She peeked through the bubble, afraid Malik would hear when it popped open, if it opened. He had removed his helmet and run over to the hatch of the Nomad. He banged on it with his rifle, ordering the escapees to come out. If they did so, he promised he would spare their lives, only sending them back to the brig for a ride to a slaver’s market. What a treat.
Alisa depressed the button, hoping he would not hear the noise over his own yelling, and the bubble popped open with a soft hiss. It was not that loud, but Malik’s head swiveled around, his gaze locking onto her.
She leaped into the cockpit and hit the unlock button for the hatch on the side of the craft. “Get in,” she barked, even as she knew it would be too late.
Malik dropped his helmet and sprinted toward the Mantis, his legs moving so quickly they blurred. A clank sounded over by the transport he had taken to the research station, and Leonidas jumped out, also in his combat armor. Alisa felt a glimmer of hope, that he might be coming to help her, but Malik was too fast. He was already springing into the air, leaping as high as the cockpit with no need for a ladder.
Familiar with the console, Alisa did not hesitate to hit the button that would close the bubble. It started down, but not quickly enough.
Malik landed on the side of the craft, holding on easily even though there was no ladder on that side, no ledge to support him. He caught the bottom of the bubble as it lowered and shoved it upward. Alisa hit the starter, having a notion of lifting off and flying crazily to buck him off. But it was a delusion. She barely touched the button before his hand landed on her shoulder.
It was like being hit by a tornado. She reached up, trying to push him away or at least deflect the oncoming attack, but he yanked her from the seat before she knew what was happening. Her shoulder thudded against the bottom of the bubble, and then she was flying through the air.
She envisioned smashing into the hull of some ship as she arced across the bay, but all that lay beneath her was empty decking. She twisted, trying to land in such a way that she could roll and absorb some of the force. Her feet struck down first. She did not break anything, but a painful jolt slammed her body, and her momentum carried her into a much faster roll than she could control. She went head over heels at least three times before skidding to a stop at the base of the Nomad.
Alisa groaned, every part of her abused body hurting. Why couldn’t the people inside of her ship have lowered the ramp so that she could crawl up it to safety? Instead, the craft was locked up like a clam.
Malik jumped down from the cockpit and raced toward her, rage in his dark eyes. Alisa scrambled to her feet, but knew she could not do anything, that he would pin her—or kill her—before she could move.
A blur of red arrowed in from the side. Leonidas.
He slammed into Malik so hard that they flew twenty feet through the air, a jumble of twisting limbs, the men grappling with each other before they struck down. Neither wore his helmet, so they focused on each other’s vulnerable heads.
Alisa had no idea which man was superior in a fight, but Leonidas was older. Malik might have the edge of youth.
A part of her wanted to watch, to find a way to help Leonidas, but she had no way of damaging Malik through his combat armor unless she could shoot him in the head. A difficult proposition when he and Leonidas were intertwined, wrestling and changing positions faster than cats in a back alley. Besides, if she got a chance to fire, she would prefer it to be with a real weapon, with something that could take Malik down even if it struck his armor.
Her eyes shifted toward the e-cannons on the front of the Mantis.
“Those might work,” she muttered.
Clangs and thuds sounded as the men grappled, occasionally separating for a second to punch or kick or even get off a blazer blast with the weapons built into their armor, and then joining again. It was mesmerizing, their speed amazing, but Alisa made herself run. Giving the combatants a wide berth, she raced toward the Mantis. Her battered body felt like it had been through a blender.
Shots fired from the entrance to the landing bay. The men who had been after them earlier had gotten the door open. They weren’t shooting at Alisa—not yet—but blazer bolts streaked toward the Mantis, toward the side near the wall. Beck must have drawn their fire.
Alisa reached the cockpit, coming at it from the side opposite the firefight. She climbed up and found Mica already buckled into the co-pilot’s seat.
“Ready to leave, huh?” Alisa slithered over her to reach the pilot’s seat.
“The others are in, and Beck is hanging out the airlock door, trying to protect us.” Mica pointed over her shoulder to the passenger area, where Yumi and Alejandro were buckling themselves in. Did they expect Alisa to fly them home in this insectoid bucket? They would be lucky to make it out of the asteroid belt in the short-range ship. No, Alisa only intended to escape Malik and find a way to get the Nomad back from the people she was supposedly rescuing.
A boom came from outside of the ship as Alisa sealed the cockpit. Beck? Or the pirates attacking him? Either way, smoke flowed in through the side hatchway, making her cough. She started the engine. A light flashed on the control panel, alerting her to the open hatch.
“Beck, get in,” Alisa ordered, flicking on the exterior cameras so she could see what was going on beside and behind them. No less than six men leaned out into the landing bay, firing at Beck, half of their shots blasting against the hull of the Mantis. The blows did not harm the thick armor of the transport ship, even with the shields down, but she saw Beck take a blazer bolt to his chest plate, the force knocking him against the hatchway. “Someone grab him,” she added, her hand over the button that would close the hatch.
She craned her neck, looking for Leonidas and Malik. They had rolled out into the middle of the landing bay and were on their feet now, trading punches and energy bolts. Blood ran from Leonidas’s nose, and he looked like he was favoring one leg. His armor was dented in several spots. Three suns, had Malik’s punches done that?
Malik had taken some damage, too, and bled from one ear, and his nose was smashed into his face. Alisa could not believe their powerful punches had not broken each other’s skulls like star melons dropped from skyscrapers, but she remembered that their bones were as enhanced as the rest of them. They probably knew their heads were vulnerable, too, and were protecting them.
Malik rushed in, his armored fists punching at Leonidas’s chest plate in a rapid series of attacks. Leonidas blocked, but was pushed back. The expression of rage on Malik’s face made Alisa shudder. Had this attack come as a betrayal to him?
The hatch on the Mantis’s passenger compartment clanged shut. The light on the control panel stopped flashing, and Alisa activated the thrusters, taking them into the air.
The red lights were still flashing around the forcefield, denying anyone an exit, so she would only have the limited space of the landing bay for maneuvering. That landing bay was cluttered with several other ships, including the Nomad, which took up a quarter of the space, nearly blocking the exit completely. She shook her head. She did not need to exit, not yet. She just needed to stop Malik.
Blazer fire splashed against the clear cockpit bubble. Alisa snarled at a warning that beeped from the control panel and threw up the shields. She needed to deal with the pirates too. Leonidas and Malik were on the ground, grappling again, so she focused on the pirates first. Firing an e-cannon from inside the ship one was on was never a good idea, but she wasn’t overly concerned about the mining vessel surviving this encounter.
“I’m trying to find an override for the exit door,” Mica said, poking at the controls in front of her.
“We’re not going anywhere yet.” Alisa rotated them toward the pirates, flipping the switch to charge the cannons.
“We have to go. That diversion I set up? We’ve got less than five minutes until it goes off. We don’t want to be onboard when it does.”
Alisa clenched her jaw, wishing she had not requested that diversio
n. They still had to find a way to get onto the Nomad.
“We’ll go soon, but instead of doing that, comm my ship, will you? Tell them—” Alisa almost said that there would be a serious ass-kicking if they did not open the hatch, but rewards might work better than threats. “Tell them we would appreciate it if they’d let us in before they take off, that we’ll take them someplace safe, and that Beck will make them some fancy barbecue on the way.”
“They’re not going to wait. They’re probably doing exactly what I’m doing.” Mica waved at the controls and then at the exit. “They’re not going to be happy about the idea of being recaptured.”
“We’ll take care of our enemies, and then they won’t have to worry about being recaptured.”
Alisa lined up her cannons with the doorway to the interior of the ship. The pirates must have realized what she was doing, because they scurried back into the corridor. She fired anyway. The weapon released with a soft suck-thump, a ball of white energy slamming into the bulkhead next to the door. Metal flew everywhere, the walls inside and around the mouth of the corridor warping, smoke flooding the air as some interior circuitry melted and went up in flames. She did not know if she had hit any of the pirates, but they would think twice about coming out that way again.
She rotated the ship, careful not to knock the back end against the wall or to fly too high and bump against the ceiling. Time to figure out how to help Leonidas.
He came into view just as Malik hurled him across the bay. He struck one of the parked ships ten feet above the deck, and Alisa caught her breath, not sure if he’d hit his bare head. Why hadn’t these fools agreed to take the time to don their helmets before starting this? She could see Leonidas’s on the floor where he must have dropped it when he had charged over to help her.
Malik looked like he would sprint after Leonidas, to continue the attack before Leonidas could recover, but Alisa hit the accelerator on the Mantis. She could not fire without risking hitting the Nomad, but maybe she could scare the piss out of him.
As fast as he was, he could not outrun a ship, and when she roared up behind him, he paused, looking back. She kept going, intending to plow right over him if she could. He sprang away, and she thought he would elude her, but the shoulder of the Mantis’s bulbous body caught him. It knocked him away, and he spun through the air.
Alisa threw on the brakes and pulled her nose up, the bulky body of the Nomad filling her vision.
“Found it,” Mica said. “I think I can override the bay door now.”
“Well, don’t touch it yet,” Alisa said, banking, almost skipping off the hull of the Nomad as she brought them about. “Leonidas is down there.”
“I’m not touching it yet, but you need to hurry. I commed your ship, and nobody answered.”
She needed to hurry? She was already doing everything she could. She touched a finger to the cannon controls as she spun back toward the open part of the bay. With the Nomad behind her, she could risk a shot now.
But Malik had taken cover behind one of the parked ships. He leaned out and fired at her with a blazer imbedded in the arm of his suit. Between the shields and armor of the Mantis, Alisa did not worry about the bolts striking them, but she couldn’t get a clear shot with her cannons, not with him wedged between two ships.
She was on the verge of firing anyway, and not worrying about destroying those craft, but she spotted Leonidas ahead and to the side. He had recovered from being flung against a hull and was creeping toward the wall on a route that would let him circle behind Malik.
Leonidas looked toward her as she flew across the bay, and an idea sprang into her mind. She pointed at him, patted the top of her head, and then pointed toward where he had left his helmet on the deck.
“Get ready to press that button,” Alisa told Mica, then fired at the ships where Malik hid.
Another burst of fiery white energy blasted across the hangar. It clipped the nose of the ship that Malik had been crouching behind, blowing it off and hurling the ship several feet into the air. With shields, it could have withstood such an attack, but not while it stood empty and unprotected in the bay. She had the satisfaction of glimpsing red armor flying backward as she banked the Mantis, keeping them from crashing into a bulkhead.
An alarm sounded in the bay, the same alarm that had gone off a few minutes earlier.
“Did you press the button?” Alisa glared over at Mica.
She lifted her hands. “It wasn’t me.”
“Then who?” Alisa demanded as red lights flashed in the bay, warning of decompression and that the exit forcefield would open soon.
“Whoever’s piloting your ship, probably.”
Alisa glimpsed red armor as one of the cyborgs ran out from behind the parked ships and toward a control pedestal near the door she had partially destroyed. Malik. And she finally had a clear shot at him as he streaked across the bay. But where was Leonidas?
“He’s got his helmet on,” Mica said, pointing.
Alisa rose up in her seat, believing her but wanting to make sure. Yes, there he was. He finished locking it, and gave them a ready sign.
Alisa dove down, lining up her sights with Malik’s back. He arrived at the control pedestal and reached for a button. She did not hesitate to fire. A fiery ball of energy sprang out of her cannon and slammed into his back. She could not tell if he had hit the button or not, but it did not matter. The lights around the exit turned from red to blue, and she felt the pull against her ship as the forcefield dropped, opening the bay to the vacuum of space.
Broken shards of metal flew past the Mantis, bouncing off the cockpit bubble and the hull as Alisa compensated for the pull. To her horror, Leonidas flew past too. He had not been near anything he could grab, and now he was blown out into space. The combat suit should give him air if it hadn’t been too damaged in the fight, but there would be nothing to keep him from tumbling into the empty void.
Snarling with frustration, she looked for Malik. If she had not blown him to pieces already, she would do so now.
He was still by the control pedestal, hanging on to it as his legs flew free. She couldn’t believe he was still alive after she had landed a direct hit with the cannon. He must be close to death. But even as she watched, he lowered one leg, activating the magnetic sole of his boot. Leonidas must have been caught by surprise before he could do the same, or maybe some of the debris had hit him, knocking him free before he fully secured himself. Alisa wished she’d had a chance to warn him about more than the helmet.
“Shoot that bastard,” Mica ordered, thumping her fist on the console.
Alisa had exactly that in mind. She soared down, lining up her cannons again. As his second foot came down, he looked back. Almost on top of him, Alisa fired.
The cannon’s blast slammed into his face, tearing his head from his body, which flew free from the annihilated pedestal and tumbled toward the exit.
Feeling grim satisfaction, Alisa turned the Mantis in the same direction. If Leonidas had not been hurt, just blown out into space, she could go get him. This ship had an airlock, so he could be brought on board.
But the bay exit was blocked—with her ship. No longer trapped, the Nomad ambled out into space.
“I thought you commed them,” Alisa blurted.
“I did. Apparently, the promise of barbecue wasn’t enough to make them stick around. Or maybe they’d rather claim your ship for themselves. That’s usually easier if the captain isn’t onboard.”
“Damn them. We saved them.”
Chapter 21
As Alisa flew out into space, the Nomad flew ahead of them. The freighter had already cleared the mining ship.
“You better hurry if you want to catch them,” Mica said. “You know this thing doesn’t have much range.”
“I know.” But Alisa looked toward the small sensor display between them on the control panel. She tapped a button, asking it to look for lifeforms outside of the ship.
Wreckage pinged off the back o
f their hull. Leonidas had to be somewhere out here, too, floating along like the debris. No, there he was, clinging to the hull of the mining ship, not far from the bay door. He had caught one of the crane-like protrusions on the side of the craft.
Mica looked at the sensor panel. “If you go after him, we’re not going to catch your ship.”
“Comm them again, will you? Tell them to wait.”
Alisa turned the Mantis to follow the hull of the mining ship toward Leonidas’s position, trying not to wince because the Nomad was heading in the other direction. Even if Leonidas had been less than forthright with her from the beginning, and he had gotten them into this mess, she could not contemplate leaving him behind. He had saved her life. More than once.
“What am I bribing them with this time that’s going to be more valuable than a Nebula Rambler 880?” Mica asked.
“Given that the ship is nearly seventy years old, it shouldn’t take much. You’d think the barbecue alone would have been a fair trade.”
“Not if they found out they would be eating a giant bear that tried to kill us.”
“Tell them there will be side dishes too,” Beck called from the back. “I saw that there was some cabbage and some ready-bread in the kitchen. I can make some galaxy slaw. And don’t forget the eggs, assuming the chickens haven’t fainted from all of this excitement.”
“If they steal my chickens, I’ll be most peeved,” Yumi said.
“Yes, the chickens were my primary concern too,” Alisa said.
Leonidas was pulling himself down the crane and toward the hull, probably intending to crawl along it and back to the landing bay door. That might work if the pirates hadn’t gotten in there yet to close everything down, but then he would be stuck there on a ship that—
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