by Audrey Faye
He did not scurry away quickly enough to outrun a cyborg. Leonidas caught him around the neck and lifted him in the air, his feet dangling six inches above the floor. The man gasped and gurgled even though Leonidas was careful not to completely cut off his airway. His foe kicked futilely, the efforts so puny that Leonidas did not bother blocking them. His torso and thighs, enhanced with subcutaneous implants as well as ridges of hard muscle, could take a lot of abuse.
As he glanced toward the intersection to make sure his fluidwrap had, indeed, caught the third person—it had—the dangling man reached for a pistol holstered at his belt. Leonidas reacted instantly, tearing away the belt as well as the trousers it held up. He wouldn’t normally rip off an opponent’s pants, but he didn’t want to hurt these people more than he already had and thought humiliation might do as much to end the fight as brutality.
“Are you done resisting?” Leonidas asked the man, chilling his voice to ice, an art he had mastered as an officer commanding hundreds of young, strong idiots.
His adversary’s eyes grew round at the realization that his hairy legs were dangling, exposed to the alley and its occupants. Or maybe he realized that he was the only one capable of responding. His nearest ally was unconscious, and the young man on the other side of the intersection lay pinned by a net. The mugger’s own net had flown uselessly wide and now plastered the wall, lighting it with electric blue tendrils that crackled and zapped. They would deliver a stun charge to a trapped person, but they had no effect on the wall.
“Leonidas?” Alisa asked from the corner, an odd note to her tone.
He looked to her, worried that she had spotted some other trouble. Her head and her firearm stuck around the corner, her gaze turned toward him.
“Am I disturbing you?” she asked, a smile quirking the corners of her lips. “I can leave you two alone if you want to take more of his clothes off.”
Leonidas gave her a sour look. Of course she would make a joke. He should have known.
“I’m… done… resisting,” his captured thug wheezed, Leonidas still using his throat as a handle by which to hold him up.
As he lowered the mugger to his feet, Alisa strode over to the one flattened on his back by the net. His features were hard to make out under the crackling blue energy of the net, but he looked young, fifteen or sixteen perhaps with an attempt at facial hair tufting his chin.
“What was the plan?” she asked him, tapping him on the chin with the muzzle of her Etcher. “Rob anyone who came this way?”
“Slavers are around,” the boy said.
“On Starfall Station? Really? This used to be a respectable place.”
“Always around,” the boy mumbled, “and paying good right now.”
“For cyborgs?” Alisa looked at Leonidas.
Leonidas barely glanced at them. He was searching his captive and removed a small pistol from his jacket pocket—amazing how a man with no belt or trousers could still be armed.
“For women,” the boy said.
Surprise blossomed on Alisa’s face.
“We were just going to shoot the cyborg.” The boy’s gaze slid toward Leonidas. “And take his armor.”
“You’d just kill him? For no reason? Why, because he’s not human?” Her tone had turned impressively frosty.
Leonidas watched her indignation with some bemusement since just a few weeks earlier, she’d been calling him cyborg and hadn’t seemed to believe he was fully human. He did appreciate that once someone shifted from enemy to ally for her, she was loyal to that person. He hadn’t experienced a lot of that from those outside of his unit, those who weren’t cyborgs and didn’t understand what it was like to be human, but different. Mostly, he encountered fear and uneasiness, even from men he had worked beside for years.
“Uh, because he had big guns,” the boy said, wilting under her glower. He looked toward Leonidas, his expression hopeful, as if he might help him. Hardly.
Leonidas had been debating whether to let his captive go since the muggers hadn’t actually managed to do anything to them, but that comment, along with the fact that they had wanted to sell Alisa to slavers, hardened his heart. He ripped off the man’s shirt, drawing another look of surprise from Alisa, and tore it into strips. He used them to tie the mugger’s ankles and wrists together, then moved onto the unconscious man to give him the same treatment.
“I suppose you’d find it unseemly if I made a joke about how you like to strip your captives and then tie them up.”
“Yes.” He didn’t even know what she was implying. Something sexual, he had no doubt, but most such jokes went over his head.
“You’re good to have along for a fight—or a mugging—but we need to work on your sense of humor.”
“We?” After tying the first two men, Leonidas started for the third, but something on the ceiling behind the light fixture caught his eye. He berated himself for not noticing it earlier, but the fixture nearly blocked it.
“I’ll help,” Alisa said. “I like projects. In truth, I just want to see you laugh now and then.”
“I laugh. When it’s appropriate.”
“You haven’t laughed since I met you.”
“We’ve been fighting enemies and fleeing for our lives since you met me.”
“What about after we escaped from the pirates? Remember? Beck barbecued that bear meat. We were relaxing, chatting, and drinking Yumi’s fermented tea since that was the closest thing we had to alcohol. Everyone was enjoying themselves, and Beck told jokes while he grilled.”
“Beck isn’t funny.”
Alisa squinted at him.
Three suns, she didn’t think Beck was a comedian, did she? Please.
“I laugh,” Leonidas repeated sturdily.
“I don’t believe you. Unless you do it alone in your cabin at night. Which I doubt, because I’ve heard you thumping around in there, presumably having nightmares.”
He’d had an argument poised on his lips, a suggestion that maybe he did laugh when he was by himself in his cabin, but it froze before coming out. He hadn’t realized that he made noise when he slept. That he had nightmares was no surprise—he remembered them well when he woke up with a jolt, memories of battles gone wrong and lost comrades and guilt rearing into his mind. But he felt chagrined to learn that others were also aware he had them.
Not knowing what to say, and certainly not wanting to linger on this topic, he returned his attention to the light fixture. He stood on tiptoes to pull an item down from the ceiling.
“What’s that?” Alisa asked, thankfully changing the topic.
He flipped it to her. “A small mirror.”
She caught it easily, perhaps not with a cyborg’s enhanced reflexes but certainly with a pilot’s reflexes. He’d seen her fly a few times when it counted, such as when they were being chased through asteroid belts, and she was good at her job.
“Low tech way to see who’s coming, eh?” Alisa tossed it onto the boy’s chest, shaking her head as she looked down at him. “Slavery. I’m not sure whether to be horrified or flattered. I would have thought I was too old to attract slavers.”
Leonidas raised his eyebrows. He knew she had an eight-year-old daughter and guessed her to be in her early thirties. Since he was edging up on forty, he would hardly call someone in her thirties old. The muggers—slavers—probably hadn’t looked beyond her face and the curve of her hips when determining her potential as a slave. While she wasn’t gorgeous, she was attractive and had an appealing smile. Too bad she was usually mouthing off when she made that smile. The Alliance had probably encouraged mouthiness, considering it a promising trait in someone signing on to help overthrow the government.
“You’re supposed to say something like, ‘You look fabulous, Alisa, and you’re not too old to attract slavers.’”
“You want to attract slavers?”
“No, that’s not my point. Never mind. Are you collecting your net?”
“Yes.” Leonidas stepped past her and foun
d the casing for the ball, which had split open into several segments to release its electric cargo. He deactivated the energy aspect, then tugged the slender tendrils of the net off the supine figure. The boy leaped up and tried to dart off. Leonidas caught him by the collar of his shirt. As he proceeded to tie the kid up, he asked Alisa, “If I call the police, what are the odds that they’ll get here before someone comes by and mugs our muggers?”
“If you call the police, someone will probably come for you, wanting to collect—” She cut herself off, glancing at the boy, who was listening. “They’ll probably come for you,” she finished.
He appreciated that she hadn’t mentioned the warrant. Even if these three weren’t a threat, who knew who they knew?
“I can call them,” she said, slipping a comm unit off her belt. She never wore an earstar comm-computer, as was common. “No idea on the mugging the muggers part. Beck was right. The station seems rougher than the last time I was through here.”
“I’ll wager that the last time you were here, the empire controlled the station and maintained order.” He hadn’t brought it up with Beck, but he couldn’t help himself this time. He supposed he wanted Alisa to see reality, to realize that she’d fought on the wrong side, that her people had made the system a worse place, not a better one.
Alisa grimaced. “Yes, the empire was excellent at maintaining order.”
“That order meant you wouldn’t be mugged on the way to a coffee shop.”
“We’re not on the way to a coffee shop. We’re on the way to some smithy located on the dubious side of the station. Besides, under the old regime, I would have been arrested for walking around after curfew, and my gun would have had to stay on my ship, a ship that has no weapons of its own because the empire forbade civilians to be armed, even if they were lugging freight through pirate-infested space. Even you have to admit it’s been inconvenient that we haven’t had a way to defend ourselves this past month.”
“Pirate-infested space was rare when the empire ruled, unless you were way out near the border worlds.”
“People on those border worlds like freight delivered to them too. My mom and I had more than our share of run-ins when I was growing up on the Nomad.”
“That was your mother’s choice to go somewhere unsafe, to take a child somewhere unsafe.” Leonidas couldn’t stifle the distaste in his voice, though it was directed more toward his resentment that the Alliance had destroyed the empire without having anything sufficient to instate in its place. If the war had created a better universe, perhaps he could have accepted being on the losing side more easily, but it hadn’t.
“My mother,” Alisa said coolly, “flew freight because she couldn’t stand the stifling rules of living on an imperial planet, which was all of them in the last century. She should have been allowed to defend herself out in the system.”
“Rules exist for a reason. They keep people safe.”
“Safe.” Her lip curled, and she said it as if it were a curse. “You can get arrested, be thrown in a jail cell, and be safe as a bramisar in its den, but you’ll never see the stars again. People love to give up their freedoms for safety. Pretty soon, you can’t walk where you want, when you want, and you might as well be a dog instead of a human being.” She issued a disgusted noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl, then stalked down the corridor in the direction they had been headed before the attempted ambush.
“The Alliance is overflowing with freedom-seeking idealists,” Leonidas called after her, though he doubted she was listening. “It takes a few pragmatists to run a government. You’ll see. When the entire system collapses and your government is replaced by chaos, you’ll see.”
Alisa did not look back. Leonidas glared down at the tied-up muggers.
“You sure you don’t want to let us go so we can catch her and sell her to slavers?” the boy asked.
Leonidas grunted and walked away, hoping Alisa would remember to comm the police to pick them up. If police even existed on Starfall Station anymore. Star fall, indeed.
Leonidas put out a hand to stop Alisa. They were in the wide corridor leading to the smithy—it was more like a street with buildings to either side, a high ceiling arching about thirty feet overhead. The area was very quiet, considering how many of the shops kept night hours. To their left, a window display showed all manner of netdiscs and personal comm assistants, and floating holosigns promised inexpensive repair rates. Two buildings ahead, the roll-up door of the smithy was closed, though a glowing sign shed light from the window beside it.
A faint odor reached Leonidas’s nostrils, that of a butcher shop—or a battlefield.
“More muggers?” Alisa looked down at his hand.
“Perhaps,” he said, scanning the buildings more intently than he had when they first turned onto the street.
“You’ve accused me of being someone whom trouble always finds, but I think it’s even more likely to find you.”
“I believe I said you’re someone who makes trouble wherever she goes. You’re quick to mouth off to people, even those it’s unwise to be mouthy with.”
“Like cranky cyborgs?” She smiled, her irritation from ten minutes earlier apparently forgotten.
After years of outranking most of his peers and having them defer to him, he was never quite sure how to handle her irreverence. This time, he said, “I’m not cranky,” and regretted that it sounded petulant rather than authoritative.
Her smile only widened.
He sighed and walked down a maintenance passage between the computer repair building and the next structure, checking to see if the shops had back doors. He couldn’t yet tell where that smell was coming from, but striding through the front entrance of the smithy might be unwise.
A waist-high, bug-shaped trash robot rolled through the alley that ran parallel to the street, sucking debris into its proboscis, incinerating it in its carapace, and shifting the ashes to a bin in the rear. It reminded him of the chase that he’d been on with Alisa and Dr. Dominguez in the sewers below the university library on Perun. They had temporarily escaped pursuit by catching a ride on an automated sewer-cleaning vehicle. He and Alisa had sat side by side in the cargo bed, their shoulders touching. It hadn’t exactly been pleasant since they’d both stunk of the sewers, but she hadn’t been mouthy then, perhaps being too tired to make quips. For some reason, the image came to mind now with a feeling of fondness. Odd.
His memories faded as he turned into the alley and saw the robot trundling toward a charred box lying on the floor. A hole burned in the side displayed destroyed interior circuit boards and wires.
“That’s an imperial spy box, isn’t it?” Alisa asked, stopping beside him.
His armor case stopped, too, just shy of bumping into his back.
Leonidas nodded. “Yes.”
The boxes were usually floating through the air when one saw them, built-in cameras observing from above and sending the feed to police monitors.
“Guess the Alliance decided they didn’t want to use them when they took over,” Alisa said.
“No.” Leonidas shook his head as the trash robot widened its nozzle and sucked the box in, the same way it had the other debris. “That was shot down today, not months ago when the Alliance took this station.”
“Good point,” she said quietly, looking up and down the dim alley. “Someone was doing something they didn’t want observed, eh?”
“So it would seem.”
Leonidas waited for the trash robot to incinerate the box and continue down the alley, then walked to the back door of the smithy. Unlike the vehicle-sized, roll-up door in the front, this was a simple door for humans. There were no windows on the back of the building, so he couldn’t see inside, but he caught that butcher-shop scent again.
He paused, looking down at Alisa. “You may wish to wait outside.”
“Oh?” Judging by the curiosity in her eyes, waiting outside wasn’t what she had in mind.
Even though he had served with
some female soldiers and knew they could be tough, his instinct was to protect women from gruesome experiences.
“I don’t think my armor case will fit through this narrow doorway,” he said. “Perhaps you could watch it for me.”
“Afraid the trash bot will come along and suck it up? I don’t think it’ll fit inside its maw.”
“Nevertheless, I’ll purchase your chocolate beverage later if you wait here.”
He thought that might draw an agreeable smile from her, but her eyes closed to suspicious slits. Still, she leaned her shoulder against the wall and nodded for him to go inside.
The door was locked with an old latch-and-bolt system, rather than with electronics. He gave a quick tug on the handle, snapping the mechanism. If he was wrong and nothing had happened inside, he would pay the smith for the damage.
The area he stepped into was dark, but his eyesight was better than human, and he could make out most of his surroundings. An aisle ran the length of the back wall, with tools, crates, and unidentifiable clutter rising over his head and blocking the view of most of the building. All manner of machinery towered at one end, a mix of modern and computerized with old-fashioned and antiquated. At the other end, laser smelting equipment dangled from a ceiling beam, the tip resting against an anvil and a rack of mallets of various sizes. Heat radiated from a furnace behind the equipment.
Leonidas stood quietly and listened before venturing away from the door. The scent of blood was stronger inside.
When he did not hear anything, he walked down the aisle and turned toward the front of the building. The holosign glowing in the window, proclaiming the business open, shed some extra light. To his eyes, it clearly illuminated the prone person lying on an open stretch of floor near a front counter and payment machine. It was a man, blood pooling on the floor next to him, a rivulet of it leading to a drain nearby. It had dried, but only partially. This hadn’t happened long ago.
