“Was your thigh integral in the sausage-making process?” Alisa asked.
“Of course. You can’t make decent sausages sitting down.”
“What about the stuff in the blue jar? If your thigh was integral in making that, it could explain a few things.”
“The blueberry balsamic sauce is amazing. I can’t believe you’re mocking it.”
Alisa caught a wistful expression on Tomich’s face as he gazed in their direction. Was he regretting that he did not work on the flight deck anymore, exchanging barbs with fellow pilots? His crew probably did not try to include their commander in their banter. Maybe she ought to try to suborn him, get him to leave the Alliance and work for her. That would make recovering the Nomad easier, and she could promise plenty of banter. Of course, it had taken her weeks to suborn Leonidas, and he’d surely only agreed to become her employee because the empire was mostly dead. She had better work on another plan for Tomich.
“Four minutes to destination,” the monotone pilot said.
“The radiation warning light just went on,” his co-pilot added.
“Finish dressing if you haven’t already,” Tomich said, as he plopped his helmet onto his head, “and make sure your seat buddy double-checks your kit. I haven’t been over here yet, but I’ve heard from the scientists that the radiation next to the station will fry you if you have anything exposed. I can only imagine what it’ll be like inside.” He looked at Alisa. “It’s going to be tough to sell the place as a tourist destination.”
“I’m sure the Alliance can do it with slyly worded brochures,” she said, then shifted toward Leonidas. “Will you be my seat buddy?”
She caught Abelardus rolling his eyes and resisted the urge to make a rude gesture. She would be crabby, too, if she had Alejandro for a seat buddy.
Alisa rolled her braid up behind her head and used a couple of pins to clip it back, then slid the helmet into place. The fasteners attached themselves with a hiss-sluuup. Leonidas stood up, waving for her to do the same, and checked the various fasteners around her helmet and boots.
“Do you want me to check you out?” she asked, waving to his armor.
“I thought you did that the first day we met him,” Mica said.
“No, that took at least a week.”
“I see. You wanted to be thorough.”
“Very.” She grinned at Leonidas, though the two faceplates between them muted the effect.
“Is she flirting with your cyborg?” Tomich asked Mica, sounding somewhat horrified.
“Yes,” Mica said. “He’s even more useful than my tools, so it was probably inevitable.”
“That’s high praise, Leonidas,” Alisa said. “How do you feel about it?”
“My armor doesn’t need a check. The internal sensors will let me know if anything is amiss.”
“You feel strongly, you say?”
“We’re almost to the station,” he said, nodding toward the view screen in front of the pilots.
“So it’s not the time for inappropriate humor?”
“Precisely.” He grabbed the blazer rifles that he had brought along, slinging one over his shoulder and keeping the other in hand.
“Does the cyborg ever flirt back?” Tomich whispered to Mica, his expression of horror shifting to one of fascination.
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Mica said, “but he does glare fiercely when other men get close to her.”
“I thought that was just his normal expression.”
“No, that’s just his typical glare. He reserves the fierce one for special occasions.”
Leonidas sighed as the shuttle glided beneath the wheel of the station, heading for huge doors on the hull of the axis.
“Do you miss the days when we were all afraid of you?” Alisa asked him.
“Occasionally.”
The rest of the shuttle crew finished suiting up, then watched in silence as the craft approached the station. The bluish-gray hull filled the screen, no hint of lights or life visible on the exterior. No glowing plaques, to Alisa’s relief. Despite appearing long-abandoned, the station did continue to spin on its axis. The shuttle matched its rotation, settling into an orbit that kept it alongside those big bay doors.
A bright yellow dot gleamed from atop the set of doors, and Alisa thought there might be lights on after all. Then she realized what she was looking at. A piece of the orb. It had been inserted into some alcove in the hull. She leaned to the side so she could see around the pilot’s head and spotted another piece. This one was tucked into an alcove on the left side of the doors.
“We thought sticking the four pieces into the matching slots would unlock the doors,” Tomich said. “But our research seems to have holes in it. We haven’t had any Starseer advisors.” He looked toward Abelardus.
Alisa thought about pointing out that Abelardus hadn’t advised anyone on much of anything, but the pilot spoke first.
“We’re lined up as good as it’s going to get, sir. You can leave anytime.”
“No airlock to latch onto?” Beck asked.
“No airlock that will let us in,” Tomich said. “How do spacewalks make you feel?”
“A little queasy, to be honest.”
“I’d advise against throwing up in your spacesuit. You’re not going to be able to take the helmet off for a while.”
“Thanks for the tip, sir,” Beck grumbled.
A clink sounded as something bounced off the hull, some debris. Alisa remembered that the artifacts the pilgrim ship had found had been plucked from outside of the station.
“This way,” Tomich said, walking past Leonidas and Alisa as he headed toward the rear of the shuttle.
Alisa started after him, but Leonidas made sure he went ahead of her. Abelardus jostled his shoulder, trying to go ahead of him, but jostling Leonidas was like jostling a mountain. It did not work, and Leonidas ended up at the airlock hatch right behind Tomich. Alisa let the men go first. What help was she going to be over there? Leonidas had given her a blazer pistol, but she couldn’t imagine there being anything to shoot at. It wasn’t as if energy bolts could clear out radiation.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Yumi asked, coming up to her side.
“Being forced to go along on a mission you can’t contribute to because the Alliance is paranoid?” Alisa asked.
“I might be able to contribute.”
“Oh? Did you bring along something soothing to mix into the water reservoirs of our suits?”
Yumi frowned.
“Sorry,” Alisa said, regretting her snark again. Yumi did not deserve it. “I’m nervous. And tetchy about my ship.”
“I should have brought you something soothing.”
“Undoubtedly so.”
“There’s enough room in the airlock for us to go across four at a time,” Tomich said. “I’ll go first with—”
“Me,” Abelardus said. “If we can get the doors open, the shuttle and the rest of the people can fly in.”
“I’m not sure we want the shuttle flying in, but all right. Abelardus, isn’t it? You come in the first wave. You, too, Sergeant Croix. And… Colonel Adler.”
Leonidas did not object. He strode into the airlock with the rest of the men.
“Should we be offended that we weren’t picked for that group?” Alisa asked.
“I thought you didn’t even want to go,” Mica said, joining Yumi and Alisa. Alejandro waited behind them. Beck had maneuvered his way into the group of Tomich’s soldiers.
“I don’t,” Alisa said, “but I like to feel as if I’m indispensable.”
“Unless that space station can be flown somewhere, I doubt they’ll need you.”
“You’re crushing my indispensability delusion.”
“I would be fine staying here and playing a round of Banakka,” Mica said.
Alisa looked at the proximity of the soldiers, made sure the comm was off in her suit, and lowered her voice to whisper, “How about instead, coming up with a plan for getting the
Nomad back and escaping the pursuit of five Alliance ships that are faster than we are?”
“I don’t see how that could happen. Don’t you think they’ll let us go once they have whatever treasure they’re seeking in there?”
“I think… it’s unlikely that Abelardus is going to let them have the staff. He and Alejandro both want it for their own reasons.”
“What they want isn’t going to matter much when they’re surrounded by Alliance soldiers and ships.”
“I bet Abelardus will try to influence Tomich, trick him maybe.”
“You think that will work?” Mica asked.
“Not indefinitely. At which point, we have to deal with getting back to our ship and avoiding pursuit.”
“Captain, the Nomad couldn’t outrun a garbage scow, much less a warship.”
“So you don’t have any ideas for a plan yet is what you’re saying.”
Mica frowned at her. “Isn’t that your job? As the captain of the ship?”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“Damn, I was afraid of that.”
“Next group,” a sergeant at the airlock said.
Alisa took a step, but four soldiers pushed past her to go first.
Alejandro sighed.
Alisa climbed onto a seat to look out a porthole on the same side of the shuttle as the station. Leonidas’s red armor was distinct as he stood above the door and perpendicular to the axis, his boots locked onto the hull. The rest of the soldiers, clad in matching combat armor, were impossible to identify, but only Tomich and Abelardus were out there in spacesuits. Alisa assumed the one fiddling with an orb piece was Abelardus. He had removed it from its niche and was studying it. She could now see the other three pieces of the orb, each nestled into niches at the cardinal points around the huge double doors.
She turned on her comm, and the chatter of the men filled her helmet. Most were making quips or complaints, nothing she would consider useful. Her spacesuit only offered her access to one channel, so she could not single out Leonidas to talk to him and get an update, at least not without everyone else hearing them.
A ker-thunk sounded, and the four soldiers who had gone into the airlock appeared outside of the shuttle. They pushed off to join the men on the hull of the station. Like Leonidas, they also carried rifles. One had a bandolier of grenades.
Alisa eyed a bag that Mica carried, wondering what she was bringing. Tools? Smoke grenades?
“Next group,” the sergeant manning the airlock said.
This time, Alejandro held up his hand and made his way to the front. None of the remaining soldiers objected.
Alisa hopped down, following in his wake, and Mica and Yumi went with her. They passed a bank of decontamination showers and turned into the dim airlock chamber. The sergeant closed the hatch behind them, and they waited for the interior to depressurize. Soon, the outer hatch opened, and Alisa had her best view yet of the station hull. The oblong core stretched up and down, and the wheel shadowed them from the faint light of Rebus, the nearest sun.
Alejandro stepped into the hatchway and pushed off. The shuttle had pulled close, and the station was the size of a ten-story building back on Perun, so it would be hard to miss. Still, nerves teased Alisa’s stomach as she floated through space, arrowing toward the red combat armor. She had always been fortunate that her stomach did not bother her in zero gravity, perhaps a side effect of having been born on a ship and spending so much of her life out here among the stars. But that did not mean that situations like this did not make her nervous.
Alisa landed next to Leonidas, her aim proving true. She shifted the soles of her boots so the magnets locked onto the hull.
Leonidas touched her back briefly as she stood upright beside him, the shuttle orbiting over their heads, but he did not say anything. He, too, might be cognizant of everyone else listening on the same channel.
“I think you’re going to have to do more than touch it, Starseer,” Tomich said. He was crouched above the doors next to Abelardus. “Nothing’s happening.”
“I assure you, I’m doing more than touching it,” Abelardus said stiffly. His gloved hand rested on the piece of the orb, which he had inserted back into its niche.
“Fine. I think you’re also going to have to do more than fondle it.”
“I’m using my mind to try a few things. Honestly, I thought it would open for me, just because of my blood.”
“Maybe your blood isn’t as special as you thought,” Tomich said.
“My blood is special. But I’m beginning to wonder if it will take someone with a closer link to Alcyone. If this was her station, her final resting place, maybe she didn’t want just any Starseer getting in. I suppose that could make sense since she was ostracized from what remained of the Order in the end.”
“Is that your way of saying that you can’t open the door? Because we haven’t had any luck cutting into the exterior. That hull is thick. It’s as if they built this station to withstand being pelted by asteroids.”
“I assume they didn’t want anyone to cut their way in,” Abelardus said. “Let me try a few more tactics.”
All the interest was directed at the top piece of the orb, so Alisa scooted down the hull to look at the one on her side of the doors. She doubted she could do anything the others could not, but the glowing artifact tugged at her with some invisible power, as it had the other times she had seen it outside of its case. All the hairs on her arms stood up, and she could feel gooseflesh rising all over her body.
The urge to gaze into the orb’s swirling depths was difficult to resist, and before she knew it, she stood above it, her eyes locked downward. The quarter piece lay snugly in a niche that appeared to have been designed to hold it. She remembered the puzzle-like protrusions on the inside of the pieces from the time she had seen the orb disassembled. Now, its snug and exact fit into the hole kept it from floating free. Or maybe some power she did not understand did that.
Drawn by something inexplicable, she reached down to touch the surface. For some reason, a memory flashed through her mind, the one where she’d been pressing a blazer pistol to the orb. She sensed something, almost a feeling of indignation.
She hesitated, her fingers a couple of inches from its surface. It would not zap her if she touched it, would it? She imagined herself being flung away from the hull and having to be rescued.
“Alisa?” Leonidas asked quietly. He had followed her along the hull and stood a couple of feet away.
Feeling more confident thanks to his presence, Alisa poked the surface with her finger. A tingle of power ran up her arm, but it did not hurt this time. She rested her gloved palm on the piece and felt warmth even through the thick material.
A flash of intense white light came from beneath her hand. Alisa stumbled back, almost losing her footing—and her boots’ grip on the station.
Leonidas grabbed her arm, steadying her. “What did you do?”
“I—”
The rumble of machinery beneath her feet interrupted her, the reverberations coursing up from the hull. Several of the soldiers, including Leonidas, whirled toward the doors, their weapons at the ready. Alisa could only stand and gape. Had she done something? Or had she simply been touching this piece of the orb when Abelardus had done something to the other one? That seemed more likely.
With a grinding that she felt rather than heard, the ancient doors rolled open, revealing a pitch-black hangar bay inside.
Alisa looked toward Abelardus, expecting him to bow and take credit for finding a way in. But he was staring straight at her. The faceplate made it hard to see his expression.
“You might want to put some more effort into looking up Stanislav when you have time,” he commented.
She stared back at him, puzzling through the ramifications of the words.
Leonidas was the one to respond. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” Alisa said. She hadn’t told him about her questionable genes, and she did not
want to do so now, not with a bunch of unfamiliar soldiers—and their familiar commander—looking at her. “Who’s the brave soul who’s leading the way in?” she asked, hoping to divert their curiosity.
Leonidas was the one to walk over the threshold of the doorway, heading into the blackness.
Chapter 18
The hangar bay was empty.
The soldiers directed flashlight beams all over the place as the team entered. Some of the men pushed off the walls, floating through the cavernous space until they landed on a floor or ceiling, but most of them chose the conservative approach that Alisa favored, walking along the walls and making sure one magnetic boot sole was solidly locked to metal before taking each step.
Leonidas strode ahead of her, but he looked back at her several times. She couldn’t help but think he was wondering about the doors. She was trying not to wonder herself. This was not the time to ponder how strange her life had become of late.
At Tomich’s direction, the soldiers waited when they reached the far end of the bay where a smaller set of double doors led deeper into the interior, another pitch-black interior.
Abelardus waved the men aside, indicating that he would go in first. Or at least Alisa thought that was his intent, until he looked at her and gestured for her to join him.
“Oh, I get to lead now?” she asked.
“It seems like a good idea to put the person who the doors opened for in front,” Abelardus said. “There could be traps.”
“That really makes me want to go first.”
“I meant to imply that the traps might not trigger if you’re in front.”
“Yeah, what you meant to imply and what’s going to happen aren’t necessarily related.”
“You’re sounding pessimistic, Captain,” Mica said, coming up behind her.
“From you, that’s a compliment, isn’t it?” Alisa asked.
“Absolutely.”
“I’ll lead with you,” Leonidas said, though he gave Alisa another of those curious what-is-this-about looks. Or maybe that was a concerned I-think-I’m-figuring-out-what-this-is-about-and-I-don’t-like-it look.
“Let’s do this then,” Alisa muttered and stepped through the doorway. Leonidas stuck close, his rifle in hand.