“Doctor,” Alisa repeated, forcing herself to step into the cabin to nudge his shoulder.
He still did not move. His eyes were open, but they were not blinking.
Alisa kicked the lid shut. Alejandro flinched. The light lessened considerably, but to Alisa’s surprise, some continued to leak out through the seam in the wooden box. It hadn’t been doing that before. Previously, when the lid had been down, the strange energy it emitted had not been nearly as noticeable, and since she had been in a dark room to steal it before, she knew that light had not escaped the box.
“What?” Alejandro asked, finally looking at her, squinting up with confusion in his eyes.
“We’re in a jam right now,” Alisa said. “This isn’t the time for communing with eerie spheres.”
“I just checked on it…” He touched the deck on either side, further confusion wrinkling his brow, as if he was not sure how he had gotten down there.
“It’s fine, other than being extra uppity right now. Why don’t you leave it under your pillow and come help us in engineering. We need to get the power back on so we can take off before we break through the ice and become a boat.” She doubted Mica wanted to see Alejandro in engineering any more than she wanted Alisa and her thingie-lexicon there, but it might be good to get him away from that box for a while.
“Ice?”
“We’re in The Hells’ Leftovers. You’ve heard of it?”
“I—yes.” Alejandro blinked around the room, which was still partially illuminated by the box. “Where did this fog come from?”
“The hells, apparently. Maybe all three of them combined to muck up this corner of the planet.”
Alejandro picked up the box and climbed to his feet. “Yes, I remember now. The Starseer temple. It must be nearby. Maybe that’s why the artifact is responding.”
“Responding?”
“Getting uppity, as you said,” he said dryly, his usual demeanor returning.
“You think just being in the presence of Starseers could cause it to intensify its strangeness?”
“From my research, I believe—” He broke off with a frown for her. “You’ll get no further information out of me, Captain. Please do not pry.”
“I didn’t know it was prying to walk into someone’s room and keep a creepy artifact from taking over his mind.” Alisa waved and strode back into the corridor. “Come make yourself useful, Doctor. We need all hands.”
The ice cracked again, the snap sounding as if it came from directly below the Nomad.
Alisa scowled, wishing she knew a way that she could be useful.
“It’s colder than death in here,” came Mica’s voice over the intercom. “Who opened the hatch?”
“What?” Alisa ran to the walkway. The wide cargo hold hatch was open, the ramp once again unfurled, almost obscured by the thick mist rolling into the ship. “Yumi?”
Alisa peered toward the corner. The chickens were still in their pen, still being oddly quiet.
“Yumi’s in here,” Mica said, leaning out of the hatchway to engineering. “Making herself useful by holding flashlights and not calling pieces of sophisticated equipment thingies.”
“She didn’t open the hatch?” Alisa walked slowly down the stairs. Her arm hair was not standing on end now that she had shut the orb box and moved away from it, but another feeling of unease crept over her as she stared at the open hatch, the mist and cold air rolling in.
Yumi stepped out of the engine room. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who opened it?”
Chapter 4
Alisa commed Leonidas as she walked across the cargo hold to close the hatch. She kept her other hand close to her Etcher as she went.
“Leonidas here,” he responded softly.
The sound of his voice sent relief through her. The way things were going, she had almost expected him not to answer, for him and Beck to have walked off into the mist, never to return.
“Did you and Beck come back to the ship?” Alisa opened the panel and looked at the lever for manually opening the hatch. When she had closed it, she had tugged it downward. It was now back in the up position. There was no way it could have fallen upward.
“No,” Leonidas said, a worried note in his voice. “I just took down the two perimeter guards watching the White Dragon ship. It’s down at the base of a cliff here, and they were expecting trouble.”
“Beck is still with you, right?” she asked, looking around the foggy cargo hold.
“Yes. He took out one guard’s rear left haunch.”
She snorted, remembering Beck’s claim to having helped with the Octavian bear on that asteroid laboratory.
“I heard that, mech,” Beck growled over the comm. “I was drawing fire. That’s why you got those two so easily.”
“Is that what you were doing?” Leonidas murmured. He raised his voice. “Is everything all right back there?”
Alisa hesitated. She wanted to tell him to come back, that unsettling things were happening and that she would prefer big burly men in combat armor next to her, but she did not. “Just a lot of mist and some oddness. We can handle it. What are you going to do next?”
“Deal with the rest of the people who were trying to crash your ship,” Leonidas said, his tone steely now.
It made her shiver. She was tempted to ask for leniency on the behalf of the mafia men, but those were not Alliance soldiers. They were bullies and criminals, criminals who had been trying to kill her and everyone on her ship because of one man’s actions. No, not even that. Assuming Beck had told her the truth when they had met, he had been wrongly convicted by the mafia men. Someone else had killed that White Dragon leader, and Beck had been blamed because it happened in his restaurant. Maybe what he ought to be doing instead of making money to pay them off was finding out who was responsible for the crime for which he had been framed.
“Beck, I’ve got an insight for you later,” Alisa said and threw the lever to raise the ramp and close the hatch again. Maybe she ought to get some of Mica’s gum to stick to it to make sure it did not accidentally fall upward against gravity again.
The sound of weapons fire came over the comm, and then it was shut off.
“Great,” Alisa muttered and headed for engineering to check on Yumi and Mica. If nothing else, she could also hold a flashlight.
A faint tink drifted across the empty cargo hold. She paused, looking toward the chickens, but the noise had come from the direction of the stairs, not their pen.
“Doctor?” she asked, though she was certain she would have noticed him walking down the stairs if he had entered the cargo hold.
Silence was the only response. Yumi had taken her candle with her when she left, so the hold was dark except for the weak illumination of the emergency lights in the deck. They brightened the hatchways and a few panels on the walls but did nothing to drive away the shadows in the corners. Or under the stairs and the elevated walkway. The mist made visibility worse, fuzzing the air like fog hugging a pond on a damp morning.
Her hand on her Etcher, Alisa continued toward engineering, but she kept her eyes toward the stairs.
Despite her focus, it was the alarmed squawk of a chicken that warned her of trouble. Someone cursed, and the shadows stirred under the stairs.
Alisa fired more on instinct than conscious thought. Her bullet clanged off metal. She ran several steps and dove, anticipating return fire. If it did not come, she would feel foolish, but she was certain someone was over there.
As her shoulder hit the deck and she rolled in a somersault, the squeal of a blazer sounded. She glimpsed a bright orange bolt slicing through the dark air just behind her as she jumped to her feet. She fired again, not aiming and not caring, just hoping to make her attacker duck for cover as she raced toward the engine room. She dove again, this time aiming for the hatchway, the lanterns inside calling like a beacon.
Mica stepped into the opening as Alisa rolled across the threshold. Mica yelped, jumping back in surpri
se.
“Intruder,” Alisa blurted, scrambling to her feet.
“So we deduced,” Mica said as she tossed something into the cargo hold.
Blazer fire shot out of the darkness under the stairs and also from the opposite side of the hold, from the alcove of the airlock. Alisa cursed, realizing she had been standing by the hatch and chatting openly with spies watching on. Spies who wanted her dead.
Alisa snugged up to the wall just inside of the hatchway. “Put out the lanterns, Yumi.”
“Thought you wanted the lights on, not off,” Mica growled, jumping back to stand opposite of Alisa on the other side of the hatchway.
“Not when they’re highlighting us for the enemy,” Alisa said, waiting for Yumi to scramble around the room, shutting off lanterns and flashlights while staying out of sight of those in the cargo hold. If she leaned out too soon, she would be an easy target with her body limned by the light.
Deadly orange beams lanced through the opening between Alisa and Mica, splashing against the far wall. One almost took out a bundle of conduits. Another burned a scorch mark in the bulkhead.
“If you bastards hit my new deuterium tank, I’m going to scrag you good,” Mica hollered, leaning out and shooting.
“Aren’t we all scragged if they hit that?” Alisa asked.
A cough came from out in the hold. An acrid smell tickled Alisa’s nostrils, so she assumed Mica had thrown a smoke grenade.
“Nah, it’s triple-shielded, but I don’t want it scuffed.” Mica leaned out and fired. “You hear that, you ugly comet humpers?”
Unlike Alisa, Mica had a blazer pistol, and her streaks of crimson flashed through the hold, brightening it as if lightning were flashing. For an instant, Alisa had a good look at the person crouching under the stairs, someone wearing a big, shaggy fur coat. She couldn’t target the man in the airlock alcove from her position, but she could shoot at this one. She leaned out just enough to line up her shot, but the hold had gone dark again, smoke and mist further obscuring her target.
“Shoot again,” Alisa whispered to Mica.
“Who gets to repair the pock holes later?” Mica growled, but she complied, dumping a barrage of fire in the direction of the airlock.
In the light from her blazer bolts, Alisa spotted her man again. He spotted her too. He had a blazer out, the muzzle pointed straight at her.
She fired first and lunged back behind the protection of the bulkhead. The man returned fire, but his bolts did not sizzle past her ear as she expected. They must have flown wide.
“We’ll make Beck fix the holes,” Alisa said. “These are his mafia men.”
“I’ll have a putty knife and a paintbrush awaiting his return.”
Alisa risked peeking out again. When blazer bolts lit up the hold, Mica trading fire with the man in the airlock, Alisa spotted the figure by the stairs, flat on his back and not moving. Good.
“Got a plan for the one in the airlock?” Alisa whispered. She couldn’t target him or even see him, and she didn’t think Mica could hit him effectively, either. In that alcove between the two hatches, he would be well protected.
A cough came from the airlock.
“That’s my plan,” Mica said. “Hoping he pukes his lungs all over the deck.”
“Beck’s going to need more than a putty knife to clean that up.”
“He can—”
A boom erupted from somewhere outside, and the ice heaved underneath the Nomad. The ship lurched to the side, hurling Alisa back from the hatchway. She skidded into a console as snaps and cracks erupted outside, echoing ominously inside of engineering. She accidentally kicked someone as she rolled to her hands and knees. Yumi? It was too dark to see anything.
“Did one of those idiots set off explosives?” Mica demanded from flat on her back. She had also been thrown away from the bulkhead and lay in open view of the hatchway. “On ice?”
Afraid Mica did not realize she was a target right then, Alisa scrambled toward her and grabbed her shoulder. Shudders wracked the Nomad, but she could easily imagine the mafia man taking advantage. She found her feet and started to pull Mica out of the way. A thump came from outside the hatchway, and she heard someone’s heavy breathing.
Alisa could barely see, darkness still reigning on the ship, but she whipped her Etcher across her body and fired as a man appeared out of the shadows. The figure froze, framed by the hatchway, then toppled forward with a thump.
Before Alisa could recover her breath and string two thoughts together, a bang came from out in the cargo hold. Icy air swirled into engineering.
“Is that damned hatch open again?” she growled, even as she and Mica scrambled to the side where they would not be easy targets.
Footfalls thundered across the cargo hold. Alisa leaned her back against the engine housing and aimed her Etcher. She hoped that in the dark, the reinforcements would trip over the mafia thug crumpled in the hatchway.
Another dark figure came into sight, a huge one this time.
“Alisa?” came Leonidas’s voice a split second before she fired.
She yanked her Etcher up, not trusting her twitchy trigger finger. But she reacted quickly enough to keep from shooting.
“We’re here,” she said, trying to sound calm and professional and definitely not frazzled.
A flashlight came on. It belonged to Yumi, who was crouching near the shield generator, trying to stay out of the way.
Leonidas stood in the hatchway, a couple of fresh scorch marks on his crimson battle armor. He looked down at the man at his feet, then stepped over him and into engineering. He walked straight toward Alisa as Beck stepped into the hatchway, blood spattering his white armor.
“I told you to keep the hatch closed,” Leonidas said, pinning Alisa with his gaze.
“No, we’re fine here. Thanks for asking. How was your day?” She stuffed her Etcher into its holster.
His lips thinned.
“I didn’t open the hatch,” Alisa said, “just as I assume you didn’t hit the button to lower our shields right before the other ship fired. Weirdness is happening here.”
“Yes, and my vote is to get out of here, especially since—”
Another snap sounded from under the ship, and the deck lurched, dropping a couple of inches.
“This situation is making it very difficult to maintain a serene state of mind,” Yumi announced. Her flashlight beam wavered. Her hand might have been shaking.
Alisa didn’t blame her. She was trying very hard not to look at the man she had very likely killed—or the blood spattered on Beck’s armor.
“What happened out there?” Mica asked. “You didn’t blow up the other ship, did you?”
“In the midst of a frenetic battle on their ship, we may have inadvertently shot something important in engineering,” Beck said. “Something that cracked, smoked, and caused men to shout, ‘Abandon ship, abandon ship.’ Which we then decided would be a good idea for us too.”
“There was an explosion, and the ice under their ship cracked,” Leonidas said. “It was sinking as we ran away, and we barely escaped before a massive chunk of ice broke, sank, and took them all down with it.”
“Their ship didn’t float?” Alisa frowned at Yumi, more alarmed than ever by the sounds of ice snapping outside. “You said a ship would float, like a boat.”
“I said this ship probably would, since it’s got a lot of air on the inside.”
“Well, let’s see if we can get it fixed before we have to test that theory, shall we?” Alisa pushed herself away from the console she had been leaning against, though she had no idea where she would go. The ship was still broken and without power, so she couldn’t even check the cameras in NavCom. Maybe Mica would need another flashlight holder. She stopped beside Leonidas. “I assume we were right and that those were White Dragon people?” she asked him. “The ones in here didn’t introduce themselves before they started firing. We have some rude enemies.”
“They were White Dragon,?
?? he said. “When I charged onto the bridge, the captain tried to bribe me with ill-gotten mafia booty.”
“And you said no?”
“I shot him.”
“That’s the equivalent of a no, I suppose.”
His brow furrowed slightly, that look that meant he didn’t understand how she could make jokes when she did. She sighed, not wanting to try and explain. She could easily imagine him striding onto a bridge in that red armor, an implacable executioner arriving to deliver death. She found the image disturbing. She found this whole situation disturbing. Making jokes and avoiding thinking about it was easier than dwelling on grim reality.
“You did well to defend yourselves here,” Leonidas said, the praise surprising her.
She almost made a flippant comment, especially since she felt her defense had been anything but spectacular, but she bit her lip before it came out. She said, “Thank you,” instead, guessing he would appreciate that answer more.
He rested his hand on her shoulder, and she decided she had guessed correctly.
“Uhh, Captain?” came Beck’s voice from the cargo hold. “We have a problem. Well, technically, the problem may have us.”
Alisa started for the hatchway, but Leonidas kept his hand on her shoulder long enough to make sure he could walk out first. A thunk, thunk, thunk came from a panel that Mica had opened. Yumi, once again holding the flashlight for her, looked curiously toward the hatchway, but Mica remained focused on her work, as if she hadn’t heard Beck speak.
“Keep working,” Alisa said softly as she walked out. She had a hunch they weren’t safe yet.
“Count on it,” Mica replied as she continued to thunk.
Beck stood in the cargo hold, his rifle cradled in his arms as he looked toward six robed figures standing at the top of the ramp, mist curling about their legs. Two carried black staffs, like the one Alisa had seen on the station. The others merely had their hands folded into the sleeves of their robes. All had their hoods pulled low, hiding their faces in shadow.