The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  “Are you reading?” Alisa asked, twisting the clunky freighter into a semblance of a barrel roll to avoid the enemy ship. She kept heading them toward the mountains, but she was doing her best to avoid taking more fire along the way. The shields had dropped to fifty percent power.

  “Yes, cyborgs are capable of that, you know.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t, just that I couldn’t believe you are. Now. Aren’t you airsick?” Alisa asked as she spun them in a corkscrew, the view screen alternately showing white ice and blue sky as they streaked over the frozen sea. The Nomad creaked and groaned, feeling the unaccustomed stress of gravity as she did her best to contort the craft to avoid fire.

  “I don’t get airsick,” Leonidas said.

  “I do,” Yumi groaned from behind them.

  Leonidas squinted at the view screen. “Straighten us out for a few seconds.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Alisa asked, but she complied.

  The view screen settled with the white ice on the bottom and the first of the seven peaks looming up ahead. Only one sun remained in the sky, and it was low on the horizon, casting an orange fiery glow over the ice.

  “See that rock formation jutting up over there?” Leonidas pointed. “That could be a whale.”

  Alisa was more interested in something else she saw in the distance, starting to the right of the mountains. Those clouds. They were even thicker and lower than she had realized, a bank of gray floating over the ice. Fog. Or maybe that was considered mist. She didn’t care as long as it would obscure visibility. She hoped she would get lucky and that it would obscure the enemy’s sensors too.

  Ignoring the “whale,” which looked like a jumble of rocks to her, she veered straight for the fog. She also ignored the distressed gags coming from Yumi’s seat. They would all be making distressed noises if the shields gave out.

  The White Dragon ship picked up speed, and she had a feeling its pilot knew exactly what she had in mind—and wanted to stop her from reaching the fog.

  “Mica,” Alisa said over the comm, “if you could fondle some extra energy out of that deuterium tank, now would be a good time.”

  “I was cuddling with the tank, not fondling it.”

  “Whatever gets me more power.”

  Cannon blasts slammed into the back of the Nomad, the jolt throwing Alisa against her harness.

  “Should have gotten some big guns for the ship instead of toys for engineering,” she growled. If only her cargo delivery had provided her with more funds. As it was, it would take her five years to get through the list of replacement parts that Mica had given her. And weapons were not on that list.

  “You need to head more to the west if you’re going to follow that peak,” Leonidas said.

  “I cannot tell you how much I don’t care about whales or peaks right now,” Alisa said, weaving, hoping to avoid taking another blast straight on. She did not want to slow too much for maneuvers, though. The bank of fog was growing on the horizon, blocking the rays of the setting sun.

  “I thought our goal was to find the Starseer temple.”

  “Something I’ll worry about fully once we get rid of this asteroid kisser.”

  “I agree with the captain,” Yumi said. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to lead an enemy ship to the Starseers.”

  “You don’t think they’ll have weapons to defend themselves?” Leonidas asked.

  “Perhaps not in the traditional sense.”

  “I would not have a problem with them using their mind powers to make that ship crash,” Alisa said.

  “From what I know of them,” Leonidas said, “it’s more likely that they’ll make both ships crash. They’ve kept their temple a secret for centuries by—” a cannon blast struck them, jolting the ship, “—keeping ships from finding them, not helping the ones that do.”

  “Yes, but we’re banking on them liking Yumi,” Alisa said. “Everyone likes Yumi. She’s sweet.”

  A retching noise came from the seat behind her.

  Alisa grimaced and did not look back. It was bad enough cleaning up the deck when the chickens escaped.

  She flew into the fog bank, grayness enveloping them and obliterating the view, and immediately pulled up on the flight stick. She did not fly far in that direction, not wanting to come out of the mist, but she wanted to make sure they were no longer in the enemy’s line of fire, at least for the moment. She flattened them out and veered deeper into the fog before checking the displays. The cameras showed nothing but fog. The sensors displayed the location of the ground and also showed the other ship. It was still following them.

  Alisa went back to evasive maneuvers, flying deeper into the fog and hoping that their sensors would become less effective, that whatever mystic mumbo jumbo Leonidas had been reading about happened. She would gladly risk losing her own sensors, so long as the other ship lost hers too.

  A huge, dark shape loomed out of the fog.

  Cursing, Alisa pulled up again. She got a close-up of a rocky slope, the Nomad’s thruster casings practically skidding off of it before they achieved a vertical course.

  “Nobody mentioned mountains inside of the mists,” Alisa said, aware of Yumi’s fingers gripping the back of her seat like talons.

  “The encyclopedia article neglected to mention them,” Leonidas said calmly. He was watching the view screen, his eyes intent, but he lacked Yumi’s tense and stressed expression. Maybe he had experience flying with pilots even crazier than she.

  “Well, mystery solved as to why ships don’t come back out of here,” Alisa said. For some reason, that mountain hadn’t shown up on the sensors.

  Leonidas grunted noncommittally.

  Alisa leveled out again, flying forward much more slowly than before. The enemy ship still showed up on her sensors, but it came and went, the blip disappearing from time to time. She hoped that meant that it was falling behind, or having trouble tracking her. Or both. She turned them to fly deeper into the mist again, or at least in the direction she thought would be deeper. She no longer trusted the sensors, and the cameras were showing nothing but fog, so she was flying on instinct. The digital compass kept changing its reading, even when the Nomad was cruising straight.

  “This is remarkable,” Yumi breathed. Her airsickness must have calmed, because she had turned her attention to the sensor station and was taking readings. “I’ve read about the Northern Mists, but I’ve never been here in person.”

  “Have you always known this was the location of the Starseer Temple?” Alisa asked, never taking her eyes from the view screen and the route ahead.

  A distant screech and a boom sounded. The White Dragon ship was still firing, which meant it hadn’t fallen that far behind.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know if the Starseers were exploiting a natural phenomenon or doing it all themselves. I believe it’s the former, because if my memory is correct, documents of the strangeness of the Northern Mists date back to the first or second century after colonization, before the Starseers left Kir and possibly before they had even evolved into advanced human beings.”

  “Advanced human beings. Please.” Alisa grunted. “They have gene mutations from whatever whacky radiation was sprouting from their planet.”

  “Hm,” was all Yumi said, and Alisa remembered her admitting that all of her experiments with meditation and drugs had started because she’d hoped to find a way to access the Starseer power that lay dormant in her own genes.

  And why not? Who wouldn’t want to be an advanced human being?

  Alisa glanced over at Leonidas.

  His head was tilted, his eyes half-closed. “I can still hear them,” he said, noticing her look. “They’re above us and firing randomly, hoping to get lucky.”

  “Above us? You think they’re flying high enough to be out of the fog?”

  “Possibly.” He held up a finger, and a couple of long seconds passed. “The sound is muffled now. Either they went behind a mountain or we did.”
>
  Alisa slowed down, taking that as a warning that another obstacle might be ahead. If they crashed out here, she doubted any medical ships would find them and rush to their aid.

  Even with Leonidas’s warning, the appearance of jagged, ice-covered rocks surprised her, seeming to spring out at them as the fog faded to reveal them at the last moment. She jerked the Nomad upward, then cursed, remembering that the White Dragon ship might be waiting up there. She adjusted their route to fly along the side of what was definitely looking like a mountain even though she could only see the closest twenty-five meters of it as they cruised along.

  “Flying blind is fun,” she said.

  Something tickled the back of her mind, almost an itch. She scowled and ignored it, keeping her focus on the screen ahead. But an uneasy feeling came over her, the certainty that something bad would happen.

  Alisa took them around a curve in the terrain and almost leaped out of her seat in distress as the nose of the White Dragon ship came into view, almost on top of them. She tried to veer away, but the other pilot veered at the same time, trying not to hit them. It was an accidental game of chicken, and they both went in the same direction. They struck each other’s shields with enough force that each ship bounced in opposite directions. The White Dragon craft spun toward the mountain, its back end striking a cliff.

  Before Alisa could whoop or gloat, blue lit up her starboard camera, the bright glow of an e-cannon muzzle visible even through the fog.

  “Shields down,” the computer announced.

  “What?” Alisa cried, glancing at the controls even as she veered away from the other ship. The power was still at forty percent, but the shields had dropped, as if someone had flipped a switch to turn them off.

  An e-cannon blast slammed into the Nomad. The force hurled Alisa to the side. Her harness kept her in her chair, but not without wrenching her shoulder. Her head almost struck the sensor station, and she glimpsed green fuzz on the display even as the world spun around her. She managed to keep her hold on the flight stick, but the ship did not respond to her attempts to stop the spin.

  Another jolt came as the Nomad’s belly struck something. The ground? No, the ice, she corrected, another horror piling onto the dozens of others jumbled in a heap in her mind. They were on top of the ocean, not solid land.

  She tried vainly to pull them up, but the Nomad struck down again, this time staying down and skidding. White shards of ice flew up, spattering the external cameras. Alisa bounced around in her seat as the ship scraped and bumped across the lumpy surface. A cry of pain came from somewhere within the ship.

  The Nomad jerked to a halt, and the lights went out.

  Chapter 3

  Images flashed through Alisa’s mind of the last time she had crashed. Too many ships, too much going on at once. Pandemonium. Dodging debris and other ships. Flying recklessly. Firing. And then hearing the imperial message that was relayed throughout every Alliance ship: “We surrender.” A surge of relief. Until the kamikaze fighter came out of nowhere, streaking toward Alisa, taking her out even after the surrender had been promised. The stars disappearing. The desert spinning below. Red sand everywhere. Red sun. White light. Pain. So much pain.

  Alisa drew in a shuddering breath and blinked away the memories. The blackness of the present replaced the harsh red light in her mind. She grew aware of her seat on the Nomad and the shivers still coursing through the ship around her.

  “Did you turn off the shields?” Alisa demanded as soon as the world grew still. The lights had not come back on, and the cameras and view screen were out too. A few blinking red alerts came from the dashboard, but did not provide enough illumination for her to see much. She could barely make out Leonidas in the co-pilot’s seat.

  A groan came from behind her. Yumi.

  “Me?” Leonidas asked. As indomitable as he was, he also sounded shaken from the crash. Or from something. Alisa remembered that strange tingle that she had felt before running into the other ship.

  “You’re the only other person with access to the helm controls,” Alisa said, but even as she spoke, she realized how ridiculous it sounded. Why would Leonidas have shut down the shields? He could have been killed in that crash too.

  “No, I don’t—at least I don’t remember…”

  The confused way his words came out, so unlike the confident way he usually spoke, sent a shiver of unease down Alisa’s spine.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” he said. “I remember seeing the other ship and hitting it, and then it’s fuzzy. We—” A snap sounded, his harness unbuckling. He jumped to his feet. “The other ship. They’re out there, and they’re not far from us. Beck,” he called and charged out of NavCom.

  Alisa reached for her own harness fastener, but her hands were still shaking. She fumbled with it unsuccessfully.

  “Captain?” Mica’s shaky voice came over the comm, none of her usual brusque sarcasm present.

  “I’m here,” Alisa said.

  “I don’t know what—for a minute there, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and then we hit something. We hit everything.”

  “Yeah, we had the same experience up here. We’re not far from the mafia ship, and I don’t know what their status is. Beck and Leonidas are going out to meet them if they try to board us.” Alisa assumed that was what Leonidas had been planning when he charged out of NavCom. “Can you get me a damage report, find out if we can get back in the sky? Or in the fog, as the case seems to be.”

  “I thought I’d try to get the lights turned on first,” Mica said, a hint of her usual dry humor returning, though she still sounded shaky. Alisa hoped she hadn’t hit her head.

  Worrying about other people and their injuries helped Alisa steady herself, and she finally got her harness unfastened.

  “Yumi?” she asked, standing up.

  “I’m alive,” Yumi said quietly, still sitting in her seat. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Why don’t you check on your chickens? Go check on Alejandro, too, will you, please?”

  “Yes. Where are you going?”

  Alisa dropped her hand to her holster. “To make sure no mafia thugs board my ship.”

  Following the emergency lighting lining the walkways, Alisa made her way down the corridor toward the cargo hold. She paused at the intersection that branched to the crew and passenger quarters, hearing several thumps coming from the direction of Leonidas’s room. He was probably getting his armor on. Since she had no armor, she continued to the cargo hold.

  Irritated squawks greeted her before she reached the stairs. The poor chickens. It was a wonder they were laying any eggs at all with the constant stress of living on a spaceship. On this spaceship, at least. In the last month, the Nomad had seen more action than an Alliance warship during the war.

  “Captain?” came a muffled voice from the deck of the cargo hold.

  Alisa gripped the railing to guide herself down the stairs. “That you, Beck?”

  He sounded like he was already in his combat armor.

  “Yes, ma’am. By the hatch. The mech said we should go out and check on the other ship, said they might have crashed too. That right?”

  “I’m not sure. Sensors and cameras are down. I did see them hit a cliff, but unless their shields also suspiciously dropped right before that, it wouldn’t necessarily have damaged them.”

  “Suspiciously?”

  “Talk later,” Leonidas said, startling Alisa as he came up behind her. His voice was gruff, but he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. A gentle armored hand. “Beck and I will go check. Stay here.”

  He tried to guide her to the side, so he could pass her on the stairs.

  Alisa stubbornly continued down. “There’s nothing I can do here. I’m going with you.”

  “You won’t be able to see much out there without a helmet with night vision, Captain,” Beck said. “I think we flew past the terminator into night.”

  “Unless your helmets have fog vision, you won�
�t be able to see much out there, either,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  Guided by the squawking of the chickens, Alisa found her way to the hatch, almost smacking against Beck’s armored shoulder on the way. With his night vision helmet, he saw her and stepped out of the way, stopping her with a hand out.

  “It will be cold out there too,” Leonidas said from behind her shoulder.

  Alisa remembered her earlier thoughts—had it just been a few hours ago?—about wishing that he was her bodyguard, or worked for her in some capacity if body guarding was too lowly for him, and that he would loom at her shoulder. This wasn’t quite how she had imagined the scenario.

  “Let us go,” he added. “You’ve got your comm unit? We’ll report in to you.”

  “Let’s just see what we’re dealing with. If we can get the hatch open.” Alisa found the bulkhead with her hands and patted her way to the hatch controls. The button wouldn’t work without power, but there was a mechanical override behind a panel, if she could find it in the dark. Why hadn’t she stopped in her cabin to grab her multitool and a jacket? Maybe it wasn’t too late to get them. She just hated to delay because her instincts were itching, suggesting that delaying might be a bad idea.

  A beam of light appeared on the wall where she was patting around.

  “Oh,” she blurted, almost ridiculously pleased. She smiled over her shoulder and found that Beck was the one providing the illumination with a flashlight built into his suit. “Thank you.”

  Leonidas was a few feet farther down the wall, the panel Alisa had been searching for already open in front of him. He looked over at them, frowning slightly for some reason.

  “See,” Beck said, “I’m useful, Captain.”

  “I never said you weren’t useful. You make excellent duck.”

  “Stand back.” Leonidas tugged on the latch, and a hiss sounded as the seal on the hatch released. He crouched by the side of it as it rose and the ramp automatically unfolded and extended.

  The temperature seemed to drop thirty degrees in a second. Fog rolled into the ship, hazing over the pricks of emergency lighting on the deck of the hold.