit up by the flashing of blazer fire all around. He, too, was tumbling away from the mining ship, but he wasn’t flailing around like she was. He was limp in his armor. Unconscious? She swallowed. Dead?
“Captain?” Mica’s voice crackled as it sounded in Alisa’s helmet. “You alive in that suit?”
“I am,” Alisa rasped. “Leonidas? Can you hear me?”
He didn’t respond.
“Bravo Six is bringing the shuttle over to get you. He’ll be better at the fine maneuvering it’ll take to catch you two dolts.”
“Save your terms of endearment for when we’re safely aboard.”
“You’re both idiots,” Mica growled, then swore. That vehemence was probably the biggest indication she would give that she was worried.
The space battle kept going in the background, blazer beams streaking between ships, as Alisa continued to tumble. Had anyone on those ships seen what had happened? Tymoteusz had to be out of it—he had to be dead. Surely, even he couldn’t protect himself in space without a suit, could he?
The cylindrical white shuttle came into view, and Alisa laughed, albeit a touch hysterically, at the meals painted on the side. Her work. And Leonidas’s. Jelena had done those strawberries.
Bravo Six swooped in to pick up Leonidas first. He still didn’t seem to be moving, and Alisa cursed the rotation that had her in its grasp, because she couldn’t watch every second of that pickup, couldn’t watch for signs of life.
The Nomad lingered nearby. She wanted to tell Mica to fly it farther away, to get Jelena and everyone else away from all that radiation.
The shuttle flew toward her. All she wanted was to get out of space and back into atmosphere and gravity so she could yank her helmet off and wipe away the stupid tears tracking down her cheeks.
“The mining ship just flew into the rift,” Mica said, her voice still crackling. “And disappeared.”
“Can you tell if Tymoteusz went with it?” Alisa asked, doubt still nagging at her that, maybe somehow, he could have survived. That any second, the staff would be ripped from her hands and zipped over to him, wherever he was.
“A bunch of black-robed people got sucked out when we hit the bridge,” Mica said. “I didn’t stop to ask for their idents.”
The shuttle filled Alisa’s vision, blocking out everything else. She clunked against the hull and scrambled to turn and magnetize the soles of her boots and get one locked on. The staff made everything more cumbersome, and she had the wicked thought to simply point the thing at the rift and hurl it in. Too bad she couldn’t see it with her naked eye. She didn’t even know if it was still open. Had Leonidas’s twenty minutes passed?
The outer hatch on the shuttle’s airlock opened, and she pulled herself in. There wasn’t much room. Bravo Six stood in there, gripping the inner hatch with one hand and holding Leonidas’s arm with his other.
Soot smeared Leonidas’s dented armor. Alisa couldn’t tell if there were any rips in it. In the dim illumination provided by the shuttle’s running lights—and the flashes of blazer fire still streaking between the two fleets farther from the rift—she could just see through Leonidas’s faceplate. His eyes were closed, and blood smeared his face. She cursed and wanted nothing more than to hurry inside with Six so she could check on him. But Six was looking at the staff instead of cycling the airlock. If androids could gape in surprise, he was doing it.
An idea flashed into her mind. She couldn’t see the rift from here and chucking the staff into it with her arm was unrealistic, but if it was still open, the shuttle’s sensors would see it. And Six could fly right up to the event horizon without being affected by the radiation.
She handed it to him. “Six, this has to be destroyed, or thrown somewhere it will never be recovered.”
He accepted the staff but only gave her a puzzled look, and she growled in frustration with herself. He wasn’t in a spacesuit and commed in. He wouldn’t be able to hear her out here.
Using exaggerated movements, she pointed at the staff, then at Six, and then to roughly where she thought the rift was—the station, having been abandoned by the mining ship, must still be close to it.
“Throw it in,” she said, mouthing the words slowly, hoping he could see her lips through the faceplate.
She gripped Leonidas by the armor and waved for Six to go back inside. He let go of Leonidas but still seemed puzzled. As soon as he got back in the ship, she could comm better directions.
Hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake and risking both of their lives, Alisa pushed off the inner hatch with Leonidas in her grip. They floated away from Six—and the shuttle. He immediately closed the outer hatch, so she hoped that meant he had caught the gist.
“Mica,” she commed, also hoping that the Nomad was still close enough to come pick them up before the radiation turned their thyroids into pan-fried glands. “Leonidas and I need a pickup.”
“What? The android was supposed to get you.”
“I sent him on a more important errand.”
“You’re an absolute lunatic.”
“I know,” Alisa said. “Come get us, please. I’ll give you a raise. And have Alejandro standing by. Leonidas is unconscious, and we’re both…” She eyed the radiation warning on her display. “We’re looking forward to his radiation recovery shots.”
“The ones that make you puke and piss all over the place? Did I mention what a lunatic you are?”
“Yes. Are you on your way?”
Mica did not answer, but the Nomad soon came into view, flying out from behind the station. They’d probably been doing their best to stay out of the fighting. Wise decision. Alisa was relieved they hadn’t simply taken off for the nearest planet, leaving Alisa and Leonidas to Bravo Six.
As the Nomad flew closer, Alisa watched the shuttle heading to where she assumed the rift awaited.
“Lady Captain?” Six asked over her comm.
“There you are, Six. Good. Did you understand what I meant? Can you find a way to throw the staff into the rift?”
“Throw, Lady Captain?”
“Pull up close, lean out of your airlock, and chuck it in.”
“I do not know if that will work precisely, but I understand your reasoning. This is a dangerous item when in the Starseers’ hands—I witnessed three ships seemingly spontaneously explode during the battle.”
“That was the staff—Tymoteusz.”
“So I gathered. I will ensure it is no longer a threat, Lady Captain.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Six.”
Alisa was on the verge of switching channels—she was concerned about how quickly Mica was coming in with the Nomad and thought her engineer might want some piloting advice—but Six spoke one more time.
“It has been an honor to work with you, Lady Captain.”
“Uh, you too, Six. We’ll get your eye fixed when this is all over.”
“Of course.”
Alisa switched to Mica’s channel and offered some advice while shifting her grip on Leonidas so she could lock her boots to the hull when the Nomad drew close enough.
“Any chance you’re awake, Leonidas?” she asked softly, using his channel.
He did not respond.
She had no way to check his pulse or any other health statistics when he was inside his suit, and the thought that his armor might have been damaged so much that the seal was ruptured, and that he had been exposed to space all this time… She stroked the side of his helmet, wanting to touch his hair, to touch him. He couldn’t be dead in there. He just couldn’t.
The Nomad loomed close, floating into Alisa’s path—she had some momentum from her push off the shuttle, but it was slight, and it seemed to take forever before she finally touched the hull of her ship. Her home.
She spacewalked along the outside to the airlock and felt almost giddy as she knocked on the hatch. She would see Jelena soon. Alejandro would be able to fix up Leonidas. Maybe she could go strai
ght to NavCom and zip them out of local space before the Alliance and mafia people figured out that their mini war was over.
She glanced over her shoulder as the hatch unsealed, hoping to spot the shuttle. They might have been too late for Six to send the staff into the rift, but if not, maybe she could sneak away with it and hurl it into a sun or volcano. Hells, maybe a sustained blazer blast would destroy it. As far as she knew, nobody had tried to break it yet.
Alisa could see part of the station, but she couldn’t see the shuttle. Maybe Six had already tried and failed to toss the staff. Or maybe the Nomad was simply blocking her view of the rift. Or maybe…
An uneasy feeling swept over her, and even though the hatch had unlocked, she hesitated to go inside.
“Captain?” Mica commed.
“Yes, we’re here. Did you see what happened to Six and the shuttle?”
Mica didn’t answer right away.
“Mica?”
“He flew the shuttle into the rift,” she said. “It disappeared the same as the mining ship. The rift closed just a few seconds later. I figured you ordered him to.”
“No… not exactly. I just wanted him to get rid of the staff.”
“He might not have had time for anything else. Also, Yumi isn’t sure if the rift will keep opening and closing now that the station has been pulled out of the door.”
“Meaning…” Bravo Six wouldn’t be coming back. And all those miners had been condemned to death because of Tymoteusz, and because she and Leonidas hadn’t known any other way to ensure they got rid of him. She wished she’d still been at the helm when the dome blew. She might have stopped the ship before it went through the rift. “I understand. We’re ready to come home.”
“Soon, Captain,” Mica said. “Alejandro had us stash your armor cases in the airlock, so we can hose you down and you can stick the pieces in there for cleaning. He’s set up a nice decontamination zone for scrubbing your irradiated asses.”
Alisa closed her eyes—she’d forgotten they would have to go through all that—but she took a deep breath and said, “I understand,” again. After all they had endured, she could endure a little more.