“Leonidas, are you ready to be picked up soon?” Alisa asked, tapping her controls. She was surprised he wasn’t already at the airlock, eager to escape. “What are you doing in navigation again?”
“Changing the distress call to warn ships away,” he said, his own fingers dancing over the controls, “and seeing if I can change its course, so it won’t make it to Primus 7. If your ship had weapons, I would suggest blowing it up.”
Alisa shuddered at the idea of blowing up the final resting place of those people, but she agreed that it would be better not to make Primus 7 deal with the problem. “Couldn’t you toss the artifacts out into space?” she suggested. “Then the ship might at least be recoverable.”
Abelardus made that choking noise again.
“Or could we decontaminate them somehow?” Alisa asked.
“No,” Yumi said, “not when the materials themselves are radioactive. If particles had just fallen onto them, such as onto Beck’s armor, it would be one thing, but not this.”
“I’m leaving them,” Leonidas said. “And I could use a pickup.”
“Heading your way,” Alisa said.
“Should we risk getting that close again?” Yumi asked. “We’ve all already had some exposure, and as you admitted, this ship isn’t set up for decontamination. When Leonidas comes aboard, we’ll get another dose.”
“He can take off his armor and stick it in his case in the airlock, the same as Beck did.”
“Someone still has to open the hatch and hand him the case.”
“We’re not not picking him up,” Alisa said.
“Put the case in the airlock before I arrive,” Leonidas said dryly. “To further minimize exposure, I can push off the outside of the ship, and you can pick me up out in space.”
Alisa was surprised he trusted her that much to suggest such an action. That would take a lot of faith, and she shivered as she imagined herself in that situation.
“Would that make a difference?” Alisa asked Yumi.
“It might help. Getting an airlock with a radiation scrubber would be even better.”
“I’ll put it on my shopping list.”
Yumi smiled faintly. “Before or after the sanibox upgrade?”
All Alisa said was, “Get ready, Leonidas. We’re coming to get you.”
Chapter 4
Alisa carefully guided the Nomad toward the red suit of combat armor drifting through space at the velocity with which he had jumped from the Peace and Prayer. She placed her freighter in his path, assuming he could find something to grab. Then he could magnetize his boots and lock onto the hull.
Once again, she marveled at the trust Leonidas displayed by jumping into the middle of nothing and waiting for her to pick him up. What if she had never come? He would have floated in space until his oxygen ran out. Could she have done the same thing if she had been in his position, with him here at the helm?
Yes, she decided. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she had also come to trust him that much. Even so, taking that leap of faith would have terrified her.
“I suppose you would be irritated with me if I took over control of the ship and arranged for him to miss,” Abelardus said, his expression wry as he looked over at her.
Yumi had gone to see if Alejandro needed help in sickbay, leaving Alisa alone in NavCom with Abelardus. Alisa now wished she hadn’t. The fact that he could make a joke about such a thing made her want nothing more than to dump him on the nearest planet or space station.
“Irritated?” Alisa asked. “I’d do my best to choke you with your pendant.”
“I’ve been choked enough for one day. I’ll pass.” He sniffed and looked at the control panel. “Besides, I don’t know if I could fly this ancient piece of takka.”
Alisa clenched her teeth. “You know what’s a big bowl of steaming takka?” She turned toward him, pointing a finger at his nose.
The comm flashed.
“Captain?” Alejandro asked.
“Hold that thought.” Alisa lowered her finger. She should probably thank Alejandro for the distraction. Getting in an argument with someone who could hurl a two-hundred-odd-pound cyborg across the cargo hold could not be good for her health. “What is it, Doctor?”
“Beck is experiencing side effects, but I’m treating him. He’s decontaminated his suit. Mica and I verified that his case is equipped to do so. I’m prepared to do my best to get Leonidas aboard without further contaminating the ship.” Alejandro sounded tired, maybe queasy.
“Thank you,” she said. “How’s Mica doing?”
“I hate everyone and everything,” Mica wheezed in the background.
“It sounds like she’s her normal self,” Alisa said.
Alejandro grunted. “She’s been sick. I’m monitoring her. How are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine so far.” Alisa did not hear the clunk of Leonidas touching down, but one of her monitors caught him landing on the hull of the Nomad.
“Are you?” Alejandro asked. “Hm.”
Abelardus looked over at Alisa thoughtfully.
“Leonidas is making his way to the airlock now,” Alisa told Alejandro. “He’ll be ready for your attention soon.”
“Understood.” The comm light winked out.
Abelardus was still looking at her.
“I know I’m fascinating, but what?” Alisa asked, returning his look frankly, but not holding it for long. It still bothered her that he could read minds. She started laying in their course, though she was less certain than ever that she wanted to visit the source of Leonidas’s coordinates.
“Starseer blood?” Abelardus asked.
“Who?”
“You.”
“Me?” This time, the look she gave him was incredulous. “No. What are you talking about? Why would you even think that?” Alisa did not have Starseer genes. Her daughter was the one with the special blood, and that had come courtesy of Jonah.
Abelardus’s thoughtful expression had not faded, and she found herself scowling at it.
“You can read my mind and tell that’s the truth,” she said.
“I see that you believe it’s the truth. Have you ever been tested?”
“Of course. I had a medical exam before I went to flight school and another before they let me into the Alliance army.”
“They don’t sequence DNA for an army physical,” he said. “Were you born in an imperial hospital?”
“No.” Her scowl deepened. This was silly. Why would he think she had Starseers for ancestors? He could see that she had no special powers. If she had them, she would have used them to strangle him with his pendant when he had suggested leaving Leonidas behind.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“Asteroid kisser, you’re in my head, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Naturally.” He smirked at her.
“Why are you asking all this? Because I’m not down in sickbay throwing up?”
“All Kirian descendants have a higher tolerance for radiation than the average human. When the original colonists were contemplating the planet for a place to land and establish their civilization, they underestimated how much radiation was getting through the weak atmosphere and overestimated how quickly they could get domes up to shelter the population. It didn’t help that one of the colony ships carrying much of the engineering and terraforming equipment was destroyed during the descent. Our ancestors were exposed to a great deal of background radiation. A lot of them ended up dying young. Others survived and had children, and our scientists tinkered with their genomes to make them and their descendants more resilient to the cosmic rays.”
“Right. I’ve heard that story, that it was some of those mutating genes that caused that… that.” Alisa waved at his face, indicating his arrogance as much as his power.
He snorted. “Lady Naidoo was right. You say whatever’s on your mind most of the time, don’t you?”
“It’s part of my charm. And I’m not a Starseer.”
/> “No, but you could have the genes without knowing it, especially if you weren’t born in an imperial hospital.” He tilted his head. “Where were you born?”
“On board this ship, actually.” Alisa thought about saying it had been in his cabin, and that her mother had gotten amniotic fluid all over his bunk, but she presumed her mother had given birth in sickbay, or perhaps in her own cabin. “According to her, she had just reached a space station—she was piloting while having contractions—and meant to have me in a proper medical facility, but I was a demanding and ornery baby and came early.”
“Ornery. Imagine.”
“But my mother was born on Perun, in the capital city,” Alisa said, ignoring his teasing—or maybe those were insults. She did not feel that they knew each other well enough for anything that could be considered teasing. “She would have been tested in an imperial hospital when she was born.”
“And your father?”
“Er.”
He raised his eyebrows.
It was silly, but Alisa had never known her father, so he never figured into her thoughts or equations for anything. “I don’t know. Mom said he was a fling on a border world.”
“A fling that she decided to turn into a child?” Abelardus raised his eyebrows.
She scowled at him, but she understood what he was implying. Birth control implants had been required in the empire, and a man and woman—or other suitable cohabitation couple—had been required to ask permission from the government before having the implant removed and proceeding to have up to, but no more than, three children. Accidental pregnancies had been rare, especially on core planets. Even out on the border worlds, populations had been controlled and monitored. Only gypsies and pirates who kept to the skies and stayed off the grid had flown under the empire’s radar.
“From what my mother told me, she wanted a child and wasn’t going to let the empire tell her that she couldn’t have one just because she wasn’t partnered with anyone.” Alisa waved her hand, trying to dismiss the conversation. She had no wish to discuss her origins or her family background with some strange Starseer. She’d already said more than she was wont to do and wondered if he might have been tinkering with her mind.
That faint smirk touched his lips again.
“Not me,” he said. “Maybe you’re just in a chatty mood. Maybe you want to know the truth about your heritage.”
“No, I don’t.” The Nomad was back on course, so Alisa pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to check on Leonidas. Don’t touch my controls.”
Abelardus lifted his hands in innocence.
“Alisa?” he said as she stepped through the hatchway.
“What?” She did not look back. She was tempted to tell him to call her Captain instead of using her first name.
“I only meant to tease you, not insult you.”
Once again, the knowledge that he had been in her mind, reading her thoughts, chilled her.
“Stay out of my head.”
• • • • •
Alisa found Leonidas in sickbay with Alejandro. Mica and Beck must have been sent to their cabins to rest.
“How are you doing?” Alisa asked Leonidas as she walked in. He wore trousers and one of his T-shirts, one that fit him like a second skin. His crimson armor case hovered in the corner of sickbay, humming softly.
“I’m fine,” he said, nodding to her. “The doctor is examining some blood.”
“Did he give you a shot to make you pee?”
“No. Is that desirable?”
Alejandro was bent over his microscope, but he frowned over at them. “Leonidas had his combat armor on the whole time, including when we were flying up to the contaminated ship. His only exposure came when he removed his suit, and you’ve never seen a soldier strip so quickly and slam the pieces into his armor case. I checked him, and his radiation levels were minimal.”
“That armor is handy,” Alisa said. “I do need to get some.”
Leonidas regarded her, his eyes growing gentle. “Have you been sick too?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said, then added, “Not yet.”
She did not want anyone else to notice that she, Yumi, and Abelardus were in the same group of people unaffected by the exposure, to start thinking that her father might have been some staff-twirling robe-wearer. She did not want to think about it herself, either, and yet… a part of her couldn’t help but wonder. From everything she had heard, it was far too late for her to develop any talents if she did have the Starseer genes, but maybe it would make things less odd between her and Jelena when they were finally reunited. Would Jelena be delighted by developing powers, or would she worry about being thought a freak? Alisa was not sure how she would have reacted at that age. But if they all had the unique genes, she could say, “Look, we’re the same. You, me, and Dad, all the same blood. Nobody’s odd here.” Or maybe they could all be odd together.
“It’s Starseer blood,” Alejandro said, and Alisa flinched.
Leonidas nodded. “The woman probably had it too. I wish I’d had an opportunity to question one of them as to what happened, but I doubt I would have gotten anything understandable out of them.”
“The madness was unfortunate,” Alejandro said. “Especially since it affected both of them. As I said, delirium can be a side effect of radiation poisoning, but I thought they acted oddly, even given the circumstances.”
It took Alisa a moment to wrench her thoughts away from herself and to focus on what they were talking about. Not her blood, but the blood sample Leonidas had brought back on his armor.
“Emotional traumas, perhaps?” Leonidas said. “I’ve seen men snap in battle and spout nonsense.”
“Seeing everyone on their ship dying around them and knowing they would follow could not have been easy,” Alejandro said, though he did not sound convinced.
“Could the artifacts themselves have held some power beyond the radiation?” Alisa asked. “Like the doctor’s orb?”
“Who would infuse a plaque with Starseer power?” Leonidas asked.
“Well, if it was Alcyone’s station, maybe she did it. Or maybe there was something else on the deck in that cabin. You looked like you were stepping over a lot of clutter.”
“Yes. And bodies.” He sighed.
Alisa wondered if he, too, wished they hadn’t heard that distress call and diverted. What good had come of all this? The only thing she could think of was that they had dealt with it out here in the middle of nowhere and that the ship hadn’t floated up to Primus 7 where more people might have been affected by the radiation. Of course, whatever sensors Primus 7 and its ships had might have been able to detect the radiation long before sending people to board. She hoped that no one on the Nomad would suffer long-term health effects from this side trip.
“You’ve put the ship back on course toward Leonidas’s coordinates?” Alejandro asked, turning away from the microscope. The way he asked it made it sound like he expected the answer to be yes, and that he would be disappointed if he heard anything else.
“I have,” Alisa said. “But are we sure we want to continue on?”
“Of course. What do you mean?”
Leonidas leaned his hip against the exam table and crossed his arms over his chest, but he did not say anything. He merely watched the conversation.
“You saw the star map,” Alisa said. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that the pilgrim ship came from the exact spot in space that we’re on our way to search?”
“Of course it’s not a coincidence.” Alejandro brushed past her, and she thought he would stalk out of sickbay, but all he did was look up and down the corridor, then pull the hatch shut. “Those damned Starseers know where we’re going, and I’ll bet my left testicle that Abelardus sent word ahead so people could investigate the coordinates before we got there, people with Starseer blood.” He pointed toward his microscope. “It’s not as if this rust bucket is the fastest thing in the galaxy. Many other ships could have reached i
t by now. That’s why we can’t delay any further.”
“First off,” Alisa said coolly, taking exception to the rust bucket comment, “closing the hatch isn’t going to keep Abelardus from knowing what we’re in here talking about. And second, who in all of the suns’ fiery hells do you think wants one of your testicles?”
Leonidas snorted.
Alejandro glared. “I see you’re going to take this conversation seriously.”
“This is your mission, not mine. My mission is being delayed again because of you and your orb. You tell me what about that is supposed to make me serious.”
“The dead people we just left in our wake,” Leonidas said grimly.
Alisa flinched, immediately feeling childish. Alejandro rubbed her the wrong way and made her want to lash out. But Leonidas made her feel… she didn’t know what exactly. Ashamed that she wasn’t a better person. She doubted that was his intent, but it still stung. Jonah had never made her feel ashamed.
She turned toward the hatch, blinking at the unexpected emotion that welled within her.
“She’s impossible to deal with,” Alejandro said and stalked back to his microscope.
“No, she’s not.” Leonidas walked over and put a hand on her shoulder, frowning at her, in concern not condemnation. “Thank you for picking me up,” he said. “Not everybody comes back for irradiated cyborgs.”
“Your suit was irradiated, not your cyborg parts,” Alejandro muttered, his back to them.
“I’ll thank the three suns for that.” He lowered his hand.
Alisa wished he hadn’t. She felt the urge to lean against him, whether he had shamed her or not. Alejandro turned back toward them, so she leaned her shoulder against the bulkhead instead.
“We will need to be careful approaching the coordinates,” Alejandro said, having apparently decided he could have serious conversations with her after all. “Those contaminated artifacts came from somewhere.”
“It’ll be interesting to discover somewhere in the middle of nowhere,” Alisa said.
Alejandro made a disgusted noise and headed for the hatch. “I’m going to lie down. Let me know if anyone needs medical assistance.”