Relic of Sorrows: Fallen Empire, Book 4

by Lindsay Buroker

  “It’ll be interesting to discover somewhere in the middle of nowhere,” Alisa said.

  Alejandro made a disgusted noise and headed for the hatch. “I’m going to lie down. Let me know if anyone needs medical assistance.”

  He opened the hatch and stalked out.

  Leonidas smiled faintly at Alisa. “You really do vex him.”

  “Good, he vexes the hells out of me. I know he—” Alisa caught herself from saying that Alejandro wouldn’t mind if she were dead. That had come out in a confidential conversation between Leonidas and Alejandro, one she had eavesdropped on. “I know he never forgets that I’m Alliance and that I don’t want what he wants.”

  “No,” Leonidas said softly, his eyes growing hooded.

  “You do sometimes, I think.”

  “I don’t forget it. I suppose I just hope that you’ll come around to my way of thinking someday and realize the Alliance doesn’t care about you any more than the empire did. Now that you’ve been getting in their way, they probably care even less.”

  She swallowed, annoyed that there was some truth in his words. “I’m only in their way because you two thugs sucked me into your orbit,” she grumbled.

  “Thugs?”

  “Thugs.” She reached out and squeezed his biceps. “Surely, it’s not the first time you’ve been classified as such.”

  He arched an eyebrow, and she withdrew her hand, regretting the joke. Every now and then, he deigned to banter with her, but it didn’t seem to be his natural reaction. She had probably offended him again.

  “Many times,” Leonidas said, “but I was puzzled as to your classification of a scrawny man in a robe as such.”

  “I’ve seen his bare shins under that robe. Those leg hairs are definitely thugly.”

  He snorted.

  She smiled, relieved that she hadn’t offended him. “That almost sounded like a laugh, Leonidas. I’ll get it out of you one day.”

  “Perhaps.” He did return the smile, though his smiles were never huge and toothy. They were always a subtle stretching of the lips, and there always seemed to be a sadness in them, one he could never fully shake.

  Someone tugged the hatch open further, and Alisa expected Alejandro to walk in, returning for something he had forgotten. But Abelardus stepped in.

  He eyed Leonidas. “Such a shame that you made it back on board. I tried to suggest to our captain that she leave you behind, but she was oddly unamenable.”

  Leonidas stared back at him, all of the humor gone from his face, the smile only a memory. Alisa rolled her eyes.

  Abelardus’s gaze shifted to Alisa. “I saw you were in here and figured you were checking your blood.”

  “And that I’d need your help?” she asked, aware of Leonidas looking curiously in her direction.

  “I’m curious as to the answer.”

  “I’m not.”

  He smirked. “Yes, you are.”

  “Didn’t we talk about my feelings in regard to you being in my head?”

  “My apologies. It’s a bad habit, I know.” Abelardus looked back to Leonidas. “Why don’t you take a walk, mech? You must be tired after your adventures.”

  “I’m rarely tired.”

  “No? Not even when you sleep so poorly?” Abelardus smirked again.

  Alisa wanted to punch him in the mouth. No, she wanted Leonidas to punch him in the mouth. That would hurt him a lot more.

  “You’re monitoring my sleep?” Leonidas asked. “I didn’t know I was such a fascination for you.”

  “Know thy enemy.”

  “Why don’t you both go get some rest?” Alisa said. “And leave me alone so I can hunt up some painkillers. For some reason, I’m getting a headache.”

  “Well, I doubt it’s from the radiation,” Abelardus said.

  “I doubt it is, too,” Leonidas muttered and walked out.

  Alisa watched him go. She wouldn’t have minded if he had stayed. She just did not want the two of them sniping at each other. She made a shooing motion, hoping Abelardus would follow. A moment alone sounded quite appealing. Her thoughts were a tangle, and she needed time to consider them. And perhaps time to see if she could figure out how to work Alejandro’s DNA sequencer. She was curious, damn it. She didn’t want to be, but she was.

  “I helped the Alliance, you know,” Abelardus said, drawing her attention back to him. “My brother didn’t. We argued a lot. He supported the empire and was even working for them in the end. I don’t know if it’s true, but according to him, he tutored the emperor’s older son. Before the kid died. I’m not sure if the younger boy has had any training. I never cared. Honestly, I didn’t care about the Alliance either in the beginning, but I came around to the idea of the empire’s vise grip on the system being lessened.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Alisa asked, wanting to shove him out the hatchway after Leonidas, but making herself pause. This was new information. She didn’t care who he’d fought for, but if his brother was the same Durant that had taken her daughter, wouldn’t it be useful to know more about him? If Durant was an imperial loyalist, what did he have in mind for Jelena?

  Abelardus tilted his head. “I thought it might matter to you.”

  “I’d like to hear more about Durant.”

  His mouth twisted. “I was hoping you’d rather know more about me.”

  Er, why?

  “Not unless you kidnapped my daughter.”

  “I wouldn’t do such a thing. Look, I know you think I’m a jerk because I don’t like your cyborg friend, but I find it puzzling that you call him a friend. He’s everything the empire stands for. I bet he enjoyed enforcing their laws and squashing dissenters under his big booted feet.”

  “I think you’re a jerk because you messed with my mind and convinced me to fly up to that Alliance warship and sacrifice ourselves to them, all to buy time for your people.”

  “I thought the mech might be sacrificed, but I doubted they would do anything to you. I have no quarrel with you, Captain.”

  “That ship’s commander jabbed me in the throat with a blazer and seemed perfectly happy to sacrifice me.”

  Abelardus stared into her eyes, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She stepped back, certain he was sifting through her thoughts.

  “He was bluffing,” Abelardus said. “The Alliance commander. He wouldn’t have hurt you, but he could tell that the mech had feelings for you—” he sneered, “—and that he would give up rather than see you sacrificed.”

  “You weren’t there. You didn’t read his thoughts. You can’t be sure. I’m not even sure.”

  “I’m sure.” Abelardus shrugged. “Even if I wasn’t, you should know that Lady Naidoo’s first response to learning that your ship had a beacon on it and that you’d led those warships to us was to want to blow you, your crew, and your ship off our dock. She figured that would take care of the beacon. Those of us with saner minds talked her out of it. Yumi Moon’s mother, for one. And I argued against it too. It’s one thing to protect our turf from invaders but another to kill in cold blood.”

  “I don’t know why I should believe you.”

  “Because we’re the same.” He surprised her by grinning and thumping her on the arm with his fist. “Go test your blood and find out.”

  She grunted. “Why would that matter? I can’t do anything that you can do. Sylvia—my sister-in-law—said lots of people have Starseer genes, but that it’s rare for them to manifest.”

  “Lots? Not lots. They’re dominant genes and do get passed on easily enough, but our people were almost annihilated after the Order Wars. Nearly extinct. A few centuries hasn’t made a huge difference, and we don’t generally get along that well with outsiders—I can’t imagine why.” He quirked his eyebrows. “So, we’re not out there breeding with normal humans like glow worms on a rampage.” He touched her arm again. “Check your blood. It’ll be fun.”

  “Uh.” Alisa didn’t know what to say. Playful Abelardus was more alarming than
asshole Abelardus. “You know what would be fun? If you could get in touch with your brother and ask him if he’s been kidnapping little girls lately. I would appreciate that.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would. I sent a message as soon as we left Arkadius, but he didn’t respond. I’ll try again.”

  “Good. Thank you.”

  “Test your blood,” he repeated, then bowed and walked out, his robe sweeping over the bottom of the hatchway.

  “Weirdo,” she muttered.

  Alisa pulled the hatch shut and leaned against it. She closed her eyes, relieved to be alone. She had not been lying about that headache, and she could feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. Was that from stress? Radiation? Or were the side effects of Alejandro’s potions starting?

  A painkiller and a nap were what she needed.

  And yet… she found her eyes opening, her gaze turning toward Alejandro’s tools. She could work a microscope, but she didn’t know how to use the DNA sequencer. Would it be difficult to figure out? Should she try? What would it truly change if she had some gene mutations? Who didn’t?

  Her legs felt numb as she walked around the table to the counter. The DNA sequencer sat next to the microscope, the blood sample from the pilgrim ship still in it. She peered at the small display on the compact device. It showed several double helixes that meant absolutely nothing to her—she couldn’t even tell if they were actual images taken from cells or pictorial representations—but the columns of text on the other side of the display were somewhat more illuminating. The familiar ATCG letters were lined up in various combinations on the left, and in most instances, matching combinations lay in the columns to the right. But in several spots, the combinations on the right were highlighted, and letters had been inserted, deleted, or shifted.

  “All right, so these are the genes of a crazy person who’s somewhat resistant to radiation,” Alisa murmured.

  She dug her netdisc out of her pocket and took a picture. Next, she poked around on the machine until she found where Alejandro had inserted a sample on a small tray. She slid the tray out and started toward the sink but realized he might want to look at it again. Instead, she hunted through the paraphernalia strewn across the counter until she found an eyedropper and another tray. She didn’t see anything she could use to prick her own skin and settled for pulling out her multitool. The laser knife would simply cauterize, but there were a couple of small physical blades tucked into the tool. She washed the small knife and her finger in the sink and also found some sanitizer to use. Since she did not truly know what she was doing, she hoped she could take a sample without contaminating it with all manner of outside bacteria. With her luck, she would end up sequencing the DNA of some microbe that hung out under fingernails.

  Once she pricked herself and dropped a sample into a fresh tray, she paused. This probably wouldn’t work without Alejandro’s help, which she did not want to ask for, but what if it did? Did she truly want to find out that she had the same mutant genes as Abelardus and all those asteroid kissers in that temple who had looked down their noses at regular humans and cyborgs?

  No, these were the same mutant genes that Jelena had, she told herself. Her daughter. And Jonah had possessed them. Yumi had them too. Perfectly normal people. Besides, as she had told Abelardus, it wasn’t as if it would change anything about her. It was too late for her to manifest any weird talents. All it would mean was that if she had more children, she could pass the genes along, and they could manifest weird talents.

  “Lucky them,” she said and shoved the tray into the machine.

  It beeped indignantly, and she thought she had done something wrong, but it locked down on the tray, and she could not pull it back out again. The display on the screen changed. Red, green, yellow, and blue squiggles scrolled past on an axis with the letters they represented underneath.

  Alisa shifted from foot to foot, waiting impatiently, and reminded herself that this had taken years when they had first started doing it back on Old Earth. Since she hadn’t tinkered with the settings, she had no idea if the machine was doing all of her DNA or only looking for Starseer mutations. She was on the verge of going to find something to eat when it beeped, and the word complete flashed on the screen. A readout similar to the one that had been on it before filled the screen. Mutations were highlighted. She brought up the holodisplay on her netdisc, the picture she had taken floating in the air. The mutations were the same.

  For a long minute, Alisa merely stared at the displays, the reality slowly sinking in.

  “Congratulations, Alisa,” she finally said. “You’re a freak.”

  She snorted at herself.

  “What’s new? Nothing.”

  She removed the tray, washed away her blood, put everything back where she had found it, and walked out of sickbay.

  Chapter 5

  Mica was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat in NavCom when Alisa woke from her nap and walked in to check on their flight. It hadn’t been a particularly restful nap, thanks to several trips to the lav. She might have Starseer blood, but apparently, that could not save her from the side effects of Alejandro’s potions.

  Fortunately, Mica did not look as pale as she had before. The mess on the deck had been cleaned up.

  “Anything interesting happening up here?” Alisa waved at the view screen as she slid into her seat.

  “Just looking at the stars and wondering if my hair is going to fall out.”

  “Would you miss it much?” Alisa looked at Mica’s short, tousled locks. “It’s not like you brush it or spend any time primping it.”

  Mica gave her a sour look. “I still like to have some. Gives my partners something to grab onto in bed.”

  Alisa grimaced. “Mine just gets in the way in bed. Someone’s usually lying on it or accidentally trapping it under a hand or arm.” Maybe short hair would be easier.

  “Someone? Nobody specific?”

  “Jonah.”

  “I thought you might have experimented with others.”

  “Well, before him I did.”

  “And since?”

  “Of course not. It wouldn’t be—it hasn’t been long enough.” Alisa looked toward the stars and pointedly did not think about Leonidas. “I still miss him a lot.”

  “Ah.”

  Alisa tried to decide if there was skepticism in that short noise. Her words were not untrue, but she had been so busy since she got out of the hospital that she hadn’t thought of him as much as she should have. She wished there had been more time to spend with Sylvia, time to go out to the farm to see the rest of Jonah’s family, and time to truly say goodbye. After she found Jelena, perhaps they could do those things. Or hold a memorial of their own.

  That thought made her reach for the comm controls. She wanted to know if Abelardus had sent messages to his brother, or if he was lying, telling her what she wanted to hear. After all, why would he care about Jelena? He was here for the orb and the staff, the same as the rest of the galaxy.

  Mica looked at her hand, and Alisa hesitated. She usually reserved eavesdropping and snooping for when she was alone. Oh well. Mica knew she wasn’t a paragon of virtue.

  She pulled up a list of all the outgoing comm messages from the last week, the headers of everything everyone had sent since the ship left Arkadius. Most people encrypted their communications, or had mail services that did it automatically, but she could see the side of the videos and messages that had been recorded here, before they were encrypted and sent, since they had to be boosted through the Nomad’s transmitter. She wouldn’t necessarily get the other side of the message, but they hadn’t had real-time communication since they had moved away from the core worlds, so any recent messages would be one-way, regardless. Besides, all she needed to see was one side of Abelardus’s message to know if he had commed his brother.

  “You’re reading people’s mail?” Mica asked as Alisa skimmed through the accounts.

  “Not everyone’s.”

  Alisa glanced at the hat
ch to make sure nobody had a nose pressed to the window, then selected the messages on Abelardus’s account.

  “Good, because mine is private. I don’t want people knowing about the smutty romances I order.”

  “Do engineers watch romances that don’t involve tools and machinery?”

  “Who says mine don’t?”

  Alisa waved her fingers in a semblance of a salute. “I wasn’t looking at your vid collection or opening your messages, though I did notice a lot of mail going out to engineering firms and exploratory mining operations. Résumés?”

  “Résumés. I need to get out of here before I get irradiated.”

  “I’m wounded that you’re so determined to leave. Once we get rid of our artifact hunters, life would be normal again. Just me helping Jelena with her schooling while cargo sits in the hold as we carry it from moon to planet to station.”

  “Will that schooling involve teaching her how to hurl cyborgs against the wall?”

  Alisa grimaced. “I hope not. But she probably will need to learn about her new talents. Maybe I can hire her a Starseer tutor. An innocuous one.”

  “Is there such a thing?”

  “Yumi’s sister seemed decent. Maybe she would like to have adventures in space for a while and teach Jelena the fine art of not being an ass.”

  “Adventures? See, I knew you had more planned than simple cargo hauling.”

  “Don’t you think you would be bored at a job that didn’t have at least some adventure?” Alisa ignored several messages that Abelardus had sent to Lady Naidoo, though she might watch them later. It would be good to know if Abelardus or the other Starseers had been alerting people to the coordinates they were heading out to explore. “After all, your time in the army couldn’t have been that sedate. I know we had excitement on the Silver Striker.”

  “The fighter pilots had excitement. The engineers sat inside the heavily shielded warship and waited for the wrecked remnants of that excitement to come in for repairs.”