Arkadian Skies: Fallen Empire, Book 6

by Lindsay Buroker

  Alisa propped a fist on her hip. Would it be inappropriate to punch him while he was talking on the comm?

  “Yes, I’m aware of the work you did in the field,” Alejandro said, putting his back to her. “That’s why I’m contacting you. I see. Thank you.” He tapped his earstar, but responded to another caller instead of turning to face Alisa.

  “How many people has he contacted?” she whispered to Ostberg.

  “Five or six,” he whispered back, since Alejandro was speaking again.

  “Five or six people who now know he’s on the planet and could have reported that fact to the authorities?” When Alisa had suggested he try to find a local contact, she hadn’t imagined him comming the entire hospital staff.

  “Do you think we’ll have to fight?” Ostberg whispered. “I can get my staff and be ready.”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  Alejandro frowned at them, made a shushing motion, and kept talking. “Yes, that would be excellent, Doctor. Two hours? We’ll be there.”

  Finally, Alejandro closed the comm. He lifted his chin.

  “I’ve found an old medical school colleague who works at the hospital and who has agreed to let me in with my patient and a colleague.”

  “Which colleague did you have in mind?” Alisa glanced at Ostberg. “He’s a little young to pass as a nurse or a doctor, don’t you think?”

  “Leonidas.”

  “He’s a little brawny to pass as a nurse or a doctor, don’t you think?” she asked, though she agreed that a chaperone for Alejandro would be a good idea, and she couldn’t think of anyone she trusted more to send along.

  “It’s possible for a doctor or a nurse to be muscular,” Alejandro said.

  “Oh? Did you find a lot of time to exercise when you were working eighteen-hour days in the ER?”

  “No, but some people use growth stimulants to get the look while bypassing the need for exercise. And my days were rarely that short. But not everybody is an ER doctor. My hours were less demanding when I moved into specialized surgery.”

  Alisa almost wished she could go along to see Alejandro trying to pass a six-and-a-half-foot-tall cyborg off as a nurse.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need time to prepare Durant for transport,” Alejandro said. “My colleague is meeting us soon at a pharmacy near the hospital, and he’ll escort us in, vouch for me, and handle the questions and paperwork.”

  “Really?” Alisa hadn’t expected that much assistance. She tried to decide if she could imagine anyone liking Alejandro enough to go to that much trouble—and risk getting into that much trouble—for him. “Are you paying him?”

  “Of course not. He’s a neurosurgeon with twenty years of experience, and the Alliance trusts him.” Alejandro curled a lip at that. “He saw the tides changing, turned early toward the rebels, and treated many of their injured officers during the war. He has money and an impeccable reputation in this city.”

  Another reason he might not be quite the staunch ally Alejandro thought he would be. Alisa hesitated to point that out since she had been the one to suggest this tactic. Maybe it would have been better to hijack an ambulance, make fake idents, and sneak in. But until Mica found that forgery correspondence course, Alisa did not have anyone with the expertise to create fake idents.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Gregory Gutteridge. And don’t worry. He owes me a favor. I let him copy off my tests a few times.”

  Alejandro shooed her toward the hatchway, and Alisa went out, but not without worries dancing in her head. She thought about going to help Mica with the camouflaging, but decided to look up the doctor’s old school buddy and see what his public record said about him. She had some time before the men headed out.

  When she passed through the mess hall, she found Beck in his apron, whisking something in a bowl while omelets fried in a griddle atop his grill. Leonidas leaned against the counter.

  “Are you two bonding?” Alisa asked him. “Or is Beck requesting the use of your enhanced taste buds again?”

  “I’m putting a unique spin on a South Perunese sauce,” Beck said. “If it turns out, I can bottle it up and include it along with the package of samples I’m sending to Chef Leblanc. Do you think there’ll be time to stop at a post office here? Or a CargoExpress?”

  “If you do it soon. Before Alejandro visits the hospital. Just in case we end up having to flee rapidly.”

  “His plan didn’t meet with your approval?” Leonidas asked.

  Beck handed him a whisk. Leonidas accepted it, licked it, and returned it.

  “More lemon,” he said.

  “You think so? All right.” Beck squeezed a condiment bottle into his bowl. “I’ll use real lemon when I’m preparing the final package, so keep that in mind. I’m sure I can get all kinds of fresh produce here, things that are too difficult for Yumi to grow in her cabin. It’s hard to find a lemon even on a space station with a full hydroponics level.” He sighed wistfully and stuck the licked whisk back into the sauce, stirring vigorously.

  Alisa lifted her lip. “Will you also be using clean utensils when you’re preparing the final package?”

  “I didn’t think you’d object to a little cyborg spit.” Beck grinned at her and winked at Leonidas.

  Even if she was moderately disturbed by Beck’s cooking hygiene, she decided to appreciate that the two men had gotten over their animosity and suspicion of each other, at least when it came to the mess hall. Leonidas hadn’t even given that whisk a suspicious sniff before tasting from it.

  “I don’t.” She touched her palm to her chest. “But your chef may not find it particularly sanitary.”

  “Chef Leblanc was a soldier. I’m sure he’s tasted worse than spit.”

  “An accolade that oddly wasn’t painted on the side of any of his ships.”

  Maybe there hadn’t been room among the doughnut and hamburger murals.

  As Beck handed Leonidas the whisk again, Alisa resumed her walk, heading to NavCom. She didn’t have much time to dig into this acquaintance of Alejandro’s.

  She closed the hatch as she entered. Even though Alejandro would probably be busy in sickbay until he left, if he came up here, he wouldn’t appreciate her snooping, she was certain.

  When she tied into the local sys-net, the public information on Dr. Gutteridge matched what Alejandro had said, but that didn’t assuage her concerns. It only made her wonder anew why the man would risk getting into trouble for Alejandro’s sake. It wasn’t as if he was only helping an old comrade; he would be helping someone who was still loyal to the empire, what little remained of it. If the Alliance found out about that, they wouldn’t be happy with the doctor, trusted citizen or not.

  A knock came at the hatch, and Alisa turned the holodisplay on her netdisc to private before waving for the person to enter.

  Mica walked in and flopped down. “I finished camouflaging the ship, no thanks to Beck, who left after twenty minutes, declaring that he had a limited time to get his parcel together.”

  “Sorry, I should have come out to help you myself.”

  “Yes, you should have. Especially since…” Mica leaned forward, tapping at the controls to bring up a live map of the surrounding area. “Yes, there they are.”

  “What?”

  Mica zoomed in and pointed at something flying through the sky over the city. A nearby section of the city with a sports stadium and a shopping arcade. Alisa recognized it from their flight in.

  “That looks like an automated search drone,” she said, nodding toward the object in the air.

  “It’s one of many out there, scouring the city in a grid pattern.”

  “What are they searching for?” Alisa asked, though her gut already knew the answer. She hoped her gut would be wrong and that some other problem in the city had the authorities excited.

  Mica gave her a frank look.

  “Oh.”

  “We’re on the news too.” Mica pulled up another display, a newscaster ta
lking beside an image of a very familiar freighter. “Looks like the planet patrol got their comm fixed. One hand knows what the other is doing now.”

  “Always inconvenient when that happens.”

  “I’ve thrown as much junk as I could lift myself atop the ship, but you might want to close down all but minimal power, if not all power. A search drone might notice an energy signature coming out of a junkyard and find it suspicious.”

  “The doctor may object to removing a catheter by candlelight.”

  “He’ll get over it.” Mica pushed herself to her feet. “I knew nothing good would come of returning to Arkadius. We’ll be lucky if we’re not all in prison by the end of the day. Or we might just be dead.”

  “I don’t know why you’re worried. I’m the captain. You’re just an employee I wrangled into helping me with my dastardly criminal pursuits. This is the Alliance, not the empire. You shouldn’t be convicted in one of our courts.”

  “What does a conviction matter if I’m standing next to you and Leonidas when the police launch a grenade at you?”

  “This is the Alliance, not the empire,” Alisa repeated, hoping she didn’t sound delusional. “The police should arrest us, not greet us with grenades.”

  “Everyone greets your cyborg with grenades.”

  Alisa wanted to reject that notion, but he did make people twitchy when he appeared in that red armor.

  Mica, muttering under her breath, walked out, leaving her netdisc open. Alisa leaned over and returned it to displaying the aerial coverage of the search drones. There were two craft near the junkyard now.

  She flicked the comm to announce ship-wide, “Pull up the flashlights on your multitools or earstars. We’re going to power down for a while so we fit in with the junk in the junkyard.”

  “Don’t we already fit in with the junkyard junk?” Beck hollered, his voice floating up from the mess hall.

  Alisa ignored him, figuring he was grumpy over having the power to the mess hall shut down. He had a portable grill. Let him use that. How perfect did his preparation space need to be when he was using a saliva-slick whisk?

  After turning off the power, leaving only a handful of emergency lights glowing to mark the hatchways and walkways, Alisa returned to her netdisc. It wouldn’t need to be charged for a while, so she could continue her research.

  But she had already perused as much about Gutteridge as she wished to. She would warn Leonidas to watch for a trap when he and Alejandro went out. What more could she do? Besides be ready to fly in and pick them up in a hurry if necessary?

  She scanned the news, looking for mentions of Starseers. There were a lot of recent reports, but when she checked them, they proved to be nothing more than speculation about linking natural disasters with their nefarious ways. The temple attack wasn’t mentioned anywhere, so she assumed the military had kept it—and their failure—a secret. A search for Starseers combined with children brought up nothing.

  “So glad I have sys-net access again,” Alisa muttered. “It’s so useful.”

  The netdisc beeped, showing her a bunch of her serialized vid dramas downloading in the background. She snorted. At least she would have something to watch while Alejandro was gone.

  With nothing else to do, she found herself pulling up the old comm calls that had come in from the Storm Fury while the Nomad had been near Alcyone Station. She could use them to contact Tomich’s ship if she wished. Could she find out for Leonidas if Admiral Tiang was still aboard? And if so, could she think of a way to convince the doctor to come down for a visit and perhaps a surgery? Without kidnapping being required? There had to be a way to barter, bribe, or blackmail him—crimes perhaps, but lesser crimes than kidnapping—so he would want to do the surgery.

  “Later,” she told herself. She dared not contact the Alliance before her team went to the hospital, lest she risk tipping someone off and making their journey more difficult.

  On the other hand, if she waited… and if they tipped off the authorities on their own, she might have to fly in and rescue them, which would be followed by her streaking away from Arkadius as quickly as possible, likely with the authorities firing up her butt along the way. There would be no chance to talk to Tomich or the admiral then.

  If she contacted Tomich now, maybe she could route the message through a few communications stations on the planet to make it hard for the Storm Fury to pinpoint the origin of the call.

  If she did comm Tomich, would he be any help? She had betrayed him, in a manner of speaking, the last time they had met. But he had betrayed her, too, during what should have been an amiable dinner party. Didn’t that make them even? Maybe he would hold a professional but not a personal grudge against her.

  And she had another reason to get in contact. Someone should warn the Alliance about the resurgence of this group of Starseers—the chasadski, Abelardus had called them—who apparently wanted to rule over the entire system. If she informed Tomich that they were the ones with the Staff of Lore, maybe he could tell his superiors, and the Alliance would stop putting effort into finding her ship. What was there left here on the Nomad for them to find? Leonidas had to be a minor problem for them, compared to that staff.

  Not that Tomich would necessarily believe her. Still, he would have to check up on the lead, wouldn’t he? It could split their resources and result in fewer ships hunting for the Nomad.

  Though Alisa did not know if it was wise, she found a couple of nodes she could relay a message through, and she initiated a call. She wouldn’t talk for long.

  “Storm Fury, this is Lieutenant Park,” a comm officer soon said.

  “I have information on a Starseer artifact,” Alisa said without identifying herself. “I need to talk to Commander Tomich.”

  “Who’s calling, please? The commander doesn’t take comms from anonymous sources.”

  “No? Tell him he wasn’t nearly that uppity when he commanded the Star Warriors,” Alisa said, naming their old squadron.

  Silence fell after that. Alisa did not know if the lieutenant was checking on Tomich to see if he wanted to take the call or if she was simply referring the matter to some higher-ranking officer. Alisa well remembered being a lieutenant and being nervous at the idea of addressing a ship commander directly. Even if she had been on the irreverent side, she’d known better than to deliberately vex her superior officers with trivial matters.

  A beep sounded, followed by, “I’m not uppity, Marchenko. I’m busy hunting for stolen relics that I was, according to my superiors, responsible for losing.”

  “You’re doing that from the orbit of Arkadius?” Alisa asked, relieved to hear his voice and to also hear that it didn’t sound any more exasperated with her than usual.

  “Maybe I got a tip that you’d be here.”

  Alisa knew that wasn’t true, since she hadn’t known she would be coming this way until Durant had shown up on her cargo ramp, but she wondered if the Alliance already knew about the chasadski and had also guessed that they might visit the temple here.

  “The staff isn’t on my ship anymore,” she said, just in case he would believe her.

  “Oh? Did your Starseer leave with it, perhaps?”

  “It was stolen by another group of Starseers. That’s what I commed about, to warn you. This may be a matter of galactic security.”

  “That’s why you risked comming me, eh? You decided to risk having your location traced by my comm officer just to give me a tip.”

  Alisa wondered if that was a warning that the lieutenant was doing exactly that right now—and that Tomich would be obligated to send a team to find her if he discovered the Nomad’s location. Yes, she would definitely keep this short.

  “I’m sending you the image of the man who walked away with the staff,” Alisa said, tapping through her files as she spoke. She wouldn’t mention the possibility that the man was her father. “You may want to research him. He’s running with a group of Starseers called the chasadski. Pariahs. Apparently, they want to fi
nish what their ancestors started centuries ago.”

  “Taking over the system?”

  “Just so. This man and the staff were last seen on Cleon Moon.”

  “I’m aware that the staff was there,” Tomich said.

  The Alliance must have an intelligence team trying to track down the artifact. He probably had gotten a severe reprimand for losing it. Alisa regretted that she’d caused him trouble and regretted even more that she was wrapped up in all of this. Sometimes, it was all she could do not to curl up on the deck and cry that she wanted to go home, to a home and people who no longer existed.

  “And you believe it’s here on Arkadius now?” she made herself ask. She didn’t have much time and still needed to broach her main reason for contacting him.

  “Don’t you?” Tomich said.

  “We don’t have any proof.”

  “Something brought you here.”

  “The warmth and cheer we hoped to experience at the hands of the planet patrol,” she said, having no intention of going into detail on Durant and Jelena.

  “Is that what caused your brute to rip a leg off an android patroller? The willful destruction of personal and corporate property is a crime here, you know.”

  Alisa bristled at hearing Leonidas called a brute, especially when he had been doing her bidding and protecting her ship, but she worried about being traced and made herself stick to the script.

  “We’re open to paying fines. Listen, Tomich. I’ve given you some information. Would you be willing to give me some information in exchange? It’s nothing—” Alisa kept herself from saying that it was nothing that would get him in trouble or nothing that would hurt anyone, because she couldn’t promise any of that. “Nothing major,” she said.

  “The validity of your information is in doubt,” Tomich said. “Also, it wasn’t requested.”

  “Tomich,” she said softly, “I don’t want that weapon in the hands of Starseers, especially Starseers with megalomaniacal tendencies. I care what happens to the system.”