It sounded like an android, but Alisa couldn’t tell if it was the same one she had communicated with—and battled against—before.
“Hello, Explorer,” she said. The ship was flying so close now that she had no trouble reading the name on the hull. “Is this Captain Echo?”
“It is. We’ve met before.”
“Yes, I remember. Is there something I can help you with? You’re flying close enough to suck my ship’s exhaust.”
“Technically untrue, Captain. Exhaust particles dissipate in space at a rate of—”
“What do you want?” Alisa interrupted.
“Despite certain difficulties faced last month, my employer still seeks the Staff of Lore. I believe you’ll lead my team to it.”
“Do you really? Or are you desperate because your employer is getting cranky and you have no idea how to find it yourself?”
The android hesitated. Maybe his employer was cranky. “I find it statistically probable that you will lead me to the staff, due to your dalliances with Starseers known to have the staff. It is impractical for us to fly randomly around the asteroid belt while hoping for a chance crossing.”
“You don’t think that’s what we’re doing?”
“I cannot know with certainty, Captain. I am observing you while I consider that very conundrum.”
“Well, here’s the truth,” Alisa said. “I have Starseers aboard, and they do have an idea as to where the staff is. I’m willing to have the person who can sense it direct you to the Starseer ship that is carrying the staff while we continue our own search.”
“You seek something in addition to the staff?”
Alisa didn’t want to seek the damned staff at all. “I do, yes. My daughter. She’s out here somewhere.”
“I believe you are uncomfortable with our presence, Captain, and that you do not want competition in acquiring the staff.”
“I am uncomfortable with your presence, but not because of anything to do with the staff. Didn’t your maker tell you it’s rude to stalk women around the galaxy?”
“No.”
“Well, it is. If you change your mind about wanting directions to the staff, let me know. But I may not be willing to extend the offer indefinitely.”
The channel closed before she cut it off.
“That was a waste of time,” Alisa announced.
“Likely so,” Leonidas said.
“I love it when you agree with me.”
He tilted his head toward the holo map. “Continue on to the next asteroid on the list.”
“I love it less when you give me orders.”
“Her love is fickle, isn’t it, cyborg?” Abelardus asked.
They both ignored him.
“If we find our people hiding there,” Leonidas said, “I’ll deal with the androids if they try to take the children away from us.”
“While I get excited about the idea of you being surly with androids, I don’t want to put Jelena in the middle of a firefight.” Alisa fiddled with the tip of her braid while glowering thoughtfully at the ships tailing them. “Yumi, is there anything in this asteroid field that could be used as… I don’t know. A way to distract these androids?”
“I’m not certain what that might be, Captain.”
“How about an abandoned floating weapons platform that we could board and use to blow up every enemy in the asteroid belt?”
“I didn’t see that on the map,” Yumi said dryly.
“Damn.” Alisa caught Leonidas eyeballing her and shrugged. “There was a space station. Why couldn’t there be a super weapons platform?”
“There are some abandoned mining facilities,” Yumi said.
“Facilities with lots of tunnels dug out inside of the asteroids?”
“Presumably so.”
“See if you can find one with lots and lots of tunnels inside,” Alisa said. “Something large enough for us to fly through.”
“I’ll see what’s in the sys-net database.”
“Hoping to lead them into a maze and get them lost?” Leonidas asked.
“If they follow me, they deserve what they get.”
“Androids won’t get lost easily.”
“What if we try out your e-cannons to collapse a tunnel on them?”
“It would be difficult to collapse a tunnel in the zero gravity environment of an asteroid,” Yumi said.
“Good point,” Alisa said, “but let’s visit one of these mining facilities. Maybe something will inspire me.”
“I think our time would be better spent continuing to search for the children,” Leonidas said. “We may have to check a hundred more asteroids before we find them.”
If they were out here at all. Alisa tamped down that thought, preferring to believe they were here and it was just a matter of time before she located them.
“Or they may be in the next one,” she said. “I don’t want a firefight going on around them. Yumi?”
“Yes, I’ve located a large mining asteroid that isn’t too far from here. It has a diameter of over twenty miles, and according to the database, was mined for gold and ahridium more than a hundred years ago.”
“Corporations coming in without permission and robbing my people of the minerals from the remains of the planet that was once ours,” Abelardus grumbled.
“Technically, that asteroid was purchased by Stardust Excavations Unlimited,” Yumi said.
“Nobody had the right to sell it. I bet that asteroid was a Starseer potato farm once.”
“Sounds like as good a place to get androids stuck as any,” Alisa said.
Abelardus gave her a sour look.
Yumi transferred the coordinates to Alisa’s netdisc, and the holo map adjusted, a new red dot joining the others, glowing more brightly.
Alisa headed toward it. “Let’s see how you androids like spelunking.”
Chapter 13
Alisa guided the Nomad through a gaping hole at the end of the asteroid and into a vast cavern that had long ago been hollowed out. Leonidas watched pensively from the seat next to her. He hadn’t objected further to her plan, but he did not appear pleased with the delay. Alisa wasn’t pleased with the delay, either, but she was even less pleased with android ships plaguing her like zits in need of popping.
“I don’t suppose we have a map of the interior?” she asked as the asteroid field disappeared behind them and darkness closed in from all sides, suffocating in its density. The running lights of the Nomad played over a chiseled rock wall as she followed it. Alisa couldn’t yet see tunnels, but she imagined they would find some, that the entire asteroid couldn’t be hollow inside.
“All I have is what the sensors can detect of the surrounding terrain,” Yumi said. “There’s no map in the public domain. It’s likely that Stardust Excavations has kept them in its private logs. The company still exists, if you’re curious. I looked.”
“Great, let’s comm them up and see if they’ll send a map.”
“We could try, but the delay—”
“I know. I’m still waiting to hear back from Hawk. We’ll just go exploring and hope we get lucky.” Lights glowed on the rear camera as the first of the android ships followed the Nomad inside. “And hope they don’t,” she added.
“Are they all following, Yumi?” Leonidas glanced toward the sensors.
“The two yachts are hovering outside right now,” she said.
“If we can take out the leader, would the others retreat?” he mused. “Or would they carry on with their mission?”
“Do you want me to comm and ask?” Alisa asked. “I think Captain Echo finds me charming.”
“Didn’t he hang up on you earlier?” Yumi asked.
“Because he was overwhelmed by how much charisma I exuded.”
“Transferring the sensor reading to your netdisc,” Yumi said, refraining from commenting on Alisa’s charisma.
Alisa accepted the transmission, and a rough map of their surroundings replaced the asteroid belt on her netdisc’s ho
lodisplay. It revealed three tunnels at the end of the massive cavern, each tunnel large enough for a mining ship to trundle through. More importantly, large enough for the Nomad to pass through. Losing their pursuers would have been easier if the freighter had been smaller than the treasure-hunting vessels—she might have found tiny tunnels where the androids couldn’t follow—but the opposite was true.
She chose the leftmost passage at random. It curved upward, and the Nomad’s lights reflected off something metallic up ahead. Alisa’s first thought was that they were glinting off ore still in the walls, but a huge hulk of machinery blocked the passage.
Cursing, she reversed the thrusters. They almost ran into the machine, some kind of mobile drill that was no longer mobile. It looked like it might have floated around in the asteroid for years before becoming lodged.
“Think we can squeeze through on that side?” Alisa asked, eyeing the object.
“Shields are up, right?” Leonidas asked, glancing toward the console in front of Alisa.
She touched the indicator. “Yes.”
Leonidas leaned toward the controls that Mica had wired up to the e-cannons. Before Alisa realized what he was doing, he fired several times. White flashed as the energy blasts slammed into the drill.
“What are you doing?” Alisa blurted, as shrapnel pelted the sides of the tunnel and the Nomad’s shields. She would have backed them up had she known he meant to do that.
Or maybe not, she amended, as she saw the treasure-hunting ship’s lights on the camera coming up behind them.
“Now, you can squeeze through,” Leonidas said, waving to the pulverized machinery floating in the passage, none of the pieces larger than a meter across now.
“So generous of you to accommodate,” Alisa said, nudging the Nomad forward.
His eyes twinkled as he looked over at her.
“Been waiting for a chance to play with those, have you?”
“It’s important to test fire one’s weaponry before using it.”
“Is it,” she murmured, resisting the urge to make a dirty comment. He wouldn’t catch the innuendo anyway. Probably. Maybe that would change for him going forward.
“The sensors should have seen that drill,” Yumi said, “regardless of whether it was powered down. I’m going to run down to engineering and grab a couple of tools for calibrations.”
“Don’t let Mica’s pessimism squash you while you’re there.”
“Never,” Yumi said brightly and waved.
Alisa continued slowly down the passage, hoping they did not run into more obstacles. She imagined being forced to back out of the tunnel, which would also force the android ship to back out of the tunnel. Unless it got tired of patiently following and took the initiative to attack.
The tunnel continued on, the scored-out walls not as inspiring as Alisa wished. She wasn’t sure what she had hoped to find in here. A nice incinerator chamber, perhaps.
A chiseled-out chamber opened ahead, cluttered with dilapidated equipment ranging from pickaxes to a mining ship three times the size of the Nomad, all floating in the gravity-free machine graveyard.
“I wonder…” Alisa mused, eyeing the massive ship. “If the androids can’t sense the staff the way our Starseers can, could we pretend to take a field trip in there, as if we believe the staff has been hidden inside, and lure the androids in? If they hooked up to its airlock and sent a crew in to beat us to the prize, and we then left as quickly as possible, getting out before them, could we then blow up the ship? Or the tunnel that led us here? Leaving them stuck inside? At least until they can burn their way out with blazer fire or whatever they have?”
“We couldn’t pretend to take a field trip,” Leonidas said. “They have sensors and will be able to tell if we send people aboard or not. Also, if I were them, I’d wait to see if you found the staff, and then capture you and board you afterward.”
“You’re draping a wet blanket all over my brilliant schemes, Leonidas.”
He spread one of his gauntleted hands. “There’s little to be gained from this cat-and-mouse game and much to be lost.”
Alisa veered toward the mining craft, ignoring the old tools pinging off her shields.
Blocky and long, with a huge cargo hold taking up the back nine-tenths of it, the ship sported several gaping holes in the hull. It floated at a diagonal, not that up and down mattered much without gravity to deal with. She spotted an airlock hatch and flew toward it.
Aware of Leonidas watching her, she brought the Nomad in close. “I know you’re thinking I’m crazy, but I’m not committing to anything yet. I just want to see what their ship does. And if the two others come in here too.” They had fallen off the monitor, the mineral-laden rock diminishing the Nomad’s sensor range.
“I wasn’t thinking you’re crazy,” he said, his gaze toward her. He shifted it away, toward the weapons controls. “I was thinking inappropriate thoughts, actually.”
“Inappropriate?” Alisa asked, intrigued even though she was watching the android ship sail into the chamber and head in her direction. “That’s the word you use to describe my sense of humor. I find it hard to believe you were thinking humorous thoughts while we’re in the middle of a problematic situation.”
“Humorous, no.”
She arched her eyebrows at him.
“I was—” He cleared his throat. “I was thinking that you’re sexy when you scheme.”
“I’m always sexy,” she informed him with a grin, even if it wasn’t particularly true. She felt flattered that he was having such thoughts of her, inappropriately timed or not. Indeed, her own mind flashed back to the night before, sitting on the edge of his bunk while his hands roamed freely. Appropriateness was overrated. “I appreciate you having the thought. And I appreciate that you can have the thought now.”
“I’m not sure you should. These thoughts have been growing increasingly difficult to push aside. At first, I found them novel and appealing, but now, I fear they’re inconvenient and distracting.”
“What, you don’t want to think about sexy women while you’re battling an android?”
“Certainly not,” Leonidas said.
The two other android ships flew out of the tunnel and into the chamber. Ah, yes. This was her chance to trap them if she could come up with something. She had to try.
“Maybe you can appreciate your lustful thoughts later,” Alisa said, committing to lining the Nomad up with the airlock on the mining ship and extending the tube. She lowered their shields to make the connection, hoping she wouldn’t regret it. “In your bunk.”
“That would be a more appropriate place for them.”
“I believe he appreciated them there this morning,” Abelardus said, ambling into NavCom. “Vigorously.”
Leonidas glared at him.
“What were you doing?” Alisa asked. “Watching him?”
“I’m keeping an eye on him because I’m concerned about your safety. When he’s vigorous, he’s dangerous.”
“Do you have a reason for being up here? I asked you to see if your people could do something about those ships.”
“Yes, and Ostberg says he might have located a couple of crucial points inside of the lead ship. Something that looks like it’s important to the engine lubrication. Either that, or it’s a beverage dispenser.”
“Uh, what?” Alisa asked.
Abelardus shrugged. “That’s what the spigot reminded me of.”
“There may be a reason you’re only a beer brewer for your people.”
“Beer brewing is noble and takes an exquisite touch. As I have.” He tapped his fingers together. “Come find out when you tire of your overly vigorous cyborg.”
Yumi squeezed past him, tools in hand, raising an eyebrow in his direction.
Abelardus shrugged and said, “Ostberg wanted to know if he could come up to NavCom and speak to you directly.”
“You mean he asked permission before barging in on me? I didn’t know Starseers knew how to do
that.”
“He’s young and timid.”
“Send him,” Alisa said, waving for him to leave, not only because he was annoying her but because the head android ship was sidling up to the wreck within spitting distance of the Nomad. “What’s he doing? There’s not an airlock in that spot.”
“There’s a hole in the hull,” Leonidas said. “It’s not as if there will be life support inside or that the androids would need it, regardless.”
“There are a few holes, yes, but they’re relatively small. I wonder…” Alisa eyed the wreck, a few thoughts percolating through her mind. One of the yachts had stayed back near the tunnel entrance, but the other was coming in close, perhaps looking for another spot where its inhuman crew might enter. “An android would go over without a spacesuit, right?”
“Most likely.” Leonidas gave her a you’re-thinking-of-something-shifty look. Or maybe she could now re-designate that to his you’re-sexy-when-you’re-thinking-of-something-shifty look.
“Mica?” Alisa commed.
“You can’t have any more of my tools if that’s what you’re asking,” Mica said.
Yumi, the sensor panel open as she tweaked something inside, frowned over at the comm. Alisa wondered if she’d had to barter or plea before being allowed to check out tools.
“I was wondering if you could make some gas.”
“Depends on how Beck’s food sits with me.”
“Ha ha. I was thinking of something explosive.”
“And I wasn’t?” Mica asked.
“Preferably something that’s not easily detected. I’m not sure what kind of olfactory senses those androids have, but I don’t want them getting suspicious ahead of time.”
“As I recall,” Yumi said, “we didn’t see Captain Echo in person, but the android that boarded the ship was a Steinway-Thomas 5580, less than two years old, so a newer model. Some of the androids modified specifically for mining purposes do have enhanced olfactory senses for detecting problems in tunnels, but that’s not a standard feature. Most have slightly better than human detection abilities in regard to smell.”
“So, a non-smelly gas, Mica,” Alisa said. “Nothing visible either. And a lot of it. Enough to fill up the cargo hold of that giant ship over there.”