Arkadian Skies

by Lindsay Buroker

  “He pointed a big destroyer at me the first time we met,” Alisa said, by way of an icebreaker, and because Suyin was frowning down the corridor in the direction Leonidas had gone.

  “Pardon?” she asked, her gaze shifting to Alisa.

  “Leonidas,” Alisa said, figuring they might as well talk about him, since he was the one who ultimately needed Tiang’s help. “He was a loyal imperial soldier, as I’m sure you guessed from the armor. And I was an Alliance pilot, only a few months out of the service.” Amazing how long ago that seemed, when it had only been, what? Two and a half, three months? “But the empire is no more, and he knows that. He’s been a great asset to my little team.”

  “Ah.”

  Suyin had dark, hard-to-read eyes, and Alisa couldn’t tell if that single syllable represented disbelief, disinterest, or surprise that she was being filled in. Since she must believe herself a short-term passenger who would be dropped off as soon as they found her father, she might, indeed, wonder that.

  “You’re truly in charge then?” Suyin added, popping another mint into her mouth.

  Alisa couldn’t tell if that was a nervous habit or if they contained caffeine, nicotine, or thoithoi and represented an addiction. If they had been chocolate, Alisa might have cozied up to her and tried to feed her own addiction, since there wasn’t much left onboard.

  “It’s my ship,” Alisa said, “and he agreed to work for me.”

  She felt uncertain about boasting that she was in charge when Suyin had just witnessed Leonidas fighting in the corridor—and not obeying her orders to stop in a timely manner. Explaining Abelardus was complicated and should not be necessary. Saying as little as possible about the Starseers—and that staff—seemed wise.

  “Do you know who he was?” Suyin asked.

  “Do you?” Alisa still didn’t know how that could have happened and did not want to give away Leonidas’s real name unless it was necessary.

  “Even though I’m a civilian, I know more than you might expect since my fiancé is an Alliance officer. He and my father talk shop at dinner whenever they’re both on-planet at the same time.”

  Alisa noted that Suyin hadn’t quite answered her question. Suyin turned forward in her seat and watched the smoldering city on the view screen, seemingly saying the conversation was at an end.

  Alisa grimaced. She didn’t think she had made any progress in winning over the woman. Maybe she shouldn’t try right now. With people trapped, wounded, and dead throughout the city, she shouldn’t be worrying about Leonidas getting his issues fixed. Abelardus was right that it was a selfish concern right now, but sometimes the timing couldn’t be ignored. When else might she have found Suyin and gotten her onto the Nomad? If they had waited, the admiral might have been back on his ship in orbit. Inaccessible. And what Abelardus wanted them to do… could get them all killed.

  No, she vowed to herself. She wasn’t going to get killed going after that stupid staff. She would drop off Abelardus, and Alejandro and Leonidas if they were all determined to go, and then she would get her ship out of harm’s way. Yes, she felt guilty for losing the staff, but this wasn’t her fight, and there was little she could do to help. So what if the man involved and possibly leading the opposite side was her father? She wasn’t responsible for what he did. It wasn’t as if he’d ever been a part of her life. Besides, what could she do against a super powerful Starseer with a super powerful artifact? Her battle, her mission, was to find Jelena.

  With that thought in mind, Alisa checked the sensors, and when she confirmed there weren’t any ships flying in their direction, she stood up, wanting to check on Alejandro and Durant.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said. “I’ve got my comm, so I’ll know if they return or if they need help.”

  Alisa expected Suyin to nod and wave for her to go, but she frowned over her shoulder and raised a hand to stop her.

  “Colonel Adler was one of the emperor’s loyal men, Captain,” Suyin said. “The highest-ranking cyborg officer in the fleet. The war may be over for you, but I doubt he considers it over. I doubt that very much. Whatever he’s told you, whatever he’s said he’s doing here, you would be a fool to trust him.”

  Alisa paused, her hand on the jamb, and groped for a response, one that would change Suyin’s mind. She hadn’t expected the woman to have any idea who Leonidas had been. She might have learned from her father eventually, but these preconceived notions would only make winning her over harder. Maybe thinking she could do so was a vain hope. And was it necessary? Admiral Tiang was the one who could do the surgery.

  “He’s an honorable man,” Alisa said.

  Suyin snorted and looked away again.

  “Wasn’t your father a high-ranking imperial officer until recently?” Alisa asked, annoyed at the prejudgment of Leonidas. Belatedly, she realized she shouldn’t have asked that question. Suyin hadn’t told her who her father was.

  “Do you know so much about all of the people you rescue, Captain?” Suyin asked coolly.

  “Only if they’re related to high-ranking officers from the war. I did serve for four years.” True, but she’d had no idea who Admiral Tiang was until Leonidas told her. Lowly pilots and high-ranking medical officers rarely played cards together.

  “He was never a loyalist,” Suyin said, not turning back around—Alisa could not see her face or tell if she had believed that excuse. “Just a scientist trying to find a place to do his research. He found out early on that being a civilian scientist doing research that was of interest to the military meant being yanked around by them, so he joined in the hope of gaining enough rank that he could call the shots. He’d had more than enough of the empire by the time the Alliance formed.”

  “So had I,” Alisa said, wanting to emphasize that they were on the same side.

  When Suyin did not respond, Alisa headed toward sickbay. Their conversation hadn’t gone as she had hoped it would.

  She passed through the mess hall, where Abelardus and Ostberg sat across from each other at the table, their heads bent together. She did not want another lecture from Abelardus, and she hoped he wasn’t trying to recruit the boy to help him in some matter that might be at odds with her wishes.

  She found Alejandro sitting on a stool, scanning through files on his netdisc. Durant lay on the exam table, as he had for almost all of the last week, as unconscious as ever.

  “How’s your patient?” Alisa asked, though she wanted to grab Alejandro, shake him, and demand to know when Durant could finally be woken up.

  “He’s stabilized again since his breathing treatment,” Alejandro said without looking up from the holodisplay. “I’m going over the scans and doing research on the affected parts of his brain.”

  “Any thoughts on a treatment plan?”

  Alejandro frowned over at her, and she felt ashamed that she only cared because of the knowledge in Durant’s head, but he had been her daughter’s kidnapper. What was she supposed to feel? Deep distress that he was wounded? Wasn’t she being magnanimous by not having thoughts that he’d gotten what he deserved? Or at least not sharing them?

  “Not yet,” Alejandro said.

  “Do you think you will be able to come up with something? Now that you have more information?”

  “I have ideas, and I’m getting more as I research. Of course, the seed cannot grow into a flower if the gardener is digging it up every day to check on its progress.” He turned back to research.

  Taking that as a suggestion that she stop pestering him, Alisa stepped back out into the corridor. Her comm beeped, and she jumped on it.

  “Leonidas?”

  “We’re coming back,” he said. “We have several injured.”

  “And the admiral?” Feeling self-absorbed again, and needing to justify it, Alisa added, “I know Suyin is worried about him.”

  “Yes. He’s not injured. I’ll talk to you later.”

  She frowned, wondering what that meant. Was there something that he didn’t wan
t to say with others around him? Maybe she was reading too much into the comment, but she headed to the cargo hold so she could open the hatch personally.

  The squawking of chickens greeted her when she came out onto the walkway. One had escaped and was pecking at the deck under the stairs.

  Mica was already standing by the cargo hatch—maybe Leonidas had tasked her with the job of monitoring it before he left. Or maybe she had a reason to think the men would need to return in a hurry.

  “Everything all right?” Alisa asked.

  “Aside from the city in ruin outside?” Mica asked.

  “Aside from that, yes.”

  Mica shrugged. “My shoulder still aches from being hurled about by dinosaurs last week, I’m having trouble getting the alarm on the grav generator to stop going off for no reason, and I keep getting interrupted when I’m in the middle of my turn at Math-a-gories. My team is relying on me, you know.” She waved skyward, and Alisa assumed this was some sys-net game. “And nobody has downloaded my résumé yet,” Mica added.

  “Sounds like a rough week.”

  “Yes. I need references for my résumé to make it look better.”

  “You want me to write a letter of recommendation?”

  “I need good references. You’re a criminal now.”

  “If you can earn the praise of some tyrannical criminal mastermind, then employers might think you’re truly something special.”

  “Who told you that you were a mastermind?”

  “I think that’s the sort of adjective a criminal picks for herself,” Alisa said.

  “Like megalomaniacal?”

  “I can’t spell that. I wouldn’t pick it for myself.”

  “So, you’ll be using all monosyllabic, easy-to-spell words on my letter of recommendation? That will impress prospective employers.”

  Alisa thumped her on the shoulder. “I’m here to help.”

  “I don’t suppose you could get your Commander Tomich to write me a letter.”

  “All he knows about you is that you like getting tools and spare parts.”

  “That demonstrates my enthusiasm for my job.”

  An exterior camera showed Leonidas and Beck coming out onto the roof, each carrying someone. A hoverboard floated between them, with three more people laid out on it. Admiral Tiang walked at Leonidas’s side, clad in loose trousers and a rumpled khaki shirt. Leonidas’s helmet was off, and the two men were talking. Alisa hoped that was a promising sign. The admiral didn’t look like he needed medical attention. Alisa wondered why he hadn’t answered Suyin’s comm calls.

  Mica hit the controls to open the hatch and lower the ramp. The men strode straight up, and Alisa’s breath caught when she saw that Leonidas carried a girl on his hip, her arms flung around his shoulders, and her head buried. There was blood on her shirt.

  Even though Alisa knew it wasn’t Jelena—there was no way she would be in an apartment building in some Arkadian city—she couldn’t help but think of her. The girl had the same hue of brown hair and appeared about the same age, and seeing her with her arms clutched around Leonidas brought to mind memories of Jelena riding around on Alisa’s hip when she had been a toddler. Emotion thickened her throat as the group shambled up the ramp, the beleaguered city stretching out behind them a reminder that many children would be hurt or separated from their parents.

  “We need to get out of here,” Leonidas told Alisa, a warning in his eyes.

  What had happened?

  Admiral Tiang stopped at the top of the ramp and frowned around the cargo hold, not appearing pleased at his rescue conveyance.

  Leonidas carried the girl toward sickbay, telling the rest of the injured people to follow him. Beck nodded at Alisa, not appearing concerned about whatever was bothering Leonidas, and followed the others up the stairs.

  “Guess we’re heading out,” Alisa said, waving for Mica to close the cargo hatch. “Maybe you can catch up with your math game while we’re en route to confront evil-doers.”

  “The excitement of my days is too great to contain.” Mica walked toward engineering, muttering something about masterminds under her breath.

  Alisa climbed the stairs and headed for NavCom, pondering excuses she could make as to why she wanted to fly away from the city without dropping Suyin or Admiral Tiang off. Especially when she should drop all of the injured people off before leaving the continent.

  “Captain?” Yumi said, walking out of the mess hall and meeting her in front of the now-crowded sickbay. A worried frown creased her brow, and she ignored Alejandro’s cranky-sounding orders drifting out.

  “What is it?” Alisa asked.

  “I can’t get in touch with my sister anymore.”

  “She’s not answering your comms?”

  “It’s more like they’re not getting through. My messages are bouncing right back to me. I tried my mother, too, and it was the same thing. I’m worried something happened to the temple.”

  A couple of the injured people in sickbay were looking at them, so Alisa waved for Yumi to go farther up the corridor with her. “You said before that the chasadski had visited the temple and tried to coerce people to join them.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think they would have had the power to do something if that coercion didn’t work?”

  “Against so many Starseers? I’m not sure. I don’t know how big their group is. And I don’t know what the Staff of Lore can do, besides start earthquakes.”

  “Do you know where the temple is now?”

  Yumi shook her head. “Young-hee didn’t tell me where it was moved, just that it was supposed to be safe and hard for the Alliance satellites to find.”

  “Well, try to figure it out, and we’ll check on it, after we check the spot you and Abelardus found.” The spot where that attack had supposedly originated. Alisa knew Abelardus wanted to confront the staff thieves, but she found herself hoping that they would be too late.

  “What if they’re the same spot?” Yumi asked.

  What, indeed. “We’ll figure that out when we get there.”

  A throat cleared behind her. Leonidas stepped out of sickbay.

  “Alisa?”

  “Yes?” she asked, as Yumi returned to the mess hall.

  “There wasn’t a cat,” he said quietly.

  “Huh?”

  “Remember when Ms. Tiang spoke to a Hawk on the comm?”

  “Her fiancé, yes,” Alisa said.

  “She mentioned checking on a cat. I broke down the door to enter the Tiangs’ apartment and looked around for the admiral. He ended up being next door, taking care of the injured girl and her mother, and then they got trapped in there when an aftershock took down a beam. That’s where I found them, but I had a good look around their apartment first and didn’t see a cat or sign of one being owned. I’d thought to collect it or at least let it out if it was there.”

  Alisa nodded, though cats would have been the last thing on her mind if she’d been tramping through a smoke-filled, earthquake-ruined building.

  “I asked the admiral about it before we left the floor,” Leonidas said. “He was confused. He said there wasn’t a cat.”

  “You think that was a code or something? A message for her fiancé? Letting him know she thought she was in trouble?” Alisa curled her fingers into a fist. She wagered it had been exactly that. Suyin had seen Leonidas, identified him, and believed herself in danger. Alisa growled, frustrated. It wasn’t as if they had chained her up and threatened her. They had been saving that for later.

  “Have you looked up who the fiancé is?” Leonidas asked.

  “No, have you?”

  “There wasn’t time, but I remember a Hawk from the war.”

  “So do I,” she said, thinking of the famous pilot again. “Admiral Hawk Hammerstein. But there could be a lot of people with that name. Granted, Hawk would usually be a nickname or call sign for most people.”

  “If it is the admiral, then he’ll have a lot of resources to thr
ow at getting his fiancée back. It would be wisest to leave her and her father here. Neither is injured, and we haven’t done anything to them that they could object to.” Yet, he seemed to add silently, his eyebrows raising. “There’s no need to take them with us to look for the staff.” His lips stretched wide, in an expression that might have been wry or sad, an acknowledgment that there was a need, but not enough of a need to justify imprisoning them and taking off with them, especially if they were likely to be chased the whole way.

  Between one eye blink and the next, an idea formed in Alisa’s mind.

  She grabbed Leonidas’s arm. “Oh, yes, there is.”

  “What?”

  “Just go along with me,” she said over her shoulder, already running for NavCom.

  Chapter 11

  “No sign of pursuit yet,” Yumi said from the sensor station.

  “Good.” Alisa thought about calling for more power from the thrusters, as the Aszarian Sea passed below them, the last of the setting suns gleaming red across the deep green water. But no. She didn’t want to get there prematurely, before their pursuers arrived. If Stanislav was there with the Staff of Lore and had taken over the Starseer temple, they would need all the help they could get. Alisa just had to figure out a way to convince their pursuers to be that help.

  “At present speed, it looks like we’ll arrive at the coordinates Abelardus and I calculated in about forty-five minutes.”

  “You’re a steady science officer and navigation assistant, Yumi. You should let me hire you.”

  Yumi’s expression appeared more stressed than pleased at the words.

  “No word from your sister or mother yet?” Alisa asked.

  “Nothing.” Yumi gripped knobs on the panel that did not need to be gripped, and she stared at the monitor. “I’d just barely reestablished communication with my mother after ten years. And met sisters I didn’t even know I had. If something happened to them—if I’ve already lost them before I got to know them… It doesn’t seem fair.”

  Alisa opened her mouth, intending to say that they didn’t know yet that anything had happened to the temple, but Yumi probably wanted commiseration, not logic.