End Game

by Lindsay Buroker

  “Not at this time.”

  “There’s mandala drawing in the next session,” Young-hee said.

  “Exciting,” Alisa said.

  Leonidas leaned back, looking like he was rethinking his decision to come here for help.

  Yumi rolled into a sitting position. “What can I do for you, Captain? Leonidas?” She looked back and forth between them, her eyes closing to thoughtful slits.

  “We’re looking for something to… relax a person,” Alisa said, resting a hand on Leonidas’s shoulder. She almost withdrew it, thinking of his comment about casual touches arousing him, but he was still wearing his armor. She doubted he even felt the touch.

  Yumi smiled widely. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you took me up on my offer.” She scrambled to her feet and climbed onto her bunk to poke into the tin-filled cabinets above it. She grabbed one painted purple with a squat orange mushroom on the top. “Here we go.” She hopped off and handed the tin to Leonidas. “Bliss. Over a hundred doses in here. Scientifically proven to increase the likelihood of relaxation, meditative thoughts, and intense orgasms that last far longer than typical.”

  Leonidas stared down at the container in his hand. Young-hee also stared at it, and then at him, and then at Alisa. A flush of heat warmed Alisa’s cheeks, even though she hardly considered herself uncomfortable when discussing such matters. Leonidas shot Young-hee a wary look. He probably wasn’t enthused about discussing his sex life—or drugs to enhance his sex life—in front of her.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding,” Alisa said.

  “You may want to remove your armor first,” Yumi advised. “I believe it would impede relaxation and the ability to free your heart and your soul.” She grinned. “And other things.”

  “This isn’t what I had in mind,” Leonidas said, giving Alisa a we-should-have-gone-to-Alejandro look. He stepped back, as if he would flee the scene, but Alisa rested a restraining hand on his forearm.

  “Yumi,” Alisa said. “While we appreciate your willingness to share this drug, we actually came looking for something that would lower a man’s interest in sex. Temporarily, of course. Until we’ve figured out how to work our new family dynamics.” She looked at Leonidas, who appeared mortified at having this conversation so openly. “Though I wonder if the qui-gorn would help, too, to keep Jelena from being able to read your thoughts. Or would she find it suspicious that she couldn’t read you as well as others?”

  “I would prefer not to have the thoughts at all,” Leonidas said, his face turning glum. “Until such time as it would be appropriate to act upon them. For now, they just interfere with my efficiency.”

  “That must be why the empire didn’t want horny cyborgs. Poor efficiency.” Alisa meant it as a joke, but he didn’t smile.

  “I see,” Yumi said. “I do have compounds capable of lowering a man’s libido. There’s one made from mussafras root that’s a favorite of wives on Targos Moon. If their husbands were bothering them when they weren’t in the mood, they would mix mussafras powder into their tea or wine. Or if their husband’s eyes strayed, they would use the powder to make sure they were incapable of following their eyes with other organs. One moment please.”

  Alisa frowned at the idea that this was some kind of punishment for Leonidas. She wanted him to enjoy life, not be miserable. And she wanted to have sex with him and love him, not push him away. Sighing, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder while Yumi returned to her cupboard to rummage.

  “If you ever just want time alone together,” Young-hee said, “I would be happy to babysit. To keep Jelena suitably distracted.”

  “Thank you,” Alisa said, not wanting to explain that it wasn’t just that she wanted to be able to have sex with Leonidas without Jelena knowing. She didn’t feel she could until Jelena had accepted him, if not as a surrogate father—surely that would take a long time—but as her mother’s friend and partner. She didn’t want to sneak around behind her daughter’s back for her own pleasure. Even if it would be for Leonidas’s pleasure too.

  “How is sex handled in Starseer families?” Yumi asked, opening a different cabinet door to poke around. “If the children develop telepathy by the age of eight or nine, then you must have to deal with them knowing what’s going on behind the parents’ closed bedroom door. Are the parents open with it?”

  “Starseer parents would be able to shield their thoughts from their children, so a closed door usually suffices,” Young-hee said, “and the children are used to their parents being intimate from a young age, generally. There’s less privacy overall in a household with people with extrasensory awareness. But it can be awkward, certainly, in a situation such as this, where a new mate replaces an old, a biological parent perhaps.”

  “Any advice?” Alisa asked. She wasn’t sure if Young-hee’s father had been a part of her life or if there had been other suitors along the way.

  “My mother had a discussion with us girls. And then played the music loud in the bedroom.”

  Leonidas grunted.

  Yumi hopped down from the bunk, this time with a purple tin with a brown root painted on the top. It was very similar to the first tin.

  “Labeling those and listing the dosage and side effects might be more helpful than painting them,” Alisa pointed out as she handed the tin to Leonidas.

  “I would usually do that if I was making a little bag for someone,” Yumi said, “but I understand cyborgs have fast metabolisms. You better just take the tin. Use what you need and bring the rest back whenever your situation has changed.”

  “Any side effects?” Leonidas eyed both tins warily.

  “The mussafras may put you in touch with your feminine side.”

  His lip curled.

  Alisa linked her arm with his. “Finally, I’ll have a chance of getting needlepoint art for my wall.”

  “The masculine and feminine should be represented in each soul, regardless of sex,” Yumi said. “I don’t believe you’ll experience anything untoward.”

  “So long as he doesn’t become attracted to Beck instead,” Alisa said.

  “Well, I’ve told you what to do if his eyes stray.” Yumi smirked.

  “Here.” Leonidas handed her the first tin.

  Yumi stepped back, lifting her hands. “Keep it. Perhaps a time will come in the not too distant future where you wish to experiment.” Yumi gave Alisa a pointed look, and Alisa wondered if she somehow knew that her and Leonidas’s first—and sadly only—night together hadn’t been as star-shattering as she had hoped, since he’d been so careful, so afraid he would hurt her.

  Leonidas muttered a thanks and headed toward his cabin. Alisa stifled a yawn, thinking she should get some sleep, too, but with so many ships out there, she figured she should sleep in the pilot’s seat.

  “Goodnight, Leonidas,” she said softly, pausing at the intersection. She groped for a way to say something more, to thank him for understanding her need to keep him at arm’s length, but words eluded her.

  He paused at his hatch to give her a long look over his shoulder, his gaze raking her entire form, his eyes hungry but with a hint of anguish there was well. “Goodnight,” he said, and ducked into his cabin, closing the hatch firmly behind him.

  Feeling lonely, Alisa headed to NavCom.

  Chapter 11

  Alisa slid her hands over the control panel in the imperial shuttle’s cockpit, appreciating how easy it was to see the craft’s stats on the floating holodisplays. The view screen stretched across the entire space, wrapping around Alisa and making it feel like a window looking out onto the stars, letting her see more than one hundred and eighty degrees around her. The shuttle had been built ten years earlier, but compared to everything she had flown for the Alliance—and since—the craft felt sleek and new. Too bad she was only using it to deliver food and her catering team, rather than flying it into battle. Or maybe not. The torpedo bays were empty, the blazer banks depleted. The shuttle would work well for obstacle courses and do
dging enemy fire, but it was in no position to attack.

  “Is black practical for a caterer?” Leonidas asked, walking up the aisle to take the other seat in the cockpit. He hadn’t yet put on the grayish-blond wig and contoured nose, jaw, and cheek prosthetics that would change the look of his hair and face, but he was wearing the formal waiter’s uniform she had ordered for him complete with button-down shirt, bowtie, and lapel jacket. He, however, managed to look like a bodyguard even in the servants’ clothing. “What if Beck dusts me with flour? I thought cooks were supposed to wear white.”

  “I hate to demote you when you’ve imagined yourself in that lofty position, but you’ll be carrying hor d'oeuvres on trays, not cooking anything.”

  Beck had finished all the preparation on the Nomad, so he shouldn’t be in need of Leonidas’s meager chef’s skills. He’d found trays with lids somewhere—possibly back in the junkyard—and they had transferred everything over to this shuttle for the ride to the meeting spot. He, Abelardus, Yumi, and Young-hee were back there now, alternating between stirring things to keep them from solidifying and changing into serving costumes of their own. Alisa was surprised that Yumi and Young-hee had wanted to come, especially since Yumi’s mafia ex-employer might be at this meeting, but maybe that was the very reason she’d wanted to come, to confront him and convince him to leave her alone. If so, Alisa hoped she would wait until after her team had planted the tracking device and filed back onto the shuttle.

  Mica was back on the Nomad with the chickens, children, Alejandro and Tiang, and the rest of the Starseers, and had muttered something about engineers not being babysitters. Bravo Six had proven himself capable of piloting the freighter and was manning the controls in NavCom. He would get the ship out of trouble if trouble came looking. Or so Alisa hoped. She had second-guessed herself several times, wondering if she should stay aboard and let Beck and Leonidas lead this mission, but the entire thing had been her idea, and she felt she should be there to direct if things went wrong. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine it going smoothly.

  “Carrying food trays?” Leonidas asked. “Is that all?”

  “You may get to carry drinks too.”

  “Hm. And what will you be doing during this scheme?”

  Beck had been relieved that Alisa was coming along to take the onus of command off him. Leonidas hadn’t seemed quite as enthused, but he had not objected. Alisa didn’t know if that was because she’d finally gotten him to accept that she would throw herself into the chaos if at all possible or if he just didn’t feel comfortable commanding a catering mission.

  “I’ll also be carrying trays,” Alisa said. “I figure the waiters will make the best spies. We can mingle with the guests, and at some point, I’ll find an opportunity to sneak away and place the tracking device.” She patted her jacket, the feminine version of the one Leonidas was wearing, where she had the tracker snugged in a pocket. It was small, slender, and had a tacky substance on the back, so she could stick it under a table or shelf. Months ago, the Alliance had used something similar to track the Nomad to the Starseer temple on Arkadius.

  Leonidas draped one of his meaty arms over the back of his seat and gazed thoughtfully at her. He seemed relaxed, and there was nothing intense or salacious about his gaze, as there sometimes had been lately, and she realized he might have taken some of Yumi’s drug. She had noticed the hungry looks he’d sometimes given her in the last week or so, but hadn’t realized how much of a charge there had been about him, the air almost crackling with electricity. This was old Leonidas, the one who was indifferent to sex. It was for the best, at least for now, but she missed the other looks, the ones that made her feel desirable and alive.

  “Are you armed?” Leonidas asked.

  “With my wits, yes.”

  His eyes closed to slits.

  “What kind of waiter would wander around with an armory?” Alisa asked.

  Leonidas opened his jacket, revealing his destroyer nestled in an inside holster.

  “What if we’re searched?”

  “I’ll growl ferociously at them to discourage that.”

  Alisa expected to have to walk through a security checkpoint to get aboard Henneberry’s vessel and imagined alarms sounding at Leonidas’s hardware. She wondered what else he had secreted inside his costume.

  “As it is, we may have trouble if they ask to see our identifications,” she said.

  “We’re a legitimate catering company with several ten-star reviews, Captain,” Beck called up from the back. “And we’ll be carrying trays of delectable food. I bet they’ll just wave us toward the banquet hall.”

  “Unless they’ve been doing research and figured out our legitimate company has only been around for three days.”

  “We went out of our way to make it appear that we’ve been around longer,” Yumi said brightly. “When would you like your drugs?”

  “Not until right before we go on board,” Alisa said. “And this time, you can tell us how much of a dose to take.”

  Leonidas’s eyebrows rose.

  “Just in case some of Tymoteusz’s people are at the meeting,” Alisa said. “I’m assuming this is preliminary, and that they won’t be here, but if they are, I don’t want them reading our thoughts as soon as we walk on.” She hoped that having a couple of Starseers on her infiltration team would give her the advantage instead.

  “I see.” Leonidas shifted his jacket back into place, hiding the big gun. “Can you see my bulge?”

  “Uh, you’re not supposed to ask a lady that.”

  His brow furrowed, but then he seemed to grasp the innuendo. “Not ever?”

  “At least not in public places.”

  No, not ever, Abelardus said into her mind. Nobody wants to hear about his bulge.

  Alisa checked the sensors as an excuse to ignore him. “We’re coming up to the meeting coordinates, and there’s a bunch of ships waiting at them. Lots of yachts, with one big one in the middle. And when I say big, I mean gargantuan. That thing rivals an Alliance warship. I have a feeling that’s where we’re going to be directed to go.”

  It seemed strange to see all these ships out here, loitering in empty space. Aldrin and Baku Moon were still on the sensors, but there was nothing out this far, not so much as an asteroid tumbling past.

  “I wonder how big the crew is,” Leonidas said, eyeing the big yacht. “Is it surprising that, on a ship that large, she wouldn’t have had enough people to handle the meal preparation in-house?” He scratched his jaw. Wondering if they were flying into a trap?

  But who would want to bother to trap them? The Alliance wanted the Nomad, yes, and the empire might want Alisa’s team, too, if it believed they had information on Thorian’s whereabouts, but what would some entrepreneurs and mafia families care about her people? That Henneberry woman had been interested in having Alisa executed, but now that she thought that had been taken care of…

  Alisa frowned as it occurred to her that Solstice might have lied about that. What if she’d told Henneberry that she and Leonidas had escaped? And were looking for her?

  “This is more than meal preparation,” Beck said from the back. “This is an event. It requires an exquisite dining experience.”

  “Is it hard to prepare exquisite meals when your portable grill is the main cooking source for everything?” Young-hee asked.

  “Absolutely not. My grill is amazing, and my sauces make everything divine.”

  “Is it just me, or has he grown more pompous about his food since I came on board?” Abelardus asked.

  “He’s gotten a couple of big deals since then,” Alisa said. “His pompousness is deserved.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Beck said. “I think.”

  A comm button flashed, and another holodisplay popped up, this one displaying a woman’s face. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore a blue uniform of sorts. It wasn’t Alliance or imperial. Something Henneberry had concocted for her staff?

  “Personal Touch Cateri
ng Company Shuttle,” she said, “This is the Starry Elegance. We look forward to having you aboard. Please fly your shuttle into our port bay for docking.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Alisa said, without offering her name. She’d made one up for this, but was hoping Beck was right and that he wouldn’t be asked to present identification for his individual staff members, that the baskets of veggies painted on the side of the shuttle would convince people of their legitimacy.

  “We’re clearing you for landing now.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alisa closed the comm. “A bay instead of an airlock.”

  “We won’t be able to fly away of our own accord if things turn bad,” Leonidas said.

  “Abelardus may be able to convince whoever’s in charge of the doors to open them,” Alisa said, “but I agree, attaching via an airlock would have made me feel freer.”

  “I wonder if they have a grab beam.”

  “On a civilian yacht? That seems like an unlikely accessory.”

  “They have weapons.” Leonidas pointed to e-cannon ports visible all over the hull of the ship, then tapped a few spots that might have represented blazers. “They could have other combat accessories.”

  “I had no idea civilian yachts needed to be so militarily equipped.”

  “They may be recent upgrades. The system is more dangerous these days.”

  Alisa tightened her jaw and resisted the temptation to get into their old argument. Besides, she couldn’t deny that there had been more lawlessness in the system since the empire had fallen.

  “Looks like eighteen ships here in total,” Alisa said, counting on the sensors as they flew closer. The larger ones were floating near the Henneberry yacht—they must have sent shuttles over to its bays—while a few medium-sized craft were hooked up via airlock tubes. Those vessels too large for the bays and without shuttles of their own, Alisa assumed. “Henneberry must have gotten a lot of the mafia families interested in her establishing-an-all-new-government scheme.”