“You think there might have been some more artifacts in it?” Alisa asked. “Radioactive artifacts?”
“I believe non-radioactive artifacts go in a display case,” Mica said, “not a lead box.”
Alisa gave her a flat look. “I just meant that we don’t know what was in there if they didn’t look inside.”
“There wasn’t time,” Leonidas repeated, but he looked distressed that he couldn’t give her an itemized list of the contents.
She squeezed his hand again. “I’m sure there wasn’t, especially if Beck was in danger of being ripped into bits.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have admitted that,” Beck grumbled.
“If the androids did have radioactive artifacts aboard,” Alisa said, “were they the artifacts from the pilgrim ship? Or were they different artifacts?”
“You’re being loose with that term, aren’t you?” Mica asked. “Artifacts? I saw a plaque and a bunch of space junk.”
“Old space junk.” Alisa remembered the helmet. She could imagine it in some collector’s display case, a radiation-squelching display case. “Abelardus called everything there an artifact, and he’s our expert on Starseer things.”
Mica did not look impressed.
“Are you implying that the android ship might have been following us?” Alejandro asked, plunking another piece of shrapnel into the bowl. “That it came upon the pilgrim ship and then veered off to track us?”
“I don’t know,” Alisa said. “That shouldn’t be possible. We destroyed that homing beacon back on Arkadius, so nobody should be able to follow us.”
“Maybe the androids are out here collecting artifacts independently of us,” Beck said.
“Or maybe someone leaked the news of their existence to numerous people,” Alejandro said.
“I know we’ve talked about that and blamed Abelardus—and you’ve blamed me—but does that even make sense? Why would he want anyone to get there before we do? Before he does? I don’t know who those androids work for, but I doubt it’s Lady Naidoo or the Starseers.”
“Why not?” Beck asked. “They had money, as evinced by the tips I got for my duck skewers, and they didn’t seem to be afraid to use technology.”
“True, but they’re so secretive. It seems like they would handle artifact hunts on their own.” Alisa shrugged, admitting that this was nothing more than intuition. She had no proof.
Abelardus poked his head through the hatchway. He seemed to be one of the few who had escaped the battle unscathed. He must not have landed on his shoulder when the android had hurled him.
He looked toward Alisa, frowned at her handclasp with Leonidas, and said, “I came to see if you’re all right, Alisa.”
Leonidas frowned back at Abelardus, or perhaps at his use of her first name.
“Just me?” Alisa asked, tilting her head toward Beck, Mica, and Leonidas.
“You’re the one getting pieces of metal pulled out of your back.”
“Ah.”
“It looks painful. Too bad your bodyguard didn’t get back a few seconds sooner, eh?” Abelardus flicked his fingers at Leonidas.
Leonidas’s grip tightened on Alisa’s hand, but he seemed to realize it right away, because he loosened it, extracting his fingers. She lamented that Abelardus’s words made him want to do so, but also would not want him holding her hand if he got angry and inadvertently squeezed hard. She well remembered him smashing that drone with his grip, a drone that had been sturdy enough to withstand a lot of hits from blazer bolts and bullets.
“If you’re referring to Leonidas,” Alisa said, “he was busy disabling the android’s ship so we could escape.”
“A shame for your back that he couldn’t have done it faster.”
Alisa started to shift up onto her elbows, tempted to point out that Abelardus had been the one who she’d been depending on to help her in the cargo hold, but Alejandro touched her back, pushing her back down. It was just as well, since she did not have a shirt on.
“I’m not done yet,” he said. “Relax.”
Relax. As if that was easy with Starseers and cyborgs around.
“We came as quickly as possible,” Leonidas said.
“I guess,” Abelardus said. “It’s not your fault you’re not that quick anymore. You probably were when you were younger.”
Leonidas’s eyes closed to slits.
Alisa almost rolled her own eyes. The last thing she needed was for them to get into a fight in the middle of sickbay.
“Abelardus, could you go check on Yumi and the other ship?” Alisa asked. “See if it’s still being repaired?” She doubted the Explorer remained within range of their sensors, but it was as good of an errand to send him on as any other.
“Actually, that’s what I came to see you about,” Abelardus said, “in addition to wanting to check on your well-being.”
“What is it?” Alisa asked, far more concerned about those androids than her well-being.
“The ship finished its repairs and is flying again.”
“I don’t suppose Captain Echo is flying back to his employer.”
“He’s coming after us.” Abelardus shrugged. “Sorry.”
He withdrew from the hatchway, disappearing up the corridor.
Alisa let her forehead thump down onto the table and groaned.
Leonidas touched the back of her head. “I do regret that I wasn’t quicker and didn’t make it back before you were injured,” he said quietly. “I should have known you wouldn’t stay in NavCom.”
“Not when there are holes in my ship, no.”
She lifted her head, but he was walking away. He looked back as he ducked through the hatchway, the regret he had spoken of visible in his eyes. She clenched her fist as he disappeared, wishing she could punch Abelardus for saying those things. It wasn’t as if Leonidas or anyone else was her keeper. If she got shot—or filled with shrapnel—that was her fault, not anybody else’s.
“Captain?” Yumi asked, speaking over the comm. “The enemy ship has come into sensor range again. It’s following us.”
“So I’ve heard,” Alisa muttered, letting her forehead thump down on the table again. “So I’ve heard.”
Chapter 12
Alisa gingerly put on a fresh shirt, trying to do it without lifting her left arm. The painkillers kept her back from hurting too much, and her shoulder itching had subsided somewhat, but she did not want to jostle the patches of QuickSkin all over her back. She felt like the Nomad, all patched up but far from one hundred percent. Mica lay on the exam table now, about to receive some of Alejandro’s ministrations.
Alisa needed to get to NavCom to check on their pursuer, but she made herself pause and say, “Thank you for your services, Alejandro.”
He grunted at her, busy sanitizing the instruments he had used for plucking shrapnel from her back. Mica hadn’t received nearly as many pieces, but she had a couple.
“You’re as talented as you are gracious,” Alisa said.
“Go make sure that other ship doesn’t get my orb,” Alejandro said, waving toward the counter where the box sat. Somehow in all of this, Abelardus had let him start toting it around again.
“I wasn’t going to blow it up,” Alisa said.
Alejandro grunted again. Was that a sign of acknowledgment? Of agreement? Of something lodged in his throat?
“I suppose Captain Echo knew that too,” she said, buttoning her shirt. “He didn’t seem that worried. Are androids programmed to be good at poker?”
“I was not overly worried either,” Alejandro said. “Perhaps you are not a good poker player.”
“You weren’t worried? Is that why you were foaming at the mouth, and Abelardus had to restrain you?”
“Even the penitent man is ultimately uncertain of his place in the heavens.”
“Captain,” Mica said, “I believe I hear the NavCom computers beckoning to you.” She made a shooing motion.
“So long as that other ship isn’t beckoning.”
>
Alisa grabbed her jacket, scowled at the holes in the back and the blood staining it, and left sickbay. She swung past the laundry chute and dropped it in, hoping the automated system could clean and repair it. Even if the Alliance had been even more of a problem to her lately than the empire, she would hate to lose her flight jacket.
Yumi and Leonidas were in NavCom, pointing at the sensors and talking.
“Any new developments?” Alisa asked, slipping past Leonidas to take her customary seat.
“The Explorer isn’t traveling as quickly as it was before,” Yumi said, “but it’s still gaining on us.”
“Everybody gains on us. Freighters aren’t meant to be fast—or to be used for secret missions into dangerous space.”
“We’re getting close to the coordinates,” Leonidas said. “They should be scannable by the long-range sensors soon.”
“At which point, we get to find out if there’s anything there, or if you’ve led us into the middle of nowhere.”
“If it’s the middle of nowhere, an odd number of people are finding it alluring right now.” He tapped the display. “Another ship just popped onto the sensors.”
Alisa propped her arm over her backrest and looked, though there wasn’t much to see yet.
“Make that three ships,” Yumi said, as the Nomad continued to fly in that direction.
“Four,” Leonidas said a few seconds later. “Five.”
“Just give me the final tally,” Alisa said, trying not to feel bleak and overwhelmed.
She had expected to find ships at the coordinates and told herself not to be surprised. The Alliance had been out here to place those warning buoys, so it was reasonable to assume some of their ships would be inside, investigating whatever had caused them to create the quarantine.
“And let me know as soon as you can tell if they’re Alliance ships,” Alisa added. “I’m assuming they are, but we could be dealing with more corporate-sponsored treasure hunters too.”
She did not know which would be worse. The Alliance could shoot at the Nomad because it was ignoring the quarantine. Treasure hunters could shoot at them because they were competition—or because they, too, had excellent scanners, such as the android ship, and could detect the orb aboard.
Long minutes passed with nobody speaking. The Nomad drew closer to the armada of ships, and the Explorer drew closer to it.
“They are Alliance ships,” Leonidas confirmed. “There are one, no, two warships.”
“And the others?” Alisa asked.
“Those look like imperial research vessels.” He touched the display, and details popped up in a column of text. “That’s a medical ship. Also imperial. Presumably these were all stolen by the Alliance.”
“You mean they were taken as spoils of war.”
“I know what I mean,” he said, giving her a cool look.
Alisa almost made a joke, but stopped herself. He might be willing to hold her hand while a surgeon was poking around in her back, but their pasts and their loyalties were always going to stand between them. Insurmountably so? She didn’t know. She still hadn’t figured out if he thought of her as anything more than a friend. A friend whose hair he sometimes touched.
A beep came from the control console. Alisa spun back to face it.
“Anyone want to tell me why the proximity alarm is going off?” She hadn’t realized the Explorer was closing so quickly. From its previous course and speed, she had expected to reach the coordinates before it caught up.
“It’s the Explorer,” Yumi said. “It sped up.”
“Because it’s feeling perky, or because it doesn’t want us and the orb to reach the Alliance?” Alisa tapped a button and took the ship off autopilot. There wasn’t much she could do that it couldn’t when they were flying in a straight line, but she tried to nudge more power out of the engines.
“Perhaps it perkily doesn’t want the orb to reach the Alliance.”
“I’m hoping the Alliance doesn’t know about the orb and doesn’t know about us.” Alisa supposed that was too much to hope. “Or at least that it’s too busy doing what it’s doing to notice us. Though it would be nice if I could convince them to get the androids off our butts.”
“How are you going to do that?” Leonidas sounded wary.
Maybe he was wondering if she thought she could barter him to the commander again in exchange for help. No, that did not sound like a good idea, perhaps because Abelardus wasn’t up here, fiddling with her mind.
She glimpsed movement in the corridor in her peripheral vision. Abelardus walked into NavCom with his staff.
“Great,” she muttered.
“He’s getting close enough to fire,” Yumi said.
Alisa raised the shields. She drummed her fingers next to the comm button as she debated on reaching out to the Alliance ships. What could she say to convince them to help instead of shooting her? She had no way of knowing if they had shot that first disabled ship they had seen, or if the salvage tug had attacked it before looting it, but she would like to think the Alliance wouldn’t blow people away without a warning. Perhaps that was naive thinking, considering they’d had no trouble trying to annihilate the Starseer temple as soon as they had found it.
“One of the Alliance warships is turning away from the coordinates and heading in our direction,” Leonidas said.
“Our direction? Not the Explorer’s direction?”
“Our direction,” he repeated firmly.
“Abelardus, if we need you to, are you ready to trot your mind powers out?”
“Always ready for that.” Abelardus smirked at Leonidas, not appearing worried about their situation.
Alisa shook her head. Every male on this ship had dubious sanity.
The Nomad shuddered slightly as the first energy blast tapped the rear shields. The Explorer was not yet in optimal range for firing, and the blow was barely more than a nudge, but the attacks would only get worse from here. And who knew what the Alliance ship planned?
“I’m not reading anything at the coordinates,” Yumi said in a puzzled tone. “Those ships are all sitting around, looking at empty space.”
“A mystery I’ll be happy to join you in contemplating once I’m sure we’re not going to be blown to atoms.” Alisa tapped the comm. Instead of saying anything, she sent out the preprogrammed distress call.
She adjusted the Nomad’s course slightly, heading straight toward the warship. She tried not to feel like she was heading into the muzzle of a cannon.
The Explorer fired again, several times. Alisa cursed, torn between taking evasive action, insomuch as she could in the bulky freighter, and simply keeping the best speed possible and continuing toward the warship.
“What ship is that?” Alisa asked, checking the shield power. The hits were coming harder now as the Explorer closed.
“According to its digital ID… the Storm Fury,” Yumi said.
Alisa started. “We ran into them last month at Perun. That’s Commander Tomich’s ship.” A hint of hope stirred in her breast, but she squashed it, having no idea if Tomich would help her a second time. “Assuming he’s still there and didn’t get transferred or demoted after letting us go,” she added in a mutter.
Another e-cannon blast struck the rear shields, this time with enough power to make the ship quake.
“I can’t do anything to convince androids to leave us alone,” Abelardus said, making a disgusted noise. Maybe he had tried. “And we’re not close enough for me to fiddle with the ship’s weapons and try to render them inoperable.”
“How close would we have to be for that?”
“Close.”
The shields dropped below fifty percent power. Alisa took the Nomad into a series of evasive maneuvers that would work wonderfully with a tiny Striker. With the freighter, it probably looked like a lumbering cow rolling around in a field.
The warship was taking its time reaching them, and she still didn’t know if it would help them or hurt them.
&nb
sp; The comm flashed. Alisa pounced on it. It was the Alliance warship.
“Captain Marchenko here.” She tried to sound calm instead of frantic. “If you’d care to lend your assistance, Storm Fury, we would be most grateful.”
“You are illegally trespassing in a clearly marked quarantine zone,” an unfamiliar female voice said.
Alisa winced. What if Tomich wasn’t the commander anymore?
“We had no choice,” Alisa said. “We were chased into it by that civilian ship. It’s attacking us without provocation.”
She wondered if Captain Echo was on another line with the warship, giving a different version of the story.
“If you could lend us some help,” Alisa added, when nobody responded, “we would be extremely grateful.”
The Explorer fired again, sticking to her rear like a zit. Her wild maneuvers caused the e-cannon blast to merely clip them instead of hitting them full on, but the remaining shield power dipped inevitably lower.
Alisa veered toward the warship, which was close enough now to see on the cameras. It loomed ahead of them, huge and imposing. She wished she knew if it would help.
“Abelardus,” Alisa whispered. “Is there any chance you could find a susceptible mind at the weapons console over there?”
“I think the warship is about to fire,” Yumi said, her eyes wide as she leaned back from the sensor display. “Am I correct in assuming that our shields won’t withstand that?”
“You’re correct.”
Leonidas frowned at the camera display that held the warship, scrutinizing something.
“Abelardus?” Alisa asked. “That gunner?”
“I’m trying to pick him out,” Abelardus said. “They have dozens of people on their bridge.”
Twin torpedoes launched from the bow of the warship. Alisa’s breath caught in her throat. Were they heading toward her? Toward the Explorer? Toward both?
“They’ll pass us,” Leonidas said.
And they did. They streaked past on either side of the Nomad, close enough to make even the bravest captain see her life flash before her eyes.