“I work here now,” Leonidas said.
“On this dingy, dented freighter?” Tiang looked at the dented cabinets and wrinkled his nose in Alisa’s direction.
Surprisingly, Mica glared frostily at him. She was usually the first one to mock the Nomad, but maybe it was different when the insults came from an outsider.
“Are you trying to imply that Tomich’s warship is a better home?” Alisa asked. “Because I’ve seen him land ships before. If that one is any less dented than this one, it’s only because he has a fast-acting team of mechanics with welding torches and hammers.”
“Now, now, Alisa,” Tomich murmured. “You know commanders don’t have to land their own ships.”
“Is that why they promoted you? To save hangar bays all across Alliance space?” She shut her mouth before she could say more. She felt defensive about her ship, but she did not truly wish to insult Tomich. The snobby admiral, on the other hand…
“That might have played into Command’s decision,” Tomich said.
“Seriously, Colonel,” Tiang said, ignoring the jibes and focusing on Leonidas. “Please, join us. Did you not wish to speak with me? Before I was called out to this situation, I was working on something you might find interesting. Did you know the Alliance is investing funding into creating a cyborg program? Perhaps you could offer some feedback, based on your own experiences.”
Alisa expected Leonidas to scoff and say that he had no interest in helping the Alliance with anything, but after a moment of hesitation, and a last look around the room at the soldiers, he lifted his hands to his helmet. A soft snap sounded as he undid the fasteners. He set the helmet on the counter next to him.
None of the soldiers reacted strongly, but a couple of the men who had been leaning nonchalantly stood straighter now.
“You worked with Dr. Bartosz for a time, didn’t you, sir?” Leonidas asked.
It was strange hearing him call someone sir. Even though he must have done it to superior officers in the fleet, the Nomad had yet to run into any of those on its adventures.
“I did,” Tiang said. “When I was a younger doctor, before I got so heavily into research, I even assisted with a few of the surgeries.”
Leonidas stepped forward, his eyes intent. Did he think the admiral had some of the answers that he had hoped to find on that station?
Tiang’s eyes were also intent, almost calculating. He wasn’t up to something, was he?
“Sit,” Tiang offered, waving for his science officer to scoot aside. “Have some food with me. Tell me if you’ve experienced any troubles over the years, things we should avoid if possible if we do another generation of military cyborgs.”
Leonidas took another step, and Alisa found herself noticing his helmet, the way it was now several paces away from him. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe the admiral was truly curious about him, but her senses, her simple intuition twanged.
“Leonidas,” she said. “Perhaps you and the admiral could discuss this later. I believe Tomich wanted to tell us about what his people are doing out here.”
“That’s not exactly why we came over,” Tomich said dryly.
“Colonel,” the admiral said, rising to his feet. “Let’s talk privately for a few moments, shall we?” Tiang gestured toward the corner of the mess hall.
Leonidas hesitated, and Alisa wondered if he shared some of her suspicions about the officer’s intentions. But for some reason, a gleam of hope brightened his eyes, and he followed Tiang around the table and to the corner. They started talking softly, the admiral gesturing expansively.
“Alisa,” Tomich whispered. “Are you working with them or for them?” He nodded toward Leonidas. “I can’t help but notice that nobody has you tied up.”
“Not yet,” Mica muttered. “I think she’s hoping for that eventually.”
Alisa elbowed her. “I’m just a captain carrying passengers,” she told Tomich. “I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I got involved in a quest I have no interest in. All of this is getting in the way of my own… mission.”
“So, you’d consider it a favor if we got rid of some of your passengers for you?”
“No. They paid their fare.”
Tomich squinted in puzzlement. Alisa groped for a way to explain that she did not want Alejandro or Abelardus here, but she wasn’t willing to betray them, not when Leonidas was tangled up in the equation.
“Even the cyborg?” Tomich asked, nodding toward Leonidas.
“Especially him.”
“In taking them on, you’ve been working against our people.” Tomich leaned forward, his hands doing something under the table. Fiddling with a napkin? “What happened at Arkadius? The reports say that you fought with the Starseers against the Alliance.”
Alisa took a deep breath. This was her chance to come clean, to explain everything. “I—”
A faint clink came from under the table. Alisa started to lean back to look under it, but Leonidas barked, “Gas!”
“Get them,” Tomich ordered his men, surging to his feet.
Leonidas whirled toward his helmet, looking like he would leap over the table and everyone sitting there to get at it. Admiral Tiang lunged away from him, and Leonidas switched directions. He caught the man by the throat.
“No,” Alisa blurted, confused as to what was happening, but if he killed an Alliance officer…
The soldiers in the room and in the corridors raised their weapons at him. Leonidas put his back to the corner, pulling the admiral against him to block the soldiers’ line of fire. The men did not shoot, but they all looked ready to do so at the first opportunity.
“Are you truly going to kill me, Colonel?” Admiral Tiang asked, his voice only slightly affected by the hand around his throat. Leonidas wasn’t grasping him tightly. “I believe I know what you want. I may be the only one who can give it to you.”
Leonidas eyed his helmet on the other side of the mess hall. Alisa worried about moving with all of those fingers on triggers, but she slid under the table and crawled toward the other side. If she could reach the helmet and throw it to Leonidas, he could protect himself from whatever gas he had detected—and protect his head from fire.
She bumped something as she navigated between moving boots—Tomich and the science officer were shifting to stand, to get out of the way. A spherical canister rolled away from her. Tomich had dropped that—she was sure of it. Nothing to be done now. She held her breath as she crawled out from under the table on the far side and leaped to her feet. She lunged for the helmet, but someone caught her from behind.
Instinctively, she drove her elbow back, not bothering to look at who had her. It sank into someone’s stomach with satisfying force, and a pained male grunt sounded in her ear. She jabbed her would-be captor again, stomped on his instep, and whirled, following the attack with a palm strike to the sternum.
Tomich stumbled back, his legs catching on the bench. He crashed down to the deck, leaving Alisa with a view of Leonidas and Tiang as Leonidas pushed the admiral down and leaped away from him, toward the soldiers.
The squeals of blazer fire erupted, and streaks of crimson and orange leaped through the mess hall. Those without weapons and armor dropped to the deck. Alisa started to grab Leonidas’s helmet, but he would never see her, never catch it if she threw it. He had hurled himself into a knot of armored soldiers in the corridor, trying to drop them while also keeping them in the way of their comrades’ fire.
A hiss-clink came from the other corridor, and smoke started spewing into the mess hall.
Benches toppled to the ground. Alisa crouched, trying to stay out of the way as she reached for her Etcher. The weapon wasn’t there. She hadn’t brought it to dinner.
Tomich recovered and scrambled for the corridor that led to the cargo hold. With Leonidas battling the soldiers there, he couldn’t get through, so he pressed his back to a wall. He dug something out of his pocket and stuck it into his nostrils. Filter plugs. He had come prepared. The soldiers migh
t not have known this was an ambush, but Tiang and Tomich surely had.
Alisa took a step toward him, not caring that she had no weapon. She would punch him again if she had to, rip out the plugs and make him breathe his own gas. So far, she did not feel the effects of anything, but smoke rolled into the room, and she still didn’t know what was in the canister Tomich had unleashed under the table.
More soldiers charged into the room. Beck roared and leaped toward one, his dagger in one hand and his pistol in the other. His apron flapped about his thighs. The weapons would be useless against men in armor.
Mica and Yumi made their way over to Alisa, crouching beside the counter to try and stay out of the way of fire. Abelardus reached a corner, putting his back to the wall, and took a deep breath, his eyes narrowing as he focused on the battle.
A soldier jumped out of the corridor, escaping Leonidas, and reached for Alisa. She kicked out, but only connected with an armored shin. Striking it hurt, even through her boot. A hand latched onto her shoulder.
Beck was flung onto the table. He bounced off, upending it as he fell, all of his food pitching to the deck. Alisa tried to twist away from the man grabbing her shoulder, but he only tightened his grip. Then an invisible force struck her, hurling her into the air, along with the soldier and two more men. It seemed like the entire contingent of soldiers was in the mess hall. Why hadn’t Leonidas flattened them by now? What were ten to one odds to him?
As Alisa flew over the table and neared a wall, something invisible softened her landing. The soldiers hit hard, armor crunching, but she only bumped it and slid to the deck. Abelardus saluted her from across the room, then focused on another group of soldiers.
Alisa spun toward NavCom. If she could get up there, she could fly them away from the airlock, strand Tomich and his admiral here, and keep the Alliance from getting what it wanted.
She ducked the grasp of a soldier reaching for her, but he was fast, his speed enhanced by his armor. She had to turn the duck into a drop down to the deck. A wave of energy slammed into the man, helping her escape. She scrambled to her feet, again veering toward NavCom.
A soldier ahead of her gripped Mica from behind. She thrashed wildly, kicking at anyone who came close, but she could not escape.
Alisa hesitated, wanting to help, but what could she do? She glanced back, expecting to find that Leonidas had mowed down most of the soldiers and was running in to help them. Instead, he lay on his back on the deck, his eyes staring upward, unblinking.
She stumbled and nearly fell. What the hells? They hadn’t… They couldn’t have… killed him?
Tomich leaped over Leonidas’s fallen form, pushing the admiral ahead of him. The science officer had already disappeared, heading back toward the cargo hold and the airlock. Alisa wanted to run after them. They weren’t armored. She could pummel them senseless. But two soldiers lunged toward her. Another was on the deck, wrestling with Abelardus amid a mess of spilled food. She hated to leave Leonidas and the others, but she would only end up captured if she stayed.
She whirled and sprinted through the smoke choking the corridor and to NavCom. It was full of even more smoke, a grayish-green miasma.
She reared back, holding her breath and clamping her mouth shut as soon as she realized the threat. She couldn’t smell anything, but that did not mean much.
Footsteps thundered on the decking behind her. Alisa lunged into the murky smoke, spinning to grab the hatch. She tried to shove it closed, but an armored hand reached inside, clasping the wall. The owner of it struck the hatch with his shoulder, and it was thrown open. It bumped into Alisa hard enough to throw her back. Her head cracked against the bulkhead near the sensor station, and her precious air escaped.
A soldier jumped inside. She tried to dive away from him, still hoping to reach her controls, to veer away from the warship, but he caught her easily. He had his armor to assist him, and she had nothing. Worse than nothing. Her movements felt sluggish, and she feared she had already inhaled some of that gas.
He hefted her over his shoulder as if she weighed nothing and turned back toward the corridor.
“Tomich,” Alisa yelled, giving up on the idea of avoiding breathing the gas. “You’re a worse dinner guest than you are a pilot!”
She lamented that nothing snappier came to mind. It probably did not matter. Was he even on the ship anymore? Or had he and his duplicitous admiral escaped?
As the soldier maneuvered her through the hatchway, she caught a glimpse of the view screen through the smoke. Before, only stars and the hull of the warship had been visible on it. Now, out where the other ships hovered, something new was visible. Or something very old.
A dark space station spun in place, the axis-and-wheel design that had been common after the Order Wars, after mankind returned to space but still had to use fancy tricks to create artificial gravity. It had been at least three hundred years since anything like that had been built.
Alisa tried to get a better look, but her captor toted her into the corridor. She growled and thumped her fists on the soldier’s back. Even without his armor, she doubted it would have done anything. She thumped him again out of frustration.
“Let go,” came a cry from the direction of the crew and passenger cabins. Alejandro. Such an anguished and drawn out, “No!” followed that she thought he was in true pain.
Then a soldier said, “Got it,” his voice muffled by his helmet, and she realized what had happened. More than that, she realized what this entire chat must have been about. Getting the orb. Tomich and his people were no better than the treasure-hunting androids. At least the android captain had been upfront and honest about what he wanted.
Her captor dropped Alisa in the mess hall next to Beck and Mica. Both of them lay sprawled amid the spilled food, their eyes closed. Abelardus was unconscious in the corner next to two armored soldiers who also appeared to be out. Alisa lifted her head—it was so heavy she could barely manage it. Her eyelids kept trying to droop shut. It would be much easier to lay her head on the deck than to continue to fight. What was the point? The Alliance had won. Shouldn’t she be happy? What did she care about Starseer artifacts?
Except she did care about Leonidas, and he still lay in the mouth of the corridor, his frozen eyes staring upward. His helmet was uselessly back on the counter where he had left it. Where that damned admiral had tricked him into leaving it.
“Don’t be dead,” she whispered. Her lips and tongue were so numb that it came out in a jumble.
Someone dropped Alejandro next to her, a gag in his mouth and ties binding his hands behind his back. His form blocked her view of Leonidas. She tried to lift her head again, to see over him, but she couldn’t manage it.
Her eyes shut, and she slumped to the deck, succumbing to unconsciousness.
Chapter 14
Alisa awoke to someone nudging her shoulder. She opened her eyes, squinting against light that seemed far too harsh. Her first thought was that she had woken in some blindingly lit brig or interrogation cell, but she soon realized she was still on the deck in the mess hall. The lights only seemed blinding because she had a hellish headache. Her throat also felt thick and phlegmy. She did not know what gas the soldiers had used on them, but she hoped to shove a giant canister of it down Tomich’s throat one day.
She forced her eyes fully open, trying to focus on the blurry red figure in front of her.
Red! Leonidas?
“Alisa?” he said softly.
It was him.
“You’re alive,” she croaked.
He sighed. He did not sound nearly as enthused about the fact as she.
“Tyranoadhuc gas,” he said. “They came prepared to deal with me.”
“Yeah,” she said, struggling to sit up even though her head throbbed. Leonidas helped her. “Tomich dropped it. I saw him fiddling under the table, but I wasn’t nearly suspicious enough. He was one of the commanders at our Perun moon skirmish. He must have heard all about you from the crew of that
salvage tug.”
“The smoke that came later was a sedative,” Leonidas added. “That’s what got you and the others. I don’t think I breathed in as much, since I was flat on my back with my lungs barely working.” He made a disgusted noise, directed more at himself than at the situation, she guessed.
Glad for his arm holding her upright, Alisa peered around the mess hall. There was food spattered everywhere, including on the walls and even the ceiling, but someone had turned the table and benches upright. Leonidas must have been waiting for someone to wake up. Abelardus, Mica, and Beck were still out. Alejandro was awake and had been untied, but he hadn’t moved from the spot where the soldiers had dropped him. He sat with his knees drawn to his chest, his hands over his head, his position one of utter dejection.
“I should have kept him as a shield,” Leonidas grumbled.
“Who?” Alisa asked. “The admiral?”
“Yes. But I couldn’t—I didn’t want him getting hit.” He sighed again. “I shouldn’t have left my helmet behind. I was lulled—I let myself be led aside, because I wanted to hear what he had to say. He used to be one of our people, and he’s one of the researchers familiar with cyborg tech. I wanted to trust him, even though I doubted…” He shook his head.
“I was surprised you seemed to care about the Alliance starting up a cyborg division.”
“I didn’t. What I want from him is personal.”
Beck groaned, and his fingers twitched.
“Dominguez,” Leonidas said. “Take care of the others.” He stood, lifting Alisa to her feet. “You should see this.”
Alejandro did not acknowledge him, but Leonidas guided her toward NavCom. Her legs barely worked, but his arm around her waist kept her upright.
“They got his orb,” Leonidas said.
“I heard. At least the android treasure hunters won’t have a reason to attack us now, right?”
His expression grim, Leonidas did not answer.
“Are all the soldiers off my ship?” Alisa wished she had gotten that chance to punch Tomich.