“Care to explain?” Leonidas asked.
“This… mission of mine, it’s not anything I would have chosen for myself. It was someone’s dying request. I am, quite frankly, a poor candidate for it, given my background. I thought that at the time, and I believe it even more now that so many people know about it and are after me.”
Alisa shifted her weight uneasily, hoping he wouldn’t imply again that she was the reason people knew about him and his orb.
“He knew it, too, I think,” Alejandro continued. “That I was a less than ideal candidate. But I was the doctor with him there at the end, and he had few options.”
“Who?” Alisa asked.
Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut so Alejandro might have forgotten she was there. Even though they had been through numerous binds now, he always seemed to remember that she was Alliance, through and through. Not someone to be trusted with secrets.
Leonidas surprised her by repeating the question. “Yes, who?” he asked.
Alejandro hesitated. “Do you truly need to know? Here?”
Here was probably code for: with the former Alliance officer listening.
“They may still be after us,” Leonidas said. “If we get into a shootout… Those are my former colleagues, Doctor. I don’t want to shoot them, not for something I don’t understand. I’ve trusted you to a degree thus far because I know you worked for the emperor’s family once, but if you’re on some quest for personal gain…”
Alisa blinked. Alejandro had been the personal physician to the emperor’s family? Had Leonidas known that all along? Or had Alejandro admitted it to him somewhere along the journey?
“I’m not. As I said, it was a dying man’s wish.” Alejandro sighed. “It was the emperor’s dying wish.”
Leonidas did not respond right away, and only the sound of the perpetual grinding of the sewer cleaner filled the air.
“I suspect we had similar reasons for ending up on Dustor,” Alejandro went on. “Were you not also fulfilling a final order before the war ended?”
“I cannot speak of that,” Leonidas said.
“As I cannot speak of my mission.” Alejandro glanced at Alisa, his face just visible in the light that reflected from the tunnel walls.
“Not with me here, eh?” Alisa asked. “Want me to put my fingers in my ears so you two can talk?”
Alejandro did not smile. “I was sworn to keep the mission a secret until I completed it and could hand the result over to the proper person.” He spoke vaguely, but now he met and held Leonidas’s eyes. Leonidas nodded back once, solemnly, and Alisa suspected the words hadn’t been quite so vague to him. “You have my word,” Alejandro continued, “that none of this is for personal gain. I own a lovely house by the seashore in Farmington, and there’s physical gold and diamonds there, enough that I can retire and needn’t worry about exchange rates or the fate of the imperial morat. My wife had me set everything up, back when I was making good money as a surgeon.”
“You’re still married?” Alisa asked, eyeing his sodden robe. Weren’t Sun Trinity monks supposed to be celibate? Or was that robe just a disguise? Maybe he had chosen it in the hope that people wouldn’t suspect him of being on some clandestine mission.
“No. It’s been over for ten years. My wife did not appreciate my long hours and my dedication to my work.”
Silence fell, Leonidas not asking any more questions. Had Alejandro given him enough? He seemed so loyal to the empire that Alisa would not be surprised if he would give his life to help Alejandro with his quest, even when Alejandro had refused to help him with his quest, whatever it was. Leonidas was a good man. The fact that he was loyal to the other side didn’t change that. She wondered what it would be like to have someone like that loyal to her. Or at least working for her for a fair amount of pay.
A silly thought perhaps. He would probably leave soon, perhaps going with Alejandro to help him with his orb quest, even though he knew nothing about it. And what would she do once they left? Report everything she had seen and heard to her own government? It seemed disloyal, since she was starting to think of these men, especially Leonidas, as friends. But what if Alejandro’s mission could help the empire regain control? What if he sought some ancient Starseer artifact with great power? There were legends of such things, though they hadn’t been seen for centuries and might not exist at all.
“Who do the soldiers belong to now?” Leonidas asked. “The emperor and his son are dead. I’ve been off world for too long and haven’t had a chance to read up on the news. Who’s in power on Perun?”
“Is he dead?” Alejandro asked. “The son? I’ve wondered that.”
Leonidas’s shoulder moved next to Alisa as he shrugged. “They say he didn’t get out when the palace was bombed. Even if he did, he’s ten. Far too young to rally troops around him and try to take back some of the stolen planets.”
Stolen? Liberated was more like it.
Alisa managed to keep her mouth shut, hoping the men would forget her allegiance and speak freely, but barely.
“No, if he was still alive and safe, he would need a regent to advise him,” Alejandro said, “and I don’t know who that would be. The corporations all had their hooks in the emperor, their smooth-talking representatives insinuating themselves as advisors. There was nobody Markus could have trusted, which I think he knew, in the end. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t name a regent. Or maybe he just never expected to die.” Alejandro lifted an arm, a resigned gesture. “To answer your question, Senator Bondarenko is in charge of Perun and commands those troops now. He toyed with naming himself emperor, but I don’t think he could get the support. A lot of the factions are holding out, thinking the prince might be found and that a new government could be formed around him.”
“And Bondarenko would be against that happening,” Leonidas said.
“Oh, I’d say so. The rumors suggest that he had a hand in betraying the emperor, in handing the location of the off-world hidden palace to the Alliance so they could launch a surprise strike at him.” Alejandro looked toward Alisa.
“Don’t look at me. I was just a pilot. I wasn’t a part of that attack.” Granted, she had heard about it and had been a part of the epic assault on the chain bases that had distracted all of the imperial forces, drawing them away from defending the emperor.
“Bondarenko knows about the orb then,” Leonidas said.
“Apparently.”
“And he wants it for himself.”
“Apparently,” Alejandro repeated.
Alisa thought Leonidas might press him again, trying to find out what the orb was for, but he did not. No, he was a good soldier, probably used to obeying orders and being a pawn of the higher-ups. Even though none of this had anything to do with her, it irked her that Alejandro wouldn’t tell Leonidas the whole story when he had proven his loyalty to the emperor and even to him, coming to help Alejandro simply as a favor.
She leaned against Leonidas’s shoulder, in part because she was tired, and it was easy to do so, but in part because she wanted him to know… she didn’t know what exactly. That she supported him? Could she? So long as it didn’t involve betraying her own government, perhaps she could.
He shifted, looking down at her. Maybe he would tell her to move, that he didn’t want her support—or for some scruffy Alliance pilot to lean on his shoulder.
Instead, he said, “I apologize.”
“What?” Alisa frowned up at him.
“For losing my temper with you back on the streets, when we were looking at the destroyed lots.” He paused, gazing into the darkness behind the cleaner. “It reminded me of the early years of the war, of being a ground officer and walking through devastation left by the Alliance. There were many other places like that, places where the bodies hadn’t yet been moved away, the rubble cleared. People were dead and dying, some soldiers but some civilians caught in the middle of the fighting.”
“Oh,” Alisa said, not sure what else to say.
He had apologized, but he also made her feel to blame, because her side would have been responsible for the horrors he had seen. She had seen atrocities perpetrated by his side, and knew the empire had been no less destructive, but she hadn’t been a ground troop. She hadn’t often seen buildings razed, people left to die in the ruins. She had seen destruction of ships in space, but distance had always made those deaths seem less real.
“I used to live in an apartment building on that empty lot,” she said. “My husband was there when the bombs dropped. I didn’t learn about his death until months later, from my sister-in-law.”
She wasn’t sure why she blurted the confession. So far, she had kept her losses to herself. Bitterly, she realized it had been more of a desire to one-up what he’d seen in the war than a need to tell him for the sake of telling. He shouldn’t blame her, because she had lost more than he had, at least more than he was describing. Seeing strangers dead was horrible, but losing one’s family was worse. He shouldn’t be blaming her for anything, damn it. Not when worse had befallen her because of the war.
Alisa swallowed and looked away, wishing she could retract the confession. She didn’t want sympathy or anything else from him. Her reason for sharing had been petty. It seemed to cheapen Jonah’s death.
Leonidas shifted to put his arm around her. By the three gods, she hadn’t been fishing for comfort. She hadn’t even expected him to be someone who would offer it. She wiped her eyes, tears lurking there for all the wrong reasons.
“War is ugly,” he said quietly. “Even if your side comes out on top, nobody wins.”
“Yeah,” she whispered, having nothing wiser to contribute.
She thought about pushing his arm away and saying she was fine, but after the day she’d had thus far, she found herself reluctant to do so. She doubted he truly cared, but it felt good to have someone offering an arm. She probably should have sat in silence and appreciated it, but her inappropriate humor was piqued when more sewer gunk flew off the brushes to spatter them on their faces, and she imagined how disgusting the arm around her must be.
“This would be cozier if you didn’t smell so bad,” she said.
He grunted and withdrew his arm. “You smell just as bad.”
“I know.” Alisa bit her lip, regretting the comment. He was still sitting next to her, but the world felt lonelier with the arm retracted. “But I have grand plans to bathe soon,” she said, hoping to salvage the situation or at least make him feel that she hadn’t been rejecting him. “I hope you do, too, before you show up for your ear rub.”
“My what?”
“I thought you sounded intrigued by the idea of an ear rub earlier. Didn’t you say you would prefer to be treated like a cat rather than a bat?” Hm, that had sounded funnier in her head.
Leonidas did not seem to know how to answer the question. Or maybe he did not think it was worth answering. He eventually said, “You’re an odd woman, Marchenko.”
“I know.”
Somehow, she had ended up being the one feeling rejected. Her and her big mouth.
Light flashed in the darkness behind them, and she stiffened. Leonidas bolted to his feet, jostling her.
“Another cleaning machine?” Alejandro asked, turning to look.
“No,” Leonidas said. “It’s their cyborg.”
The light was far in the distance—it had been some time since the cleaner turned a corner—and it was moving. Alisa could not see anything around it, but from the way it jerked about, it seemed like someone might be running with a flashlight.
“You can see him?” she whispered.
“Yes, and he’ll catch us soon.”
Alisa pulled out her Etcher, hoping it would still fire after being doused in the sewer. A blazer weapon would have, but she had bullets with gunpowder inside them. Did it even matter? Would a bullet stop a cyborg?
She scrambled to her feet. She would at least try.
“Leonidas?” Alejandro asked, worry in his voice.
“You two stay here,” Leonidas said, stepping toward the rear of the cargo bed. “I’ll keep him busy so you can get away.”
“No,” Alisa said, surprising herself with her concern for him. He had said the young cyborg had newer implants than he did. And he might have denied that they would automatically mean he would lose in a fight, but she worried that would be the case, that youth and greater powers would win out against age and experience. “We can all fight him, shoot at him. There’s nothing for him to hide behind, right?”
Alisa bit her lip, ragged and tired nerves flaring to life again. Even with the cleaning machine rolling along quickly in the tunnels, the flashlight was already twice as close as it had been when she first spotted it. Alejandro did not have a weapon, and hers might not fire until she got new bullets. What help could they truly be?
“There’s nothing for either of us to hide behind,” Leonidas said fiercely, and then he sprang away, leaping off the back of the cleaner and sprinting toward the light.
Alisa crouched at the rear of the cargo bed, staring back, frustrated that she could not do anything. It was too dark to risk shooting at their enemy. She would be just as likely to hit Leonidas. Besides, the cleaning machine kept rumbling along, quickly taking them away from where the men would collide.
Alejandro rose to his knees, also looking back. “I didn’t mean for him to sacrifice himself,” he whispered.
A blazer beam flashed crimson. Alisa thought Leonidas dropped into a roll to avoid the attack, but only because it continued past him. It was too dark to tell much more. A bang sounded, and smoke filled the tunnel, obscuring the flashlight beam.
The sounds of flesh striking flesh came from within the smoke, the cyborgs meeting in a flurry of blows. Alisa couldn’t tell what was happening, other than that the soldier had stopped advancing. Then the cleaner came to an intersection and turned a corner. Leonidas and the battle completely disappeared from sight.
Chapter 8
Alisa slogged through the salty night air with Alejandro, following a boardwalk along the harbor, her head throbbing with each step. The headache was only one of her physical complaints. They had been denied access to the late-running trains and trolleys thanks to their stench, and she had a blister from walking in wet shoes. A moving sidewalk had carried them for a while, but even then, guards and off-duty soldiers had given them suspicious squints. Apparently, anyone smelling of the sewers was up to something fishy—or, more likely, did not belong in the nicer parts of the city.
As they passed a sign proclaiming that the space base lay a mile ahead, Alisa glanced back for the hundredth time. She and Alejandro had both lost their comm units in the sewers, so she couldn’t check on Beck or Leonidas until she reached the Nomad, but she kept expecting to see Leonidas jogging up behind them, even though it had been several hours since they had parted ways. She and Alejandro had ridden the cleaner until it arrived at the sewage treatment plant near the harbor, and it had taken them some time to find a way up to the surface. They had covered more miles since then, and Alisa’s battered body sagged with weariness. She wanted a long shower and her bunk, but she doubted she would sleep, worrying instead about Leonidas’s fate and about how she would find her daughter. Somehow, she doubted she would be allowed in the library again tomorrow if she showed up at the door. The imperial soldiers would probably be watching the entrance, and she might have been marked as a member of Alejandro’s orb-carrying party.
“I shouldn’t have told him,” Alejandro said quietly, noticing her glance. His voice was weary, his shoulders slumped.
“What?”
“It was calculating to do so, and I knew exactly what would happen when I made the choice. But… I’m regretting it.” He sounded like someone confessing to a priest rather than someone who carried the wisdom of a religious order with him at all times.
“You mean telling him about the emperor?” Alisa asked quietly, glancing around. It was late enough that few people were out, and most of those wh
o were favored the public transportation options over walking. “That your mission had been assigned by him on his deathbed?”
“Yes. I knew that Leonidas, as a loyal former fleet officer, would feel duty-bound to help me if I told him. He’d worked for the emperor’s staff before, if not directly for the emperor himself, and I know he received a few awards that the emperor personally pinned on his jacket. I needed his help, even though I didn’t want to need it, if that makes sense.”
“He’s a powerful ally.” Alisa thought of the way she had tried to hire him.
“Yes. And my odds for success go up a lot with his help, something that wasn’t guaranteed until I told him about my mission. But I didn’t mean for him to get killed.”
“We don’t know that’s what happened.” Alisa refused to believe that Leonidas was dead. It was too soon to start thinking that way. He could have simply lost track of the cleaning machine after dealing with the other cyborg and been forced to find his own way out of the sewers. “Besides, I think you’re wrong.”
“About what?”
“That you had to tell him that to gain his help. He seems like someone who would be loyal to his friends, even those recently made, as well as his old emperor.” Alisa thought about pointing out that Leonidas had gone to the library to help Alejandro before he had known the rest of Alejandro’s story.
“Yes, you’re probably right. I do hope he’s all right. I would not wish to carry his death on my conscience.”
They finished their walk in silence. To Alisa’s relief, nobody stopped them when they entered Karundula Space Base. The automated security scanner at the doorway recognized them as passengers and crew that left earlier in the day and had nothing to say about the dried sewage decorating their clothes. It was fortunate that Alisa’s ship was docked in an exterior berth. They might have had more trouble walking into the main building where lights remained on and security guards patrolled the concourses.
The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker Page 34
