“Will we… be able to… get around it?” Alisa asked, her legs burning.
“There’s an intersection between us and it,” Leonidas said, not even slightly winded. “If we make it in time, we can turn off and avoid it.”
“That… sounded like… a no,” Alisa said.
“Just keep running,” Leonidas said.
She did not try to speak again after that, siphoning all of her energy into her legs. The lights grew larger, appearing to be several feet off the ground, giving her a sense of the size of the cleaning machine. It might fill the entire tunnel.
It rasped and ground as it continued toward them, and Alisa realized it was coming at a good speed. Images of being flattened under huge wheels and spinning brushes filled her head, and she ran faster, looking for the intersection Leonidas had promised. She could make out the gore-covered gray walls now, the light of the cleaner stealing some of the darkness of the tunnels.
A grunt sounded behind her. Alejandro had fallen behind, his robes heavy with water and pulling at his legs. Leonidas threw him over his shoulder, then easily caught up with Alisa. He did not offer to pick her up, merely pointing ahead of them.
“There.”
Alisa could barely see the spot. She was squinting now, half-blinded by the bright lamps of the cleaner. Leonidas ran ahead of her, then disappeared from the light, jumping into a side tunnel. She sprinted toward it on leaden legs, the towering body of the cleaner filling her vision, giant brushes and whirring circular blades that cut away the grime on the walls to either side of it. There was no way someone could run past it, and its huge body would be capable of crushing anything in its path.
She made it to the intersection and leaped after Leonidas, her ears full of the rasping and grinding. Thinking they were safe now, she paused, leaning forward and gripping her knees as she gasped for air. But Leonidas grabbed her.
“Keep going,” he ordered.
“What?” she blurted, feeling betrayed.
The headlight beams swung into their dark passage, driving away the shadows. The cleaner was turning here too.
Chapter 7
“Climb,” Leonidas barked as the light beams of the massive tunnel cleaner flared, nearly blinding Alisa.
“Climb what?” she demanded, scrambling backward, away from the machine. Not that it would matter. It was turning slowly around the corner, but it would pick up speed soon—it must have been zipping along at twenty-five miles per hour in the other tunnel. Leonidas might be able to outrun it, but Alisa and Alejandro never could.
“The side of the tunnel.” Leonidas gripped her and lifted her from her feet, thrusting her at the wall.
The ancient stones were jagged and uneven, but she would hardly consider them a ladder. But she did not argue. She did her best to find a grip. Would it be enough? The cleaner rolled toward them, nearly touching the ceiling with its bulky automatic control cab. Brushes and blades whirred, sweeping and chipping away the accumulated sediment and organic matter. With the ominous grinding in her ears, Alisa scrambled up the rough wall, her toes wedging into gaps between the stones where mortar had cracked and fallen away in pieces.
The cleaner rumbled toward her, picking up speed as it moved away from the corner. She slipped, cursed, and recovered, nails breaking painfully as she dug them into the crumbling mortar.
“Isn’t there an override or command to turn that thing off?” Alisa asked in frustration. “Surely even the empire doesn’t want its city sewer workers getting eaten by the machinery.”
“If you were a legitimate worker down here, you would have a remote control to deactivate the automatons,” Alejandro said from the wall beside her. He was slipping even more than she, struggling to find hand and toeholds.
Alisa glanced behind her. Leonidas stood in the center of the tunnel, facing the oncoming mechanical beast.
“What are you doing?” she blurted as she climbed higher, imagining him being smashed beneath the massive construct. Even with his enhanced cyborg bones, he surely could not withstand being run over by a five-ton machine.
“Go,” he ordered, almost yelling to be heard over the noise. “To the ceiling, to where the arch starts.”
“Arch?” Alisa glanced up.
She was close to the top of the wall now. It did arch in the middle, rising a few feet higher there than at the sides of the tunnel. Maybe there would be room if she reached that gap and could somehow hang upside down as the cleaner swept past below. All she needed was to turn into a spider to manage the feat…
Cursing, she climbed as high as she could, to the point where she could see over the cab of the cleaning vehicle. With the headlights blinding her and utter darkness behind it, she couldn’t see much else, but thought the machine dipped down in the back. Maybe there was a cargo area?
Bits of mildew and slime sheered from the walls and smacked her face as the huge swirling brushes approached. She tried to climb higher, but her foot slipped, and she almost fell off the wall. With terror surging through her limbs, she found the strength to hang on.
As the top of the cab drew closer, she sucked everything in, hugging the wall. She prayed it would rumble by below her instead of knocking her from her perch.
The lights passed first, and Alisa thought she might be safe. Then the corner of the cab hammered her in the back. She tried to hang on, ignoring the pain of the blow, but gravity fought against her. She tumbled backward, horror coursing through her body as she imagined the blades and brushes sweeping her under the machine where she would be crushed. If she died down in this nameless hell, her daughter would never know what had happened to her.
But she only fell inches, onto the top of the cab, then bounced off something protruding from it, some vent pipe. She tumbled away and fell, not down in front of it and into the sweepers but down behind it. She landed on a flat metal surface.
She held her breath, expecting some giant cleaning appendage to smash into her. Bits of slime and shards of mineral deposits struck her, plastering her face, but nothing larger came near her. Corrugated metal vibrated beneath her back. She was in a cargo bed.
A grunt of pain came from above her, followed by someone tumbling down from the arched ceiling, almost landing on top of her. Alejandro. He slammed into the bed next to her, his foot clobbering her leg. Given that she had thought she would be pulverized under a machine a moment earlier, it was a small pain to endure.
“Apologies,” Alejandro said.
“You’re forgiven.”
A soft clank sounded, something landing on top of the cab.
“Leonidas?” Alisa asked.
She spotted him crouching up there. He must have jumped and landed on top of the cleaner. He slid around the vent pipe and joined them in the cargo bed.
Gradually, Alisa’s hammering heart slowed as she realized that none of them were going to be smashed. More than that, they were getting a ride.
She scooted out of the middle of the bed and put her back to the cab so she could see behind them—not that she could glimpse anything in the blackness back there. A soft breeze tugged at her wet hair and clothes, created by the cleaner. It had returned to full speed and was cruising down the tunnel. Alisa had no idea where it would take them, but she would settle for anywhere away from the people trying to catch them.
No, not catch them. The soldiers had been shooting at them in that stairwell.
One of the men scooted over to sit beside her, his back also to the cab. Alisa wrinkled her nose. They might be in a dry tunnel for the moment, but the stench of the sewer clung to them all.
“To think,” she said, “I was feeling bad for Beck because he got left outside of the library. Now I think he was the smart one, deliberately getting himself in trouble with security so he could avoid this.”
“Better than getting in trouble with the imperial army,” Leonidas said dryly. He was the one who was sitting beside her.
Alejandro grumbled something from the other end of the cargo bed, though she coul
dn’t make it out over the continuous grinding of the machine.
“I believe he’s thanking us for coming to help,” Alisa said, offering a possible translation.
“Actually, he was cursing,” Leonidas said.
“Cursing us?”
“No, cursing in general.”
“I didn’t think holy men were allowed to do that,” Alisa said.
“I wasn’t thanking you,” Alejandro said, “but you’re right that I should have been. You both risked your lives to help me. I appreciate that. I’m just frustrated that I’d barely started to use the library when those men showed up, following me around. It was alarming enough when it was plainclothes people. But having soldiers after me is worse. And somewhat perplexing. Although, now that I think about it, perhaps it isn’t.”
“Care to explain?” Leonidas asked.
“This… mission of mine, it’s not anything I would have chosen for myself. It was someone’s dying request. I am, quite frankly, a poor candidate for it, given my background. I thought that at the time, and I believe it even more now that so many people know about it and are after me.”
Alisa shifted her weight uneasily, hoping he wouldn’t imply again that she was the reason people knew about him and his orb.
“He knew it, too, I think,” Alejandro continued. “That I was a less than ideal candidate. But I was the doctor with him there at the end, and he had few options.”
“Who?” Alisa asked.
Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut so Alejandro might have forgotten she was there. Even though they had been through numerous binds now, he always seemed to remember that she was Alliance, through and through. Not someone to be trusted with secrets.
Leonidas surprised her by repeating the question. “Yes, who?” he asked.
Alejandro hesitated. “Do you truly need to know? Here?”
Here was probably code for: with the former Alliance officer listening.
“They may still be after us,” Leonidas said. “If we get into a shootout… Those are my former colleagues, Doctor. I don’t want to shoot them, not for something I don’t understand. I’ve trusted you to a degree thus far because I know you worked for the emperor’s family once, but if you’re on some quest for personal gain…”
Alisa blinked. Alejandro had been the personal physician to the emperor’s family? Had Leonidas known that all along? Or had Alejandro admitted it to him somewhere along the journey?
“I’m not. As I said, it was a dying man’s wish.” Alejandro sighed. “It was the emperor’s dying wish.”
Leonidas did not respond right away, and only the sound of the perpetual grinding of the sewer cleaner filled the air.
“I suspect we had similar reasons for ending up on Dustor,” Alejandro went on. “Were you not also fulfilling a final order before the war ended?”
“I cannot speak of that,” Leonidas said.
“As I cannot speak of my mission.” Alejandro glanced at Alisa, his face just visible in the light that reflected from the tunnel walls.
“Not with me here, eh?” Alisa asked. “Want me to put my fingers in my ears so you two can talk?”
Alejandro did not smile. “I was sworn to keep the mission a secret until I completed it and could hand the result over to the proper person.” He spoke vaguely, but now he met and held Leonidas’s eyes. Leonidas nodded back once, solemnly, and Alisa suspected the words hadn’t been quite so vague to him. “You have my word,” Alejandro continued, “that none of this is for personal gain. I own a lovely house by the seashore in Farmington, and there’s physical gold and diamonds there, enough that I can retire and needn’t worry about exchange rates or the fate of the imperial morat. My wife had me set everything up, back when I was making good money as a surgeon.”
“You’re still married?” Alisa asked, eyeing his sodden robe. Weren’t Sun Trinity monks supposed to be celibate? Or was that robe just a disguise? Maybe he had chosen it in the hope that people wouldn’t suspect him of being on some clandestine mission.
“No. It’s been over for ten years. My wife did not appreciate my long hours and my dedication to my work.”
Silence fell, Leonidas not asking any more questions. Had Alejandro given him enough? He seemed so loyal to the empire that Alisa would not be surprised if he would give his life to help Alejandro with his quest, even when Alejandro had refused to help him with his quest, whatever it was. Leonidas was a good man. The fact that he was loyal to the other side didn’t change that. She wondered what it would be like to have someone like that loyal to her. Or at least working for her for a fair amount of pay.
A silly thought perhaps. He would probably leave soon, perhaps going with Alejandro to help him with his orb quest, even though he knew nothing about it. And what would she do once they left? Report everything she had seen and heard to her own government? It seemed disloyal, since she was starting to think of these men, especially Leonidas, as friends. But what if Alejandro’s mission could help the empire regain control? What if he sought some ancient Starseer artifact with great power? There were legends of such things, though they hadn’t been seen for centuries and might not exist at all.
“Who do the soldiers belong to now?” Leonidas asked. “The emperor and his son are dead. I’ve been off world for too long and haven’t had a chance to read up on the news. Who’s in power on Perun?”
“Is he dead?” Alejandro asked. “The son? I’ve wondered that.”
Leonidas’s shoulder moved next to Alisa as he shrugged. “They say he didn’t get out when the palace was bombed. Even if he did, he’s ten. Far too young to rally troops around him and try to take back some of the stolen planets.”
Stolen? Liberated was more like it.
Alisa managed to keep her mouth shut, hoping the men would forget her allegiance and speak freely, but barely.
“No, if he was still alive and safe, he would need a regent to advise him,” Alejandro said, “and I don’t know who that would be. The corporations all had their hooks in the emperor, their smooth-talking representatives insinuating themselves as advisors. There was nobody Markus could have trusted, which I think he knew, in the end. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t name a regent. Or maybe he just never expected to die.” Alejandro lifted an arm, a resigned gesture. “To answer your question, Senator Bondarenko is in charge of Perun and commands those troops now. He toyed with naming himself emperor, but I don’t think he could get the support. A lot of the factions are holding out, thinking the prince might be found and that a new government could be formed around him.”
“And Bondarenko would be against that happening,” Leonidas said.
“Oh, I’d say so. The rumors suggest that he had a hand in betraying the emperor, in handing the location of the off-world hidden palace to the Alliance so they could launch a surprise strike at him.” Alejandro looked toward Alisa.
“Don’t look at me. I was just a pilot. I wasn’t a part of that attack.” Granted, she had heard about it and had been a part of the epic assault on the chain bases that had distracted all of the imperial forces, drawing them away from defending the emperor.
“Bondarenko knows about the orb then,” Leonidas said.
“Apparently.”
“And he wants it for himself.”
“Apparently,” Alejandro repeated.
Alisa thought Leonidas might press him again, trying to find out what the orb was for, but he did not. No, he was a good soldier, probably used to obeying orders and being a pawn of the higher-ups. Even though none of this had anything to do with her, it irked her that Alejandro wouldn’t tell Leonidas the whole story when he had proven his loyalty to the emperor and even to him, coming to help Alejandro simply as a favor.
She leaned against Leonidas’s shoulder, in part because she was tired, and it was easy to do so, but in part because she wanted him to know… she didn’t know what exactly. That she supported him? Could she? So long as it didn’t involve betraying her own government, perhaps she could.
<
br /> He shifted, looking down at her. Maybe he would tell her to move, that he didn’t want her support—or for some scruffy Alliance pilot to lean on his shoulder.
Instead, he said, “I apologize.”
“What?” Alisa frowned up at him.
“For losing my temper with you back on the streets, when we were looking at the destroyed lots.” He paused, gazing into the darkness behind the cleaner. “It reminded me of the early years of the war, of being a ground officer and walking through devastation left by the Alliance. There were many other places like that, places where the bodies hadn’t yet been moved away, the rubble cleared. People were dead and dying, some soldiers but some civilians caught in the middle of the fighting.”
“Oh,” Alisa said, not sure what else to say.
He had apologized, but he also made her feel to blame, because her side would have been responsible for the horrors he had seen. She had seen atrocities perpetrated by his side, and knew the empire had been no less destructive, but she hadn’t been a ground troop. She hadn’t often seen buildings razed, people left to die in the ruins. She had seen destruction of ships in space, but distance had always made those deaths seem less real.
“I used to live in an apartment building on that empty lot,” she said. “My husband was there when the bombs dropped. I didn’t learn about his death until months later, from my sister-in-law.”
She wasn’t sure why she blurted the confession. So far, she had kept her losses to herself. Bitterly, she realized it had been more of a desire to one-up what he’d seen in the war than a need to tell him for the sake of telling. He shouldn’t blame her, because she had lost more than he had, at least more than he was describing. Seeing strangers dead was horrible, but losing one’s family was worse. He shouldn’t be blaming her for anything, damn it. Not when worse had befallen her because of the war.
Alisa swallowed and looked away, wishing she could retract the confession. She didn’t want sympathy or anything else from him. Her reason for sharing had been petty. It seemed to cheapen Jonah’s death.