She scooted for the doors, knowing that at least some of the particles had struck the craft. She shook the wings, as if she could shake off the attack, like a bird flinging water from its feathers. It probably wasn’t effective.
The soldiers ran back toward the door, and she hoped that meant they had given up, or at least that they knew the bay would depressurize and they needed to get out before it did. They did not stop firing as they retreated. Two men were bent over something, perhaps preparing another rust bang. The shield monitor bleeped, letting her know that the power was at eighty-five percent and dropping. Plenty of juice left for now, but if they landed a rust bang more solidly, it would not be good.
Alisa hunted for rear weapons as the Striker crept closer to the bay doors, doors that showed no sign of opening yet. They should have passed the automated sensor station. Any second, the bay alarms would go off, warning of depressurization. Or they should.
She found rear e-cannons, but she hesitated with her finger on the controls. She did not want to kill the men. All she wanted was to keep them from firing at her. She adjusted her aim toward a clunky life pod resting on the deck near the door. The Alliance should not mourn its loss too greatly.
As the soldiers preparing the rust bang lifted their heads, one pointing at her, she fired. Whatever they planned to do next, she didn’t want it to happen.
The cannon bolt launched, brightening the bay as the crackling white-blue energy streaked away. The soldiers dove for the doorway as the bolt slammed into the life pod. The unarmored and unshielded ship disappeared in fire and smoke.
“Are you able to open the doors from here?” Leonidas asked.
“It should have been automatic in one of their fighter ships.” Alisa hunted through the holo control screens, looking for a way to request that they open in a more demanding manner.
Her comm light flashed, and a familiar voice said, “You’re not going anywhere, Colonel.” It was Commander Farrow.
“It’s Captain Marchenko,” Alisa said, “and I really think you should reconsider. Your hangar bay is full of smoke already. I’m sure you don’t want to lose more equipment.”
Alisa had reached the hangar bay doors, and they remained depressingly closed. She had to sit the Striker down in front of them.
The smoke was clearing back at the remains of the life pod, and she could see more soldiers crowding the doorway. Men had come to the other doorway as well.
“Don’t they have a bigger enemy to fight?” she grumbled, worried that someone on the bridge would find a way to override the Striker’s controls next.
“If the warship’s shields are up, we won’t be able to fly out, right?” Leonidas asked.
“Right, but I don’t think the shields are up anymore, not with the jolts we’ve been feeling.”
Abruptly, the lights in the bay flashed, and the blaring of a new alarm joined the one that had been sounding. The clashing noises hurt Alisa’s eardrums, even through the barrier of the cockpit’s canopy. In her cameras, she saw soldiers who had crept back into the bay race for the doors. A computer voice spoke, but she could not hear it. Sooner than she could have expected, the hangar bay doors opened.
She hadn’t done anything to cause that to happen, but she was quick to take advantage. She piloted the Striker straight toward the opening.
You’re welcome, the Starseer voice spoke into her head.
Thanks, she replied, even though she did not know how grateful to feel, especially if this was the same person who had been responsible for them being captured in the first place.
Regardless, she guided them out of the bay and shot into the mist. It was disorienting, especially since she had forgotten that this entire battle was going on a couple hundred meters above the surface of Arkadius, rather than in space.
An explosion brightened the murky air behind her, a fiery orange ball so intense that it drove away the mist. The nose of the warship drooped, the craft tilting downward, and it started to descend toward the ice.
Alisa swallowed, realizing how close she and Leonidas had been to being trapped inside and going down with it. She forced herself to focus on finding the Nomad and nothing more. Already, the mist was returning, swallowing the warship, hiding its descent and crash from view.
She had no idea where her people were, and the modern Striker-20 controls had no more luck in reading her surroundings through the mist than the older craft had. If not for the tug of gravity, she would not have even known up from down. She guided them slowly toward the ground—the sea of ice. From there, she hoped to fly around slowly, searching for the temple and the Nomad. Even though she was skeptical of Mica’s flying skills, she hoped her crew had found a way to escape the docks. She’d had enough of Starseers, at least for now. Later, she would find a way to find the ones who had taken her daughter.
“You didn’t open the doors, did you?” Leonidas asked quietly.
“No, I think that was one of the Starseers,” Alisa said.
“If they helped us, it was for a reason.”
“You don’t think they knew how sad of a place the universe would be without my humor in it and were responding accordingly?”
Leonidas did not respond, accordingly or otherwise.
“You’re supposed to chuckle and agree when I say things like that,” she pointed out.
He stirred, the shoulder of his armor clunking against the canopy. That seat wasn’t any more spacious for him than the last one had been. “I did not wish to distract you from your piloting,” he said. It sounded like a polite way to say her humor wasn’t worth responding to.
“I didn’t know your chuckles had the potential to be distracting, but since I haven’t heard you laugh, I’ll accept that as possible. I might fall out of my seat in surprise if it ever happened.”
“I, on the other hand, am not in danger of falling out of this seat, even if a shoehorn were applied.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “It would take a very large shoehorn to move a cyborg.”
“Yes.”
The blue-white of the ice came into view through the mist, and Alisa pulled up to skim slowly along it. Inside the warship, she had lost all concept of direction, so she had no idea where they were in relation to the temple. All she could do was fly a search pattern and hope to stumble across something. She glanced at the holo map and the sensors, hoping something might slip through the interference. It did not, but the mist grew less dense ahead and to the right. She veered in that direction. It cleared slightly.
“Any chance that’s the temple?” she murmured.
“You know more than I do,” Leonidas said.
“Glad to hear you admit it.”
As the vista opened even further, Alisa saw the first of the wreckage. It was a massive amount of wreckage, and she thought it was the temple, smashed down into the ice with craters blown in its sides and the towers destroyed. But she picked out the mangled shape of one of the warships. She did not think it was the Nautilus.
Cracks stretched from the ice all around it, but it had not broken through completely, and soldiers were out on the frozen water, waving as if she could fly down and rescue them. Here and there, Alliance Strikers also lay, mangled and broken on the ice.
“This was the site of the fighting,” she reasoned, though she did not see the temple anywhere. The visibility was not as great as it had been earlier, with some of the mist creeping in from the sides, but she should have been able to see the temple. It had been huge and in the center of the cleared area.
“They must have moved it,” Leonidas said.
With a jolt, she realized he was right. She did not know how much time had passed, but she was sure it was more than the seventeen minutes the Starseers had needed.
“So, which way did it go?” Alisa asked. “And is the Nomad still with them? Or did something happen to my ship? My crew?”
She knew Leonidas did not have the answers to her questions, but muttering them aloud seemed more comforting than keepin
g them to herself.
Another massive wreck came into view, another Alliance warship. This time, the vessel had broken through the ice as it landed. The nose and front half of the hull had already disappeared into the black water underneath. There were not any people out on the ice. This had just happened. Alisa flew close enough to read the letters on the side: Star Nautilus.
“We didn’t escape that by much,” she said grimly as the craft continued to sink into the water. “Blessing of the Suns Trinity,” she muttered, hoping the crew found a way to escape.
In the little Striker, there was nothing she could do to help ensure that happened.
“Can you plot a course that will be likely to take us out of the mist?” Leonidas asked.
“I—” She jerked, as the holodisplay disappeared, and the ship started flying on its own. The autopilot indicator was off. “No,” she said slowly, “I don’t think I can.”
She leaned back in the seat and lifted her hands. The ship continued to cruise above the ice, turning toward the mist and heading into it.
“This might be bad,” Leonidas muttered.
Considering they had ended up prisoners the last time the Starseer had taken control, Alisa could not disagree.
Chapter 19
Long moments passed as the ship flew into the mist, skimming along a few meters above the ice. Alisa sat tensely, tempted to wrestle back control of the flight stick, but she doubted she could. At least there weren’t any mountains looming up for them to crash into.
The mists grew thicker as they traveled farther from the crash site—crash sites. If their Starseer controller was going to fly them all the way out of the Northern Mists, then his range was more impressive than she had thought.
A couple more minutes passed, and the Striker veered to the right, descending slightly. It wasn’t until the ship slowed almost to a hover that Alisa could make out something ahead of them in the gloom. Her heart soared as the bulky shape of the Nomad came into view. It was resting on the ice, the hatch open and the ramp down. It did not look like it had crashed. There was no sign of the temple, nor any other ships.
The Striker settled into a hover before lowering to the ice. Alisa had the canopy popped before the landing struts touched down.
“Mica?” she called. “Beck? Yumi? Is everyone all right?”
She scrambled out of the cockpit, aware of Leonidas landing beside her, his crimson boots bright against the ice. As she trotted toward the Nomad, he strode after her, one of his purloined rifles in hand.
A figure stepped out of the mist near the base of the ramp. Alisa halted so quickly that she skidded on the ice. She recognized the robed figure even before he pushed back his hood. He carried the same staff and satchel as the pilot had. Abelardus.
He looked at her briefly, but his gaze soon shifted toward Leonidas, locking onto his face. Leonidas stopped a few feet away, and they glared at each other, shooting blazer bolts with their eyes. Abelardus may have opened the hangar bay doors so they could escape, but he was also the reason they had thought it was a good idea to go up there in the first place. Leonidas, Alisa suspected, would not forget that.
A feeling of unease wormed its way into her stomach. The Starseer wouldn’t have done anything to her crew and passengers, would he have?
“They are fine,” Abelardus said, inclining his head, then looking toward the open hatch.
Mica and Beck appeared at the top and hustled down the ramp. Beck reached Alisa first, surprising her by wrapping her in a bear hug.
“Glad you made it back, Captain,” he said, lifting her from her feet before setting her back down.
Leonidas stepped close, his eyes narrowed, but the cool gaze was only briefly for Beck, or perhaps for his presumptuousness. It settled onto Abelardus instead.
Mica came in close enough to pat Alisa on the shoulder. She gave Abelardus a wary look, too, but smiled at Alisa. “That’s not the ship you left in,” she observed.
“I thought I’d upgrade while I was out.”
“It’s too bad it won’t fit in the cargo hold.”
“Technically, it could fit inside. I’m less certain about getting it through the door.”
“Maybe if your cyborg pushed from behind.” Mica nodded over Alisa’s shoulder. “Welcome back, Leonidas.”
Without looking away from Abelardus, he gave her a curt return nod.
Yumi and Alejandro came into view at the top of the ramp, both wearing thick coats over their clothes.
“What happened, Abelardus?” Leonidas asked. “You were supposedly dead, and I was imprisoned for your murder.”
“You seem to be a man who doesn’t stay imprisoned for long,” Abelardus said, brushing a few of his long, thin braids over his shoulder.
“You tried to frame me.”
“Not me. I was drugged and unconscious in my colleague’s room when all of that was going on.”
Leonidas’s eyes closed to skeptical slits.
“I think your chef knows more about the whole incident than I do,” Abelardus added.
“Uh, I know less than you think,” Beck said, stepping back from Alisa and lifting his hands.
“You were plotting with my colleagues to turn in your own crew mate,” Abelardus said, meeting his gaze. Alisa couldn’t read his feelings. Was he angry? She doubted he cared one way or another what befell Leonidas, but being drugged could have irked him.
“Not all of those ideas were mine, I swear,” Beck said. “And besides, he’s not my crew mate. He’s a passenger.”
“Only because I haven’t managed to hire him yet,” Alisa murmured.
“As I said, I had no role in that fiasco,” Abelardus said. “I was as much of a victim as he was.” He waved a few fingers toward Leonidas.
“My injuries—and your lack of injuries—suggest otherwise,” Leonidas grumbled.
Alisa did not point out that he had been hale enough to knock out six soldiers in combat armor while wearing just his underwear. There were bags under his eyes, and he looked like he should grab some of Alejandro’s strongest drugs and crawl into his bunk for a week. Or perhaps onto the table in sickbay for a week.
“Savage and Malhotra knocked me out,” Abelardus said, “and left me in Savage’s room so the others wouldn’t find me if they searched my room. Then they took a sample of my blood so they could synthesize enough for that scene in the library. Once the cyborg was imprisoned, they intended to visit him during the next sleep cycle, knock him out, and tote him off to collect the bounty money.”
“Where Beck would get a cut?” Alisa asked.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” Beck protested, hands lifting again. “I remember one of those names. I think they both may have come by for duck. And maybe I mentioned Leonidas and his bounty, sort of hoping, uhm.” He glanced at Leonidas, whose hard stare was now pointed in his direction.
“That they could do what you, as a mundane human, could not,” Abelardus finished for him.
“I didn’t want anyone to do anything for me,” Beck said hotly, indignation replacing his chagrin as he jerked his hands down. “I was just hoping for an ally.”
“A Starseer would be a dangerous ally,” Alisa murmured, eyeing Abelardus again. “And a cyborg is a dangerous enemy. I think you’d be wise not to have dealings with either, Tommy.”
Leonidas left Alisa’s side and stalked toward the ramp. She thought he would stop to deck Beck, but he walked past without speaking, punching, or looking at him at all. As he strode up the ramp, Alejandro said something to him quietly. Leonidas shook his head once and disappeared inside.
“Are you going to be that wise, Captain?” Beck asked quietly, looking in the direction Leonidas had gone and then back toward Abelardus.
A good question. One she didn’t have an answer for. She had no intention of kicking Leonidas off her ship, and she did not yet know what Abelardus wanted. What would he require in exchange for information on his brother, Durant?
“Guess we’re ready to l
eave this icy hole?” Mica asked, rubbing her arms and stamping her feet.
“Assuming someone gives us directions out of the mist, I’m more than ready,” Alisa said, though that was not the entire truth. She and Abelardus needed to have a chat first.
Mica, Yumi, and Beck headed up the ramp and into the cargo hold. Alejandro turned to follow, but he paused when Abelardus spoke.
“Dr. Dominguez,” Abelardus called up, his hand dipping into his satchel. He pulled out a familiar wooden box, and the hairs on the back of Alisa’s arms stood up.
Alejandro froze, his gaze locking onto it. “You stole it back?”
“Savage and Malhotra took it when they were setting up the cyborg and gave it to Lady Naidoo. They wanted the bounty money to start some project of theirs, but they had no interest in absconding with priceless Starseer artifacts.” Turning to Alisa, he explained, “Naidoo had been monitoring your doctor’s research and thought he might be on to something with the nursery rhymes.”
“Nursery rhymes?” Alisa looked to Alejandro, who had jogged down the ramp to join them as soon as he’d seen the box. That had been Leonidas’s idea, hadn’t it? From the way he had spoken about it, she had assumed it was fruitless.
“Yes,” Alejandro said, stopping in front of Abelardus, his fingers twitching at his side, as if he could barely keep from lunging for the box. “After some childhood verse led us through the mists, Leonidas thought it might be worth looking into the Starseer database of nursery rhymes and songs for children for clues.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Alisa asked. There had been enough slips that she knew the orb was some kind of puzzle or map, but a map to what, she had no idea.
Alejandro pressed his lips together.
“Alcyone’s staff,” Abelardus said.
“Alcyone? The saint?”
“The Starseer woman who turned against her people and helped what became the Sarellian Empire to win the war over our kind,” Abelardus said, his lips curling with distaste.
The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker Page 74
