“I want you to know that even though the war is over,” Mladenovic continued, “and your contract was up even before it ended, you have friends in the Alliance army. Though we are a little concerned that you’ve taken on some imperial passengers with dubious credentials.”
Alisa was glad she was listening to a recorded message and did not have to come up with a response immediately. The man’s knowledge of her affairs was unsettling, Alliance army jacket or not.
“We would like to give you the opportunity to serve the Alliance once more, even as you’ve now phased into the civilian life. One of your passengers has an ancient and valuable artifact that you may or may not be aware of.”
“No kidding,” Alisa muttered, as the major arched his eyebrows and stared directly at the camera pickup.
“This artifact could ultimately be used against the Alliance. It doesn’t look threatening on the surface, but I’m told it could lead to something powerful and dangerous. I’m sure you can understand why we would prefer to have it in Alliance hands rather than grubby imperial paws.”
“Everyone wants it in their hands,” Alisa said, rubbing her arms, remembering the way her hairs had stood up when the orb had been out of its box.
“Since you are in a position to get it, I’d like to offer a trade with you. I can give you information on your daughter’s whereabouts if you’ll simply bring the artifact to me at the dawn of the first sun—6:43 in the morning, the computer tells me. Meet me at the Spaceman’s Wharf. It’s just outside of the base where I believe you’re docked.” He continued to stare into the camera—straight at her. “I urge you to come, Captain. We can’t let the imperials have anything that might let them gain back any control of the system. You remember what their rule was like. Please, do what’s right.”
“Do what’s right?” she asked as the message ended, and blackness replaced his face. “Like coercing a woman into doing something illegal, such as say, stealing, by dangling information about her missing daughter in front of her for bait?”
She closed her mouth, remembering that Leonidas’s cabin wasn’t far away and that he had that special hearing. But it was hard not to talk, to shout, to rail. First, the major had told her that she had friends, but then he’d implied he would only give her information if she stole something for him. What kind of friend was that? Damned superior officers. He doubtlessly only saw her as a pawn, someone to be manipulated for his gain. Maybe for the Alliance’s gain, too, and while she could support that, this was not right. Was he even acting on behalf of his superiors? Or had he somehow caught wind of the orb himself and was now trying to get it to further his own career?
Alisa pushed herself to her feet. The captain’s cabin was larger than the other ones on the ship, but not so large that she could pace comfortably. She walked four steps, pushed off the wall, then walked the same steps in the opposite direction. She would be a fool to trust this major, and yet… he was an Alliance officer. Or at least he claimed to be. She eyed her computer, almost sitting back down to look him up, but then realized she wouldn’t have access to the Alliance military database from here. She probably couldn’t look him up.
Besides, what would she do if she found out he was a legitimate officer? Do as he asked?
It would be foolish, even if she could get away with it. She wouldn’t be that worried about dealing with Alejandro, but with Leonidas? After he had defended her, or at least been unwilling to assassinate her, she hated the idea of him thinking she was a traitor.
“But I’m not a traitor,” she muttered. “They’ve openly admitted that they’re working for the empire.” And they had admitted in secret, unaware of her eavesdropping, that they wanted to see the emperor’s son returned to power, to see the empire returned to power.
Alisa shuddered, almost feeling betrayed that they could want that. But they had clearly been people of power in that system, people who had been rewarded for their loyalty. Maybe they had no idea how rough things had been for the average subject—or for anyone who had a mind and wanted to speak it.
She found herself slipping out of her cabin and padding down the corridor. She glanced warily at Leonidas’s hatch as she passed it, wishing he and his superior ears were down in the cargo hold with the chickens. At least Mica’s cabin was on the opposite end of the corridor. When Alisa reached it, she knocked softly. In the silence of the night, she could hear soft music through the hatch to Yumi’s cabin next door. With luck, she would be too busy meditating to press her ear to the wall and listen to a conversation. Not that Yumi was likely to care about orb plots. Alisa hadn’t gotten the impression that she was particularly loyal to one faction or another. She seemed like someone who stayed out of the way and pursued her own interests.
Alisa had to knock three times before the hatch opened.
“I’m not lighting any more candles today,” Mica grumbled, rubbing her eyes and squinting into the dim light of the corridor.
“That’s good, because open flame shouldn’t be allowed on a spaceship.” Alisa waved toward the dark cabin. “Can I come in?”
“Of course. I can see from the clock—” Mica glanced at a digital display embedded into the wall, “—that it’s well into social hour.”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Alisa stepped inside. The clock promised it was only four hours until dawn and that major’s meeting time. She didn’t have long to make up her mind.
“I need advice, Mica,” she said softly, closing the hatch behind her. Darkness fell upon them, broken only by the faint glow from the clock.
“Does it require there be lights on?” Mica yawned and shambled back to the bunk set against the far wall.
“Not necessarily, but I want to show you a message I got.”
Mica fumbled on the desk, and a holodisplay popped up, providing more light for the room. “Go ahead.”
“I also need to tell you about what happened to me today before the sewer incident.” Alisa patted her way to the chair at the desk, sat down, and explained the trip to her sister-in-law’s apartment. She hadn’t fully confided to Mica before about her family problems, but she was the only one on the Nomad that Alisa had known for more than a month. And she was Alliance. They had served together on the same ship for a year. They had some history together.
“I’m sorry, Alisa.” Mica was sitting on her bunk, leaning against the wall with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “I wish I could help, but I doubt I know any more about Starseers than you do. It’s too bad you couldn’t use the library, even though I doubt you would find anything useful in public records.”
“I see you’re as optimistic as ever.”
“What optimism I have in my reservoir gets divided by half for every hour after midnight it is.”
“Right. Sorry to keep you up, but that’s not the end of my story.” Alisa took a breath and logged into the computer. She pulled up Major Mladenovic’s message and played it again.
Mica listened in silence, waiting until it finished before she spoke. “He’s familiar. We had an intelligence unit on one of the ships I served on near the end of the war, and I think he might have been the commander some of the men spoke of, the one sending orders.”
“Well, that answers one question. I was wondering if he was a legitimate Alliance officer or if he’d just beaten someone up for a jacket.”
Mica snorted. “He doesn’t look that athletic.” She ruffled her hand through her short, tousled hair. “He looks like an asshole honestly. Most majors are.”
“Guess it’s good I didn’t stay in long enough to get promoted to such a lofty rank.”
“Definitely.”
“Mica.” Alisa leaned forward. “Should I do it? What do you think? I don’t trust him, but if there’s even a chance that he could lead me to my daughter, how can I ignore it?”
“The Intelligence Division probably knows more about the Starseers than anyone else in the army,” Mica said slowly, “but maybe it would be better to comm someone else. Don’t you have the com
m numbers for any superior officers you liked that you served with? Maybe someone could point you to a friendly intel officer who could help.”
“I suppose, but it would be days, if not weeks, to get a response here. The Perunese may even be blocking or editing outgoing communications. My sister-in-law had to physically mail a letter through a private service to get word to me about my husband.”
“A problem that is easily solved by leaving the planet and taking me somewhere with more employment prospects.”
“So glad your job hunt is taking precedence over your sympathy for my plight, Mica.”
“Sorry. It’s not that. You know, I’m just…” Mica scooted to the edge of her bunk and put a hand on Alisa’s shoulder. “I’m not good at sympathy and being womanly and caring and such. You’re not, either, you know. I figure that’s why we ended up drinking together back on the Silver Striker so often.”
“I thought that was just because nobody else would drink with us.”
“That too. We have the kind of wit that not everybody appreciates.”
“And that starts wars.”
“Probably true.” Mica smiled and squeezed her shoulder before sitting back against the wall again. “I don’t think you should trust him, but I think you’re already planning to sneak into the doctor’s cabin and steal the orb.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because Mladenovic is the only lead you’ve got.”
Alisa thought of the conversation she had overheard, of the proof that Alejandro did not care one way or another about her and wouldn’t mind if she were dead. She had to admit that she felt less bad about the idea of stealing from him after that. Oh, she did not think anything she was contemplating was truly honorable, but her choices were limited.
What worried her more than the questionable morality of what she was considering was incurring Leonidas’s wrath. He would be a terrifying enemy, and if she did take the orb and hand it off to someone, he would be back here at the ship, waiting for her to return. Or he might track her down before she had a chance to reach Major Mladenovic. She would have to figure out a way to get him and Alejandro off the ship, at least for a few hours, so she could fly away. If she could get off planet, she guessed—hoped—that they wouldn’t come after her. They ought to be too busy trying to find the orb. They might go after Major Mladenovic, but if he could not take care of himself, that was his problem. She didn’t owe anything to a man who was bribing her.
“You better watch out for Leonidas if you go through with it,” Mica said. “He could break you in half with his pinky fingers.”
“I’m very aware of that.” The memory of his exposed implant popped into Alisa’s mind. “That’s why I need help.”
“Help? I thought you were here for sympathy.”
“Sympathy, advice, help… We can’t try to get the doctor off the ship and search his cabin, because he takes that orb everywhere he goes. I need to sneak in and get it from him while he’s sleeping, and then I need to hustle off to this meeting. At some point, he’ll wake up and realize it’s missing.” Hopefully not until she had already made the trade. “I would guess that he’ll get Leonidas and that they’ll leave the ship. Can you rig something so that once they leave, they can’t get back in?”
“With the doctor, it’s that way now. You and I are needed to unlock the hatch. Or Leonidas. Remember how he was on the ship for weeks before we got to that junk cave?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m fairly certain now that he was the one doing those repairs. He also gave himself access to a lot of the ship’s systems, so he can go anywhere he wants.”
“Can we revoke that access?”
“You can. You’re hardwired in as the ship’s original owner.”
Was she? Her mother must have done that years ago.
Mica pulled up a different program on the holodisplay. “Here, authorize this, and I’ll see what I can do about revoking his access. Then you can steal the orb and go.”
“We can go,” Alisa said as she typed in the passcode for the computer, then leaned forward so it could grab a retina scan.
“Eh?”
“If you’re here when they wake up, they might question you.”
“I can lock myself in here or in engineering. Probably engineering so I can monitor what they’re up to on the rest of the—”
“Mica, I’ve seen him tear open locked metal doors and grates. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could get to you through a locked hatch.” Alisa eyed the one in the cabin. It was sturdy and thick, like something found on a submarine that had to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure underwater, but Leonidas’s arms were even thicker.
“In other words, you’ve determined that I’m not getting any sleep tonight,” Mica said.
“You could have slept earlier instead of praying to candles on the cargo hold floor.”
“We weren’t praying. She was teaching me how to meditate and relax my mind and my body. Apparently, I don’t do that.”
Alisa wondered if Mica’s willingness to subject herself to meditation had anything to do with her finding Yumi cute, something she had mentioned before in passing.
“Did you not find the meditation as rejuvenating as a full night of sleep?” Alisa stood up and rubbed her hands together. She would have to do the next step of her plan by herself.
“Oddly not. People who stank of the sewers came in and interrupted us.”
Alisa headed for the hatch. “How long will it take you to revoke his access?”
“Not long.”
“Can you meet me at the cargo hatch in an hour? I want to give Alejandro more time to settle into a nice deep sleep.”
“It’s your plan,” Mica said, not sounding enthused about it or her night of lost sleep.
Chapter 10
Alisa thumbed on the flashlight on her multitool, choosing the red lens out of some vague hope that the color would be less likely to wake someone up than white. Not making noise probably mattered more. She hoped she could manage that. She knew these cabins well, but if Alejandro was sleeping with the orb under his pillow, all of her knowledge would be useless.
She slipped out of her cabin into the corridor—she had turned off the usual nighttime lights, so utter darkness filled the passage. She eased out into it, guiding herself by touch. She wore soft boots and a jacket warm enough for venturing out into the night. If she succeeded in escaping with the orb, she would head straight out.
She walked past Leonidas’s hatch as quietly as she could, regretting that she’d assigned Alejandro a cabin right next to his when the doctor had first come aboard. A thump came from within it as she passed, and she froze, expecting the hatch to burst open. She would be caught before she even started. Dozens of excuses whirled through her mind, but then she reminded herself that she hadn’t done anything yet. For all Leonidas knew, she could be going to use the head.
Another thump sounded inside of his cabin, but the hatch did not open. The noises sounded like they were coming from the back of the room, where the bunk lay, and she remembered that she’d heard such noises coming from Leonidas’s cabin before at night. He wasn’t a quiet sleeper. Maybe someday, if they met again and he didn’t kill her for stealing the doctor’s orb, she would ask him what cyborgs dreamed about. If. An optimistic thought. She doubted they would meet again. That made her sad. She liked him a lot more than she liked Alejandro. But not enough to foolishly try to keep in touch with him after she betrayed them. The system was a large place, and she could not see herself returning to Perun. With her husband dead and her daughter gone, there was nothing left for her here.
She forced herself to continue past the room, shaking away the feelings of loss. What she did tonight was for Jelena. Alisa had to believe that it would get her closer to finding her daughter.
When she reached Alejandro’s hatch, she pressed her ear against the cool metal. No sounds came from within. Despite his words to the contrary, he must not have that much trouble sle
eping.
Alisa turned off and pocketed her flashlight, then pressed her hand to the lock pad. It lit briefly, blue light brightening the corridor. The lock disengaged with a faint clunk. She lowered her hand and pressed her ear to the hatch again. The noise had not been loud, but if Alejandro was a light sleeper—or one paranoid about losing his orb—he might wake easily.
Again, she did not hear anything. Knowing she was about to cross the threshold, she gripped the old-style latch and slid it to the side. After this, she would not be able to claim that she was simply going to the head.
It was dark inside, the sounds of soft, even breaths coming from the back. The clock on the wall glowed a faint green. It did not provide enough light to see much, but she could make out the outline of the bunk and Alejandro’s form on it. She tried to see if anything lay on the floor, both because she didn’t want to step on his belongings and because it would be handy if his orb satchel was simply leaning against the wall by the door. It was too dark to pick out anything against the dark carpet.
Reluctantly, she withdrew the flashlight. Using it should save her time, keep her from patting around and possibly knocking something over. But she kept a nervous eye toward Alejandro’s form as she flicked it on. She skimmed the red beam along the carpet, but did not see anything. The desk and chair were also empty. There were built-in drawers and cupboards that she could open, but the metal latches and doors weren’t that quiet—there were identical ones in her cabin, so she knew. Besides, she suspected Alejandro was too paranoid to sleep that far from his precious orb.
She inched across the room and risked running the beam over his blanketed form. He slept on his side, facing the exit—facing her. His even breathing continued, but she worried that his eyes would pop open at any moment. She kept from running the beam close to his face and angled it down toward the carpet as soon as she had seen what she needed to see. He was not using the satchel for a pillow as he slept.