Perilous Hunt

by Lindsay Buroker

  “We’ve decided he’s not like other admirals,” Alisa said.

  “I haven’t met many admirals,” Stanislav said, “so I don’t have a basis for comparison.”

  “Most of the ones I’ve met are like Alejandro. Stiff, stodgy, and in need of stick-removal surgeries.”

  Alejandro ignored her.

  “Admiral Hawk seemed a reasonable man, all things considered,” Stanislav said.

  Tiang finished his snack, swigged so much coffee that she was certain he would have to leave in the middle of the surgery to pee, then washed up and returned to the operating room. Alejandro pointedly turned on a fan, and Alisa imagined germs being sucked up and incinerated. Cookie crumbs, too, perhaps.

  Alejandro tried to shut the door and shoo Alisa and Stanislav out, but she waved him away, touched her stun gun, and nodded toward Tiang. The doctors set to work, and neither looked toward her again. She did step back into the main sickbay room to watch through the windows, so she wouldn’t disturb the men.

  “There are other ships in the asteroid belt,” Stanislav said quietly from her side.

  Alisa jerked. “What? Close?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But they may be searching for the shuttle or the staff too.”

  “Too? Are these not imperial ships?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t tell by auras if a person is imperial or Alliance. It’s the people I sense, stark against the emptiness of space, not the ships.”

  “So long as they’re not heading in this direction.” Alisa looked toward Leonidas, wondering anew if they should be doing this now. Tiang had said the surgery might take up to three hours, but they had now been hooked up to the station for nearly twenty-four without repercussions. Three more did not seem like too many to ask for.

  “They’re not. I’ll let you know if it changes. And I’ll keep an eye on…” Stanislav nodded toward the operating table, or perhaps that nod was for Tiang. Was he even now applying subtle pressure so that the admiral didn’t realize he hadn’t intended to do this surgery?

  “All right,” Alisa said, even if she objected to the manipulation. She had given her assent by not stopping it, and now she was committed.

  Her comm beeped again. “Captain? It’s Yumi.”

  “With good news?”

  “I’m putting together a map of potential asteroids for you, and I’ll send it over shortly. I must warn you that any of these larger asteroids could hold a hidden installation. There aren’t any compositions that would render an asteroid unsuitable for development, other than ones comprised of harder ores, which would be more work insofar as chiseling out the core for a compound.”

  “Sounds like you’re sending me a big list then,” Alisa said.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Go ahead and send it. Maybe my pilot’s intuition will help in narrowing the field.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a scientific methodology.”

  “And yet, I trust it.” Aware of Stanislav looking at her, Alisa asked, “What?”

  “I did not know that pilot intuition was useful in determining the location of hidden bases.”

  “Of course it is. You look at things like whether the asteroid is too close to its neighbors to allow good access for ships.”

  “I see. That actually makes sense.”

  “I’m going to choose not to be offended by the fact that you sound surprised.”

  “Good.”

  Alisa pulled up her netdisc to look at Yumi’s map, but Mica had also sent the shuttle bay footage, so she called that up first. On the operating table, Leonidas lay still, Alejandro on one side of him, monitoring his stats, while Tiang manipulated the remote control and watched the holo brain, the image zoomed to levels so microscopic that the nanobots were visible. Alisa reminded herself that he was a highly trained specialist doing brain surgery and not a kid playing a holo game, even if that was what it looked like.

  She played the shuttle bay footage in a holo of her own that floated over her netdisc. When Stanislav leaned in to get a look, her first instinct was to hide the display from him.

  “I’m curious about what my—your daughter—looks like,” he said.

  She hesitated, but what intel could be gleaned from this? Kids being shuffled into a shuttle with no audio to catch words shared. If he wanted to, he could probably find a school picture of Jelena in the public records, and there were surely plenty of pictures of Thorian out there too.

  As the footage played, the first people coming into sight, she shifted so he could see the holo. At first, only adults in black robes strode into view, hurrying to open the shuttle door and load a few crates. She zipped the video forward until the first child came onto the display. A boy. She did not recognize him, but she slowed the playback, anticipating…

  Yes, there was Jelena.

  She had expected to watch with cool detachment—it wasn’t as if this were real time—but the overwhelming emotion nearly brought her to her knees. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

  Not now, she told herself, blinking away the moisture. Later, she could watch this again in the privacy of her cabin and get weepy. For now, she was the captain, overseeing Leonidas’s surgery and staying strong and professional in front of her crew and passengers. And spies.

  “That’s her?” Stanislav asked, pointing.

  Alisa nodded, not trusting her voice.

  There were three other girls and four boys, including the somber-faced Prince Thorian, but he had selected the right one. Jelena was taller than the last time Alisa had seen her, and her brown hair was back in a braid instead of the pigtails she’d long favored. Maybe she was growing out of pigtails. Had she had anyone there to help her with the braid, or had she learned to do it herself? Alisa remembered teaching Jonah how to make a few of Jelena’s favored styles, so he could help her with her hair when she wasn’t there. Did Starseers care about such things?

  One of the adults held up a hand to stop the children. They gathered outside of the shuttle. Jelena looked at the back of Thorian’s head and waved her fingers. His dark hair floated outward, as if the gravity had disappeared. One of the nearby boys giggled, and Thorian glowered at Jelena. Alisa almost groaned at her daughter making trouble, but she couldn’t pretend to be surprised. Thorian tilted his chin toward her, and her braid floated up and whacked the giggling boy on the side of his head, startling him. Jelena grinned, as did the somber Thorian, if only briefly. Well, at least she had a friend. That was good, even if Alisa would have preferred she buddy up with someone the entire system wasn’t intent on capturing or killing.

  “She’s cute,” Stanislav said, as the adults ushered the children into the shuttle. “I can see you and your mother in her.”

  Alisa shrugged, still not trusting her voice and not sure what to say, regardless.

  “Does she—” He frowned, his eyes growing distant.

  “What?” Alisa asked, dread creeping into her stomach.

  “Some of the ships may be heading this way.”

  “What?” she repeated, tightening her fingers around her netdisc. “Why? Damn it, there’s nothing here for them.” She looked toward the operating table, and Alejandro frowned at her, lifting a finger to his lips. Alisa turned her back to them and took a few steps away, not wanting to distract Tiang. “Can you convince the pilots to turn in another direction, Stanislav?”

  “Perhaps if they get closer,” he said. “They’re at the edge of my sensory range now. But it would be better for us if they didn’t get closer.”

  “No kidding. How many ships are there?”

  “Heading this way? I’m not sure yet. There seem to be multiple groups out there searching. The group that has turned in this direction might have as many as eight ships.”

  “Big ships or little shuttles?”

  “Judging by the numbers of people aboard them, they’re large ships, military perhaps.”

  “You couldn’t have discovered this an hour ago?” sh
e asked, thrusting an exasperated hand toward the operating room.

  “They weren’t heading this way an hour ago. I wasn’t even aware of them until more recently.”

  Alisa started pacing. “How long do we have?”

  “They may not know we’re here, or they may be looking for something else, not the station. Or us.”

  “Let’s hope.” Alisa grabbed her comm unit. “Mica, are you still aboard the station?”

  “Of course. I’m composing my invoice.”

  “Does it have any weapons?”

  “My invoice? No, do you think a few booby traps would make the Starseers more likely to pay attention?”

  “The station.” Alisa made a rude gesture at the comm unit, tempted to turn on the video so the gesture would go through.

  “I don’t think so, but I’ll check.”

  “Check for shields too. Just in case.” Alisa did not relish the idea of trying to keep away eight military ships with nothing but the two e-cannons installed on the Nomad. They had test-fired them and confirmed that they worked, but that was different from going into battle with them. Even one military ship would make mincemeat of her freighter.

  “Can I add this extra work to my invoice?” Mica asked.

  “Yeah, definitely bill it to the Starseers. Most of my troubles are their fault.” She turned a glare onto Stanislav. Even if he hadn’t been a part of the group that had kidnapped Jelena, he and his staff-stealing comrades had surely compounded her problems.

  But Stanislav wasn’t paying attention to her. He had moved back to the doorway and was looking into the operating room.

  Alisa walked over in time to hear Tiang speak.

  “His parietal lobe is bleeding.” Sweat gleamed on Tiang’s forehead, a testament to his concentration. “I wasn’t over there with the nanobots. There shouldn’t be any damage.”

  “Meaning we triggered something?” Alejandro demanded.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Chapter 9

  Alisa gripped the doorjamb, the ships and Jelena and Stanislav forgotten as she stared at Leonidas. He wasn’t moving under the influence of the sedative, but a monitor alarm had started beeping.

  “Programming more nanobots to go in and cauterize that,” Alejandro said, turning away from Leonidas and toward the scope. “We don’t have many of them. We’ll only get one chance.”

  “There might not be time,” Tiang said softly.

  “Can’t you use some of the ones already in there?” Alisa asked.

  “They’re not—” Tiang cursed. “Did you see that, Dominguez? A foreign signal just went to his heart. It’s one of the failsafes. I shouldn’t have triggered that, damn it. I was very careful in selecting my path. Did it move over the years? I know where they put them.”

  “A signal from the brain shouldn’t affect the heart,” Alejandro said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s just a dumb muscle that keeps—”

  “An enhanced muscle in his case,” Tiang said. “With improved cardiac output—and a damned switch that got inserted as part of the failsafe program. I looked over Dr. Bartosz’s notes before starting this.”

  His words came out quick and clipped. Scared.

  “What’s going to happen to his heart?” Alisa brought her fist to her mouth, terror flooding through her. And recriminations. Why had she pushed for this? Why hadn’t she been patient? Surely, this could have waited a month or even a year. And with more time, maybe they could have found a more reasonable—less risky—solution.

  “Ventricular tachycardia,” Tiang said, glancing toward a holo monitor displaying Leonidas’s vital statistics. “Which will lead to ventricular fibrillation.”

  “Which leads to what?” Alisa demanded. She could hear the note of hysteria in her voice, but she couldn’t calm it down. A heart attack? Death?

  “Dominguez, open his IV line,” Tiang said. “I brought mylocidane. In my bag.” He jerked his head toward the counter without taking his eyes from the brain scan. “Grab an antiarrythmic too.”

  Alejandro moved to comply, but not without a frown in his direction. “You knew this was a possibility.”

  “Of course I knew, but I was careful to avoid the trigger. It shouldn’t be happening, damn it.” Tiang dashed a sleeve across his brow.

  “What’s mylocidane?” Alisa asked, her fingers twitching. She wanted to help, but how could she? She didn’t know anything.

  “A powerful beta-adrenergic blocking agent,” Tiang said, glancing at the monitor. Alisa didn’t know what most of the stats meant, but she had no trouble reading that his heart rate had shot up and was jagged instead of regular.

  Alejandro, preparing the IV, frowned at Alisa. “This would be a good time for you to take a coffee break, Captain.”

  “A what?”

  “You’re a distraction. Let us do our job.” He jerked his chin toward the outer chamber.

  Alisa wanted to punch him, or curse at him, or both, but she clamped her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted was to distract Tiang. Either of them.

  Stanislav rested a hand on Alisa’s shoulder. She was too tense to acknowledge it.

  “He’s gone into fibrillation,” Alejandro said. “Will the drugs be enough? If there’s some device in there deliberately causing this? Tell me we don’t have to crack open his chest and remove the device.”

  “I don’t know, but we couldn’t operate on his heart while it’s in this state anyway. Get the TAM-press. Assume we’ll have to do chest compressions.”

  Footsteps thudded behind Alisa, but she did not turn to look. She couldn’t take her gaze from the operating table, alternately staring at Leonidas’s face and at the monitors. His eyes were twitching under his lids. What horrible nightmare must he be having now?

  “Captain,” Beck said, “we have a problem.”

  “No shit.” And she was helpless to do anything about it.

  Beck only glanced into the operating room. “Some ships just came into range of the station’s sensors.”

  Alisa’s comm beeped. A message from the Nomad. Abelardus was probably keeping an eye on the sensors over there.

  “A lot of them,” Beck added. “And they’re coming this way.”

  “How long do we have?” she asked, her gaze still on Leonidas.

  Alejandro and Tiang kept working, both methodical despite the worried looks on their sweat-beaded faces.

  “I’m trying to get to the failsafe switch in his brain to short it out, but it’s hard to find,” Tiang said. “There’s blood everywhere now. This is a damned mess.”

  “Do you want me to insert the repair nanobots?” Alejandro asked. “They’re programmed. Or do we need to wait until his heart is stable?”

  “Wait,” Tiang said.

  “Not long, Captain,” Beck said, his voice growing quieter as he figured out what was going on in the operating room. “Thirty minutes? Less? If we can sense ships heading our way, they’ll be able to sense us too. I’m not sure we matter to them, but if we do… Maybe we should prepare to get out of here. If it’s just the station they want, let them have it. There’s nothing for us here, right?”

  Nothing except Leonidas in the middle of the operation. Three suns, they couldn’t move him now. Alejandro shoved Leonidas’s shirt up and strapped a device to his chest, over his heart.

  “Should’ve had him strip,” he muttered, glancing at the monitor and grabbing an injector.

  “Get Mica, Yumi, and everyone else nonessential back on the Nomad,” Alisa told Beck. “Prepare to leave.”

  “Uh, right, Captain, but don’t you need to do that? As the pilot?”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  Beck turned, but paused. “Is he nonessential?” He pointed at Stanislav, who stood still, his hands clasped within the sleeves of his robe as he regarded the surgery.

  “I have no idea.” Alisa told herself to go find a hover gurney so they could move Leonidas to the ship as soon as possible, but she couldn’t unroot her feet from the spot.


  “I knew it,” Alejandro growled, as a flurry of beeps erupted around him. “He’s in cardiac arrest. Initiating CPR and injecting molimarephrine.”

  Alisa’s legs grew too weak to move, to support her weight. She sank down against the doorjamb, gripping the back of her neck with her hands. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. She’d already lost Jonah. She couldn’t lose Leonidas too. He’d survived way too many battles to die like this. It didn’t make any kind of sense. It just didn’t.

  “I’ll round everyone up, Captain,” Beck said, his voice sounding far off.

  On the table, Leonidas’s torso jerked as the device initiated chest compressions. After only a few rounds, the monitor flashed an alert.

  “His heart’s beating on its own again,” Alejandro said, turning off the device. He sounded surprised, even puzzled.

  “I am controlling it now,” Stanislav said from the doorway, his voice a murmur, his eyes glazed as he seemed to focus inward.

  Alejandro looked over at him sharply. “His heart?”

  “Yes. I am attempting to lower the beats to a normal range as well, but as soon as I let go, the problem will return.”

  “I’m trying to nullify the trigger in his brain,” Tiang said, still navigating his nanobots through the miasma of neurons inside Leonidas’s skull. “If we can soothe that back into a static state, or destroy it altogether, it won’t keep sending signals to the switch in his heart.”

  “Understood,” Stanislav said.

  Alisa’s comm beeped again, insistently. Alejandro glared over at her.

  Alisa forced herself to her feet, even though she stumbled and had to grab the wall for support.

  “What is it, Abelardus?” she asked.

  “About time,” Abelardus said. “The Alliance is hailing us.”

  “Is that who’s coming?” She should have known. Who else would sail into the asteroid field with eight ships? “What do they want? The station?”

  “They want Admiral Tiang back, and they’re going to shoot the hull off your ship if you don’t hand him over nicely. They also want the staff and/or any information pertaining to it that we have. And they want us to detach from the station—they seem to want it too. Or maybe they just want to destroy it.”