Chapter 6
As the night cycle deepened, Alisa gazed at the old-fashioned photograph in her hand, the photo she had carried in her flight suit all through the war, the paper now creased and wrinkled. The picture was of her, Jonah, and Jelena, taken four and a half years ago, before the war and back when the universe had made sense. It hadn’t been an ideal universe, but it had been knowable. Understandable. The future was something different now, something uncertain and scary.
She closed her eyes, retreating into the past.
Alisa opened the door to the sound of giggling. She walked into the apartment, a bottle and a box cradled in her arms, her laundry in a bag over her shoulder, the clothes needing attention after her week flying her DropEx delivery route. When she glimpsed Jelena floating in the air on the other side of the couch, her arms outstretched like an airplane, she set her belongings down and walked over to investigate.
Jonah lay on his back on the floor, his bare feet creating a shelf to prop their daughter up as he held her hands and gyrated his hips to give her a ride. Another round of giggles burst out as she swooped low over the coffee table.
“Alisa,” Jonah said brightly, his eyes gleaming with good humor.
“Mommy’s back!” Jelena blurted, wriggling on Jonah’s feet.
“I’m back,” Alisa said, tamping down a grin and trying to look stern. “School starts next week. I thought you two were going to practice reading while I was gone.”
“We’re taking a break. We’ve been working for hours.” Still flat on his back, as Jelena waved at him to make her swoop sideways again, Jonah fished under the couch, pushed a couple of toys aside, and produced a netdisc. “See? We still have a book open.”
“Mmhm, and is it hard to read a book that’s under the couch?”
“Not at all. Jelena has excellent eyes. The delights of youth.”
Alisa’s grin slipped out, and she shook her head. “I got champagne and bonbons on the way home, so we can celebrate your promotion, Professor Chaikin.” She considered his position on the floor and how he appeared to be having as much fun as Jelena. “Perhaps juice bulbs and candy planets would have been more appropriate.”
“Not at all. The champagne is very thoughtful, thank you.” Jonah lowered Jelena to the floor, his eyebrows rising as he looked toward the chocolate box. “Are you sure the bonbons were purchased with me in mind?”
“Of course. You get the ones with the weird fillings that I don’t like.”
Jelena ran around the couch and hugged Alisa’s legs. “Mommy, I was flying. Just like you. Did you see?”
She reached down and picked Jelena up for a hug. “I did see. And if you had a few thousand tons of deliveries in your cargo hold, it would have been exactly like me.” Her tone must have sounded unintentionally wry, or perhaps bitter, because the humor faded from Jonah’s face.
“You’re not feeling restless again, are you?” he asked, coming over to add his arms for a family hug. “Flying an airplane instead of a spaceship?”
Alisa hesitated, but shook her head firmly and smiled. “Not at all. It’s bad enough being away for a week at a time. If I left for months, Jelena would never learn how to read.”
Jonah snorted and kissed her, not denying it.
Footsteps sounded on the deck outside of NavCom, and Alisa slid the photo back into its usual spot in her jacket pocket. Six months after that arrival home, the war had officially started, and the Alliance had sent out its recruiting flyers. Pilots had been in high demand. Even though she had loved spending time with her family, she had not hesitated long before signing up. She’d told herself—and Jonah—that she wanted to ensure a future of freedom and opportunities for Jelena, and she had genuinely believed that, but looking back, she realized she had also been eager for a chance to fly among the stars again. Jonah had understood, probably more than she had at the time.
The hatch opened, and Alisa rested her hands on the controls, pretending to be doing something. It had been several days since they’d escaped their encounter with the White Dragon ship and left Dustor behind, and the first of the asteroids was now visible on the view screen. She truly would have to do something soon, but the cyborg had yet to give her directions beyond the Trajean Asteroid Belt.
“You all right, Captain?” Mica asked, flopping down in the co-pilot’s seat.
“Fine. Why? There some trouble I should know about?”
“Not really, but I think people are wondering if the captain shouldn’t be doing more captaining instead of hiding up here in navigation. Beck was asking if he should be doing something, too, and I’ve heard our two passengers rumbling a few times, wondering how long this delay will be and when we’ll be heading to Perun.”
“You tell them to ask the cyborg?”
“No.” Mica snorted. “You still don’t know his name?”
“I don’t want to know his name.”
If Alisa knew his name, she might have to stop thinking of him as the cyborg, and she didn’t know if she wanted to do that. He had been useful during the fight with the White Dragon ship, and he hadn’t caused any trouble yet. She almost wanted him to cause trouble, wanted him to live up to what she expected from a soldier in the Cyborg Corps. But he just kept to himself, staying in his cabin, not dissimilarly to the way she was staying in NavCom and ignoring the rest of the ship. She didn’t want to captain. She was far more comfortable piloting. Besides, did a crew of three need a captain? Mica seemed to get the job done without anyone telling her what to do, and Beck… well, she supposed she could find some work for him, but in truth, she had only hired him to be an extra gun if they ran into trouble.
“The cute girl with the chickens is wondering when you’re going to collect the second half of her payment. She seems proud of whatever it is. I’m starting to get an inkling.”
“Oh?” Alisa was about to ask for clarification on the payment but found her humor piqued and instead asked, “You think she’s cute?”
“She’s a kook. She had the hatch to her cabin open this morning as I was walking by, and I heard this heavy breathing. My first thought was that she’d dragged Beck inside for a rousing round of sex, but she was just lying on her bed, making herself hyperventilate. She had some quirky drum and flute music going. When I asked what she was doing, she said, ‘experiencing euphoria’ and invited me to join her.” Mica made a disgusted face.
“I don’t know how you turned down an offer like that. Especially from someone cute.”
Mica sighed at her.
“Her name is Yumi,” Alisa said. “That one I know, at least.”
“Congratulations. There’s a smoky sweet smell wafting from her cabin now. Reminds me of the dorms at BKU on Arkadius. I’m guessing your payment will come in the form of special herbs. Or perhaps in psychedelic mushrooms.”
“Probably ones that she grew herself,” Alisa said, not fazed. Who was she to judge when she’d traded her prescription painkillers for a gun and chocolate? “With the help of chicken fertilizer.”
Mica shifted toward the view of the asteroid belt. “Do you know where we’re going in there?”
“No.”
“Shouldn’t you ask?”
“I was hoping the cyborg would come up here and tell me, so I wouldn’t have to go knocking on his hatch. I used to play house with my stuffed animals in that cabin he’s claimed. I don’t want to see what he’s done to it.”
Mica grunted. “You played house?”
“Well, I played ship and made the stuffed animals my crew. We battled smugglers and pirates together.”
“And now you’re doing it in real life.”
Alisa grimaced. “When I was six, and my stuffed crew and I defeated the bad people, vengeful friends of the bad people didn’t come after us later.”
“Six-year-olds tend to be shortsighted.”
“Yeah. Why don’t you go talk to the cyborg for me?”
“No, thanks. You’re the captain.”
“I don’t sup
pose you’d go if I ordered you to go?” Alisa asked.
“Probably not. We’re not in the military anymore, and I doubt you’re going to fire me. Mostly because you’re not paying me.”
“This is true.” Alisa flexed the tense muscles in her shoulders. She had been sitting up here for too long. “You going to stick with me after we make it to Perun? Or are you getting off there? I know we only talked about getting there, not what would happen after.”
“I figured you’d reunite with your husband and kid and live happily ever after.” Mica frowned at her. “I’m not misremembering that, am I? I thought you mentioned a family back when we were on the Silver Striker.”
Alisa stared numbly at the asteroids looming ahead. She had forgotten that Mica didn’t know. They had fallen into working together easily, as they once had when they had been new lieutenants on a big ship, intending to do big things to stop the empire.
“I’m going back for my daughter,” Alisa said. “My husband was a civilian casualty in the Perun Central bombing.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.”
Alisa flicked a hand in acceptance, not wanting to speak further about it. She had spent the first month of her rehabilitation in denial over his death, until the vid images had come in on the news, showing the devastation to the city, which had prompted her to find pictures of the destruction of her own neighborhood. She’d also found Jonah’s name in an obituary. That had made everything depressingly real. She had spent the second month of rehabilitation mourning his death, regretting that she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye, and regretting that she hadn’t told him often enough what an amazing person he was. It would take her a long time to stop missing him, but now she needed to focus on the future instead of living in the past.
“After I get Jelena, I’ll figure the rest out,” Alisa said. “I’m not sure what else I’m qualified to do except for piloting, and whether it was entirely legal or not, I do have this ship now.”
“I was planning to look for work,” Mica said. “I’m qualified for a lot.”
“Are you sure? Some people demand optimism from employees.”
“I’ve yet to see that in a job description.”
“You have to read between the lines. It’s there.”
“We’ll see,” Mica said. “I’d like to do something a little more interesting than keeping an ancient freighter smothered in shag carpet in the air.”
“That carpet is only in the rec room.”
“No, it’s in my cabin too.”
“That’s velvet carpet. That room was rented by a—well, I wasn’t supposed to know what she was, but a lady rented it for a while and saw clients when we visited planets and space stations.”
“It’s purple. It’s gross.”
“Stick around, and I’ll let you remodel.”
Mica curled a lip. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the job offer, Captain, but… you know I’m from a mining colony, right? Grew up on a moon strip-mined half into oblivion.”
“I figured it had to be something like that when you’ve got a name like Mica Coppervein.”
“Yes, we all got named after our colony, not our parents. We weren’t supposed to think too much about being individuals, just about making sure the colony succeeded, that the valuable ore got taken out and sent back to the empire.” Mica sneered slightly. “The empire always took so much, left us so little. There was never enough to go around. We worked hard all day and into the night, and we were always at least a little hungry.”
“But you got out and found yourself an education,” Alisa said, though the latter was an assumption. Mica had been a lieutenant in the war, so she ought to have a degree.
“I won the lottery. The children all got some education, enough reading and math to understand the equipment and fix it if things went wrong. There were tests to select the brighter kids. I was one of those, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The timing was just right for me. Every few years, the empire came around with some scholarships. They wanted the best and the brightest for the fleet, and they weren’t above finding those kids on remote holes. With the help of the foreman, they picked one kid to go away and get an advanced education. That was me.”
“Were you supposed to go back and help your people one day?”
Mica shook her head. “It was about helping the empire, not my people. Besides, nothing’s changed there in fifty years. Maybe five hundred. They’re not looking for revolutionaries to return and stir up the colony. No, after you finish school, you’re supposed to be so grateful for the opportunity that the empire gave you that you’re eager to go to work for them.” Mica looked at her hands. “I was grateful that fate had given me a chance, but I couldn’t ever love the empire. I just figured I’d take what I’d been given and do some good with it somewhere. First, that was joining the Alliance and fighting for a better way of life. Now… I’m not sure yet, but I have to do something meaningful. I can’t waste what I was given when thousands of my people are never given anything.”
Alisa reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “I understand. We’ll get to Perun, and you’ll find your destiny.”
“A whole heap of trouble, more like.”
Alisa smiled and pushed herself to her feet. “I guess someone has to talk to our cyborg.”
“Good luck. I’m still not convinced he’s not going to kill us all in our sleep.”
Alisa paused with her hand on the hatchway. “Has he done something to make you think that’s likely?” She had not seen it, but she’d also been spending her time isolated in NavCom.
“Besides regarding us all with disdain?” Mica asked.
“Yes.”
“No. I’m just being pessimistic.”
“Rare.”
“Yes.”
Alisa headed into the corridor, turning down the first of two dead-end hallways that led to crew quarters. The hatch to her mother’s cabin was still locked. Alisa had left it that way, not having the courage to go in there and look around six years ago. She still wasn’t sure she had the courage.
Before she made it to the cyborg’s cabin, Beck stepped out of his hatchway, almost running into her.
“Sorry, Captain. I was just cleaning my armor.” He raised his eyebrows, appearing quite eager to please. “You have anything more that needs doing?”
“I don’t know. What can you clean besides armor?”
“I was in the military for a long time. I’ve cleaned just about everything. Not real fond of lavs.”
“Surprising.”
He gave her a salute, not seeming to realize that neither of them were in the Alliance army anymore, and started past her. She continued toward the cyborg’s hatch, but Beck stopped her with a soft word.
“Captain?”
“Yes.”
“I—ah. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate that you didn’t kick me off the ship.” Beck made a face, his forehead creasing. “I think maybe you should have.”
“I can’t do that until I’ve tasted your grilling.”
“All I need is some fresh meat, and I can make a feast.”
“Maybe there will be something interesting on one of the asteroids.”
Beck scratched his head. “You’ve got an odd sense of humor, Captain.”
“I know. I’m not finding folks as appreciative of that as you’d think.”
“Well, I’m appreciative that you didn’t hand me over to the mafia. I’m not the brightest sun in the galaxy, and sometimes I get a bit impulsive. I didn’t mean to bring my troubles to you, but you just let me know if there’s a way I can repay that favor. Anytime. I’m your man.”
Alisa hadn’t intended to keep him onboard past Perun, and she doubted she would need many favors repaid in the next week, but she smiled and said, “I’ll let you know. Might need someone to stand in front of me if there are any White Dragon thugs waiting for us when we land.”
He grimaced. “Did you have to file your flight path with the authoritie
s before we left? I’ve heard the mafia owns the authorities on Dustor. I’ve heard that now. I was blissfully ignorant of such things a few months ago.”
Yes, and if the mafia brutes had been able to gain access to the security cameras on the docks, who knew what information they could gather?
“I did file a flight path—that’s the law, after all—but I didn’t mention our detour to, uhm.” Alisa waved toward the cyborg’s cabin. “I’m about to find out where.”
Beck curled a lip at the hatch and took a step back, like he wanted to flee in the other direction, but he braced himself. “You want me to go in with you to talk to him?”
Yes, she thought. “No, I doubt he’ll kill his pilot. Before he reaches his destination.”
“Holler if you need me.” Beck saluted again and headed into the lav at the end of the hall.
If he was going to clean it, she would consider giving him a raise. She had unfortunately noticed that someone’s space rations hadn’t been agreeing with him or her overly well.
Alisa continued in the opposite direction, to the last hatch at the end of the hall. She lifted her hand to knock, but paused when a thump reached her ears. Another thump followed and then an abbreviated yell. It almost sounded like people were doing battle inside.
Since Beck wasn’t in there, she couldn’t imagine who else the cyborg would be beating on, but she rushed to knock loudly, hoping to deter him. The noise halted immediately. Several long seconds passed, and Alisa shifted her weight, images of what she might see tormenting her mind. She reached for the latch. Even if it was locked, she had access to all of the spaces on ship.
But the big metal hatch opened before she had more than brushed it. She jerked her hand away as the cyborg’s large form loomed in front of her, and she inadvertently took a step back. He was barefoot and bare-chested, revealing a torso so chiseled with muscles that any bodybuilder would have envied him.
He looked completely human, no sign of machine parts integrated underneath his flesh. If he didn’t give himself away by jumping off buildings or wearing that Cyborg Corps uniform, a person might spend a lot of time with him without ever knowing. A part of her wondered if she would be able to feel the difference between human and cyborg if she ran her hand down the ropy muscles of his arm. Not that she had any wish to do so. Even before she had fallen in love with Jonah, a kind and peace-loving man if ever there was one, she had preferred artists and creative souls to the brawny hulks that hurled weights around the gym.
Realizing she was staring at his pecs as these thoughts flitted through her mind, Alisa jerked her gaze up to look at his face. Only when she saw his ruffled hair sticking up on one side and a pillow crease on his cheek did she realize he had been sleeping. It was late in the night cycle.
Though puzzled as to what that thumping had been about if he had been sleeping, she straightened her spine to address him. “We’ve reached the T-belt. I’ll be needing some more specific directions unless you want to simply tour the rock field. Even if you do, our other passengers might object to that.”
Down the hall, Beck came out of the lav. The cyborg’s gaze flicked in that direction, then he stepped back into his cabin, holding his hand toward the interior.
It took Alisa a moment to realize that he was inviting her in. Her gut knotted at that. She didn’t want to be alone with him. Memories of the Battle for Atlar-Sharr sprang to mind, of the way the Merciless, the ship she had been flying, had been irreparably damaged and then captured, despite all the fancy piloting she’d been able to muster. She and a handful of the command crew from the bridge had made it to an escape pod, but not before they had seen a troop of Cyborg Corps soldiers tramping through the corridors, ruthlessly slaughtering the men who fought back, who tried to buy the captain and the lieutenants time to escape. She remembered feeling like a coward for leaving when others had remained to fight the monsters, but she had been following orders. Besides, she had been too terrified to run off and pick a fight with the stone-faced killers. She would have run, orders or not.
The cyborg was looking down at her, still holding his hand out, the expression on his face somewhere between ironic and impatient.
“You want to talk in private?” Alisa asked. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the rec room.”
Somehow, talking in a common area seemed safer than talking in his cabin. With the hatch closed.
“This won’t take long.” He stepped away from the hatch and grabbed a shirt off the back of a chair tucked into a small, built-in desk. It and the bunk were the only furnishings in the room, though a trunk and a large red case had been secured in a corner.
Alisa’s heart kicked into double-time when she realized what that case was. Combat armor. The crimson combat armor that the Cyborg Corps soldiers wore in battle. The exact armor that those cyborgs who had mown down the crew of the Merciless had worn, the dark color masking the blood that spattered it, the blood of the slain, the crew, people she had worked with, had come to know.
Oblivious to the fact that Alisa was on the verge of hyperventilating, the cyborg opened the trunk and pulled something out of a pocket in the lid. A netdisc. He thumbed it on, scrolled through images on the holodisplay that came up, and set it on the desk. An oblong rock covered in craters—an asteroid—floated in the air.
Alisa took a deep breath to steady her nerves and made herself ease into the cabin.
The cyborg folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the back wall, intentionally giving her space, she sensed. Maybe he knew that he was the stuff of nightmares, of terrifying memories that would never fade completely. Did he care at all? Or did he love the reputation he had?
She glanced at the bed as she drew closer to the desk, at the rumpled sheets, wondering again what he had been doing when she had knocked. Vigorously masturbating? She smirked and almost shared the thought with him, but managed to clamp down on her irreverent tongue before the joke came out. She already knew what he thought of her humor.
“Those are the rough coordinates,” the cyborg said. “And that’s the asteroid.”
Now that Alisa could see it better, she noticed how fuzzy and degraded the image was, as if someone had taken a picture of a holodisplay of an asteroid. She experienced the first inkling that maybe he wasn’t supposed to have this information or be visiting this place. Back in that junk cave, all she had envisioned doing was dropping him off somewhere, but now she wondered if he was going to be even worse than Tommy Beck in involving her and her ship in something dangerous.
No. She wouldn’t allow that. She would drop him off. The asteroid spinning slowly on its axis didn’t look like the kind of place where someone could arrange a transport, but that was his problem.
The cyborg leaned toward the desk and swiped his fingers through the holodisplay, bringing up more images. “I’ve pieced together a map of the inside from various notes and snatches of conversations I heard over the years.”
“Map of the inside?” Alisa stared at him, forgetting her unease in his presence as incredulity replaced it. “You want me to fly into one of those holes?”
“What did you expect?”
“A space station floating around out here somewhere. Or a mining facility on the surface of an asteroid. Someplace to drop you off and get—” She stopped herself from saying get rid of you, though those were surely the words that had been in her mind.
His eyes closed to slits. Yes, he knew what she had almost said.
“My visit won’t take long,” he said. “The person I seek will either be there and have the answers I want, or he won’t.”
“Be there? Inside of the asteroid?”
He nodded once.
“And if he’s there, will you be staying with him?” She resisted the urge to make an innuendo. She didn’t know why sexual comments kept popping into her head. Her humor had odd timing.
“Can’t wait to get rid of me?” He leaned back against the wall, again assuming his relaxed pose with his shoulder aga
inst the wall, but his jaw was clenched, his face lean enough that she could see the muscles tightening.
“Look, I just want to get to Perun.”
His gaze flicked down to her jacket. “You’re not going to be welcome there.”
“Better than not being welcome anywhere,” Alisa retorted before she remembered that if there was anyone in the galaxy she didn’t want to irk, it was a cyborg.
He did not move, but that stillness no longer looked relaxed.
“You think you’re so fucking brilliant, don’t you?” he asked softly, his voice hard. “Took down the mighty empire, destroyed three hundred years’ worth of order, tradition, safety. And how did you do it? Not with force, not in honorable battle, but through guerrilla tactics, spying, and treachery.” He took a step toward her, his arms lowering, his fingers curling into fists at his sides. “As if that’s something to be proud of, as if it hasn’t always been easier to destroy than to create, to build.”
Alisa took a step back, but her shoulders bumped against the hatch. She wondered if Beck was still in the corridor.
“Did you ever stop to wonder if you were doing the right thing?” the cyborg demanded, his voice still soft. “If your people had the manpower and wherewithal to replace a stable government? I sincerely doubt it, judging by what’s cropping up in the empire’s absence. Those sadistic morons down in that junkyard that enjoy cutting on visitors and roasting the pieces they cut off over a fire, those are only the tail of the comet. There’s much, much worse out there. Your security guard—” he sneered, putting mocking emphasis on the words, “—found out that the White Dragon Clan rules on Dustor, and they’re not even the worst of the degenerates out there taking advantage of the void, using intimidation and cruelty to cow people, to carve up the system into kingdoms, each more vile than the last.”
He truly looked pissed now, and Alisa wanted to sprint into the hallway and back to NavCom where she could lock the hatch. Not that a pissed cyborg couldn’t tear open a locked hatch. Still, she made herself stay and stare defiantly up at him. She was the captain, damn it. She couldn’t run off with her tail between her legs.
“You think the empire didn’t use intimidation and cruelty to cow people?” she asked. “You’re the fool if that’s the case. Too busy kissing their asses to realize what terror the average person felt. Nobody dared speak their mind. If they did, they disappeared. You walked into the wrong place, talked to the wrong people, and you disappeared. You think we didn’t all know what was happening? That those people were killed or brainwashed? Didn’t any of your loyal cyborg cronies ever say the wrong thing and disappear?”
“Nobody makes a cyborg disappear.”
“Must be nice to be so gods-damned special.”
He was staring at her, far too close for her liking. She couldn’t move back with the edge of the hatch digging between her shoulder blades, but she sure would have liked to. Fury burned in his eyes, and his fists had only tightened as she spoke. She saw for the first time the naked truth in his intense face, that she represented everything he hated. He probably blamed her for ruining his perfect life of being an imperial sycophant, of using his bare hands to kill anyone who dared defy the emperor.
With more audacity than she felt, she made herself lift her chin and ask, “You going to show me the map of the inside of this asteroid, or do I just get to grab my butt with both hands and let the autopilot steer us into a rock?”
Seconds passed without him moving, without him doing anything but staring into her eyes, as if he could make her pay for all the Alliance had done with the power of his mind. She almost told him that he wasn’t a damned Starseer, but she sensed she had already pushed him far enough. She couldn’t assume he wouldn’t hurt her just because she was the pilot. A person could suffer a lot of pain and still be functional enough to fly.
Finally, he stepped back and turned toward the asteroid floating innocuously above the desk. He swiped an irritated finger through the display, and the map grew larger.
“It’s rough, at best, and it may not be accurate,” he said. “I advise that you save the butt grabbing for later and fly very slowly and very carefully. There is a way in, but it may be difficult to navigate.”
“Into what?”
He glanced at her, his lips pressing together.
“If you don’t tell me, how am I going to know when I get there?”
“It’s a research station.”
“For researching what?”
“You don’t need to know that to find it.”
She propped her fist on her hip and almost told him that the empire didn’t need to worry about keeping confidences anymore, that the emperor was dead and there wasn’t anyone left in the organization with the time to care about old secrets. But did she want to pick another fight with him? Next time, he might not keep control of his temper, and a pissed off cyborg would be a very dangerous thing.
“Fine,” Alisa said. “You didn’t answer my other question. Are we dropping you off there?”
He hesitated. “I may need a ride out again. If the person I seek isn’t there or isn’t—” He shook his head. “I may need a ride to Perun.”
It occurred to Alisa that she might have the opportunity to strand him on this asteroid of his. If there weren’t any ships and pilots docked at this research station, he could be stuck there for a very long time. One less cyborg to go back to Perun and help the empire try to reestablish itself. One less cyborg to get in her way.
An alarm blared, making her jump. She cracked her elbow on the hatch and scowled.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Proximity alarm. We’ve got company.”