He shot a glare at the walkway above as he steadied himself and reset for another attack.
At first, Alisa didn’t understand the reason for that glare, but then it registered. She lowered her arms and focused on Abelardus, who was leaning against the railing and smirking.
“I don’t need your help,” she said.
“I couldn’t refrain. You were fantasizing about pounding him in the chest, and I wanted to help. I fantasize about that too.”
“If you want to spar with Leonidas, you can come down here and do so. Don’t use me as your conduit.”
“I’m just trying to help you feel successful.”
“Go away.”
Abelardus rolled his shoulders into a shrug and ambled back into the heart of the ship.
“You were fantasizing about pounding me in the chest?” Leonidas asked, touching a pectoral muscle.
“I fantasize about a lot of things involving your chest. That’s what you get for teasing me by walking around shirtless.”
“Do you want me to put it back on?” He waved to the railing.
“Absolutely not.” She glanced toward Stanislav, reminded that they weren’t alone. But he had his back to them, staring at the corner, or perhaps that fat black chicken, as he meditated. “Let’s do some more.”
“Why don’t we shift to ground-work and throws?”
“Throws?” she asked skeptically, picturing the times she’d seen him and Abelardus hurling each other across the hold and against walls.
“I’ll do you, and then you do me.”
“You know that sounds naughty, right?”
His brow furrowed in puzzlement.
“Never mind,” she said. “If I get to throw you, I guess it’s worth it.”
“I’ve seen you fight before, so I know you already know how to fall. Go ahead and attack. I’ll throw you, and you can see how little it hurts in armor. It’ll make you less tentative in battle.”
“People don’t usually call me tentative.”
“You’re not when you’re flying.” He lifted his eyebrows. “To the chagrin of your passengers.”
“Ha ha.” She raised a fist, definitely ready to attack. She still thought she might be able to slip through his defenses, even without Abelardus’s help.
He let her punch several times before he caught her wrist and twisted, planting his hip against her abdomen so quickly she barely registered it. Before she knew it, she was flying over him and to the deck several feet away, rolling several times before she came to a stop on her back. He was right that it didn’t hurt, but she still felt stunned by how quickly everything had happened. The armor let her limbs move faster, but how did she ramp up her brain to follow along faster?
A figure in a spacesuit came into view, looking down at Alisa as she lay on her back.
“I don’t think your armor is working,” Mica observed, tucking her helmet under her arm.
“No? I barely felt that.”
“But aren’t you supposed to be the one throwing him now? You’re in armor, and he’s not. You should have the advantage.”
“Yes, but he’s special.” It sounded like a reasonable argument.
“What happens when we meet other special opponents that want to kill us?” Mica asked.
“We point Leonidas at them. Special should battle special. Besides, we’ve seen him getting thrown up against walls lots of times. I don’t think it’s considered embarrassing.”
“He throws his opponents three times as often as they throw him.”
“Is that what’s required to avoid embarrassment?”
“At least a one point six ratio,” Mica said. “And I think it’s more about avoiding death than embarrassment.”
“One point six?”
“The Golden Ratio. Don’t you know anything?”
“I didn’t know that applied to combat.”
“It applies to everything.” Mica walked past Alisa and headed for the stairs. “Are those my parts?” she asked Leonidas.
“Yes,” he said, offering no opinions on how he felt about throwing ratios.
“They’re not doing any good in here. As a proper engineering assistant, you should have delivered them to me.”
“Assistant?” Leonidas asked. “I thought I was in charge of mounting the weapons, and you were assisting me.”
“You thought you were in charge? Captain, haven’t you taught this man how relationships between men and women work?”
Alisa rolled to her feet, the movement easy in the armor. She didn’t even need to use her hands. “Aren’t you two engineer and security chief right now? Not man and woman?”
“Well, the engineer surely outranks the security chief.” Mica picked up the sack, rooted through it, and stuck some small metal parts to her magnetic boots.
“I don’t think that’s true,” Leonidas said. “As section heads, we should be of equal rank.”
“Section heads? We don’t have sections full of people to command.”
“I have Beck.”
“I wouldn’t brag about that.”
Leonidas arched an eyebrow.
“Besides, he’s far more of a chef than he is a security officer.” With her parts collected, Mica headed back toward the airlock. “I’ll expect you back in your armor in ten minutes and out there to help me finish with the installation before some enemy materializes out of the ether to attack us.”
“It’s probably a good idea,” Alisa said, joining Leonidas and patting him on the back. “You can throw me around some more later.”
“I look forward to it.” He bowed.
“I’m looking forward to throwing you around even more.” She grinned, just in case the innuendo occurred to him, if not now, then perhaps later.
“Alisa?” came Stanislav’s soft voice from the corner. He rose to his feet and met her eyes with a frown. “We have company.”
Alisa looked toward the cargo hatch. She was about to ask for clarification when Beck came into view, his dyed blond hair artfully arranged to stick out in all directions. He waved at her while maneuvering a hoverboard up the ramp.
“Grocery delivery,” he announced. “Though they didn’t have as many of the staples as I’d hoped. Also, while I appreciate you giving me a grocery allowance, Captain, given how many people are on board these days, you should have been more generous.”
“I thought I was generous.” Alisa eyed the bags and crates on the hoverboard. There seemed to be plenty there for the eight-day round trip flight to the Kir Asteroid Belt, along with extras in case they were delayed. Or came back with more passengers than they arrived with, such as several young children… “What staples weren’t you able to get?”
“Their hydroponics section had some wonderful-looking fresh pineapple, galaxy fruit, and new quince. Oh, and I would have loved to get the blue salmon from the fish farm. I could have come up with an amazing glaze for it.”
“Those don’t sound like staples. Did you get rice, beans, and rat bars?”
Beck curled his lip. “Likely made with real rats, yes, but only because you were adamant about stocking inferior and tasteless shelf-stable food.”
“Uh huh, you got my chocolate, too, right?” Chocolate was definitely a staple.
“Several kinds.”
“Good man. It sounds to me like the shopping mission was a success. Here, I’ll help you unload—”
“Alisa,” Abelardus blurted from the walkway.
She grimaced up at him. Hadn’t he gone away?
He wore a concerned expression instead of a smug one as he looked down at her. “The Staff of Lore. I can feel it.”
“What?”
“I feel it too,” Stanislav said. “That’s what I intended to inform you about.”
“It’s here? At the station?”
“Not at the station yet.” Abelardus pointed at a bulkhead. “It’s out that way, I think. Tymoteusz and his people must be approaching.”
“No,” Stanislav said. “They’ve stopped.
They’re hovering in space and considering the station.”
“The station or us?” Alisa asked. “And what are they doing here? Are they following us somehow?” She squinted at Stanislav, thoughts of how he might be a spy returning to her mind.
“I don’t know why Tymoteusz would,” Stanislav said slowly. “You no longer have the staff, nor do you have Prince Thorian.”
Alisa shuddered, reminded that Tymoteusz apparently wanted to kill the prince because of some delusional vision he’d had. The Alliance wanted the kid dead, too, so he couldn’t grow up and raise an army with which to reestablish the empire. She had no idea how the remnants of the empire felt about the prince, but maybe they wanted Thorian dead too. That Senator Bondarenko on Perun might want to ensure nobody could come in and take his power away. Alisa felt sorry for the poor kid—ten years old, and the entire system wanted him dead—but she felt even sorrier that her daughter was with him. What if Jelena were hurt—or worse?—simply because she was standing next to Thorian when a grenade or assassin was sent his way?
“That’s not going to happen,” Alisa muttered to herself.
She murmured to the AI in her helmet to turn on the comm. “Mica? Better finish up out there quickly. We have a visitor.”
“Someone special?” Mica asked.
“Very special.”
Mica sighed. “It always is.”
Alisa took off her helmet and strode toward NavCom. She had a feeling she was about to find out if she could fly the ship while wearing her armor.
Chapter 2
Alisa slid into the pilot’s seat and pulled up the rear camera on the view screen, zeroing in on the section of space where Tymoteusz’s ship hung. It was, indeed, the same craft he had been using when he flew away from the volcano—and the Starseer temple—on Arkadius, a compact gray ship large enough to carry a few people on interplanetary flights, but there wouldn’t be room for extra cargo. She supposed that staff was all they needed.
She was tempted to comm Station Control to ask if they could bump up their departure time, but Mica was still out on the hull, finishing the weapons installation. Besides, would they truly be safer flying out into space on their own? At least here, attached to the station, it seemed less likely that the chasadski would open fire on the Nomad. If they did, the station would surely defend itself, not wanting to suffer damage of its own.
“What are they doing out there?” Abelardus wondered, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat beside her.
“You tell me, Lord Telepath.” Alisa stuck her helmet on the deck under the console, glancing around NavCom for a place where she could pile the rest of the armor if she removed it. Not that she planned to do so with Abelardus lurking. She didn’t have much more than underwear on underneath it.
“They’re not close enough for me to attempt to contact them,” Abelardus said. “Not that I would want to initiate a chat with chasadski traitors. You should call Stanislav up. I’m sure he doesn’t mind mental chats with his brother.”
Alisa wouldn’t be surprised if Stanislav and Tymoteusz were already having mental chats, but Stanislav would not admit it if they were.
“He’s in the same ship he had on Arkadius, isn’t he?” Abelardus asked. “He won’t have many people along.”
“Does he need many?”
“Depends on what he wants to do. The Staff of Lore does, obviously, give him access to a great deal of power. If he’s here to avenge himself upon you, he wouldn’t need a large crew.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She grimaced. Would he truly come after her because her people—Leonidas, specifically—had removed his bomb from the temple and destroyed it, thus ruining his plan to sink one of the planet’s continents? He could have killed her when they’d crossed paths in that volcano. He had let her live then. Of course, that had been before she’d thwarted his plan.
“I always imagined that irate imperial soldiers would be the ones who wanted to avenge themselves upon me.” Alisa checked the sensors again. The chasadski ship was well outside of weapons range, but that might not mean much. Assuming Tymoteusz was as powerful as, or more powerful than, Stanislav, he might be able to make her brain blow up from three suns away. “Not grumpy Starseers with god complexes.”
Leonidas appeared in the hatchway, his armor on, save for his helmet.
“You’ve done more to irritate your own people of late than you have to irk the empire,” he said. “What remains of it.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“You even won over one of their formerly high-ranking military officers by being…” Leonidas considered her thoughtfully.
“Sexy and seductive?” Alisa suggested, ignoring an eye roll from Abelardus.
“Stubborn.”
“You’re such an unabashed flirt, Leonidas.”
He stepped inside and touched the side of her head, stroking her hair.
“Isn’t there a rule against cuddling in NavCom?” Abelardus grumbled. “Because if there’s not, there should be. This is a professional place, and we could be in trouble. Tymoteusz has the power to destroy this entire station, you know.”
“Even if it’s not on a fault line?” Alisa asked.
“Earthquakes aren’t all that staff can do. Not that shaking all the bolts out of a space station wouldn’t sufficiently destroy it.”
“You’re as optimistic as Mica. I would suggest that you pursue a relationship with her, but she would shoot me if I did that.”
“She’s busy canoodling with—”
“The ship is moving,” Leonidas said, sliding into the fold-down seat behind Alisa and tapping the sensor monitor.
“Toward us?” Alisa glanced at Abelardus, wondering if he could sense Tymoteusz’s motivations.
He shrugged. “I have no idea what his intent is. As I said, the individual chasadski are still too far away for me to sense. Besides, the power of the staff obliterates the auras of everyone around it. I wouldn’t be able to read any of their thoughts even if they were closer. From what little contact I’ve had with the chasadski, they’re all extremely powerful. Someday, you ought to ask your dad what he’s really been up to for the last thirty years.”
Alisa gave him a sharp look. “What do you know?”
“I just have suspicions. I doubt he got that powerful twiddling his thumbs by himself in some solitary refuge.”
“Even if he was meditating and studying for all of those years?”
“You don’t get better at manipulating people without practicing on people.”
“Captain,” came Yumi’s voice from the corridor. She slipped into NavCom with her sister, Young-hee, right behind her, the latter in a black Starseer robe, with her black hair swept back into a bun. She might have appeared regal and severe, especially for someone who couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two, if not for the white chicken feathers scattered on her sleeve and soot on her cheek. Had she been using Yumi’s improvised laboratory for something? “Young-hee says she can feel—”
“There he is,” Young-hee growled, thrusting her finger toward the view screen. “That slimy bastard. Are we going to find a way to fight him? To punish him for stranding our people in the jungle and nearly destroying our temple?” She propped her fists on her hips and looked at Abelardus.
“Er, I would be happy to destroy him, especially if it involved getting the staff back,” Abelardus said. “But I’m not in charge here.” He looked at Alisa, which led Young-hee and Yumi to look at her too.
“I was contemplating how best to hide from him,” Alisa said.
“Hide?” Fists still on her hips, Young-hee spun toward Yumi. “You said if we stayed aboard, we would have our chance to capture that megalomaniacal criminal.”
Alisa arched her eyebrows. Had Yumi been the reason several of the Starseers had wanted to stay aboard? Alisa certainly hadn’t promised any of them that the Nomad was heading off to capture people. True, she had told Abelardus she would help him get the staff back, since she felt g
uilty for allowing it to be stolen from her ship, but that would be after she found Jelena.
Yumi intertwined her fingers. “All I said was that we were heading toward the Kir Asteroid Belt, that the Myers-Donald Nine comet is also heading this way, and that the soothsayers are predicting that its possible crash into the asteroids might be a sign of portentous events coming to a head.”
“Have you been smoking that purple grass you’re growing?” Young-hee asked.
“Only enough to ensure its efficacy, since I intend to sell it to fund more supplies. Are you upset that I didn’t share? You seem tense.”
“Yumi always thinks everyone seems tense,” Alisa said.
“The ship isn’t heading straight toward us,” Leonidas said, watching the sensors instead of the sisters. “It’s circling the station and appears to be heading for an empty berth.”
“Maybe Terrible Tym just needs to pick up some staples,” Alisa said.
“Salmon and pineapple?” Leonidas murmured.
“I was thinking of intellicuffs and torture implements. Do megalomaniacal criminals like pineapple?”
“If he’s going aboard the station,” Young-hee said, “maybe we can set a trap for him.”
“I’m not setting a trap for anyone carrying around a super weapon,” Alisa said. “He defeated your entire temple full of people, right? What makes you think we’d be a match for him?” She waved to include Leonidas and Abelardus, since her biggest assets, at least when it came to fighting, were right here in NavCom. It wasn’t as if she could depend on Stanislav to fight his brother. Besides, he’d gotten himself beaten up and left in a meadow the last time he’d tried that.
“He caught us unaware,” Young-hee said, frowning. “The point of setting a trap would be to catch him unaware.”
“What if he’s reading my mind right now and knows everything we’re planning?” Alisa asked.
Young-hee's frowned deepened. “Can you tell if he is?”
“I can’t tell anything. I’m a grub, or so Ostberg informs me. But if the past is any indication, my mind is honey to Starseers. They can’t keep their telepathic paws off it.” Alisa looked at Abelardus.