Fallen Empire 2: Honor's Flight

by Lindsay Buroker

  • • • • •

  Alisa almost felt human again when she stepped out of the sanibox, but her head still ached, so she would return to sickbay for a painpro before crawling into her bunk. She needed to give Leonidas some chocolate too. The man certainly deserved it.

  The built-in netdisc on her desk flashed, signaling the messages Mica had mentioned, but she got dressed and headed to sickbay first, leaving her soiled clothes for the automatic washer, though she was afraid they would simply have to be burned. She delved into her drawer for her stash of sweets and poked through the small assortment of choices. It was odd to be selecting one of her precious dark chocolate bars to share. They were expensive and often hard to come by in the freight lanes and on space stations. She grabbed the pecan and raisin one, figuring Leonidas might appreciate a few extra calories.

  “I apologize for causing you to miss your appointment with your contact,” Alejandro was saying as Alisa approached sickbay. The hatch door stood open, bright light slashing out into the night-dimmed corridor. She slowed her steps, listening.

  “I’m beginning to think that the gods don’t want me to—”

  The way he broke off made Alisa think he’d heard her coming. Trying not to feel guilty for eavesdropping—again—she continued to the hatchway.

  Inside the small sickbay room, Leonidas sat on the single medical table, his shirt off as Alejandro worked on him, using skin binders to hold gashes together while the QuickSkin sealed the wounds.

  He hadn’t gotten to a gash on Leonidas’s forearm yet, and Alisa started, glimpsing a hint of metal and circuitry revealed by the flesh and muscle that had been laid open. Even though she had logically known that Leonidas had cybernetic implants, it was jolting to actually see machine bits inside of someone that she had started to think of as human. As normal. A person. Maybe even a friend, not a machine.

  “Marchenko,” Leonidas said, a guarded greeting.

  Blushing because she had been caught staring, Alisa jerked her gaze up to his face. “I brought your chocolate,” she blurted, waving the bar. Maybe he would forget that she’d been gaping at his cybernetic innards.

  “Thank you.”

  Alejandro kept working and did not seem to notice the exchange. He had taken the time to finish his shower and change clothes before coming to sickbay, this robe identical to the last, except with a paucity of sewage clinging to it. Alisa found it strange to see a man in a gray monk’s robe wielding medical tools. She wondered if he knew how to fix cybernetic pieces if they were damaged, but she did not want to pry.

  “Will he live, Doc?” she asked, coming forward to hand Leonidas the bar.

  “Yes, but he should refrain from tangling with younger cyborgs.”

  “He wasn’t that much younger,” Leonidas grumbled, accepting the bar and opening it with delicate precision that seemed at odds with the bulky muscles of his arms.

  “Fifteen years, I’d guess,” Alejandro said.

  Leonidas made a face. “Damn, I’ve gotten to the age where fifteen years doesn’t seem that long of a time.”

  “Must be rough getting old,” Alisa teased, though fifteen years also wasn’t quite the eternity for her that it had seemed when she had been younger. The forty she judged him to be would have been ancient to her when she had been in school. Now it didn’t seem that far off. “Though at least you’re not as ancient as the doctor. Doc, your hands steady, there? That’s not an age-related tremor, is it? Can I get you something?”

  He shot her a dirty look. “Do you have a purpose here, besides delivering chocolate and admiring Leonidas’s physique?”

  The blush that had warmed her cheeks earlier returned. “I wasn’t admiring anything. I was—” She broke off, not wanting to admit to gaping at his machine parts.

  Leonidas’s eyebrows rose, but he did not say anything, merely snapping off the end of the chocolate bar and putting it in his mouth.

  “I was coming to see if you two are staying on or want to try another city on the planet, or what you plan to do,” Alisa said. “I still need to hunt down cargo and resupply, but after today, I think I better try another metropolis. The idea of staying here makes me twitchy, now that I know the imperial army is hunting for your orb.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me to leave yet,” Alejandro said quietly, his gaze back on his work.

  “There hasn’t been enough time to cogitate and realize the wisdom of doing that.”

  “Are you asking now?”

  “No. I mean, not exactly. I need money, and if you’re willing to keep paying, you can stay aboard.” Even as the words came out of her mouth, Alisa wondered at her offer. What was she thinking? She had her own mission ahead of her, one that would be hard enough to accomplish without people constantly attacking her ship because of Alejandro’s presence. But if she sent him packing, Leonidas would go with him, and she found herself reluctant to say goodbye to him forever.

  Leonidas broke off a piece of the bar and offered it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said, accepting it. Maybe it would help with her headache. Leonidas was not the only one who had expended a lot of energy tonight.

  “Have you decided yet which city you’ll go to next?” Alejandro asked.

  “No. I’m open, so long as I can get a cargo. I’ll put out some feelers, see what’s out there tonight before I go to bed. I need a few hours of sleep before I trust myself to fly us anywhere. Besides, I don’t want to leave without Beck. I need to figure out what happened to him.”

  Alisa grimaced. She liked Beck, but he was someone else who was making her life more complicated than it needed to be. If she found out he had gotten into trouble with campus security, she would help him get out of it, but if he was simply out shopping and carousing, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to leave him here and look for another security officer, one who wasn’t wanted dead by the mafia.

  Leonidas offered Alejandro a piece of chocolate, but he refused it, moving around his patient to seal the gash on his arm.

  “Will your implants heal on their own?” Alejandro asked. “Or do I need to do something?” He waved at the exposed circuitry.

  That answered Alisa’s earlier question as to whether he had any experience with cyborg surgery.

  Leonidas gave her a wary look before answering, as if he anticipated that she would mock him or make a snide comment. She bit her lip, distressed that she and her sharp tongue had made him expect that.

  “If the implants are seriously damaged, they need to be replaced,” Leonidas said, “but they do have self-regenerating capabilities that will be adequate for this.” He pointed his chin at the gash.

  “Good.” Alejandro pulled the ragged edges of the wound together, making the cybernetics disappear. “Captain, I still need the use of a comprehensive library. Would you consider putting down in New Dublin?”

  Alisa nodded. “I’ll see what’s available in the way of cargo there.”

  With her daughter missing, it seemed inane to worry about something as prosaic as cargo, but she had rejected Sylvia’s offer of a loan. Perhaps that had not been wise, given her predicament. She hated to be beholden to anyone, but she would need money to keep her ship in the air so she could hunt for Jelena. She had no idea if her daughter was even here on Perun, or if they had taken her to another planet altogether. She would head to that library, too, and do what she had wanted to do earlier, look up where the local Starseers could be found. Maybe she could get a lead from them.

  “Good. I will continue to pay for my cabin,” Alejandro said. “And I will pay for Leonidas’s too.”

  Leonidas arched his eyebrows. “I can pay my own way.”

  “I insist.”

  “Oh? What do you expect from me in return for such largesse?”

  “Maybe he expects you to perform sexual favors for him,” Alisa said, the joke coming out before she could think better of it. This was why Leonidas expected mockery from her. She sighed.

  “That seems unlikely,�
� Leonidas said dryly. At least he did not seem offended.

  “I’ll go check on Beck.” Alisa left them, feeling like she was fleeing. For some reason, she was not that comfortable in her skin around Leonidas. Maybe she should rethink her offer once again and ask them both to leave at the next stop.

  The sickbay hatch clunked shut softly behind her, and she paused, frowning back at it. They hadn’t bothered shutting it before. What were they about to say that they didn’t want people to overhear? Or was she just being paranoid? Maybe Leonidas simply did not want anyone else to walk in and stare at his naked chest. Or maybe Alejandro needed him to take his trousers off to treat wounds on his lower half.

  In her cabin, Alisa slid into the swivel chair bolted to the floor in front of the desk, the computerized mesh adjusting to cup her body comfortably. She reached for the comm, the flashing light catching her eye again. She should have checked her messages right away since one might be from Beck, but she found her fingers straying as the holodisplay popped up. The captain’s cabin was tied into the controls in NavCom, so she could check the course and the sensors from her bed if she woke up in the night. She also had access to the master internal communications controls. She tapped a couple of buttons, and turned on the comm in sickbay, then leaned back to listen. She felt like a creep for eavesdropping again—intentionally—but that didn’t make her turn off the speaker.

  “Think we can trust her?” Leonidas was asking.

  Alisa felt her heart speed up as adrenaline surged through her veins. Even though she had only activated the comm in one direction, she kept her breathing soft, afraid she might get caught listening if she made a noise.

  “No,” Alejandro said. “She’s made it clear her loyalties are to the Alliance.”

  A silent moment stretched, and Alisa wished Leonidas would say something to defend her. Alejandro’s words were true, but she had been helping them, hadn’t she? She had nearly been killed multiple times now because she had first taken Leonidas to that secret laboratory and then gone with him to the library to assist Alejandro. It seemed unfair of them to condemn her.

  “I would actually prefer it if she was simply motivated by money,” Alejandro said, “because I could pay her for her silence, but when she talks of fares, it’s usually an afterthought.” He sighed. “I’m uncomfortable with how much she knows.”

  “She doesn’t know any more than I do,” Leonidas said, his tone dry again. “Which isn’t much.”

  “I’m concerned that she’ll report what she does know to her government.”

  Alisa swallowed. Yes, she had been considering doing just that. The main reason she hadn’t done it was that they were on Perun, and she had no idea who she would report to from here. This didn’t seem like the type of information she should beam across the system to a customer service representative accessible through the virtual government site.

  “I suppose it would be terribly Machiavellian of me to ask if you would be willing to make her disappear.”

  If Alisa’s heart had been racing before, it nearly leaped out of her chest now. From Alejandro’s tone, it had almost sounded like a joke, but she could imagine the man watching Leonidas, seeing if he got an amenable reaction, in which case he might consider it more seriously…

  “It would be evil and villainous,” Leonidas said coldly.

  “I suppose so.” Alejandro sighed again. “I just feel that I can’t fail in this, and it’s making me paranoid. I don’t sleep. I lay awake all night and worry.”

  “Prescribe yourself something then,” Leonidas said, his voice still cold.

  Alisa managed a faint smile, pleased that he rejected the idea of doing something heinous to her, but it didn’t last. It was chilling to hear that Alejandro, a man wearing a monk’s robe, damn it, would even consider making her “disappear.” Were those robes even real? Had he sworn any oaths?

  Alejandro chuckled. “You’re a better man than I am, Colonel. All right, we’ll stay aboard, at least until I can do the library research I need to do.”

  “I’ll remind you that I have my own quest, Doctor. I don’t need you to pay my way here, nor do I appreciate you assuming that I’m yours to command.”

  Alisa silently cheered for him. She was glad he still sounded irked at Alejandro. Maybe he would decide to abandon the doctor and his mysterious quest and stay aboard, accepting her offer of employment.

  “I don’t assume that,” Alejandro said quietly. “But surely you must agree that my mission is of more importance than your personal quest. You have plenty of time for that later.”

  “Not if I get killed protecting your ass from people who should be my colleagues, not my enemies,” Leonidas said, his tone going from cold to hot. “And I still don’t know what your mission is, what you and your little artifact hope to accomplish.”

  “I’d think that should be obvious. The goal is to put the empire back together.”

  Leonidas snorted. “It’s not a disassembled assault rifle that can simply be reassembled.”

  “It can be carved out again, with the proper tools and the proper leader.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

  “The boy? He’s ten. He can barely tie his shoes. And we don’t know if he’s alive.”

  “You know that’s not true,” Alejandro said quietly. “He already has the power to tie your shoes. From across the room. And I know as well as you do that the emperor got him out of the palace in time.”

  The emperor’s son? That had to be who they were talking about. The media had reported him dead. It wouldn’t shock her to find out that he had been squirreled away somehow, but how could Alejandro be so sure? Had he been there at the end? Seen the boy taken? And what was the tying shoes bit supposed to imply? That he had Starseer abilities? Alisa was hearing too damned much about those people these days.

  “He’s still ten,” Leonidas said. He did not sound surprised by anything Alejandro was saying. “Armies aren’t going to follow him.”

  “Not now, no, but in eight, ten more years? Our people will have had time to rebuild and gather more resources by then, and the system will have seen what a farce the so-called Tri-Suns Alliance is. It’ll be our time to move then, and I plan to do my part to facilitate that.”

  Alisa leaned back farther in her chair, her nerves calmer now that they weren’t talking about her, but the conversation was still chilling. It also occurred to her that Alejandro might start to think about getting rid of her again if he had any idea that she was listening in.

  “If you’re done here,” Leonidas said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Yes, with your accelerated healing, you should be fine in a couple of days. Go ahead.”

  Alisa reached for the button that would turn off the sickbay comm—the last thing she needed was for Leonidas and his enhanced ears to walk by her cabin and hear her listening to Alejandro puttering around in there. But she paused as the men spoke again.

  “I wouldn’t get too attached to her if I were you,” Alejandro added. “I can understand not wanting to kill someone in cold blood, but if she proves herself willing to betray us for the sake of her Alliance…”

  “I’m not attached,” Leonidas said coolly.

  The hatch clanged as he shut it.

  Chapter 9

  Alisa sat at her desk and stared at the holodisplay of her netdisc. The brightness of the visual had dimmed since several minutes had passed since she had touched it. She’d heard the hatch to Leonidas’s cabin shut out in the corridor, followed by a second clang shortly after. Alejandro finishing up in sickbay and going to his room, perhaps. She hoped so. She had forgotten to get headache medicine and did not want to run into him if she went out for some. After what she had heard, she had no idea how she would look him in the eye without glaring daggers at him.

  The idea that he thought she was expendable chilled her. Even if Leonidas wouldn’t be Alejandro’s henchman, a doctor could easily kill so
meone. He would know just how to make it look like an accident. A simple injection from a needle, and she might never wake up.

  She shuddered, wondering if she should arrange his death first. But she had never done something like that, and she did not know if she could. The mere idea of murder made her stomach churn. She’d shot ships down in battle, and that had resulted in people’s deaths, but she was no cold-hearted killer. She liked to think she had a few shreds of honor, eavesdropping tendencies notwithstanding. She would have to hope that the mild-mannered Alejandro did not have the balls to kill someone himself.

  The only thing she had appreciated about listening to that conversation had been realizing that Leonidas was no cold-hearted assassin, either. She doubted she could trust him to choose her over Alejandro and the empire, if it ever came to that, but at least he wouldn’t stab her in the back. No, if he ever killed her, he would shoot her in the chest. She wished that were more comforting. She did not want him to kill her at all. She wanted him to be someone she could trust. An ally. A friend.

  She groaned and sat straighter in her chair, rubbing her eyes. With her mind spinning so much, she did not know how she would ever sleep, but she needed to try to find Beck first, regardless.

  When she swiped her hand through the holodisplay, the messages light flashed again. Someone had commed the Nomad twice, both shortly before she had returned. A late hour to be making calls.

  She poked the number, bringing up a face she didn’t recognize, but that did not mean much, given that she had been gone for so many years. With short brown hair, old-fashioned spectacles, and a lean, almost gaunt face, the man was neither handsome nor memorable. He did wear an Alliance military jacket with major’s pins on the collar, and that got her attention.

  “Captain Marchenko,” the officer said. “I’m certain you’re busy, so I’ll keep this short. My name is Major Mladenovic, 14th Intelligence Division. I’m aware that you’ve recently returned home and found that your husband is dead and your daughter is missing. My condolences on your husband. His passing was regrettable.”