She nodded. “That’s the deal.”
The shadowed face regarded Leonidas briefly, but the Starseer did not pause for long. “This way,” he said, and raced for two of the remaining combat craft. “The dart is mine.” He pointed to the last of the ice-colored ships, a one-man craft with an arrow shape. “You can take the Striker over there.”
Alisa eyed the rusty Alliance craft docked at the end. A Striker-13 rather than the 18 she had flown in the war, it looked like it hadn’t been taken out for a run in a long time. In fact, judging by the patches along the side, it had survived a crash.
It did, a voice spoke in her head, and Alisa jumped. The Starseer voices all sounded alike in her head, but she assumed this was the robed pilot speaking to her. He had already jumped into his own craft, the dart, and was lowering the clear canopy of the cockpit. It wasn’t entirely wrecked, so we brought it in off the ice and fixed it. Several of our ships were acquired that way.
What happened to the pilot? Alisa asked as she popped the canopy.
She didn’t make it.
Alisa wagered most of the pilots—and the crew—of the ships that flew into the mists didn’t make it. She now suspected that had less to do with natural phenomena and more to do with the Starseers’ almost obsessive efforts to guard their secrets, even if it meant murder. Three suns, was she truly going to defend these people? What if the Alliance ships were justified in what they were doing? What if the Starseers had been fiddling with the tectonic plates beneath the continents of Arkadius? What if they did want to take over the planet?
We just want to be left alone, the other pilot assured her. There are too few of us left to think of war or taking over anything.
Alisa did not know whether to believe him or not. Naidoo had lied to her once, and what of the way they had treated Leonidas?
“Marchenko, do you expect me to fit back here?” Leonidas asked.
She had slid easily into the cockpit, as if she were slipping into a favorite old pair of pants—the 13 was noticeably older and less sophisticated than the 18, not to mention the rust edging the seams that made her doubt its space-worthiness, but the cockpit size was identical to the model she had flown. The back seat was big enough for a soldier in a flight suit, but had not been designed for a tall, brawny cyborg, certainly not one in combat armor.
“Alisa,” she corrected him, “and wouldn’t you rather be in the air than down here, helpless to have any effect on your fate?”
“What I want won’t do anything to make me smaller.”
“Just try to wedge yourself in. You should be able to scoot the seat back for a little more leg room.”
Hurry, the other pilot said, his dart taking off with a noisy flare from its thrusters. We need all the help we can get. It will be another… twenty-three minutes before the temple’s engines are fully online and can move the structure.
Working on it, Alisa thought, fastening her harness.
Grunts and clunks came from behind her as Leonidas tried to draw all of his armored limbs into the seat.
“I’ve got control of the blazers up here,” Alisa said, fastening her harness and hitting the button to lower the canopy. “Assuming this thing is fully loaded, you should have the e-cannons and two torpedoes.”
“I’m familiar with Alliance ships.”
Right, he had probably helped destroy plenty of them.
“Are you familiar with how to get your elbow all the way inside?” she asked, waving at a red light flashing on the control panel. “Because the canopy refuses to close with bits of you hanging out.”
“It’s as uppity as its pilot,” he muttered amid more clunks and grunts.
The canopy was finally able to close fully, and the alarm light went out. Alisa hit the button to fire up the engines. Much like the Nomad, this older model did not have holocontrols, and forget about a surround-flow display for her peripheral vision. As the ship flared to life, she looked back to check on Leonidas, to see if he would be able to access the weapons while he was stuffed in there like pickled degafish in a jar.
His broad shoulders pressed against the clear walls of the cockpit, his knees were almost pushed up to his ears, and he was glowering at her from inside his helmet, but he did have his hands resting lightly on the weapons’ targeting controls.
“I see you would have been disappointed if I hadn’t finagled things for you to be allowed to come along with me,” Alisa said.
“After what my body has been through in the last twenty-four hours, getting massaged by rocks is starting to sound less distressing.”
“Good. We’ll make it a date then.” She winked.
He arched an eyebrow.
The console binged, signaling ready. Alisa turned her focus back to the control panel and guided them into the air. She gave the Nomad a long look as she lifted off, worried she would not see her freighter again.
“Did you see how the other ships got through the shield?” Leonidas asked.
“Uh.” That would have been a smart thing to pay attention to. “No. Did you?”
“They all flew down after they took off, under the temple.” A thud sounded as he tried to point under the landing pad, and his elbow struck something.
“Then down we go too. And hope for a big glowing, obvious door.”
Alisa eyed the tiny sensor display on the control panel. It had the power and range of a mouse running on a wheel. She could see the contours of the energy field, but nothing that hinted of a safe zone or a way out. Had the Starseers in the control room briefly lowered the gate so their pilots could fly out? If so, would they do the same for her? It would be a shame if she and Leonidas had to hide under the temple for the entire battle. Her conscience wished that would happen, even as her mind accepted that she would likely have to help if she meant to get the Nomad and her crew to safety somehow. For good or ill, her fate was tied in with the temple’s right now.
As she dipped below the edge of the landing pad, flying under the Nomad and toward the belly of the sprawling temple, another fighter craft came into view. It was one of the silvery darts, probably the one that had taken off right before her. It remained in the air under the structure, hovering near the center of it. Waiting for her?
Follow me, the pilot said into her mind. Your ship doesn’t have the safe route programmed in. I’ll have to take over your controls to get you out and into the battle.
Oh, wouldn’t that be fun. Alisa frowned at the idea of her ship being controlled by some Starseer. It had not gone well the last time she had been at the helm when that happened.
We rarely try to crash our own ships, the pilot said dryly.
“Marchen—Alisa,” Leonidas said, probably concerned that they were heading straight toward the energy shield, which, according to the sensors, wrapped under the temple as well as curving above it. Beyond the invisible field, ships from both sides flew about, weaving in and out of the mists as they engaged each other. The Alliance forces tried to focus on the temple, but the Starseers were fighting back now, harrying the small fighters and the warships.
“Yes, I’m talking to someone about it,” Alisa said.
“Talking?” he asked darkly, and she suspected he knew exactly what she meant.
“To the fellow in the robes, I believe.”
“You know who that is?” From his tone, it sounded like he did.
Before she could answer, her comm unit beeped.
“Captain?” Mica asked.
“Here,” Alisa replied.
“I’m setting more explosives. I tried to detonate the first round, but it’s as if they disappeared. The detonators certainly did. I assume you want us to get the Nomad out of here if I can destroy those clamps and get a chance to slip through the shields. Since you’re in a ship now, we can try to meet up away from the battle and find a way out of here.”
“Ah, yes,” Alisa said, hoping the Starseer pilot wasn’t monitoring her thoughts or her communications. Ahead of her, his ship had started moving again, the
nose dipping down, his craft almost vertical as it headed toward the ice. “That would be ideal, assuming one of you can pilot her out of the dock. Can you?” She had never seen Mica fly anything, but wouldn’t be surprised if she had done maintenance on ships that required her to maneuver them around a space station.
“Beck and I are arm wrestling to see who gets the honor of trying.”
“That sounds reassuring.”
“We figure the ship will crash on the way through the mists, no matter who’s flying. If we keep it close to the ice, it can’t crash far.”
“I’m not as enthused with this plan as you would think,” Alisa said.
Crashes aside, how would she find the Nomad out there with all the damned mist? On the way in, she’d barely been able to find her ass with her hand.
“Then you can come up with a better one.”
The flight stick moved of its own accord. Alisa started, grabbing it harder.
Let go, the voice in her mind instructed.
Though that was the last thing Alisa wanted to do, she forced herself to lean back, lifting her hands from the stick.
“Should I be alarmed?” Leonidas asked quietly, watching over her shoulder as the Striker surged forward, following the dart as it continued downward, as if it would fly straight into the ice.
“I am,” she said.
“Dr. Dominguez wants a word with you, Captain,” Mica said over the comm.
“Is he jealous that you didn’t include him in the arm wrestling match?”
“No, he knew he would lose.”
“Captain,” Alejandro said, “I finished analyzing the blood.”
“Oh? I thought you had already finished analyzing it before.” Alisa resisted the urge to grab the flight stick as the Striker picked up speed, and the sea of ice filled her vision.
“I had another idea when I saw Beck chewing on his leftover duck.”
“I’m glad he’s treating our imminent death as a snack time,” Mica muttered from somewhere off to the side.
“We’re not going to die,” Alisa said firmly. “I’m coming up with a better plan as we speak.” She wished that were true. She kept hoping inspiration would strike her. Right now, the ice was the only thing that looked like it might strike her.
“Well, it couldn’t get much worse,” Mica said.
“Just work on those explosives in case there’s an opportunity to escape,” Alisa said. “What did you find, Doctor?”
“A DNA match.”
“You figured out which Starseer that blood belonged to?”
Her Striker veered to one side and then the other. As they neared the frozen sea, the craft finally veered, shifting to a horizontal path and skimming along a few feet above the ice.
“Not precisely, but I do know that it was one of the people who came to eat Beck’s food. I found his trash bin full of skewers and used the saliva dried on them to run scans. I found a match on the third one.”
“How many people did Beck feed?”
“He says a couple dozen at least.”
Alisa frowned. “That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“No, but he says he did not feed Abelardus. Whoever died, if anyone, it wasn’t him. He never returned to the Nomad after escorting your team into the temple.”
“Ah,” Alisa said, her frown disappearing. “That’s something, then.”
“You’re welcome,” Alejandro said, sounding like he wanted some gratitude.
“Thank you,” Alisa managed. She hadn’t forgotten that he had asked Leonidas about getting rid of her once, but she supposed scraping spit off used skewers was a demeaning job for someone who had once been a chief ER surgeon.
“I could have told you Abelardus is still alive,” Leonidas said.
Control is yours again, the Starseer spoke into her mind as his dart surged ahead, leaving the shadow of the temple and shooting up to join other darts swooping in between Strikers and Cobras. You may join our squadron, but you may also be able to get in close and do damage with your torpedoes since you’re in an Alliance ship.
I don’t think they’re going to mistake this rusty museum piece for one of their own, Alisa thought as she zipped along the ice. She didn’t want to stay low for long, since she would be an easy target for anyone flying above, but she needed to get far enough away from the temple to better gauge everything that was going on, especially since the craft lacked a surround-flow display.
“They had better tech than this back on Old Earth,” she grumbled, alternating between watching the sensor display and the view out her canopy.
They may at least hesitate to fire upon you, the other pilot said. You haven’t trained with our people, so you would be in the way as a part of our formations.
“Great.”
“Problem?” Leonidas asked as Alisa took them to the edge of the mist field, then flew upward, trying to stay on the periphery of the battle, avoiding the dozens of explosives and bolts of energy filling the sky.
“They want our help, but they don’t want us anywhere near them while we do it.”
“Just point me toward something I can shoot.”
From the sound of his voice, he wasn’t particular about what that might be. She knew he wouldn’t mind shooting Alliance ships down under any circumstances, but after the last day and night, he might happily blow some Starseer ships out of the sky too.
She, on the other hand, did not want to fire at any of the targets. It crossed her mind to disappear into the mist, but that would not help the Nomad escape.
Sighing, once she had flown high enough to see the ships below, she turned toward a squadron of Alliance ships that were peppering the temple shield. Before she made it halfway to them, two of the Strikers abruptly veered downward. She had not seen either get hit, and there was not any smoke coming from their engines, but they spiraled toward the ice below as if they had been hit dead on.
“That’s chilling,” she muttered.
One of the Strikers managed to recover, the nose turning up out of the dive at the last second. The belly almost scraped the ice as the craft swooped back upward. The second ship did not recover. It smashed into the ice so hard that it broke through. Pieces of the ship flew free as the smashed fuselage plunged into the black water below.
Alisa flicked on the comm in her Striker, assuming it was tied in with the rest of the Starseer squadron and that she could hear their chatter. If they chattered. Maybe they were all communicating with their minds up here.
“That one’s out of it,” someone was saying.
“Good, but focus on what’s going on around you too. You’ve got a cat on your tail.”
“I see it.”
“Focus on the warships,” another voice said. “If we can crash them, it’ll matter a lot more than dropping the one-man ships. Those are just flies pestering us.”
“We’ve been trying, but they’re rotating through pilots up there. As soon as we affect one, another pushes him aside and takes the helm. I did manage to find a weak-willed mind and start a fight up there.” The speaker sounded smug. “He tried to punch his C.O.”
“Just fly,” someone with a hard voice said. “Let Naidoo and those in the temple worry about mind links.”
“Look out, Nile!”
A torpedo slammed into one of the Starseer darts, crushing through its shields and utterly obliterating it.
“Shit,” several voices said at once.
“Should have stopped that,” one said, with the slam of a fist striking a console. “There’s so damned many of them.”
More rounds launched from the temple below, coming close to shaving the wings off one of the darts. Alisa arced behind the Alliance squadron that had been distracting the Starseers when that torpedo had struck and she fired a few half-hearted shots at their backs.
A faint reverberation pulsed through her vessel as one of the e-cannons fired. She had almost forgotten Leonidas was back there and twitched with surprise as their projectile streaked away, engulfed in fie
ry energy. It slammed into the wing of one of the Alliance ships. Normally, the craft’s shields should have been able to deflect a couple of e-cannon blasts, but they must have already taken damage. They fell away, letting the projectile tear through the wing, knocking it off.
The pilot had no chance at compensating. He brought his nose up, trying to land instead of crashing, but two darts arrowed in, taking advantage. They riddled the hull with blazer fire, and smoke wafted up from the craft. It tumbled downward, eventually smashing into the frozen sea. This time, the ice did not break. Alisa almost wished it had, because seeing the craft shattered, pieces flying all across the white ice, was as sobering as a knife to the heart.
“You have deadly aim,” she said quietly. It wasn’t a compliment so much as a realization that she wouldn’t be able to half-heartedly join in the battle, not with Leonidas back there, eager to take down Alliance ships.
“Line me up for another one,” he said.
Alisa swallowed. That was the last thing she wanted to do.
Chapter 16
Alisa was almost relieved when two Alliance ships diverted from their route to target her. It gave her an excuse not to line up another target for Leonidas. She swooped and dove, trying to lose them. They stuck with her. They must have seen Leonidas take down their comrade, and now they wanted revenge. She couldn’t blame them. She wouldn’t accommodate them, but she couldn’t blame them.
She put the creaky old Striker through a series of evasive maneuvers, banking to the port side and then up, making it hard for both of the Alliance ships to stick to her. One turned to follow while the other looped off in the other direction, probably hoping to meet her as she finished her loop. She twisted, coming out of it early and cutting back and across. One stuck with her, but she caught the other upside down in the middle of his own loop. She strafed him, knowing she could not hesitate to fire, not this time. She wasn’t going to get her and Leonidas killed out here. He bided his time on the cannons, waiting for her frenetic turns to slow, to reveal an opening. Now on the tail of the Alliance craft, having switched from pursued to pursuer, she pulled close, lining up the shot. Leonidas did not hesitate. With reflexes even quicker than hers, he fired.