The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  A second dark figure loomed into view at the end of the aisle. Alisa started to bring her Etcher up again, leaping back to give herself more room to fire.

  “It’s me,” Leonidas said, crouching to spring away in case she shot.

  Alisa lowered her gun and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself in the aftermath of the skirmish. Funny how she could maintain her cool easily while weaving among enemies and fighting for her life in the cockpit of a combat ship, but turn into a nervous mess during a flesh-on-flesh fight.

  “Thanks for taking care of him,” Leonidas said, waving toward the unconscious man.

  “It seemed like the thing to do.” Alisa crept past her victim, not wanting to be anywhere nearby when he woke up.

  Leonidas removed the fallen man’s gun and searched him before following her out into a wider aisle that bisected the rows of bookcases. Alejandro leaned against a table nearby, his graying hair damp with sweat. Someone’s earstar rested on the table next to him, the tiny embedded light shining brightly enough to reveal a contusion on the side of his face and a swollen lip. Six men lay sprawled on the floor between Alejandro and Alisa. She allowed herself to think that Leonidas had needed her help and might have been shot if not for her distracting the seventh man, but she doubted that was true.

  Alejandro pushed away from the table, looking shaky. Alisa couldn’t blame him. He had proven himself an able doctor when helping her and many others after the pirate ship incident, but he was no warrior. He seemed like someone who had gone through his whole life without anyone throwing a punch at him—or drawing a weapon on him. Until recently.

  He stepped over two fallen men, one still groaning and clutching his belly, and stopped at a third. The downed figure wore a familiar satchel slung over his shoulder, Alejandro’s satchel. Alejandro did not hesitate to pry it off and return it to his own shoulder after peeking inside.

  “A lot of people are interested in that orb,” Alisa observed.

  “Yes.” His lips flattened into a line. “I’m not sure how so many have learned about its existence and that I have it.” He looked at her, his eyes closing to slits, his lips still pressed together in irritation.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” Alisa said, reading an accusation in that gaze. It was true that she had considered sending a message to someone in the Alliance government, but she hadn’t. Not yet.

  Alejandro continued to hold her gaze, not breaking it until Leonidas finished removing the fallen men’s weapons and joined them.

  He held out a blazer. “Doctor?”

  “No, thank you.” Alejandro lifted a hand, refusing it. “I wouldn’t know how to shoot it even if I could stomach the idea of firing at people.”

  Leonidas opened his mouth, but a soft ding sounded in the distance, and he did not speak, instead holding up a hand and cocking an ear toward the noise. Alisa was fairly certain that had been the sound of the elevator arriving. Had one of Alejandro’s assailants escaped and called down reinforcements?

  She did not hear anything else, but Leonidas’s expression grew grimmer. He pointed at the flashlights. Alisa did not know what he wanted at first, but when he started turning them off, she got the gist. She called up the holodisplay on the earstar on the table, intending to turn off its beam. It asked for a passcode. She dropped it on the floor and ground it under the heel of her boot. The light went out.

  Leonidas frowned at her, or perhaps the noise she had made.

  “Just giving it my passcode,” she whispered.

  Alejandro flicked off the last flashlight, and darkness returned to the area.

  A touch came at her shoulder. Leonidas. He took her arm, linked it to Alejandro’s, then led both of them toward the back wall of the library, far from the elevators.

  Alisa had not heard anything since the ding, nothing to suggest that someone had come onto the floor instead of leaving, but she had learned to trust Leonidas’s superior hearing, so she was confident that he had detected something ominous. She was, however, surprised that he did not tell them to wait there and go confront whoever it was. Her own meager martial contributions notwithstanding, he could clearly handle whoever these thugs were.

  Yet he led them deeper into the library, through two more aisles of bookcases and to the back wall. The tiny red emergency lights lined the floor along a perimeter walkway, and Alisa could see him when he stopped to look both ways. He pointed toward a door lit with an exit sign that glowed a soft green in the darkness.

  Alejandro walked that way without objecting, his hand clutched possessively over his satchel. Leonidas paused before following, tugging a small device out of his pocket. He tapped a couple of buttons, twisted something, then tossed it into the air. The tiny device flew off of its own accord. An aerial camera?

  Alisa started to ask what he was doing, but he pressed a finger to his lips before she could speak. The presumptuousness would have irked her, but his face was grave in the faint red light illuminating it from below. He touched his ear and pointed again toward the door.

  Silently, Alisa crept after Alejandro. He opened the door, and it creaked faintly. Alisa glanced over her shoulder, wondering if that had been too much noise. Who did Leonidas think was following them?

  He shook his head grimly and waved for her to go through. The landing outside was just as dark as the library. Leonidas followed them out, closing the door softly behind them.

  “We have a problem,” Alejandro whispered, turning his flashlight on.

  “Silence,” Leonidas breathed. “He’ll hear.”

  “Who?” Alisa mouthed.

  His back to Leonidas, Alejandro directed his flashlight upward. This was an emergency exit, and there should have been stairs leading back up to the above-ground levels, but they were missing. A sign strung across the empty space read: Please use the west exit. East exit basement levels 0-2 closed for repairs. They were very closed. The doors were there, higher up in the dark well, but the metal stairs and landings had been removed for several levels. Alejandro’s flashlight beam bounced off the bottom of the landing three floors above. Thanks to the library’s high ceilings, it had to be close to forty feet. The stairs leading downward were intact, but Alisa had little interest in traveling deeper into the bowels of the library. Unfortunately, she doubted they could reach the west exit right now.

  A holodisplay popped into the air at her shoulder, surprising her. Leonidas had his netdisc out, and it was projecting the view of a moving camera displaying the room they had left. Familiar dark aisles swept past, the view from above the bookcases. Alisa would not have guessed that Leonidas had spy equipment with him. Maybe he had intended to use it with whoever he had been making plans to meet later.

  The camera slowed down as it neared people, a group moving away from the elevator, following one of the red-lit walkways. There was just enough illumination to make out military uniforms, not the plain black of the imperial army, but black highlighted with crimson. Alisa sucked in a breath. She hadn’t seen those uniforms often during her time in the military, but she knew them well. They belonged to—or had belonged to—the emperor, specifically, his imperial guard, bodyguards as well as a battalion of soldiers that worked closely with him, doing his work. Their reputation wasn’t quite as forbidding as that of the Cyborg Corps, but they were known to be very good at their jobs. These men all carried assault rifles on their backs and blazers in belt holsters. Apparently, the security guard hadn’t had any success keeping them out of the library, either.

  A single man not in a uniform walked beside the group, his neck thick and muscular, his dark hair cut short. Though most of his clothing was plain, he wore a jacket similar to the one Leonidas always had on. Alisa could not make out what the patches were, but his look alone was enough to make her whisper, “Cyborg?”

  He nodded once.

  “Someone you know?”

  The cyborg in the video halted, raising a hand to stop the soldiers. He tilted his head, as if he had heard something. Them? Could he hear
her whispers even across the library and through the thick metal exit door?

  “No,” Leonidas breathed. “He’s young, probably a first- or second-year recruit. Nobody who served in my unit of veterans.”

  “Does that mean he’ll be inexperienced?”

  “It means he’ll have all of the latest technology, the best and most modern cybernetic implants,” Leonidas whispered, that grim expression on his face again.

  “Oh. Does that mean he would win if you two fought?”

  His chin came up, his eyes hard. “It does not.”

  In the video, the cyborg turned toward the camera and looked up at it. He had hard, dark eyes. The flying spy device had stopped, as if sensing possible discovery, and probably was not making any noise as it lurked near the ceiling. That did not keep the cyborg from lifting his rifle and blasting it. The holodisplay above Leonidas’s netdisc turned black.

  Leonidas stuffed his computer back into his pocket. “We have to get out of here.” He glanced upward—Alejandro had turned his flashlight toward the steps leading down, but Leonidas could probably see all the details of the missing stairs. His eyes were supposed to be as enhanced as his ears. “I can make that jump.”

  “Congratulations,” Alisa whispered. “We can’t.”

  “I have no rope.” Alejandro patted his satchel.

  “What kind of researcher doesn’t bring rope to the library?” Alisa asked.

  He gave her a dry look.

  “I could boost you up,” Leonidas said, still considering the landing above. Far above.

  “You are not hurtling us forty feet in the air,” Alisa whispered.

  She was sure he imagined them easily grabbing on after being tossed up there like a ball, but she imagined getting conked in the head by the metal floor and passing out. And Alejandro seemed even less athletic and agile than she.

  “I—” Leonidas pressed his ear against the door, then backed away and shook his head. “They’re coming. We go down. Our only choice.”

  Alejandro hurried down the steps, not hesitating. Alisa suspected he knew far more about who had sent those people than she did. She hustled after him, with Leonidas following more slowly, guarding their rear as they descended. How had she gotten herself into this? She had just wanted to come to the library to do some research. Her battle was with the Starseers, not whoever had taken charge of the remnants of the empire.

  “We’ll go down a couple more levels,” Alejandro said, as he continued past the landing on the floor below, “then cut through to the elevator, try to go back up without them noticing us.”

  “Assuming they don’t have people posted in the elevators,” Alisa said.

  “There’s no other choice, unless you know a way out. We’re fifty feet under the ground now.” He glanced at a sign by the next doorway they passed, denoting this was B5. “Maybe more.”

  Leonidas did not override his suggestion, and Alejandro continued to B6 before trying a door. It was locked.

  “Of course,” he said.

  A clang came from above them. The door on B3 opening.

  Wordlessly, Alejandro continued down. At first, he walked softly, keeping his shoes from ringing on the metal steps, but the thunder of boots pounding on the stairs above echoed down the well. Alejandro hurried, no longer worried about sound. It probably did not matter. Their footfalls would be lost in the cacophony in the stairwell now. Flashlight beams slashed down through the passage, seeking targets. Alejandro tried a door on B7, but it, too, was locked.

  “Leonidas?” he whispered, pointing at it. “Can you open it?”

  “Down one more,” Leonidas barked, passing them and pointing at a sign. It claimed that an environmental room was on the next level, probably the last level in the basement. Alisa did not know. She had never been down this far. “There’ll be machinery making noise,” he added. “Easier to hide.”

  The stairs ended on a cement pad, a door the same as the others the only way to continue on. Leonidas tugged at it. Like the others, it was locked. He braced one hand against the wall, then tugged harder, one swift motion. Metal snapped, and the door opened.

  Movement came from the landing above. Someone leaned over a railing and shouted. Leonidas waved Alejandro and Alisa through. She had no sooner than crossed the threshold when a blazer sounded, a beam of red brightening the air behind them.

  “They’re shooting to kill,” Alejandro blurted as overhead lights flickered on in the vast environmental control room.

  Leonidas lunged inside, shutting the door behind him. Since he had broken the mechanism, there was no way to lock it. Not that locking it would help if the soldiers had a cyborg like him with them.

  A large cylindrical piece of machinery was bolted to the wall next to the door. Alisa had no idea what it was, but it looked to weigh a ton. Leonidas grabbed one of its legs and pulled upward, his broad shoulders and back flexing. The sound of warping metal filled the cavernous room, drowning out the hums and beeps of machinery. Rivets snapped. He went to the other side, pulled up the other leg, and shoved the massive cylinder sideways. It toppled as someone tried to open the door.

  Bangs came from the stairwell. Someone shouted an order, and it grew silent on the other side of the door. In a second, the cyborg would probably be there, doing his best to move the blockage.

  “Go,” Leonidas barked, waving Alejandro and Alisa toward the far side of the room.

  Machinery filled the space, towering pumping stations, water heaters, snarls of pipes, and other items she could not identify. Alisa could not see the elevators through it all, but she ran in the direction where they should be. There was no way she was going to let herself get killed over Alejandro’s orb.

  As she ran, loud clangs and clanks and thumps sounded from the door. She had not yet heard the screech of that big piece of machinery sliding across the floor. Maybe Leonidas had found a way to wedge it against something so that the other cyborg could not easily push it. Easily. She snorted, finding it crazy to attribute that word to something that weighed hundreds of pounds or more.

  She and Alejandro, who was sticking close behind her, ran through an open area in the center of the room. Even though the lights were on in the control room, they weren’t strong lights, and deep shadows lurked all around the towering machinery. She glanced toward a large square drain in the center of the floor. A couple of pipes came through from the ceiling, plunging into the cement floor near it. Sewage.

  She wrinkled her nose and ran on, being careful not to get lost in the maze of equipment. The elevator doors came into view, and the sounds of banging faded behind her. She ran and hit the button, relief washing over her. They were going to make it.

  The button flashed at her, and a holodisplay appeared in front of the wall, a simple map showing the status of the cars. Only one descended all the way to the bottom level of the basement, a cargo elevator instead of the normal passenger ones, and the level it was currently on throbbed. B3.

  “They’ve held up the elevator,” Alejandro said as Leonidas joined them. “Unless we can climb the shaft, we’re stuck.”

  Leonidas shook his head. “We would be blocked by the car even if we could go that way.”

  He did not point out the slim likelihood of Alisa and Alejandro being able to climb up an elevator shaft, but Alisa certainly thought of it.

  “We’re trapped then.” Alejandro’s shoulders slumped.

  “The sewer,” Alisa blurted, even as she cringed at the idea of trying to escape into the waste stream for the entire library.

  “We can try,” Leonidas said, turning back the way he had come.

  A thunderous bang came from the far side of the control room, the screeching of metal along the floor accompanying it. Leonidas’s run turned into a sprint. Alisa raced after him, even as she felt crazy for doing so—the soldiers and the cyborg had made it out of the stairwell, and she was running back in their direction.

  By the time the grate came into sight again, Leonidas knelt beside it, gri
pping the crisscrossing bars. He probably could have torn it from its hinges easily, but he took his time, focusing on the lock.

  “This way,” someone called as footfalls pounded across the cement floor.

  Alisa dropped down next to Leonidas. “Problem?” she whispered.

  She had drawn her Etcher, but the last thing she wanted was to get in a firefight with someone who was Leonidas’s equivalent—or more than his equivalent. Besides, if she fired at imperial soldiers on the imperial home world, she had no doubt that she would be arrested and never let off the planet again. Or maybe they would simply kill her outright.

  “Trying not to make it obvious,” Leonidas said.

  He tugged once, the gesture short and effective. The lock popped.

  He lifted the grate enough for them to squirm through. Alejandro did not hesitate. He slithered through and dropped, even though they could not see what awaited them in the darkness below. Alisa went after him, nearly kicking him as she fell. She realized he was bracing himself against the sides, his feet and hands planted. As she dropped past him, her heart leaping into her throat, she stuck her legs and arms out, trying to do the same thing. His caution was understandable. Who knew how far this dropped?

  But her hands wouldn’t reach. She plunged into darkness, unable to stop herself.

  Chapter 6

  Alisa wasn’t sure how far she fell, but the square of light up above grew small before she splashed down. Cold water enveloped her and washed over her face. Only the memory that people were hunting for them kept her from sputtering and cursing. Judging by the smell—or lack of smell—she had landed in water and nothing more, but she rushed to find her feet and get her head out. It came up to her chest.

  Someone splashed down beside her, making less noise than she would have expected. She was sure she had struck on her back, slapping water all over the place. She reached out and found a shoulder that was too broad to belong to Alejandro.