Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Afterword

Cleon Moon

(Fallen Empire, Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

Copyright © 2016 Lindsay Buroker

Illustration Copyright © 2016 Tom Edwards

TomEdwardsDesign.com

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my editor, Shelley Holloway, and also to my beta readers, Cindy Wilkinson, Sarah Engelke, Rue Silver, and Walter Scrivens, who have been amazing about getting their feedback to me so quickly with this series. Also, thank you to my cover designer, Tom Edwards, who has been able to create those wonderful spaceships on a fast schedule. Lastly, thank you for reading these books and sharing the word about them. I hope you continue to enjoy them.

Chapter 1

Cleon Moon, a gray blob with swirling brown smudges, looked like a rejected marble fished out of a sludgy sewer. Captain Alisa Marchenko had been there before, and it was every bit as ugly as she remembered.

“It’s magnificent,” Yumi said, flouncing into NavCom and clasping her hands in front of her chest with the enthusiasm of a toddler presented with an Asteroid Icy.

“The moon or the planet?” Alisa asked, waving to the massive gas giant visible behind Cleon Moon. The planet Cleon orbited had interesting green and blue striations with a massive emerald eye in the center. Its magnificence was debatable, but Alisa could see someone calling the planet beautiful. The moon, on the other hand…

“Cleon Moon, of course!” Yumi unfolded the seat at the sensor station and sat down behind Alisa. “The native fungal forests are amazing. There are tens of thousands of different species of fungi, many with edible and medicinal properties. Many are still a mystery, waiting to be studied.”

“I imagine studying them is hard when you have to wear a breathing mask to go outside of the domes because the atmosphere is toxic.”

“It’s not toxic; it just hasn’t been terraformed to desirable human conditions. But that’s the appeal. These fungal forests were growing here long before humans settled the system. They’re fabulous, Captain. If we have time, we could stop and harvest some meykonghi arelexius.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Meykonghi arelexius is the base component in Bliss, a recreational drug that relaxes muscles, reduces inhibitions, and increases the intensity of one’s orgasms.”

“That can’t be legal,” Alisa said, certain the empire hadn’t approved of anyone having a good time.

“I’m not sure if the Alliance has made a ruling on it yet,” Yumi said. “But it can be sold for a great deal on the black market.”

“Were you truly a science teacher, Yumi?”

Alisa adjusted the controls, taking them toward the southern hemisphere of the moon where the majority of the domes had been installed. The structures ranged from family-sized compounds of less than a square mile to city-sized domes covering hundreds of square miles and millions of residents. Some were owned by private citizens, others by corporations, and still others by the mafia. She hoped the White Dragon people did not have a presence on the moon, since, as far as she knew, they were still after Beck.

“I was an excellent science teacher,” Yumi said, “and I miss teaching. Will your daughter need instruction when you find her? I can teach her mathematics and science if I continue traveling with you.” She smiled, as if that was an appealing notion.

Given all the craziness and near-death experiences the Star Nomad had been through lately, that was hard to imagine.

“So long as you keep the orgasmic mushroom lessons to a minimum. She’s only eight.” Alisa hoped to find Jelena before she had a birthday and she had to add a year, but she was struggling to maintain that optimism in the face of all the detours and delays. She prayed to Solis-de that her daughter was down on Cleon Moon—and that she could finally find her.

“Of course, Captain. I love teaching people of all ages. I love research too. I can’t wait to get my hands on some fungal stalks.”

“We need to find you a man, Yumi.”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

“Or a woman could be arranged. Whatever you prefer.” Alisa thought about mentioning that Mica might be interested, but she had enough jobs on this ship already without turning herself into a matchmaker. Besides, Leonidas was walking up the corridor with something in his hand, and he wouldn’t be interested in such discussions.

“I have some quotes for you, Captain,” he said, holding up his netdisc. He thumbed a button, and the holodisplay appeared in the air.

“Alisa,” she corrected him—now that he was officially in her employ, he had started calling her captain again. She appreciated his professionalism, but it had taken her weeks to get him to call her by first name instead of last. This felt so stiff and formal, especially considering they were now dating. In a manner of speaking.

Leonidas ignored the correction and set the netdisc on the console beside her.

“What kinds of quotes?” she asked. “Shakespeare? Thucydides? Churchill? Volk?”

Leonidas acknowledged this attempt at humor with the barest twitch of an eyebrow.

“I believe you’re thinking of quotations, Captain,” Yumi said.

“Yes, I was pulling Leonidas’s leg. Which isn’t easy, let me tell you. It’s quite firmly attached.” Alisa thought about squeezing his thigh, but he was wearing his serious face and did not appear to be in the mood to appreciate humor—or squeezes. He had probably spent hours doing this research. The suns knew he was determined that they make the freighter more defendable now that he was her security chief.

“I have seven different quotes for e-cannons, torpedo launchers, and ship-rated blazers, all of which can be installed on the Star Nomad with suitable time in dock.” Leonidas pointed at images of the various weapons in the holodisplay before swiping to a database that listed merchants and prices. “Three of the major domes have installation facilities that can work with us. Has Abelardus given you landing coordinates yet?”

“Not yet,” Alisa said. “He said there’s a tiny Starseer enclave down there where we can start our search for Durant, but he’s waiting to hear back from them before directing us to land nearby.”

Alisa had checked Abelardus's personal messages to make sure he was telling the truth. He had, indeed, tried to contact someone on the moon several times since they had flown into communications range a couple of days ago. He had also sent another message to his brother. Unfortunately, she hadn’t noticed any responses come in yet. Either he was even less popular among his people than he was on this ship… or there was a reason those people weren’t responding to him.

Alisa hated the idea of finding more obstacles standing between her and her daughter. With every week that passed, she felt like more of a failure as a mother. If she discovered that something had happened to Jelena after she had been kidnapped, she doubted she would ever forgive herself.

“If he tells us which is the nearest dome, I can make an appointment to get a more accurate quote,” Leonidas said. “We’ll need to consider methods of coming up with payment. I have imperial morats in my account on Perun, but I doubt anyone here will take them, even if the interplanetary banking grid is still up.”

“I doubt anyone in the system will take them,” Alisa said, before she could think wiser of reminding him of the empire’s demise. He did not consider her an enemy anymore, but that didn’t mean he liked to be reminded about the loss of his livelihood and all he held dear.

All he said was, “Did you see the prices?” He zoomed in, perhaps not trusting her un-enhanced eyes to pick up the fine print.

“Yes, are those the entire costs? Installation included? They seem reasonable.”

“Those are the down payments.”

“Oh.” Three suns, where would she get the money to pay for weapons? She could barely pay for food and water and fuel for the ship. They would be in a rough spot now if Commander Tomich had not left the Nomad with tools, parts, and raw materials for repairs.

“They are reasonable prices though,” Leonidas said. “The weapons are slightly used.”

“Slightly used? As in slightly ripped off the battered hull of a ship that made the mistake of flying too close to one of the merchant’s salvage ships?”

“Possibly. Cleon Moon wasn’t a highly regulated body even when the empire held sway over the system.” Leonidas’s lips pressed together, but he refrained from once again pointing out that the system was a much rougher place these days, thanks to the Alliance’s inability to police more than the handful of planets they had claimed. “These are the final prices, not including labor,” he said, bringing another set of numbers to the forefront.

Alisa stared bleakly at them. When she had been growing up on the Nomad, her mother had taught her to fly, but she’d handled all of the finances. In the Alliance, her superiors had worried about the repair and upgrade costs. Seeing such large numbers now boggled her mind.

“So, Yumi,” Alisa said slowly, “how long would you need to do some harvesting, and how much could we make from selling orgasm mushrooms?”

Leonidas blinked a few times and mouthed a, “What?”

“I could do some research on current black market prices,” Yumi said, “though getting involved in the drug trade is dangerous.”

“As opposed to everything else we do?”

“Ah, good point. I’ll do the research.”

“You’re considering producing illegal drugs?” Leonidas frowned at Alisa.

“Unless Alejandro and Abelardus will let me sell that staff, which is apparently worth tens of millions of tindarks. Do you have any other suggestions as to how to earn massive amounts of money in a short time?”

“This is a freighter. Perhaps there is a lucrative cargo that might be acquired on Cleon.”

“Lucrative and cargo aren’t words that typically go together. If you want all that—” Alisa pointed at the catalog with all the weapons he wanted lovingly circled, “—we’re going to have to get creative.”

He did not argue, but his frown did not lessen. As an imperial officer, he had enforced the empire’s laws, so she imagined the idea of participating in illegal activities bothered him more than it did her. Oh, she wasn’t enthused about the notion either, mostly because she could imagine it leading down roads that would get them into trouble—more trouble—with the various mafia organizations out there. She already felt like she was dancing on a tightrope.

“I’ll look for a cargo,” she said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find something that pays above average.” Well above average.

The proximity alarm beeped before Leonidas could reply.

Alisa groaned, hoping that another ship just happened to be flying too close as it headed to the moon, nothing more. She did not expect to run into the Alliance out here, but she wouldn’t be surprised if her people still had a reward out for Leonidas’s capture. Just because Tomich had let him go to obtain a greater prize did not mean that his superior officers did not still want him. It was also possible that Tomich and the researchers back at Alcyone Station had since figured out that their prize was not so great after all.

In addition to being in the Alliance’s sights, the White Dragon mafia had her ship on file and liked to chase it whenever they spotted it. Maybe part of this weapons upgrade could involve a clever disguise to make the Nomad look like another ship. Perhaps some fresh paint or a macramé appliqué attached to the hull would fool people’s sensors.

“It’s a modified freighter,” Leonidas said, leaning over Yumi’s head to eye the sensor display. “Heading toward us.”

“Modified, how?” Alisa asked.

“Extra shielding and several weapons platforms.” He sighed with longing. Maybe that matched the upgrade he wanted for the Nomad.

The comm flashed, and Alisa glowered at it. These days, nothing good happened when strange ships approached and wanted to speak with her.

“This is Captain Marchenko,” she said, “close personal friend of First Governor Ingvar Vestergaard and former lover to Alliance Fleet Admiral Denny Cameron. May I help you?”

Leonidas arched his eyebrows.

Alisa muted the comm. “I’m trying to sound too important to mess with.”

“You sound promiscuous,” Yumi said.

“Promiscuously important.”

“It’s unfortunate, Captain,” a male voice drawled over the comm, “that none of your former lovers cared enough to outfit you with a more impressive ship.”

Alisa unmuted the comm. “There’s nothing wrong with my ship. What do you want?”

“To collect taxes, of course. You’re on course to land on Cleon Moon, are you not? And deliver freight? We’re here to make sure you pay the taxes due.”

“They’re closing fast,” Yumi whispered. “Taking up a position right behind us.”

Well within firing range, Alisa had no doubt.

“I suppose you’re some kind of official government representative?” she asked, as she raised the Nomad’s shields.

She poked at the sensors, checking for other ships within range. As she had suspected, there were no Alliance craft, nor did she see anything that might be considered a police craft. It was probably a free-for-all up here in orbit.

“Naturally,” the man drawled. “We collect taxes on behalf of the Moonstar Mafia, controller of Sargon, the largest and most imposing of Cleon’s domes.”

“We’re not going to Sargon,” Alisa said, though she had no idea if that was true yet or not.

“Don’t worry. We’ll split the taxes equitably with the other domes.”

“Sure you will,” she muttered.

“You have two options, Captain. Electronically transfer the funds to us, or lower your shields, and we’ll send a team over to collect a portion of your freight.”

Alisa muted the comm again. “I suppose they’ll be unimpressed when they learn that our cargo is ten chickens.” She looked at Leonidas. “Any ideas? I’m sure you and Beck can thwart their tax team, but Mica is still repairing the damage from the last time intruders forced their way onto the ship.”

Leonidas eyed the gray curvature of the moon. “Are we close enough that you can make it down to land before the shields give out?”

“Probably not if they have free rein to fire indiscriminately up my ass as we go down. Evasive maneuvers in a planet’s—or moon’s—atmosphere are always tricky, and there’s not going to be anything to hide behind until we’re all the way down. Maybe not even then. I don’t remember a lot of mountains on Cleon. Mostly swamps and giant fungal stalks that are a poor imitation of trees.”

“The fungal stalks aren’t supposed to be trees,” Yumi said. “They’re fascinating and a delight to study.”

“Hiding a ship behind one isn’t a delight. Unless it’s a very skinny ship.”

An alarm flashed on the console, and the Nomad shivered.

Yumi gripped the back of Alisa’s seat. “What was that?”

“A warning shot,” Leonidas said and stood up. “Invite them to board.” His blue eyes narrowed, a familiar glint entering them. “I’ll suit up and be waiting for them.”

“To show them the cargo and give them a tour?” Alisa asked.

“To show them my fists and my rifle.”

He turned toward the hatchway, but Alisa reached out, touching his wrist. “Be careful, please. I know you’re tougher than ahridium, but I’m sure they’ll anticipate trouble.”

“I would be disappointed if they didn’t come prepared.”

Alisa expected him to give her a curt nod and walk out, all business as usual. He was the consummate professional when on shift, and she had to catch him during a quiet moment, early in the morning or late at night, to entice him to drink coffee, eat chocolate, and let her lean on him.

But he stopped and clasped her hand. “May I order you to keep the hatch shut and stay in NavCom or would you find that overly stifling?”

Distracted by the pleasing way his thumb was brushing across the backs of her knuckles, Alisa almost forgot to respond. “It does sound restrictive. And I am the captain here. Technically, you only get to order Beck around.”

“Perhaps I can suborn your engineer and talk her into installing an exterior lock on that hatch, so we can force you to stay put.”

“You can’t suborn Mica. We were in the Alliance together. She’s loyal.”

“I saw her working on a new résumé this morning.”

“Damn her fickle ways.”

Leonidas let go of her hand, and Alisa resisted the urge to fling her arms around him for a goodbye hug. For one thing, Yumi was two feet away. For another, this was just some self-appointed tax collector they were dealing with. Not cyborgs, not androids, and not legions of soldiers in combat armor. It should be an easy battle for him.

The comm flashed again as Leonidas walked out.

Alisa swatted the button, not looking before answering. “We don’t have any electronic funds, so you’ll have to come aboard if you want your taxes.”

“Is that an invitation for us to loot you?” a woman asked dryly.

Alisa frowned at the comm, only then realizing that another ship had opened a channel. She turned toward the sensor display, wondering if she dared hope that this could be a rescuer. She would like to believe that a woman would be less likely to prey on innocent freighters, but that might be a foolish belief.

“Another ship is veering toward us,” Yumi informed her.

“You’re supposed to tell me that before they hail us,” Alisa whispered. She looked at the readout long enough to determine that the second vessel was another modified freighter, then turned back to the comm. “We are having a party in our cargo hold shortly,” she said, “but I’m not sure you’re on the guest list. Care to identify yourself?”

“I’m Captain Asaro. I’m here to collect your taxes.”

Alisa rubbed her forehead. This moon was even more of a mess than she had anticipated. As much as she feared and disliked most of the Starseers she had met, she hoped Jelena was in their care if she was down there. She would need someone who could keep the aggressively opportunistic locals away.

“We’re already talking to a tax collector,” Alisa said.

“I see that. He’s not authorized. I am.”

“You’ll have to talk to him about that. I have a limited amount of taxes, and he was here first.”

Alisa closed the comm, doubting there was anyone orbiting this moon that she wanted to talk to. The Nomad was still on course for the southern hemisphere. She drummed her fingers on the console, then nudged the speed up. Accelerating into a body’s gravitational pull wasn’t typically recommended, but an idea started to form in her mind. Maybe she could come up with a way to avoid being boarded.

“Abelardus,” she called toward the corridor. She hated to ask for his help, but a little Starseer persuasion might move this encounter in the direction she wished.

The Nomad shuddered as an e-cannon blast slammed into the rear shields. The first ship must have figured out that she did not have boarding in mind.

You require my assistance? Abelardus asked smugly into her mind as he stepped into NavCom, his long thin braids dangling down the front of his black robe.

Haven’t we discussed the way you’re not going to talk into my head anymore?

Yes, and I adore our discussions, Alisa.

“Captain,” she growled, glaring over her shoulder at him.

Yumi gave her a curious look.

Alisa gestured to direct Abelardus toward the sensors. “Any chance you can convince those two captains that they’re mortal enemies and want to blow each other out of the stars?”

“It’s difficult to manipulate the minds of multiple people at once,” he said.

“If you can just convince one of those captains that they’re mortal enemies with the other, that should suffice. They sound like the kind of people who would shoot back if shot at.”

Another cannon blast slammed into the shields. Alisa snarled and took control of the helm. It was time for creative flying, whether there was anything to hide behind or not.

“They also sound like the kind of people who shoot at unarmed freighters,” Abelardus observed.

She would have snapped at him to at least try, but his eyes grew vacant as he stared toward the ceiling, and she realized he already was. Good. She braced herself to deal with the challenge of evading enemies while trying to find a safe landing spot down there. Neither swamps nor fungal stalks sounded like desirable things to come down on.

“Weapons fire is lighting up the sensors,” Yumi said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Alisa said.

“They’re shooting at each other.”

“It’s working?”

“The newcomer fired a cannon at the one who hailed us—and fired at us,” Yumi said. “It only took seconds for that ship to shoot back. Now they’re both unloading everything they’ve got at each other.”

Alisa gaped at Abelardus. While this had been her plan, and she had hoped for this result, she hadn’t truly expected it to work, at least not so quickly.

He smirked at her. “There was some preexisting bad blood. It only took the lightest of nudges to convince the female captain that getting rid of the competition was a good idea. Especially when she thought she remembered a rumor that the Star Nomad was carrying a valuable cargo.”

“You didn’t put thoughts of a priceless Starseer artifact into her mind, did you?” Alisa couldn’t believe he would be that foolish, but who knew what went on inside that smug head?

“Naturally not. I tantalized her with thoughts of millions of tindarks worth of cyborg parts.”

“I don’t think Leonidas’s parts are worth that much.”

“No.” Abelardus sniffed. “They’re not. But I made her believe we have crates of cybernetic implants, state of the art. A valuable cargo. One worth fighting for.”

“It worked,” Yumi said. “Uhm, it may have worked too well.”

“What do you mean?” Alisa asked.

“The original tax-collecting ship has been incapacitated.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Abelardus said.

“Not when the other one is renewing its pursuit of us,” Yumi said.

Chapter 2

“We’re heading down now.” Alisa had not slowed the Nomad down while the other ships had been squabbling, and now she was glad. She had assumed that any fight that broke out would take several minutes to resolve. That woman’s modified freighter had to have some heavy weaponry, if it had destroyed that other ship so quickly. It would make short work of the Nomad too.

“Perhaps I dangled too appealing of a cargo in front of the captain’s eyes,” Abelardus said.

“I’d say so.”

Alisa watched their pursuer in the rear camera display as the contours of the continent came into view on the main screen. She could make out the infrequent domes rising up from the otherwise gray landscape. Hundreds of miles of swamps and fungal forests stretched between them, the flat wetlands devoid of mountains or canyons that Alisa might have flown through to shake a pursuer.

“Maybe you could amend your mental suggestion,” she told Abelardus. “Convince the captain that what she really heard about was a cargo hold full of rusted worthless cybernetic parts from centuries long past.”

“It’s much easier to convince someone of something they want to believe than of something they don’t want to believe,” Abelardus said.

“Does that mean you won’t try?”

“It means I already tried.”

A flare of yellow appeared on the rear camera as their pursuer launched a torpedo.

“Brace yourselves,” Alisa said.

That was going to hurt, even with the shields up.

She veered to the right, hoping to evade the attack, but the torpedo changed course to follow her. She wasn’t surprised. It slammed into their rear shields, exploding with a white flash that made Alisa wince as she was thrown forward against her harness. Abelardus might have gone headfirst into the view screen if he hadn’t caught himself on the back of a seat.

Alarm lights flashed, and the shield power dropped a terrifying fifty percent. It had already been down twenty. Another hit, and they wouldn’t have any shields left.

If the ship could last another minute, the Nomad would be skimming over the wetlands, where Alisa hoped, perhaps vainly, that she might find some cover. But she didn’t know if she had that minute.

Alisa thumped her palm onto the comm button.

“You’re going to have to pick up your expensive cybernetic parts by hand if my wreckage is scattered across a hundred miles down there,” she told the other captain, glancing back at the sensors, wishing that some police or military ship would appear to help them. But if anyone in the domes cared about squabbles between freighters, they weren’t coming out to show it.

“No problem,” the woman replied promptly. “I have mechanical minions that don’t mind such tasks.”

Chicken squawks drifted up from the cargo hold. Alisa wondered if their pursuer would be disappointed when all she found littered across the landscape was feathers.

The internal comm light came on. “Captain, what despicable and nefarious things are you doing to the ship?” Mica asked.

“I’m not the one doing them. We’ve picked up a tax collector.”

“Is it hard to collect taxes from a ship that’s been utterly pulverized?”

“That’s what I was asking.”

“Just got this ship halfway fixed,” Mica grumbled, amid clanging sounds. “Taxes. Thought we overthrew the empire to get rid of taxes.”

More clangs sounded.

Alisa did not know if Mica was fixing something or simply taking out her irritation by banging on the hatch.

“Strap yourself in, Abelardus,” she said as the swamplands grew larger and more distinct ahead of them. “I don’t want you falling in my lap the next time we get hit.”

“You sure that wouldn’t excite you?” he asked, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat.

Alisa grimaced, regretting that she hadn’t told him to lock himself in his cabin instead. But they had reached land, and she was too busy flying to retort.

Tall gray stalks rose up from the moist ground, some towering forty or fifty feet. They did not have branches or leaves, instead reminding her of stalagmites. The water had a sickly grayish tint that matched everything else in the moon’s bleak wilderness. Not seeing any promising mountains or buttes to swoop around, she flew low over a lake.

“I’ll try to distract her gunner into—ah.” Abelardus frowned. “They’re launching another torpedo.”

Several of the fungal stalks rose up from the water, each between five and ten feet thick, and Alisa weaved in and out around them, hoping the torpedo might strike them instead of her freighter. She had no idea if they had the mass and density of trees, or if a torpedo would cut right through them without exploding. A faint shudder went through the Nomad as she brushed one with the edge of her shield.

“Brace yourselves,” she said again, watching the torpedo weave through the stalks after them.

It had irritating precision. She banked hard around a clump—or was that a copse?—of towering stalks, the Nomad’s belly almost skimming the murky water around them. The torpedo shot past, going too far before banking. It turned sharply. Too sharply. It clipped one of those fifty-foot stalks and exploded in a fiery blast that took out the entire copse.

As Alisa started to congratulate herself on surviving another thirty seconds, something huge leaped out of the water ahead of them. She shrieked as a hulking scaly figure slammed into the Nomad’s shields in front of the forward camera, momentarily blacking out the view. A thump sounded as the massive creature bounced off, flew to the side, and disappeared back into the water with a splash.

“Just to be clear,” Abelardus said, “were we bracing ourselves because of the torpedo or because of your flying?”

“What was that?” Alisa asked Yumi, ignoring him.

“One of the dinosaurs common to the southern continent,” Yumi said. She, too, sounded shaken, but she hadn’t shrieked. Alisa felt chagrined by her response. “They’re the local wildlife. Some scientists made them after the domes went up. I believe they’re something of a tourist attraction.”

“Do the tourists like it when they leap out of the water and try to plaster themselves to their hulls?” Alisa forced herself to take a breath when she realized her voice sounded squeaky.

“Your engines may have alarmed it.”

“You sure it wasn’t that torpedo exploding?” Alisa asked, then sobered and checked the sensors. Their foe was still out there and probably had more torpedoes.

“That also could have been the reason,” Yumi said agreeably. “I wish we could get out here. I believe I saw several interesting varieties of mushrooms growing in the shadows of some of those stalks. I would love to get a sample of the mycelial mat we flew over.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Alisa spotted the other ship flying over the shoreline ahead of them at the same time as the proximity alarm complained again. “Tell me something new,” she told it, and checked all of her cameras, certain another torpedo was on its way. “Yumi, how about finding me a place to land where that ship’s weapons can’t get us?”

“The swamps are reputedly full of quick-mud,” Yumi said. “Landing may not be safe.”

“Neither is flying.”

“They’re coming after us,” Abelardus reported. “Firing again.” He wasn’t looking at any displays, so presumably his fancy mental powers were telling him that.

Alisa swooped back into the fungal stalks rising from the lake, taking care to stay a few meters above the surface this time. She did not want to hit another so-called dinosaur, both because she didn’t want to kill random wildlife and because she was sure it would make a mess if it were sucked into one of her thruster housings.

The torpedo appeared on the sensors, a hot red blip chasing them. It swerved through the stalks, zooming closer. Despite Alisa’s best efforts to shake it, it refused to crash into an obstacle. She rose up, flying over the rounded tips of the stalks, and when it followed, she dove down, as if she intended to take the freighter for a swim. It zipped after her, closing fast. When it was only a few meters from her rear shields, and when the brackish water was close enough to taste, Alisa pulled the Nomad’s nose up.

Water sprayed as the shields skimmed the surface, but she managed to rise again before immersing the ship. The torpedo did not turn quickly enough, and it plummeted into the lake. She leveled out and zipped away, not certain if the water would do anything to thwart the projectile or its energy-seeking capabilities.

An explosion filled the rear camera. Some fungal stalks blew up, and others tottered and fell, their thick bodies floating atop the water like logs.

The comm light flashed.

“How many of my torpedoes can you avoid, fellow captain?” the woman crooned.

“I can avoid them all day,” Alisa said. “I flew a Striker in the war. You think I’m worried about your puny torpedoes?”

“Puny?”

Alisa muted the comm. “Maybe I shouldn’t have goaded her.”

“I’m attempting to influence the gunner,” Abelardus said, “but he’s terrified of his captain and cringes at the idea of disobeying her or willfully being inept.”

“She sounds like a lovely lady,” Alisa said, watching the freighter streak across the lake after them. She took the Nomad away from the water, hoping some other terrain feature would inspire her. She needed to force the other ship to crash, not simply crash its torpedoes. Who knew how many it carried? “Abelardus, how far are we from your Starseer buddies? Any chance they would help us if we flew close and they knew one of their delightful relatives was in trouble?”

“A delightful relative? Is that me or you?” He smirked at her.

“I’m no Starseer’s relative,” she said, though she knew what he was implying.

“Your father was. Have you looked him up yet?”

“Do you think this is a good time to discuss my family?” Alisa dove into a shallow valley, swerving to avoid even denser concentrations of the fungal stalks while groping for inspiration and waiting for the inevitable next torpedo.

“Why not? We discussed mycology mats, or whatever it was.”

“Mycelial mats,” Yumi said.

“That wasn’t a discussion. That was Yumi waxing passionate about fungi.” Alisa eyed a blanket of mist that floated over the lowlands of the valley. “Yumi, those dinosaurs? Do they have a habitat where they enjoy loitering in packs?”

“I believe some of the flying ones have pack tendencies. They favor marshlands.”

“Marshlands? Isn’t the whole moon marshlands?” Alisa ignored a flash from the comm after confirming it was their pursuer again and not some savior wanting to help them out.

“I’ve heard there are fens in the northern hemisphere,” Yumi said.

“Is that a joke?” Alisa glared back at her. Where was Leonidas to comment on inappropriate humor?

Yumi appeared tense rather than comedic, her lips pursed as she did some breathing exercises. Or maybe she was trying to keep from hyperventilating.

“There’s another valley in that direction,” Abelardus said, pointing. “Past that pond. Turn and head into it there. I see what you have in mind, and I can help.”

Blazer fire streaked through the fungal stalks as their pursuer swooped left and right, trying to get a good shot at the Nomad. A few of the blasts made it through the forest, pattering against the rear shields. They weren’t as powerful as the torpedoes, but the shield power still inched downward. The other ship missed more often than hitting, fortunately. Fungal stalks pitched over or exploded in masses of cellulose. A ten-foot-wide one thumped down onto the enemy as it passed. Unfortunately, it bounced off the shields and did not do damage.

Alisa turned the Nomad toward Abelardus's pond, having little choice but to trust in his “help.”

She kept swooping about, trying to provide a difficult target, as she headed into a misty quagmire. Mud mingled with the murky water they flew over. She was glad they were not on foot.

“There.” Abelardus pointed toward a clump of fungal stalks.

As Alisa took the ship in that direction, more blazer fire bounced off their rear shields. A low-power alarm flashed on the console.

“I don’t see anything,” she told Abelardus.

“Just keep flying. Stay low. Trust me.” He flashed a grin at her.

She groaned. He hadn’t earned her trust yet.

“I believe she’s arming another torpedo,” Yumi said.

“Slow down,” Abelardus said. “Let her get closer.”

“Are you spaced?” Alisa glared at him.

“It’ll have to be close.”

“It would be nice if you explained yourself,” she growled, but he sounded confident, and she did not know what else to do. She slowed down, but she was careful to keep some of those stalks between her and the other ship, weaving in and out as unpredictably as she could.

“That’s right,” Abelardus crooned, watching the rear camera. “Come closer. You know we won’t be able to evade your torpedo if you get extra close before firing it.”

“Yumi, I think our Starseer has gone crazy,” Alisa said, her fingers twitching to summon more speed. This was ludicrous.

“It does happen,” Yumi said.

“Does it look like that when it does?” Alisa jerked her thumb toward Abelardus. He was leaning toward the rear camera display, curling his fingers in a beckoning gesture.

“I—look!” Yumi blurted.

Alisa, focused on the view ahead of them, did not immediately see the dozens of winged creatures springing away from that copse of fungal stalks. Looking like Old Earth pterodactyls, they flew into the air, a huge swarm of them. They beelined toward the enemy craft, giant wings flapping as they battered against the shields all around the nose of the ship, right where NavCom ought to be.

The ship jerked, as if it had been struck, and Alisa had no trouble imagining the pilot flinching in surprise just as she had done earlier when that hulking dinosaur had leaped out of the water. Up in the air, the pilot would have had time to recover. But they were flying through a maze of massive fungal stalagmites mere feet above the ground. That jerk of surprise resulted in one of the enemy ship’s wings clipping a copse of those thick stalks. Even though they looked like giant mushrooms instead of trees, they clearly had mass. The ship ricocheted away, bouncing off more of them, and was thrown into a spin. The tail of the craft dipped into the mud, and between one eye blink and the next, the entire craft flipped over onto its back.

Alisa did not hesitate. She angled the Nomad’s nose toward the sky and streaked away at top speed. Their foe would not be stuck for long, and she doubted the ship had taken serious damage. She did smile, imagining it flying into a dock somewhere and the captain having to explain the mud on the topside of the hull.

Abelardus leaned over and swatted her on the shoulder. “See?” He grinned. “You can trust me.”

“Did you startle them?” Alisa asked.

“Of course. Animals—even genetically engineered mutant animals—have simpler minds than humans. Herd instinct too. Startle one, and they all follow.”

“Flock might be the more appropriate term in that case,” Yumi said.

Abelardus did not respond. He was grinning at Alisa, like a boy hoping for praise.

She sighed, hating to encourage him, but he had been useful.

“You’re moderately handy,” she said.

“Of course I am. You’ll come to see my value in time. I’m handy in many ways.” He lifted an arm.

He wasn’t going to hug her, was he?

“Weapons would be handier,” Leonidas said from the hatchway, giving Abelardus a dark look.

Beck stood behind him. They both wore their combat armor and were probably disappointed they hadn’t gotten an opportunity to fight.

Alisa could not share that disappointment. She could scarcely believe that not one but two ships in orbit had randomly decided to pick on her. Taxes. Please. That second ship had wanted her entire cargo. Though she might have Abelardus's overzealousness to thank for that. Maybe neither ship would have bothered with her if he had telepathically shared images of chickens with the captains.

Abelardus lowered his arm and smirked at Leonidas. “What’s the matter, mech? Bitter that you were useless today?”

“I’m never useless.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Maybe your ego won’t feel so bad about taking a salary from a woman who can barely keep the lights on.”

“All right,” Alisa growled. “Keep me out of your cockfight. And give me the coordinates to the Starseers, Abelardus. Roaming aimlessly around this moon obviously isn’t good for one’s health.”

“Does that mean we won’t be stopping to harvest fungi?” Yumi asked.

“Harvest what?” Beck asked, peering around Leonidas’s broad shoulder.

“We’ll see,” Alisa said. “First, I want to find these Starseers and find out if Durant has been here.”

And Jelena, she added silently, glancing at the rear camera. It was empty of anything except swamps and fungal forests now, but she couldn’t help but think about all the times she had come close to dying in the last few weeks. To die before finding her daughter again, before telling her how much she loved her… That would be intolerable. Poor Jelena had to feel abandoned right now, maybe worse. Who knew what she was enduring with this Durant? What if he was half the nuthead that his brother was? She grimaced, thinking of Abelardus taking care of children.

Abelardus's cocky expression faltered as he looked over at her. Damn it, was he surfing through her thoughts again?

“Coordinates, please,” she said tersely.

“It’s nothing but swamps around their outpost, and we need to get masks to walk around outside of the domes,” Abelardus said. “Also, the Starseer enclave will be hard to find, even for me. We should land in one of the cities and take hover bikes out. The coordinates are roughly between Terra Dhwan and Terra Jhero, so either of those domes would do.”

Alisa pulled out her netdisc and popped a map up on its holodisplay. At least, she tried to do so. After offering a short glimpse of the terrain around them, the holodisplay flashed. A sign appeared in the air, blotting out the map.

Five tindarks per hour for Cleon Moon sys-net access, it read.

She growled at it, but kept her complaints to herself. Leonidas was still in the hatchway, and she didn’t need him pointing out that sys-net access had been free for everyone and installed throughout the greater three suns region when the empire had reigned. Some opportunist here must have taken over the orbital satellites that provided access.

“Anyone have a bank chip that works and mind paying?” she asked. “Assuming Cleon Moon is tied in with the banking network.”

Yumi leaned forward and swiped her finger through the display. It promptly announced that she had been logged in and would be charged another tindark pre-access fee. Whatever that was.

“Thanks, Yumi,” Alisa said.

Finally, the map displayed. Alisa looked up Terra Dhwan and Terra Jhero. They both appeared to be substantial domes with cities of a million plus inside.

“Yumi, can you read the details for me? See which one sounds safer for us? And which one is less likely to charge exorbitant docking fees.” With her gaze on the landscape ahead, Alisa did not want to try to read while flying. They had come out of the wilderness and were approaching one of the domes. Everything from shuttles to helicopters to spaceships cruised about nearby.

“Jhero is owned by the Satin Scourge mafia organization,” Yumi read. “Dhwan is owned by White Dragon.”

“Uh,” Beck said from the corridor. “I know where my vote goes.”

“They’re apparently in the middle of a feud with each other,” Yumi added.

Alisa grimaced, setting a course toward Jhero. “Your Starseer allies set up in a great neighborhood, I see,” she told Abelardus.

“I highly doubt that either entity is aware of their existence,” Abelardus said. “My people may have intentionally chosen to build their residence between two warring mafia factions, assuming they would be too busy posturing at each other to notice anyone else in the nearby area.”

“Is this the only Starseer outpost on Cleon Moon?” Alisa asked.

“That I know of, yes. I checked with Lady Naidoo while we were in transit. She verified that it’s the only official outpost.”

Anticipation jittered in Alisa’s belly. If there was only one Starseer enclave, and if Durant had been on Cleon Moon, surely he would have stopped to visit his brethren, right? Maybe he would have stayed with them and told them where he was going when he left. Or maybe he hadn’t left. Maybe he was down there right now, and maybe Jelena was with him.

“What’s the purpose of the outpost?” Alisa asked.

Abelardus hesitated.

Leonidas stepped into NavCom, looming behind his seat and looking even more intimidating than usual in his crimson armor.

Abelardus sneered up at him, his expression proclaiming that he wasn’t intimidated. But he did answer her question.

“All of our installations are observation outposts,” he said, “for gathering information from local planets, moons, and stations, and for sending it back to the main temples. You saw the control room on Arkadius.”

Alisa nodded, remembering the data streaming on various monitors, displaying information relevant to the Starseers.

“This one is also a teaching center, and it’s been an orphanage in the past, where our people tried to intercept the empire and steal away children who were deemed likely to develop powers. Steal them before the empire could get their paws on them.”

Alisa bit her lip. An orphanage? A teaching center? That made it seem even more likely that it might be a place where a kidnapped girl would have been brought.

“I’m not sure what’s going on there now, since the fall of the empire,” Abelardus said, “but if my brother was—or still is—on Cleon, the Starseers here ought to know about it.”

“Good. Thank you.” Alisa did not have trouble sounding sincere with her thanks this time.

Abelardus smiled. “I told you I’d help you find her. And my offer still stands to teach her when you do.”

Alisa glanced back at Leonidas. With him kitted out in his armor, it was hard to tell if he had a reaction, but she was sure the idea of Abelardus sticking around didn’t appeal to him. After he had tricked her into kissing him, Alisa could not say that it appealed to her either.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “In the meantime, does anyone want to jump on the net and look for cargo in Terra Jhero that needs a ride somewhere? Leonidas has convinced me that this ship should be outfitted with weapons, and I’m looking for a legitimate way to pay for them.”

“Are you calling my fungi illegitimate, Captain?” Yumi asked.

More the drugs Yumi wanted to make from her fungi.

“You’re welcome to go harvest some while I look for these Starseers,” Alisa said. “I’d just prefer to stick with what I know when it comes to making money.” She didn’t want to raise Jelena in the tenebrous world of drug dealing, and now that she seemed so close, the notion that she might actually have her aboard with them both excited her and made her want to stay on the path of morally acceptable behavior. “Maybe Beck can accompany you to keep you safe,” she added, not liking the idea of their innocent science teacher wandering around on this moon by herself. “Didn’t you say that some of the mushrooms here are edible?”

“You want me to grill mushrooms, Captain?” Beck asked.

“You never know what delightful new ingredients you may be introduced to when visiting exotic locales.” Alisa pointedly did not look at the fifty-foot fungal stalks they were flying over.

“Guess I’m open to trying new culinary experiences,” Beck said.

Alisa leaned back in her seat and tried to make herself relax as they flew closer to Terra Jhero, but she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of tax collectors they might meet at the entrance to the dome.

“You and Leonidas should stay in your armor,” she said over her shoulder.

“Anticipating trouble?” Leonidas asked. Nothing in his tone suggested he objected to wearing his armor on this moon.

“It does seem to find us regularly.”

Chapter 3

Alisa guided the Nomad toward the translucent dome of Terra Jhero, the marshlands cleared of fungal forests for a mile in all directions. That did not keep the gray gloom of the moon from encroaching. Mists and swamps thickened the muddy ground all around the dome. A couple of raised roads led away from it, but there were few structures or signs that people lived outside of the protective walls. One exception was what appeared to be a racetrack of some kind several miles outside of the dome, with wide roads traversing the hills in concentric loops.

Beck trotted into NavCom, his boots thudding on the metal decking.

“Got something for you, Captain,” he blurted, nearly clubbing her in the head as he wedged his bulky form into the co-pilot’s seat. He had removed his helmet, but not the rest of his armor. There had not been sign of pursuit since the other ship had crashed, but just knowing the White Dragon were in another domed city only thirty miles away probably meant he would stay in his armor for the entire visit to the moon. “Cargo.” He smiled brightly.

“You seem inordinately excited about it,” Alisa said. “Are you concerned that I won’t be able to pay you if we don’t take on some freight?”

It was a valid concern, but she had not admitted it to anyone. She had stopped charging Alejandro and Yumi for passage since the Staff of Lore had been retrieved. It had not seemed right to ask for money since she was now on her own journey instead of theirs, not that any of them were asking her to go elsewhere. Abelardus seemed to have convinced Alejandro that she could lead them to young Prince Thorian. Alisa had zero interest in doing that, but if it kept Alejandro out of her hair, let him believe it. She hadn’t told him that she had no intention of letting that staff find its way into the hands of imperial loyalists. What she intended to do with the staff, she did not know. The Nomad wasn’t a secure enough place for it, but she hadn’t thought of a better one yet. Further, she would have a battle on her hands when she tried to take it from Abelardus and Alejandro. She would worry about that later, when she had Jelena back and safe.

“I wasn’t concerned about getting paid,” Beck said. “Uh, should I be?”

“I have a little money left,” Alisa said, “and if hauling freight doesn’t work out, Yumi apparently knows enough about mushrooms to guide us on how to become drug kingpins.”

“Huh, that’s not what you expect from someone who leads the meditation and prayer sessions in the mess hall every night.”

“You have to watch out for the quiet ones. They’re often the masterminds in a group.”

“Maybe so. But here, check out this cargo.” Beck held up his netdisc, the holodisplay already turned to a page full of information. “And look who’s doing the hiring,” he added, touching a hand to his chest, a starstruck expression blossoming on his face.

“Jean Pierre Leblanc?” Alisa had never heard the name.

“Chef Jean Pierre Leblanc. He’s got a chain of restaurants on almost all of Aldrin’s moons. He takes basic food that everyday people like, but makes it gourmet. His moonstorm burger is amazing. I used to beg my grandparents to take us into town every week when I was a kid so we could get one.”

“That’s right. You’re from one of these moons, aren’t you?” Alisa asked, amused by the reverence in his tone. Most people saved such adoration for vid stars and sports celebrities.

“Masa,” he said, pointing toward the sky. “It’s the second farthest of Aldrin’s moons. Lots of geothermal activity. You can farm anything that’s happy with heat and doesn’t mind how weak the suns are this far out. My grandparents have an algae bog.” He wrinkled his nose. “If you’ve ever tried to make a delicious meal with algae, you know what a losing proposition that is.”

“I imagine it doesn’t grill up well.”

Beck snorted. “It’s the main ingredient in the takka porridge they serve to miners, prisoners, and anyone else who’s pissed off the sun gods. Nutrient dense. Flavor dense, too, but not in a good way.”

“Yes, I’ve had some of the algae-based ration bars. It was all the Alliance could get in the early years of the war.”

“Disgusting isn’t a strong enough word to describe the stuff. I couldn’t wait to escape the farm. I only go back for weddings and births, and only for those of relatives I really like.”

“Have you got a lot of them?” Alisa had often wished for brothers and sisters when she had been growing up on the Nomad.

“Oh, yeah. We’re a fertile clan. I’ve got twelve brothers and sisters and thirty-two cousins. First cousins only, mind you. I couldn’t wait to escape to the peace and quiet of the military. But look here, Captain. The chef’s offering a real good deal for cargo hauling, and you don’t have to go far.”

“Oh?” Alisa couldn’t help but grow suspicious when people offered “real good deals” in exchange for little work.

“Looks like he—or I imagine it’s some of his people, right? I doubt he would be loitering on this drab murk-water. Anyway, his people are harvesting mushrooms this week and storing them in their refrigerated warehouse here in Jhero. If we can be available for pickup in four days, we could try to get the cargo. The chef needs them taken around to the other moons and portions of them dropped off for his restaurants. Ten moons and fourteen stops in all. We’d need to refrigerate the cargo hold, but we can do that, can’t we?”

“I imagine Mica can come up with something. The chickens might object.”

“Yumi can keep them in her cabin again. Or they can escape and roam around the ship like they prefer to do anyway.”

“Don’t remind me,” Alisa said.

“It would only take a week or so, and look. He’s offering twenty thousand tindarks. That’s stellar good money for a week’s work.”

“It is good money, especially for hauling fungi. These aren’t Yumi’s orgasmic mushrooms, are they?”

Alisa had a hard time believing restaurant mushrooms could be so valuable that the owner could afford to pay so much. Of course, based on what she had experienced so far, she did not have a hard time believing that hauling cargo in and out of these moons had become a challenging enough chore that freighter captains had raised their fees substantially. The system had changed a lot since the days she had traversed the freight lanes with her mother.

“Beck?” she prompted when he did not answer, his face gone distant, or perhaps thoughtful.

“Uh, sorry. You said Yumi and orgasmic and my mind went… elsewhere.”

“Uh huh. Are you sure these are legal mushrooms? I don’t want to accidentally get involved in something illicit.” She might not object to intentionally getting involved, if it would help her upgrade her ship, but she preferred to exhaust other options before going that route. And on the chance that she would have Jelena four days from now… she did not want to deliberately choose danger if her daughter would be on board. No, she was becoming convinced that heading back to haul freight between the Alliance core worlds would be the safe thing to do then. So long as she could figure out something to do with that staff first. And find a way to keep the Alliance from coming after her because she had Leonidas on board.

She rubbed her temple. When had her life grown so complicated?

One thing at a time. She would get Jelena and then worry about everything else.

“Says they’re for condiments for his restaurants,” Beck said. “I can’t imagine why such a successful chef would bother with illegal activities.”

“Unless his restaurants are nothing more than a cover for illegal activities.”

“Captain, if you’d had his moonstorm burger, you wouldn’t say such things.” Beck leaned over and laid a hand on her arm. “And this could be my chance. If he’s overseeing one of his restaurants when we deliver the cargo, I could stroll in nonchalantly, pull some of my sauce bottles out of my pockets, and casually offer him a taste. Could you imagine?”

“You pulling bottles of sauce out of your pocket? Oddly, I can imagine that.”

“What if he tried them?” Beck asked, oblivious to her sarcasm. “And liked them? Blessing of the Suns Trinity, my apple cider barbecue sauce would be brilliant on his burgers. What if he realizes that and wants to order some for his restaurants? He’s got dozens of restaurants. It could make my career, Captain.”

“Will you still protect me from thugs and brutes when you’re rich and famous, Beck?”

“Uh, maybe not indefinitely, but at first, of course I would. Do you know how expensive it is to contract a quality co-pack facility and ramp up production when you’re just getting started? But maybe I could start here, set aside a portion of the cargo hold.” Beck gazed through the hatchway, as if he was even now envisioning conveyer belts of bottles down there with robotic equipment squirting sauce into them. “I’d cut you in, of course.”

“Thoughtful.”

He smiled hopefully at her.

Alisa waved her hand toward the comm. “Go ahead. Get in contact with them, and see if we can bid for the freight. Four days should give us enough time to get situated.” And by situated, she meant biking out to the Starseer outpost and back. Alisa wouldn’t let herself get her hopes too high, but she couldn’t help but think that maybe she could find Jelena and get back to the ship in time to pick up the cargo. “But make sure nothing fishy is going on,” she added. “That’s a lot of money for hauling mushrooms.”

Before Beck could reach for the comm, it flashed with an incoming message from a control tower nestled against the exterior of the dome. Alisa had expected the hail, since they were flying around the city.

“This is Captain Marchenko,” she answered, leaving off mention of the Star Nomad for now. The name of the ship was painted on the side, and it had an old imperial ident, so it wasn’t as if they could slip in incognito, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there were multiple alerts on the net from the Alliance and also from the White Dragon mafia.

Maybe instead of thinking of retrofitting it, she should try to trade it for something else. But what else could she afford? Nobody was going to give her anything modern, decent, or working for the old freighter. Besides—she eyed the stuffed spider dangling over Beck’s head—this was home.

“Are you looking to dock, Captain Marchenko?” a man responded. His voice sounded blessedly professional.

“Yes, we’re looking to take on cargo. What are your docking fees?”

“Forty tindarks,” he said. “Per day.”

That wasn’t cheap, but since the man did not go on to mention searches, extra fees, or taxes, Alisa decided to find it reasonable. “Thank you. We’re interested.”

“Excellent. Enter through the south forcefield. You’ll see the docks right away.”

Alisa took them in the indicated direction, veering past a control tower and toward a portion of the translucent dome that grew transparent as she approached. It occurred to her that the forcefield opened and closed via someone else’s command, and that they could be trapped inside if that person chose not to open it when the Nomad wanted to leave. Was she a fool who risked strolling into a trap?

Beck looked at her curiously as she slowed to a hover outside of the dome.

“I think it’s open,” he said.

She eyed the surrounding terrain on the Nomad’s cameras, wondering if she could land outside and they could send Beck and Leonidas in their self-contained armor to get masks and hover bikes for everyone. But there weren’t any other ships parked anywhere outside of the dome. Marshes and fungal forests stretched as far as her cameras could see. The scant roads she had noticed were too narrow to land on, and might not support the weight of a ship—they were raised up, almost like bridges stretching through the swamps. Alisa feared she would need pontoons to land anywhere out there.

“For now,” she murmured, replying to Beck.

She guided the Nomad through the entrance and hoped she was not making a mistake.

• • • • •

Alisa headed down to the hold, using the stairs Mica had rebuilt with Tomich’s supplies, and tried not to feel nervous as she wondered what to expect in a city run by a mafia organization. Leonidas and Beck were already waiting by the cargo hatch, though nobody had presumed to lower it yet. Alejandro was also in the hold, talking to Leonidas. Yumi stood by the chicken coop, tossing feed to the girls. They had been stressed by their exposure to the radiation and had not resumed egg-laying yet, much to Beck’s chagrin. Abelardus was not around, but Alisa was not too concerned—she needed to buy some of the breathing masks before she could look for the Starseer outpost.

Mica waited at the bottom of the steps with her arms folded over her chest.

“Problem?” Alisa asked, stopping before heading over to join the men.

“You set us down in a city run by the mafia?”

“Ah, someone must have sent you the memo.”

“Funny,” Mica said. “This isn’t the kind of place where I can look for a good engineering job, you know.”

“Oh?” Alisa tried to decide if Mica was joking or not. She kept saying she wanted to leave, but she kept not leaving. “Does the mafia not need engineers?”

“I’m not going to work for the mafia. I’m not suicidal.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been flying with me.” Alisa grinned.

“Something I’m even less keen to do now that you’ve got that artifact. As soon as the rest of the universe figures out it’s in your hold, you’ll have even more people trying to shoot this ship down.” Mica’s eyes narrowed. “That isn’t why that muscled-up freighter was flinging torpedoes at us, is it?”

“No, its captain wanted to collect our taxes. By the way, can you retrofit our cargo hold to handle freight that needs to be refrigerated?”

Mica lowered her arms—and her jaw. “Retrofit… refrigeration? It’s not as if that’s as easy as dropping in some blocks of ice. Refrigerator freighters are specialized ships that are designed that way from the beginning.”

“You said a lot of words there. What I heard was, ‘Yes, Captain, I can, and I look forward to the challenge.’”

“You need to have your ears washed out.” Mica scowled at her. “Hasn’t your cyborg with his enhanced tongue been in there yet?”

“No, and having my ears licked clean isn’t on my list of preferred foreplay techniques.”

“Too bad. Because they need it. Refrigeration.” Mica grunted in disgust.

“You can’t leave it here unguarded,” Alejandro said, in the middle of his discussion with Leonidas. For the first time, his voice had risen loud enough to be audible from across the hold.

“I have an appointment with a weapons installer,” Leonidas said, glancing at Alisa.

“An appointment? The most valuable artifact in the system, all that we’ve been searching for, is sitting in my cabin on this ship, and you’re going to waltz off for an appointment? Maybe you can get your hair and nails done while you’re out there too.”

Alisa left Mica fuming and walked over to join Leonidas for more fuming. He and Alejandro were glowering at each other with equal intensity.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, though she had already gotten the gist.

She could understand Alejandro wanting a guard for the staff, but she would also prefer to take Leonidas with her. She would be shocked if she managed to wander around a mafia-run city without running into problems—they might be waiting for her as soon as she opened the cargo hatch. She would volunteer Beck to stay and guard the ship, but he had to physically go meet with Chef Leblanc’s people to see about getting them a cargo. Apparently, job interviews weren’t conducted over the comm here. Alisa would need Abelardus to lead them to the Starseers. Maybe Mica would suffice for Alejandro’s guard needs. After all, she knew her way around weapons and could make her own explosives. Given her grumpy mood, she might even enjoy a chance to pummel thieves.

“This ship is entirely inadequate,” Alejandro announced. “A determined thief could stroll right in.”

“The cargo hatch does lock.”

“Yes, I’ve seen how well locked doors work on this ship.” Alejandro turned his glower on her.

Alisa blushed, certain he was referring to the time she had sneaked into his cabin to steal his orb.

“The locks aren’t for keeping the captain out,” she said, refusing to admit to being wrong. “If it makes you feel better, we can tuck it into the cubby over there.”

Alisa waved to the secret spot where they had all hidden when the pirates in the T-Belt had forced their way aboard.

“Nothing makes a man feel more confident than storing his valuables in a place called a cubby,” Alejandro said. Mica wasn’t the only grumpy one here. Maybe some of that toxic air from the atmosphere had seeped into the ship.

“I can take it with me if you wish,” Leonidas said.

“Oh yes. Let’s flaunt it on a moon full of cutthroats and villains.”

“I won’t keep him out long,” Alisa said, resting a hand on Leonidas’s arm. “He has no need to stop for nail trims or haircuts. I can do that for him here.”

Leonidas raised his eyebrows.

“I’m excellent with laser clippers,” she informed him. “Although, you could let your hair grow out if you don’t trust my styling abilities. How did the empire feel about cyborgs with pigtails?”

“They wouldn’t have been regulation,” he said, as if she had been serious about the question.

“Unfortunate.”

Alejandro made an exasperated noise and stalked toward the stairs.

“Doctor?” Alisa called after him. “Do you need any supplies for sickbay? As long as we’re going to be shopping for masks, I’m sure I could pick them up for you.” She meant it as a conciliatory offer, but supposed it was self-serving too. Given the number of times they had all been injured, they needed a well-stocked sickbay. And a non-grumpy doctor.

He narrowed his eyes at her, always suspicious of her intent, even when he had no reason to be. Maybe he was still thinking of her theft. And the fact that she chummed around with Alliance commanders. She sighed, doubting he would ever consider her anything but an enemy.

“You have your comm with you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll send you a list.” Not bothering with a thank you, Alejandro climbed the stairs and headed back to the passenger cabins.

“I think he’s warming up to you,” Leonidas said.

Alisa blinked up at him. “Was that a joke?”

“If you have to ask, I suppose it was a poor one.”

“Yes, but I liked it anyway.” She linked her arm with his, though snuggling up to a man in combat armor wasn’t exactly cozy. “Will you escort me shopping, good sir?”

Beck, who was leaning by the hatch, snorted. “The words every man dreads hearing from a woman.”

“Even when you’re shopping for weapons?” Alisa asked.

“I’m sure you’ll want to buy more than that. Women always do. Poor Leonidas will think he’s going to buy e-cannons, but before he knows it, he’ll be in a clothing store, waiting outside of the changing room and being asked for his opinions on outfits.”

Alisa couldn’t imagine how clothing shopping might go in a city run by the mafia. All she said was, “You sound bitter, Beck. How many of those twelve siblings are sisters?”

He grimaced. “Ten.”

“We should go,” Leonidas said. “Alejandro’s concerns are legitimate. I’m not comfortable leaving the staff unguarded. Or where Abelardus can easily decide to stroll off with it. There’s no reason for him to stay with us. He might grab it and head to the Starseer outpost on his own.”

“I don’t think he’ll do that,” Alisa said.

“Just because he’s enamored with you doesn’t mean you should trust him.”

Leonidas said the words matter-of-factly without any rancor or jealousy, but they made Alisa uncomfortable. Was she trusting Abelardus too much? He had given her his word to help her find her daughter, but could she count on that? He had lied to her before.

“He’s not enamored with me,” she said, keeping her voice down, not wanting Beck to listen in on the conversation. “He wasn’t interested in me at all until he found out I have Starseer gene mutations. And I’m trying very hard to discourage that interest,” she said, meeting his eyes, just in case she had not made that perfectly clear to him.

“I know,” he said. Her arm was still linked with his, and he laid his hand lightly on hers. “Shopping?”

“Beck, open the hatch, please,” she said and smiled at Leonidas. “I would love to.”

Beck hit the button, the hatch opened, and the ramp lowered. Before any of them stepped out, no less than three spy boxes zipped past, cameras recording footage as they flew over the crowds of people thronging the docks.

Alisa swallowed. She had expected thugs and bullies, not high-tech surveillance such as the empire had favored.

Beck plopped his helmet onto his head and tinted the faceplate so his features were not visible. Leonidas sighed and extracted his arm from Alisa so he could don his own helmet. She hoped her face was not on any wanted posters out there, because she could not do the same.

Chapter 4

The weapons dealer wouldn’t deign to talk to them until they could show him hard currency, the breathing masks were ridiculously overpriced, and a spy box was following them, the cube matching their pace precisely as it hovered along, ten feet behind. So far, Alisa hated her shopping trip.

The only good thing was that she’d had enough money to buy the masks, including an extra for Jelena. She hoped Beck was having luck convincing the chef’s people to give them a cargo, and also that he would get a portion of the fee upfront. Maybe then, the weapons dealer would talk with them, though that was more Leonidas’s quest than Alisa’s right now. She itched to get back to the ship, grab Abelardus, and head out to look for Jelena.

“Is that a cyborg?” someone cried from an intersection ahead as Leonidas and Alisa were leaving the weapons shop.

Leonidas slowed his step as two bearded young men who couldn’t have been more than twenty ran toward him. They carried rifles on their backs, but neither of them reached for their weapons. Oddly, they lifted their hands and waved as they trotted up, stuffed pockets and belt pouches clinking with each step.

“I don’t think he’s real, Jimmy,” one man whispered to the other as they slowed in front of Leonidas and Alisa.

“I bet he is. Look how big he is,” the other whispered back.

Even though Alisa could not see Leonidas’s face inside of his helmet, she felt certain that his jaw had tightened in anticipation of a slight.

“He’d be perfect,” the first one said, then raised his voice. “Sir, are you a guide?”

“A what?” Leonidas asked.

Alisa noticed the spy box stopping to hover in place, keeping its spot ten feet behind them. She almost nudged Leonidas to point it out, but remembered that he had a rear camera in his helmet. He would be well aware of it.

“A monster-hunting guide,” the one called Jimmy said. “We’re looking to bag some dinos, get some reward money. We’d split it with our guide, of course.”

“I’m not a—”

Alisa touched Leonidas’s chest plate to interrupt him. “What kind of reward money?”

“The boss pays five thousand a head. Ten thousand for the T-rexes. But hardly anyone is dumb enough to go out after them. Most that try don’t come back.”

“Why are there bounties on the dinosaurs?” Alisa asked.

“To get people to hunt them, of course.”

“Of course,” she murmured.

“Also, they eat the tourists.”

“Is tourism an actual industry here?” Alisa couldn’t believe anyone would come to this dreary moon for a vacation. Anyone except Yumi. Maybe mycology tourism was big.

“The boss is working on expanding the races and getting more people in who want to gamble. That’s what we’ve heard. We’ve only been here three days ourselves. But we’re dying to take down some dinos and prove ourselves.”

“Well,” Alisa said softly, knowing Leonidas would hear, “if Beck can’t get us a cargo, we have a backup source of income.”

He snorted.

“What, are cyborgs too proud to hunt monsters for money?” she asked.

“No, but imperial officers are.”

“They sound snooty.”

“They’re noble.”

“Nobly snooty?” Alisa thought about swatting him on the butt, but didn’t know if he would find that playful or egregious when done in a public place. Or when done at all. Would he even feel it if someone touched his butt while he wore all that armor? He didn’t seem to feel bullets or blazer bolts.

Leonidas ignored her last comment and told the men, “I am not a guide.”

“Could you be convinced to come out with us, anyway? We’d be willing to go fifty-fifty with you.”

“No.”

“Can we give you our comm number in case you change your mind?” One touched the perky purple earstar looped over his helix.

“No,” Leonidas said.

The young men slunk off, their shoulders drooping.

“I hate to tell you this, Leonidas,” Alisa said, “but you are snooty.”

He offered his arm. “We should finish our tasks here quickly. We’re being watched.”

She took his arm. “You’re very serious too. It’s a wonder a free spirit such as myself is attracted to you.”

“It is,” he agreed, leading her down the street and past a statue atop a fountain—a bronze man in a fur cap was down on one knee and shooting a rifle. Alisa had seen several statues in a similar vein. She had wondered at the theme earlier, but if “monster hunting” was a popular hobby here, she could guess now.

“Out of curiosity, would you feel it if someone swatted you on the butt when you’re wearing your armor?”

“Probably not unless it was an extremely vigorous swat.”

“Like a spank?” She started to wriggle her eyebrows at him, but noticed the spy box out of the corner of her eye and sighed instead. He was right. This was the time for being serious and finishing tasks quickly.

Besides, his faceplate had turned toward the shops lining the street, something catching his eye, and he did not respond.

“Let’s go in there,” he said, his helmet tilting toward a store with a sword and shield painted on the door.

Alisa went in with him, figuring he wanted to try to avoid the spy box and nothing more. She hadn’t been paying attention to the shopfronts, other than to note they were in an upscale section of the city. Who would have guessed that purveyors of only-slightly-used arms set up shop next to diamond jewelers and hover vehicle dealerships?

To her surprise, gleaming suits of combat armor in several colors were modeled all around the store they entered, some in hover displays, some positioned in action poses on the floor. A few blazer rifles adorned the walls, too, but the place definitely specialized in armor.

Spotting a few smaller suits, ones that had room for hips and breasts, Alisa wandered toward them. As a pilot, she had never been enamored with personal armor, and she’d certainly never had a reason to fondle it lovingly, but she did so now, running her palm over a sleek blue suit. If she had such a suit, she wouldn’t have to hide in NavCom when enemies boarded her ship. And what would Jelena think if her mother rescued her while wearing such a getup? With the enhanced strength from the suit, Alisa could toss her into the air as Jonah had done when she’d been little, eliciting all manner of giggles. Would she still laugh at such antics?

A holodisplay next to the blue suit highlighted its specifications and showed it in all manner of positions, including disassembled in a matching armor case, but it neglected to mention the price, and Alisa’s daydreams faded. That meant she couldn’t afford it. The story of her life of late.

She turned, expecting Leonidas to be behind her. He stood near the doorway, eyeing the spy box. It remained outside, doing the aerial equivalent of pacing back and forth in front of the store.

“If there was any doubt that we’ve been singled out for observation, I think that quashes it,” Leonidas said.

“May I help you, sir? Ma’am?” a genteel voice asked. A robot on wheels rolled down an aisle, easily navigating around the displays. It had a humanoid torso, arms, and head. “I am Samuel 5, at your service,” it announced, then leaned forward on its axis in a semblance of a bow.

“We’re just—”

“The lady wishes to try available suits in her size,” Leonidas said. “Dragon line. Nothing raven, hawk, or sinagiar. The seam work and onboard computers on those aren’t acceptable for real combat.”

“Certainly, sir,” the robot said as Alisa mouthed, “What are you doing?”

This wasn’t the time for idle shopping, and it wasn’t as if she could afford dragon line, or any other line for that matter.

“Contemplating dinosaur hunting,” he said, meeting her eyes, his gaze intent. Almost intense.

A warm flush spread through her as she realized what he was saying, that he would go out into those marshes and risk himself to hunt giant predators that could probably bite right through combat armor. Because he knew she and her mouthy tendencies needed a suit of her own.

“That’s very thoughtful,” she said as the robot rolled toward the back of the store, “but we’re early on in our… ah.” Could she call it a relationship? Dating? They had kissed once, and even though it had been exciting for her, it couldn’t have been that interesting for him. She was flattered that he wanted to help her out, but accepting a gift worth thousands of tindarks wouldn’t be appropriate. “I think we’re at the stage where we give each other chocolates and flowers, not combat armor.”

“That doesn’t sound very useful.” He eyed the spy box again.

“Chocolate is always useful. Combat armor is… I’d feel the need to pay you back. And I can’t. There are so many things the ship needs before I can contemplate saving up money for something for myself.”

“You wouldn’t need to pay me back.”

“Yes, I would. With interest. I’d have to. Besides, it’s not like I could pay you in the other manner women without funds have paid men throughout history.”

He gave her a blank look.

“By having sex with you,” she said dryly. “Not that I would do that to pay a debt. I’m independent and self-respecting.” Please, if she had the opportunity, she would definitely pay him back by sleeping with him. She would sleep with him for no reason at all.

She sighed at herself, still feeling like she was betraying Jonah when she had these thoughts.

Not looking particularly titillated by the idea of being paid with sex, Leonidas nodded toward the spy box. “I suspect we’re going to get a visit from someone soon. Who that will be and what it will entail, I can’t guess. It could have to do with my bounty.”

“Or my ship, which has been responsible, whether intentionally or not, for the deaths of numerous White Dragon operatives—and the destruction of one of their ships.” True, she could hope Arkadius’s Northern Mists got the blame for the disappearance of that ship, but that might be delusional.

“If the information on the net is true, the White Dragon people are feuding with the Satin Scourge.” Leonidas waved toward the dome overhead. “I suspect this is about me. I may have to convince someone to alter his or her interest.”

“That might be difficult. You’re a fascinating man.”

“This way, ma’am,” the robot called from the back of the store. “I have prepared a fitting room and loaded an instructional vid to show you how to dress, should you be unfamiliar with dragon line combat armor.”

“Or combat armor of any line,” Alisa muttered to herself. She had seen all the pieces that went onto Leonidas, and it looked complicated, so she would not eschew the help of the video. If she went to the fitting room. She saw little point in trying anything on when they weren’t going to buy it.

“At least see what you like,” Leonidas said, as if reading her thoughts. “We can price it out and work on getting the funds, along with funds for the ship’s weapons.”

We. He said it so casually, implying that they were a team now and that they would take on financial struggles together. Even if they should be at the chocolate-and-flowers stage of their relationship, she couldn’t help but appreciate the simple word, the idea behind it. She missed being a part of a we.

“All right,” she said, struggling to come off as flippant rather than revealing the lump of emotion in her throat, “but don’t complain to Beck if I come out and ask your opinion on outfits.”

He gave her a quick salute, then returned to watching the street. It crossed her mind to wonder if he expected an attack and wanted her out of the way, so she would be safe. Well, she didn’t plan to take long back here, so he better prepare himself for having her back him up in a fight, whether he wanted that or not. Even better would be if they could evade an attack. Did the store have a back door they might use to slip out? She would check after trying on the blue armor.

With the instructional holodisplay helping her, Alisa managed to get the various pieces on. Fortunately, they were self-adjusting, but she wouldn’t have minded an actual person advising her. Such as Leonidas. He could tell her if her toes were supposed to be numb or how long it took to get past the claustrophobic feeling. The suit was tighter than a spacesuit, molding precisely to her body, and she couldn’t bring herself to don the helmet for more than a few seconds. The computer inside gave her an irritated beep because she interrupted its calibrations when she removed it.

“You’ll just take some getting used to,” she told the suit, running a gauntleted hand down her waist and eyeing herself in the mirror.

The armor was not as unflattering as she expected, despite the extra bulk, and she couldn’t help but admire it. She took an experimental jump, wondering if the leg pieces would automatically give her extra strength or if that was something she had to order it to do. To her delight, the little hop almost took her to the ceiling. She laughed until she realized she could have cracked her head if she had tried to jump any higher. Getting used to the armor would take a lot of practice. She wondered how long it had taken Leonidas to get used to his extra strength after his implants had been installed.

“Alisa?” came his soft voice from outside the fitting room.

“Did you come to admire how sexy and sleek I look in this armor?” she asked.

“There are two androids in paramilitary garb heading down the street toward this shop.”

Alisa groaned and started peeling off the armor. “The proper response to my question would have been yes.”

“My apologies.”

“How long do we have?”

The armor came off more quickly than it had gone on, but it still took time to remove.

“May I help you, sirs?” the robot’s genteel voice sounded from the front of the store as it greeted new customers. Or perhaps androids.

“Not long,” Leonidas murmured.

Alisa yanked off the boots, her elbows thunking against the walls of the cubicle. She hurried to tug her jacket and trousers back on, having worn only her undergarments to try on the armor. In her haste, she pitched sideways. She tried to catch herself on the swinging door, but she must not have locked it, because it opened. She tumbled out of the changing room, her trousers halfway up. Leonidas was standing there and caught her. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or mortified.

He wasn’t looking at her. Though he held her, he faced two figures in black uniforms with silver piping. They had identical faces and identical short brown hair swept to the side, and they stared back at Leonidas with expressionless silver eyes. They each carried two sidearms, as well as batons, but they had not reached for them yet. Why bother? An android had even more strength and speed than a cyborg. Alisa wondered if Leonidas’s armor would even out the odds. She remembered the heroic battle he’d had with the android staff hunters. He had survived, but he had only battled one at a time.

“The boss requires us to bring you to the palace,” one of the androids said.

They addressed Leonidas, neither glancing down at Alisa. Glad for their indifference—and that they were androids instead of leering brutes who would stare at her panties—she extricated herself from Leonidas’s arms and hustled to finishing dressing.

“Me?” Leonidas asked. “Or both of us?”

“Only your presence is required.”

The sales robot rolled about behind the androids, not seeming to know what to do.

“Very well,” Leonidas said and lifted a hand toward Alisa. “Take the masks and get back to the ship so you can finish your mission.”

It was a very reasonable thing to say, even if it came out like an order, but Alisa found herself saying, “The hells I will.”

Leonidas frowned. “Whatever this is—”

“I’m going with you.” She fastened her trousers, grabbed the bag of masks, and grasped his arm. “I’m not letting you disappear into some boss’s palace where you might be tortured or shot.”

She looked at the androids, hoping for a clue as to what fate they had in mind for Leonidas, but of course, their neutral expressions gave away nothing.

“Your presence there won’t change anything,” he said quietly, “and you put yourself at risk for no reason.”

“There’s a reason,” she said, tightening her grip on his arm, wondering if he would understand. “And how do you know I won’t be able to change anything? I’m not snooty like you. I’m a people person.”

She waited for him to mention all the times that her sarcastic mouth had utterly failed to endear people to her.

Instead, he sighed and said, “As you wish.”

Maybe he believed she could do something to help. Or maybe he just didn’t want to argue with his new employer.

The androids guided them out of the store, one walking ahead, and one walking behind. The spy box floated cheerfully after them.

Chapter 5

“Mica?” Alisa murmured into her comm unit as their android guides—captors—led her and Leonidas up wide stone steps and toward the massive doors of a building that looked more like a bunker than a palace. Rectangular and four stories tall, it had window slits, rather than windows, thick cement walls, and drones and human guards patrolling the roof and the grounds around it. Twilight seemed to have come outside of the dome, and that only lengthened the shadows and made the place appear gloomier.

“Did you get my list?” Mica promptly responded.

“Your what?”

One of the androids looked back at her. So far, they had not tried to take her weapons or asked Leonidas to remove his armor. He still wore his helmet and carried a rifle in addition to all of the weaponry built into the suit.

“My list of supplies,” Mica said. “Refrigerated cargo holds don’t magically appear on ships.”

“Ah. That’ll have to wait. Leonidas and I are being escorted into what I assume is the palace of the mafia boss who controls this city.”

“I thought you were shopping for masks.”

“We did that. We decided to branch out.”

“To a mafia palace?” Mica asked. “That sounds unhealthy.”

“It likely is.”

“If you get killed, who gets the ship?” Mica asked.

“What?”

“Do you have a will made out? People with dangerous jobs are supposed to do that.”

“I haven’t gotten around to it yet, so I’ll just have to live.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Stop being pessimistic. Is Beck back? Can you let him know—”

“He hasn’t come back yet.”

Alisa grimaced. How long did it take to arrange a meeting?

The androids led Alisa and Leonidas through the double doors. A security scanner unleashed a storm of beeps when he walked through it. It gave a mild protest for Alisa, noting the Etcher holstered under her jacket.

“All right, then let Abelardus know…” Her grimace deepened. She hated the idea of relying upon him, but who else did she have on board that could handle it? She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Let him know where we are, and tell him that if we’re not back by dawn, a rescue would not go unappreciated.”

Leonidas’s helmet swiveled toward her, the glower behind his faceplate suggesting that he might not appreciate a rescue. “It’s early to ask for that, don’t you think?”

One of the androids turned, removed her Etcher, and took her comm unit.

“No,” Alisa said. “I don’t think it was.”

The other android had moved down the hallway and was murmuring into his earstar. A few robots and drones meandered through the broad passage, but so far, she had not seen any humans inside. Maybe the boss lived here alone, surrounded by mechanical servants. She had always imagined the mafia as having huge family-run organizations, but she had no idea who was in charge of this one.

The second android returned. Alisa expected one of them to order Leonidas to remove his armor and to try to take his rifle.

Instead, the android that had been talking with someone said, “This way,” and continued down the hallway.

Puzzled, Alisa followed in silence. Why would they bother taking her belongings while letting Leonidas walk about fully armed and armored?

They passed several statues and paintings as they headed to an elevator. Alisa knew nothing about the art universe and had no idea if they were reproductions or originals or if they had any value.

Their group stepped into an elevator that took them to the top floor, where they walked out into a loft space with no interior walls aside from a few half walls. The entire fourth floor of the building was someone’s residence with all manner of tables, sofas, fur rugs, lounge chairs, and statuary sprawled across the space. A distant corner held a kitchen that was only partially sectioned off from the rest.

Soft sounds filtered through the vast room, the murmur of voices and the sucking of boots in mud, a noise that did not match with the tile floor. It came from one of the long walls where several live video feeds of the terrain outside the dome were on display. The familiar fungal stalks and swamps proliferated the area. The cameras moved to follow people in each video, sometimes groups of people and sometimes singles. They all carried weapons, everything from assault rifles to swords, and wore clothes and gear similar to what the young men asking about hiring guides had worn. Breathing masks identical to the ones Alisa had purchased covered the people’s lower faces, but all of their eyes were visible and wary as they scanned their surroundings.

One of the pterodactyl-like creatures flew toward a group of four men and women, and Alisa jumped.

Whatever camera was tracking them zoomed in close to follow the action. The people saw it coming—a screech sounded from integrated speakers that Alisa could not see—and stood back to back, raising their weapons. They fired, eliciting more screeches from the creature, but not deterring it. It flapped in, extending bird-like legs with long, sharp talons on the ends. It lunged for a woman with a blazer rifle. A man standing next to her dropped his firearm and hacked at the creature with a sword as its talons wrapped around her arm. He struck one of its wings, drawing a thick ichor that might have qualified as blood, but the creature did not let go. It battered him in the head as it flapped its wings, then it lifted into the air, carrying the woman with it, as if she were a mouse instead of a human being.

The displays changed until all of them showed this particular party, now down to three people. They were running after the winged creature and firing at it, but it kept flying away. Another camera zoomed onto the scene, then took off after it. Three suns, it wasn’t going to watch as the dinosaur ate that woman, was it?

Alisa turned away, her stomach churning with disgust and distress. She noticed Leonidas’s cool gaze—he, too, had paused to watch. His jaw was clenched, his eyes hard. It was the look he got whenever he realized that the system had turned into a less pleasant place since the empire had been ousted. She expected him to turn his hard eyes on her, with accusation clear in them.

He did look at her, but only to murmur, “It might be difficult to leave the dome without being observed.”

Alisa frowned. Did every party that walked or rode out of the city get cameras following after it? Or was this something reserved for those who went monster hunting? She cringed to imagine some mafia vid network tracking her team as she went to search for a secret Starseer outpost.

A woman cleared her throat in the middle of the room.

It took Alisa a moment to spot the figure settled on a chaise lounge with an iced drink in her hand. Tawny haired and tan skinned, she watched their approach with the air of a predator. A sleeveless and low-cut dress hugged her form, revealing the tops of breasts that Alisa suspected had been augmented. Perhaps the rest of her had been too. Her eyes seemed old to belong to someone who was the thirty or thirty-five she appeared to be. Alisa could not tell if she was the boss or some boss’s mistress, but either way, she looked like she wielded power here. The androids headed straight toward her.

As Alisa and Leonidas followed them, his helmet remained forward, so she could not see his face or guess what he was thinking. The woman smiled as he approached, but her smile faltered when she took in Alisa. A dismissive frown turned her lips briefly, but she soon shifted her attention back to Leonidas.

She produced a remote and tapped a button. The speakers muted, though the people fighting and dying on the vid displays continued.

“Welcome to my humble home, Colonel Adler,” she said, removing any doubts they’d had as to whether the mafia people here knew who he was. Would they want the information in his head? About the whereabouts, or former whereabouts, of the prince? Or would this woman simply be interested in turning him over to the Alliance for the bounty?

Alisa tried to step up next to Leonidas, but the androids took a position on either side of him, blocking her. Even though they had not drawn weapons, their stances made it clear they would stop him if he tried anything aggressive toward their employer. They dismissed Alisa completely.

She eased to the side so she could watch everyone’s faces—and so she could put her back to the distressing displays on the wall. Neither the woman nor the androids paid her any attention. She folded her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against a fancy cabinet filled with dozens of ceramic and glass eggs.

“Who are you?” Leonidas asked.

“If I tell you, will you remove your helmet?”

He gazed at her in silence.

She chuckled. “I’ve seen your holo of course, and when I learned you’d landed in my humble city, I looked up some videos of you in action.” She smiled as she took a sip from her drink, ice globes jangling as the glass tipped. “I liked what I saw.”

Alisa blinked slowly, realizing this might not be what she expected. Oh, Leonidas could still be in trouble, but perhaps for different reasons.

The woman’s gaze slid down his armor, as if she were trying to see through it to the musculature—and various other things—underneath. Alisa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Just because this mafia lady was intrigued by cyborgs, or Leonidas in particular, did not mean she wouldn’t hand him over to the Alliance if she didn’t get what she wanted.

Leonidas did not react to the woman checking him out. He’d said that one of the reasons the fleet had tinkered with the cyborg sex drive had been so that they could not be seduced or suborned by pretty women. Alisa liked to think that Leonidas would have been indifferent to this woman, regardless. She wasn’t exactly subtle.

“You weren’t the first cyborg military officer,” the woman said, “but you were the first one to rise so high among the ranks. I understand that the fleet didn’t want to put many cyborgs in leadership positions over its lowly human soldiers, lest they object to being ordered about by supermen.” She smiled and sipped from her glass. “My name is Solstice. I’ve been reading up on you, Hieronymus.”

“Why?” Leonidas asked flatly.

“You’re a cyborg colonel. One of a kind.” The woman—Solstice—spread her hand toward the various art pieces mounted on the ceilings and walls and cluttering every flat surface in the room. “I collect objets d’art, preferably one-of-a-kind items.”

“He’s not an item,” Alisa said, not caring that she hadn’t been invited into the conversation.

“I enjoy surrounding myself with wondrous variety,” Solstice said, ignoring Alisa and keeping her predatory gaze on Leonidas. “And if the items in my collection have function, all the better.”

Leonidas said nothing. This woman should have been drooling over Abelardus. He would have responded with a cheerful smirk, probably extolling all of his functions.

“My husband runs this little town,” Solstice said, not noticeably bothered by Leonidas’s lack of participation in the conversation—or the fact that she had a husband. “But it’s a hobby for him, secondary to his galactic operations, and he’s rarely here. I do most of the work, including maintaining a suitable security force. A lot of money flows into and out of the dome from the various industries here and gambling, of course.” She waved toward the wall display, glancing through Alisa without seeing her. “It’s important to have good security. I assume you’re not in the military anymore since the empire can’t afford to keep much of a fleet running these days. I happen to be in need of a security chief. A former military officer would certainly have the necessary qualifications. Would you be interested? I pay well. And there are fringe perks.” Her lips curved upward in a smile as she looked him up and down again.

“Are you sure being pawed over by you is a perk?” Alisa asked, before she could think wiser of it. She ought to keep her mouth shut—it wasn’t as if Leonidas couldn’t handle himself—but everything about this woman made her want to leap to his defense. If not by clawing her eyes out, then at least by delivering withering words.

Solstice frowned at her androids and pointed at Alisa. “Who is this?”

“An unidentified companion, ma’am,” one said.

The frowned deepened. What, was she annoyed that they had let Alisa come along?

Too bad.

“I’m his employer,” Alisa said. “He’s not looking for another job.”

“You’re the scruffy freighter captain?” Solstice asked.

“I’m a freighter captain. My scruffiness is debatable.”

Solstice sniffed and gave her a quick once-over. “No, it’s not.”

The woman’s disdain should not have meant anything to Alisa, but she caught her cheeks warming. Her clothes were on the verge of tatters, her Alliance flight jacket, in particular. It had been repaired too many times to look anything like the original. There had not been time or money for clothes shopping since she had left Dustor. Her limited wardrobe was in a sad state, and she knew it. She wished she were standing in front of this woman in that sleek blue combat armor. The sanctimonious bitch would think twice about insulting Alisa then.

Solstice turned her attention back to Leonidas. “Hieronymus—may I call you that?”

“No.”

“Ah, very well, dear Colonel. As I was saying, I’ll pay you well, and you’ll have a position commensurate with your skill level. Surely, commanding an entire city’s security force is more in line with your experience and abilities than—goodness, what do you do for this woman exactly? Guard widgets? I’m certain what I offer you will be more fulfilling.”

“Actually, I guard chickens.” Leonidas met Alisa’s eyes and smiled faintly.

“Yumi will be pleased that you’re watching out for Isabel and Alcyone,” Alisa said, then closed her mouth, not wanting to mention anything even vaguely related to Alcyone’s staff, even if in this case, Alcyone was the name of one of the chickens. If Solstice got a sniff of that artifact—speaking of one-of-a-kind items—she had the resources to make a lot of trouble. All she would have to do was keep her forcefield shut, and the Nomad would be stuck in this dome indefinitely.

Solstice sneered at this exchange. “At what rate of payment?” she asked.

“That’s private,” Leonidas said.

Alisa grimaced. She hadn’t paid Leonidas anything. She had tried to put him on the same pay schedule and rate as Beck, but he’d refused to accept it, saying to wait until she had more funds. When she had wanted to hire him, she hadn’t imagined him taking a charity position. That had been their first argument that hadn’t had anything to do with which side they had supported in the war. She’d only allowed him to have his way by telling herself she would pay him a portion of their earnings whenever they found successful cargo hauling gigs.

“Not much, I’ll assume,” Solstice said with another derisive sniff in Alisa’s direction.

Alisa wondered what those androids would do if she attempted to stuff one of these fancy objets d’art up the woman’s ass. Maybe that twisted sculpture that looked like a cat licking itself.

“I mentioned perks that you would receive if you were in my employ,” Solstice went on, clearly not good at taking no for an answer. “Perhaps I should mention what might happen if you don’t accept the position.” She smiled and sipped from her glass as she glanced toward the display wall again.

Alisa made the mistake of looking over. A two-legged dinosaur modeled after the Tyrannosaurus rex was standing on a road, eating a lone human, blood dripping from its jaws to the ground. Her stomach lurched, and she looked away quickly, struggling not to retch—or cry.

“If you’re thinking of throwing us to your monsters,” Alisa said, forcing down the bile in her throat, “then don’t bother. We were already planning on taking a trek out to hunt a few. They don’t look very challenging, not for a cyborg.”

“We’d have excellent ratings if a cyborg in imperial armor strolled out to hunt the monsters,” Solstice said, “and I might even lure a few new sponsors down to my modest moon, but I believe it would distress you more to be turned over to the Alliance.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Leonidas again. “I do have contacts in their military. It would be a simple matter to call down some ships. You would find it difficult to escape my dome without my clearance.”

“Should have landed in the swamp,” Alisa muttered.

“There’s a reason why nobody does,” Solstice said. “I understand it’s distressing to watch your ship disappear into quick-mud, never to be seen again.”

“There’s a lot that’s distressing about this moon. I’m thinking of crossing it off my list of potential retirement meccas.”

“A shame.”

Solstice set down her glass and rose to her slippered feet. She strolled to Leonidas, presuming to rest a hand on his chest. Her head barely came to his shoulder, but she showed none of the usual intimidation people displayed in the presence of fleet cyborgs, especially those clad in the dreaded crimson armor. Of course, she had those androids standing inches away from Leonidas. Why would she worry?

“I don’t truly wish to threaten you, Colonel,” she said. “I’d much prefer that we have a civil relationship, and I could even use my influence to protect you from the Alliance, should that be necessary.” She slid her hand enticingly over the pectoral area of his armor. It occurred to Alisa, when she wasn’t thinking about strangling the woman, that Solstice probably didn’t know about the way the fleet had altered its cyborgs. Alisa wished she did, because some of her interest in acquiring this particular objet d’art might wane if she knew Leonidas wouldn’t sleep with her. “I’d also prefer to see you in something more comfortable.”

“My armor is comfortable.” Leonidas lifted his hands, and the androids leaned closer, each poised to strike if need be. He pushed her gently but firmly away from him. “You are correct, however, in that I have no interest in becoming an Alliance prisoner.”

“I thought not.” Solstice let him push her back, but her flirtatious smile never faded.

“I have obligations to my current employer,” Leonidas said.

“Involving chickens?”

“Among other things.”

“I’m certain she would understand if you broke those obligations to accept another offer.”

Alisa certainly would not, but she kept her mouth shut this time. She highly doubted Leonidas would break his word to her—or leave Alejandro and his staff in a lurch.

“Perhaps,” he said, “but it would only take me a few days to fulfill those obligations. Then I could move on.”

Alisa felt her eyebrows rise, but again remained silent.

“Oh?” Solstice asked. “A few days would not be an interminable amount of time to wait. Not for such a fine head of security.”

“I can contact you when I’m done.”

“Excellent. I’ll have my personal information sent to you. You can comm anytime and let me know when you’re ready to join me.”

Leonidas inclined his head. “I will.” He eyed his android bookends. “Are we free to go now?”

“Of course, of course. But Colonel? Don’t think of betraying me. I have an eye on your ship, and I’ll know if you attempt to leave. I assure you that the forcefield will not be lowered to let that freighter out if you’re not here at my side when it takes off.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said coolly.

Alisa pushed away from the cabinet and followed him toward the elevator. Solstice must have un-muted the speakers, because the screams of someone else dying floated to their ears as they walked out. Alisa shuddered. This shopping trip had not gone well.

Chapter 6

Full darkness had fallen by the time Alisa and Leonidas made it back to the docks, crushing her hopes of heading straight out to look for Jelena. Finding a hidden Starseer outpost in daylight would be challenging enough out in those marshlands, even with Abelardus as a guide. And cruising through dinosaur-infested swamps at night did not sound wise.

As she and Leonidas walked the lamppost-lined thoroughfare, with more lights floating high overhead under the dark dome, Alisa made plans to slip out into the wilderness before dawn. Maybe they would be less likely to be stalked by cameras if they left early. They would just have to watch out for the dinosaurs. Had those “monster hunters” in the vids had some kind of attractant to bring in the big predators, or were they simply that ubiquitous out there?

She shivered, remembering the people being eaten in those displays—and that nobody had gone out to help them, that watching them being torn to pieces had apparently been good for ratings.

“Are you all right?” Leonidas asked quietly.

Though he walked at her side, he had not said much since the androids had let them collect Alisa’s gear and leave the compound. For the first half of their trek, one of the spy boxes had followed them, so that might have put a damper on his tongue. Alisa hadn’t noticed it for several blocks.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m just mulling over concerns. I’m wondering how we’re going to find the Starseer outpost without ending up on the news, and I’m also wondering how we’re going to get the Nomad out of this dome when it’s time to leave. I’m assuming you were telling that woman what she wanted to hear to buy us time and aren’t truly planning to join her security force. Just in case you didn’t know, that would distress me greatly.”

“Because I’d be breaking my word to you,” Leonidas said, nodding in agreement.

“Because I’d miss you.”

“Ah.” He smiled at her. He had removed his helmet and tucked it under his arm. His hair was tousled from having it on earlier. Attractively tousled.

“It’s too bad you’re a handsome cyborg, Leonidas. Solstice might have left us alone if you were homely.”

Of course, she also might have ordered those androids to drag him off to some Alliance embassy so she could collect the reward money.

“Then you’d probably leave me alone too,” he said, his smile turning wry.

“That wouldn’t happen.”

“No?”

“If you’ll recall, I wasn’t overly fond of you when we first met. Possibly because you were being unfriendly and pointing a gun at me.”

“Only because you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“It was my ship I wouldn’t leave alone. You just happened to be clogging up the ramp with your hulking cyborg self.” She elbowed him, which would have been more appealing if he weren’t still clad in that hard shell. “It took me a while to decide I was attracted to you.”

“How long?” He tilted his head, appearing genuinely curious.

“It was after you chose to help us instead of your cyborg buddy, Malik.”

They passed a pair of women walking in the opposite direction, and he did not respond. The docks had been busy earlier in the day but had cleared out since then. Only a handful of people strolled along now, many toting bags or being trailed by hoverboards loaded with supplies as they returned to their ships. The noise of a drunken crowd came from one of several pubs dotting the docks. Alisa hoped people weren’t in there watching replays of the monster hunts—or human hunts—while they ate and drank.

“I came to appreciate you when you wouldn’t turn me over to your Alliance colleagues,” Leonidas said when the women had passed. “In case you were curious.”

“Up until then, you considered me a mouthy Alliance pilot it was preferable to avoid?”

“More or less. I suppose I was a little impressed with you when you handled that thuggish pirate by yourself. I’d been concerned…” He cleared his throat and looked away. “I feared I would be too late to help protect you from that. And I was.”

“Good thing I’m decent at protecting myself, eh?” Alisa clasped his hand, though the ramp of the Nomad had come into view, so their romantic evening walk could not last long. “I’ve had a lot of practice. On account of my mouth.”

“I believe you.”

“I feel like I should swat you for that, but since you told me you wouldn’t feel it through your armor, I suppose there wouldn’t be a point.”

“Only if it made you feel good,” he said.

“It might.”

Someone came out onto the ramp, so Alisa let Leonidas go. It wasn’t as if the others didn’t know they had started spending more time together, but she had this sense that she should maintain some professional distance when others were around. Especially Alejandro, since he glared whenever he saw Leonidas standing close to her. A former Alliance pilot. She might as well have a communicable disease.

That looked like Abelardus on the ramp. Yes, he turned toward them, and the light from within the cargo hold silhouetted his head and braids. He glared at her whenever she stood close to Leonidas too. Not that she cared what he thought.

I went out to rent hover bikes for our journey, Abelardus spoke into her thoughts, gazing at her across the distance. I was watched as I did so. Perhaps because of my robe. Perhaps because I’m associated with your ship.

Having him speak into her head always made Alisa uneasy, and it felt like more of an intrusion when she was walking side by side with Leonidas, having a private moment with him. Since Abelardus was jumping straight to business, she kept herself from making a snide comment.

We were watched too, she replied in her mind. The mafia boss finds Leonidas fascinating.

Fascinating or irksome?

It’s a woman.

That doesn’t answer my question. Abelardus smirked—she knew it even though she couldn’t see his face in the shadows. Does she know about his problem?

Doubtful, and maybe you should stay out of his head, so you don’t give him any more problems.

He can’t satisfy you, you know. Nor will he be any help with training your daughter.

Alisa sighed.

“Is he talking to you?” Leonidas murmured as they turned onto the dock with the Nomad parked at the end.

“How can you tell?”

“Your expression got aggravated, and I don’t think I stepped on your foot or did anything to cause it.”

“You are definitely not the source of my aggravation.”

“Let me know if you want me to punch him for you,” Leonidas said. “It won’t bruise my knuckles to do so.” He glanced down at her hand.

“Thank you for the offer. I’ll let you know if that becomes desirable.”

She patted him on the back before separating to walk up the ramp. Six motorized bikes with thrusters and skids rested inside the hold.

“Do you think we should go out to look for your kin tonight, Abelardus?” Alisa asked when they entered the ship. “We might be less likely to be watched at night.”

“Don’t be so certain.” Abelardus looked past her shoulder and toward the base of the ramp.

A spy box that had not been there ten seconds ago now hovered a few meters from the ship, not attempting to hide itself. Alisa made a disgusted noise and hit the button to close the hatch.

“I’ll have one of the cameras watch it and set up an alert in case it goes away,” she said.

“Perhaps first thing at dawn would be the best time to go,” Abelardus said. “I saw that there would be some races at that track later in the morning. The monster hunting may be on hiatus for that.” He grimaced. Maybe he had also caught some footage of those people being eaten.

“Let’s hope. I want to find Jelena and get out of here. This is a loathsome place for a little girl.” Alisa hoped the Starseers did not let their charges see the local news. She could not imagine an eight-year-old child watching what she had seen today.

“I’m sure my people are taking good care of her.”

“I wish I was that confident of that.” Not for the first time, Alisa considered how this Durant—a proven kidnapper and a brother to Abelardus, who had questionable morals at best—seemed an unlikely prospect to care for a child.

“If my brother wants what I’m guessing he wants, he’ll treat her well,” Abelardus said.

“And what is it that you think he wants?”

“Someone who will grow up to birth strong Starseer babies.”

“Ugh.” Alisa couldn’t help but curl a lip. She wanted Jelena to play and laugh and be a kid, and it horrified her to think of someone wanting her as broodstock. Who would they have in mind as the father? She shuddered.

It pleased her to notice that Leonidas was also curling a lip. She didn’t know whether that was because the idea also horrified him or if it was because he wanted to punch Abelardus for being alive in general, but she approved of his response.

“You should be honored,” Abelardus said, frowning at both her and Leonidas.

“Yeah, I’ll work on that. Leonidas, let’s come up with a plan for our new problem, shall we?”

“If you wish.”

He didn’t look that cheerful at the idea. That was all right. Alisa was tired, and her brain hurt. She mostly wanted an excuse to get away from Abelardus, but she wouldn’t mind some company tonight. She dreaded the nightmares she might have after Abelardus put ideas of Starseers using her daughter to breed into her head.

“Do you want help?” Abelardus asked.

“Not right now. I’ll accept all the help you can give in the morning. Thank you for getting the bikes.” She smiled, though she had to force herself to make the effort. She hadn’t forgotten about that kiss he had foisted on her, or the fact that he had fiddled with her mind to momentarily make her think she wanted it. What if some lecherous male Starseer did the same thing to Jelena when she was older?

“You’re welcome.” Abelardus bowed and trotted up the stairs.

Alisa waited for him to disappear, then clasped Leonidas’s hand and led the way past the chicken coop, up the stairs, and into the mess hall. She paused there, spotting a plate of muffins on the table. Beck must have made it back. Before she left in the morning, she would have to find out if he’d gotten that meeting—or, better yet, firmed up the job.

Her stomach growled, and she took a closer look at the muffins. They had grill marks on them, but otherwise looked appealing. She gave them a sniff. Blueberry. She did not know where Beck had found the fruit on this forsaken moon, but they smelled wonderful.

“If Beck ever leaves us, I’m going to be extremely sad,” Alisa said, plucking up several muffins and plopping them onto a new plate.

“He’s a good cook,” Leonidas agreed, not making a similar comment about his security-guard skills.

She found some jakloff butter in the fridge, smeared the muffins, and retook Leonidas’s hand.

“Where are we going to discuss our problems?” he asked as she led him off again.

“One of our cabins, and despite what I said—” Alisa glanced up the corridor to make sure Abelardus was not loitering within earshot, “—I’d like to forget about my problems for a few hours. Will you watch a cheerful, non-violent vid with me?”

It was a simple enough question to ask, and not a huge imposition, but she paused in the intersection to watch for his reaction. They hadn’t had many date nights, and she wasn’t sure if he would grasp that she wanted that, wanted to lie with her head against his chest while trying not to worry for two hours.

“Non-violent?” he asked.

“Yes, something with a nice happy ending. Something with laughing and kissing perhaps.”

His expression grew dubious.

“I would tell you that you’re supposed to agree to watching a girly vid because you’ll end up getting sex afterward, but I guess I have to find something else to entice you with.” She held up the plate. “Muffin?”

Mica’s head poked out of her cabin, and Alisa blushed. She hadn’t realized anyone’s hatch was open. Since it had taken Leonidas weeks to explain his problem to her, she doubted he wanted others to know about it. Fortunately, Mica withdrew without comment and closed her hatch.

“You don’t have to entice me,” Leonidas said quietly. “But if you wanted to, I enjoyed that massage last week. I didn’t think I would, especially when you pulled out the rocks.”

“Those were spa stones, not rocks.” Alisa smiled and waved him toward his cabin. “If you take off some of that armor, I’ll go change into pajamas and bring my stones to visit.”

“Excellent.” He plucked the muffin plate from her hand and disappeared into his cabin.

She snorted. She would have to change quickly if she wanted any of those muffins. Thanks to that cyborg metabolism, he had the appetite of a growing teenage boy.

In her cabin, she slipped into soft pajamas, briefly lamenting that she did not have any sexy nightwear, but then reminding herself that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Leonidas was not going to ogle her. That made her sad, but it also took away some of the awkward nervousness she would have felt if she were climbing into bed for vid night with a man she’d never slept with before.

She grabbed her netdisc and opened her movie selection as she padded back into the corridor. She paused in front of Leonidas’s hatch, flicking through the titles for something he might like. But seeing all the vids in her collection stirred memories. And emotions.

That one she had watched with Jonah. And that one. That one too. And that cartoon had been Jelena’s favorite the last time Alisa had been home. Alisa also had a few classics that she had enjoyed with her mother. Rising Stars. That had been Mom’s favorite. Age of Rebellion had been a historical documentary that Jonah had watched multiple times, citing the lessons to be learned from the past. He’d eschewed action and adventure flicks in favor of documentaries and literary dramas. Fortunately, he had usually agreed to three of her types of movies to one of his when they had been watching things together on the couch at night. Or in bed after Jelena went to sleep.

Alisa closed her eyes and rested her hand on the hatch. Damn it, why did all of her vids remind her of people who were dead or missing? Why was everyone in her life dead or missing? It wasn’t fair.

She sniffed and wiped an eye. Maybe she wasn’t ready for this, movie night with someone else. She missed the comfort of having her family around her, of feeling like she belonged and knew her place in the universe. And she missed them.

The hatch opened and she dropped her hand. Sniffling outside of the cabin of someone with enhanced hearing wasn’t a good idea.

“I’m not sure what to think about finding a woman crying in front of my door,” Leonidas said, looking her up and down. At first, he seemed puzzled, but then a storm cloud rolled onto his face, and he scowled, looking up and down the corridor. “Abelardus wasn’t pestering you, was he?”

“No.” Alisa hurried to lift a hand before he could rush out, in the mood to pummel Abelardus. “Nothing like that. I was just—” She lifted her netdisc, the holodisplay of movie titles tilting as she waved it in the air, as if it alone should explain her weepy moment. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

Leonidas squinted at her, then stepped aside, extending a hand into his cabin in invitation. “Perhaps it’s good that you usually say exactly what’s on your mind. You don’t excel at lying.”

“Uh huh. Here’s a tip. Don’t criticize a weepy woman on your doorstep.”

He lowered his hand. “It wasn’t meant as a criticism. It was meant as… inappropriate humor.”

“Oh.” Alisa took a breath, feeling overly emotional. Why was she picking a fight with him? That wasn’t what she had come here for. “I’m sorry. I was looking at all of my favorite movies and realizing that the last times I watched most of them was with…” She stopped, not wanting to speak of Jonah to him. What would she think if she was with a man and he kept talking about his dead wife to her? “People who aren’t around anymore,” she finished, the euphemism not making the words any easier to say. Tears crept into her eyes again. Maybe she ought to go back to her cabin. She wasn’t going to be good company.

“Come here,” Leonidas murmured, shifting his hands toward her instead of toward the cabin.

It was an order, if a gentle one, but for once she did not mind. She stepped in and wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against the front of his shoulder. He had removed his armor and wore a simple, fitted T-shirt and loose gym pants.

“I know all about people who aren’t around anymore,” he said, returning the hug, one hand cupping the back of her head.

Yes, he would. Even if he had never been married, he had lost his mother, and he had lost men, close friends. Frequently, she was certain. And there was so much else that had been taken from him, so much that was good in life that he couldn’t enjoy.

Her tears leaked onto his T-shirt, and she let them. It felt good to have someone to lean on, someone who understood. No, not just someone. Him.

He stroked her hair while the tears trickled down her cheeks, and it made her realize how tired she was of being alone, of having only herself to depend on, especially since her life had gotten so crazy, so dangerous, in these last few months. She was always pushing aside her memories and introspection, focusing on the present. She hadn’t realized how much suppressed emotion lurked there beneath the surface, ready to spill over.

A hatch creaked open out in the corridor. Alisa stepped back, sniffed, and wiped her eyes. As much as she appreciated his warmth, she didn’t want her crew or passengers seeing her breaking down on the way to sani their teeth.

Leonidas must have guessed, because he stepped into the cabin and closed the hatch behind her.

“Muffin?” he asked, pointing to the plate on his fold-down desk.

Alisa nodded, managing a smile at the proliferation of crumbs and the two lonely muffins remaining in the center. Had he truly wolfed down the rest of them while she had been changing into her pajamas? “Weren’t there six or seven before?”

“I had to test them, make sure they hadn’t been poisoned. They could have been left by a mafia operative.”

“A mafia operative obsessed with grilling? How do you make muffins on a grill, anyway?” Alisa grabbed the plate and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, tugging at one of her socks to hide a fledgling hole in the heel. That damned Solstice woman was right. She was scruffier than a dock rat these days.

“It’s a mystery.” Leonidas covered a yawn and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Tired? We can skip the movie if you like.”

Especially since she hadn’t found a title that wouldn’t bring back memories that would depress her. They would have to hunt through the catalog together one night, preferably when they weren’t somewhere that charged for sys-net access, and pick some new ones that neither of them had seen.

“Not that tired,” he said, looking away.

Sensing it was a lie, Alisa was tempted to ask him how he had been sleeping lately. Her gaze drifted to one of the dents in the wall next to his bunk. Were there more there since the last time she had visited? She couldn’t tell.

“Have you talked to Alejandro about a pharmacological solution to help you sleep better?” she asked. “Or maybe Yumi would have some insight into such things.”

He hesitated, looking stolidly at the deck. Was this something he would refuse to talk about? Even with her?

She laid a hand on his thigh, hoping he would understand that she only wanted to help. That made her remember how he’d taken her hand and rested it there while laying an ice pack across her bruised knuckles. And how she’d cast the ice pack aside to kiss him. That had been before she’d known that kissing didn’t mean anything to him. Not now. Maybe one day. It had meant a lot to her, and she wished—

“I’ve tried drugs in the past,” he said. “A lot of us did.”

“Us? Your fellow cyborgs?”

He nodded. “Nightmares are common.”

“Because of the grisly nature of the job or because of the surgery?” She remembered him saying they had tinkered with his brain chemistry when they’d been making sure he wouldn’t feel any urges to have sex. What asses.

“Some of both, I think. Drugs tend to wear off too soon to be useful, since we metabolize things so quickly.” He glanced at the crumbs on the muffin plate. “And there are always side effects. You don’t want a crabby cyborg roaming around your ship.”

“How would that be different from now?”

His eyes narrowed, and she grinned and hugged him.

“I’m serious,” Leonidas said. “When I first joined the unit, and we all slept in the same barracks or ship bays, you’d get people having fights that brought down buildings. Cyborgs can usually survive each other’s ire, but with regular people…”

“I can imagine,” she said, sobering and lowering her arms. She’d seen him use his bare hands to take out soldiers in armor that should have made them invulnerable to unarmed combat techniques. She hoped she never made him angry enough to lose his temper with her. During those first weeks that he had been aboard her ship, she had pushed him a few times, unwisely so, and that made her glad that he could control his temper. It would be scary to be around him if some drug was affecting his ability to do so.

“Here are my thoughts on the mafia woman,” he said, resting his hand on her knee.

Alisa looked at that hand, aware of the warmth of it through the thin layer of her pajama bottoms. “That she’s slutty and completely not your type?”

He snorted. “That I’ll continue to pretend that I’m going to go work for her, and once you’ve searched the Starseer outpost and are ready to leave, I’ll head over to join her. You can take the ship and fly out of the dome. Once you’re safely free of its influence, I’ll get a bike and head out into the swamp. You can fly down and pick me up, and we’ll head off to our next destination.”

“That sounds reasonable, but I believe I said it would be nice to forget about worries for a couple of hours. I thought we could save planning for the morning.” Alisa laid her hand on his, her thoughts illogically straying to more interesting places that he could place it. Not that the thigh wasn’t nice…

“Well, you didn’t bring the rocks, and you seem to have rejected the vid-night idea.”

“I could get the spa stones—I paid money for those, so stop calling them rocks—or we could just wing it.” She patted the mattress beside her. Maybe if he was thoroughly relaxed before falling asleep, he wouldn’t have nightmares.

“You paid for the rocks?”

“I’m told they have good auras and can bring peace to your chakras. Yumi picked them out.” Alisa would not mention that Yumi had also paid for them when she had balked at the idea of spending money on such frivolous things.

“I didn’t realize my chakras were so unrestful.”

“It’s probably why you’re cranky.”

“I’m not cranky. I’m professional.”

“Well, don’t be. At least not during muffin-and-pajamas hours.”

She leaned in so she could brush her fingers across the worry lines in his brow, as if she could smooth them away. Then she pushed her hand through his soft, short hair, hoping he understood that her teasing was meant to be friendly.

“I’ll try,” he murmured, as he gazed back at her, his eyes warm but also sad. That always seemed to come out when he wasn’t being stern and professional. The professional soldier. That was the mask he hid behind, just as she hid behind flippancy and sarcasm. Maybe they both knew it was safer to wear masks than to be vulnerable. Except, with each other, perhaps they could lower them sometimes.

Alisa had not intended to, but she ended up kissing him. Even if he couldn’t return it with enthusiasm, she wanted to show him that she cared, that she wished she could make the universe better for him. But it didn’t take long for her to start thinking more of herself than of him, especially since he went along with it, returning the kiss, rubbing her waist through her pajama top. She wondered how far he would go for her sake. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had good experiences where penises hadn’t been involved. Some of Mica’s teasing comments about his enhanced tongue came to mind. But she quashed them, lowering her hands and dropping her chin to break the kiss, gazing down at the contours of his chest instead of meeting his eyes. It wouldn’t be fair to ask for favors that did nothing for him, favors that she couldn’t return. Besides, it would probably be awkward and weird for both of them. He’d be the sober one at a party full of drunks, secretly bored and wondering if everyone knew how idiotic they were acting.

“Alisa?” he said softly. “Do you want—”

“To give you a massage?” she blurted, looking up, afraid he would make the very offer she had been thinking of, the one she would be a heel to accept. If he got the words out, she might not be strong enough to say no. “Absolutely.”

His brow wrinkled, and her fingers twitched with the desire to smooth it again. She didn’t this time. Touching his face made her want to kiss him and that made her want what she couldn’t have.

She patted the bed again, scooting to the very edge so there was room for him. He gave her that look he sometimes did, the one where she felt like a puzzle he was trying to figure out.

“Lie down,” she said. “Tonight, we’ll relax and enjoy each other’s company, all right?”

He hesitated, then lay on his stomach. She thought about asking him to take his T-shirt off, but since this couldn’t lead to anything more than the platonic, maybe this was preferable. As it was, she would end up having erotic dreams and nobody to share them with when she woke up.

He cradled his head in one arm and let the other dangle off his bed. She shifted up to her knees so she could massage his shoulders. She probably should get the rocks—the spa stones—so she could dig into those steel muscles and find the knots, but maybe tonight, she would keep it light and gentle. Let him rest. He seemed to need it. Indeed, he exhaled slowly and deeply, closing his eyes. As she continued to work, the tension drained from his muscles, and she felt pleased, glad she could at least give him this.

After a time, he grew so relaxed that she realized he had fallen asleep, his breathing slow and even. She caught herself yawning and eyed the sliver of space between his broad form and the edge of the bed. She could fit there if she lay on her side, an arm resting across his back, anchoring herself to him. It would be easier than walking back to her cabin, and it would be far less lonely.

The expression on his face was restful and content, not twisted with uneasy dreams. Maybe they didn’t come until he was deeper in his sleep cycle. Or maybe having her next to him put him at ease. Was it arrogance to think that? That her presence could make him sleep well?

She gave him a few more gentle strokes, then lay down beside him, using his arm for a pillow. If he woke up and told her to go, she would, but it would be so nice to spend the night. To wake in the morning with someone to cuddle with before heading out on what would be a dangerous trip.

She smiled, imagining that cuddling, and closed her eyes.

Chapter 7

Alisa gasped in pain and fear as she tumbled through the dark air, spinning end over end. A dream. No, she realized in confusion. She was awake. She was—

She struck something hard—a wall. Her wrist crunched, something snapping as it was crushed between her and the wall. She cried out as agony sprang from the injured spot. Then she landed on the floor, crumpling at the base of the wall. She gasped again, cradling her wrist as stabs of pain coursed through her.

“Lights,” someone said—Leonidas. Then, as they came up, he leaped from the bed and dropped to her side. “Alisa!”

“Yeah,” she croaked, wincing and realizing what must have happened.

He realized too. She could tell by the horror dawning in his eyes.

“Three suns, I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely. “I hit you, didn’t I?” He cringed.

“No,” she said, even though she knew he must have sent her flying in his sleep. She didn’t want him to blame himself. She was the idiot who had been too lazy to walk back to her cabin. “I just fell out of bed.”

A statement that might have been plausible if she hadn’t been on the other side of the cabin. He looked at the distance. He didn’t have to be an engineer to do the math, but she recalled that he had studied it.

He looked down, saw her cradling her wrist and rose to his feet. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“No,” she blurted, not wanting to explain this to Alejandro or anyone else. He would judge Leonidas—judge both of them. But she inadvertently reached for him with the injured wrist, and the movement sent a fresh burst of pain through her, making her gasp again. “Damn it.”

The pain wasn’t lessening. She must have broken it.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, his face contorted with anguish as he raced out.

Alisa let her head thunk back against the wall, blinking and struggling to keep tears from tumbling down her cheeks. She could deal with the pain in her wrist. It was Leonidas’s pain that distressed her. Why hadn’t she gone back to her cabin? It wasn’t as if she didn’t know about his nightmares—and the dents in the walls.

“Because you thought you were some kind of cure—that’s why,” she grumbled to herself. Had she truly believed that because she had been cuddling with him, he wouldn’t have nightmares? Such arrogance.

Though it hurt, she levered herself to her feet with one hand and walked over to the bed. She intended to say she had fallen out and landed on her wrist. She didn’t want anyone thinking Leonidas had hit her. It hadn’t been his fault.

Leonidas returned with Alejandro in tow. He had tugged on his gray monastic robe and carried his medical kit, but he was barefoot, his gray and brown hair sticking up in tufts.

“Thanks for the house call, Doc,” Alisa said. “Sorry to wake you in the middle of the night.”

He grunted, set down his kit, and examined her wrist, which was already swelling impressively. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. Maybe he would simply treat her and keep his judgments to himself.

“Broken,” he said, and withdrew his auto injector and a painkiller to load into it.

Leonidas closed his eyes at this pronouncement, his face bleaker than death.

After the shot, Alejandro tugged out a medical netdisc and programmed a batch of nanobots for repairs. He gave her a second shot, this one burning as the microscopic critters charged into her bloodstream. She braced herself for the itching that would follow. At least the painkiller was having a pleasantly numbing effect.

Alejandro dug into his kit again, retrieving an auto-molding bandage. He wrapped it around her wrist and sealed it, the cool material turning into a semi-rigid brace.

“You’ll need to wear that for a couple of days while the nanobots work,” he said, straightening.

“At least it’s my left hand.” Alisa had no intention of delaying her journey out to find that Starseer outpost. She glanced at the clock built into the wall. It was only an hour until dawn, so she might as well stay up and get ready.

Alejandro grunted again and grabbed his kit.

Alisa thought he might leave without any comments, but on his way past Leonidas, he shook his head and muttered, “Maybe this is why the empire neuters its cyborgs.”

Leonidas clenched his jaw, anger hardening his eyes, and for a moment, she worried he might strike Alejandro. But he didn’t move, not even a twitch, as Alejandro brushed past him and out of the cabin. He merely glared at the wall, the anger solely for himself.

“Leonidas,” Alisa said, pushing herself to her feet. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“Who’s ready to go looking for civilized people?” a cheerful voice called from the corridor. Abelardus. “And by that I mean Starseers, of course. Beck?” Abelardus banged on a hatch. “You making grub for our trip? Who’s coming?”

Down in the cargo hold, the chickens squawked, protesting the banging.

Alisa sighed. Yes, she might as well get ready. She ought to be the one out there rounding everyone up. This was her mission, and anyone she could talk into coming along would be doing so to help her.

“We’ll talk later,” she said and patted Leonidas on the stomach as she headed for the hatchway. He was still standing, stiff as a board—a very angry board.

“Alisa,” he said quietly.

She paused, looking back.

“There is nothing for you to be sorry about. That was my fault. And unforgivable.”

“No, it wasn’t. It’s my fault that my massage was so amazing that it made you fall asleep.” She smiled at him, because smiles were better than tears or anger. Besides, something worse than a broken wrist could have happened. She’d gotten off easy.

“Alisa,” he said, drawing out the syllables, his tone anguished.

“I knew I should have left, and I didn’t,” she said, more serious. He wouldn’t appreciate flippancy now. “My fault. It won’t happen again.”

The words did nothing to alleviate the anguish on his face, and she realized what she was saying, that she would never fall asleep next to him again. Was that what she wanted to say? No, there had to be a solution. They would find something. Maybe that admiral that he wanted to kidnap would know about nightmares as well as cyborg penises. They would figure something out. She had to believe that.

She started to walk out, but a black-robed chest got in her way as Abelardus leaned into the cabin. “Cyborg, are you—”

He stopped, frowning down at Alisa in surprise. He must not have expected to find her in here. At least she knew he had been sleeping or getting ready and hadn’t been spying on her last night with his Starseer skills. Of course, he would probably poke into her head quickly now and find out what had happened. She didn’t want comments from him, any more than she did from Alejandro.

Hoping to forestall that, she pushed past him, saying, “I’ll dress and be ready shortly.”

Abelardus did not stop her, but his gaze did lock onto the brace around her wrist. “What—” He must have read the rest of what happened in her mind, or perhaps in Leonidas’s, because he whirled into the cabin. “Did you hit her?”

“No, he didn’t,” Alisa said, and grabbed the back of his robe.

Not surprisingly, Abelardus tried to go inside. Alisa imagined Leonidas letting Abelardus hit him—or whatever Abelardus had in mind—because he thought he deserved it. That was not going to happen.

“Get out,” she said, “or I’ll pull this robe down around your ankles, and we’ll find out if you have hairier legs than Alejandro or not.”

It wasn’t her words—or one-handed tugging—that made Abelardus step back. Leonidas shoved him out of the cabin before he could do whatever Starseer mental assault he had in mind. The hatch slammed shut in his face.

Good.

Abelardus spun toward her, still frowning. He looked at her wrist and the frown turned ferocious. “You better stay away from him. He’s too damned unstable to be alone with. I warned you. He’s dangerous.”

Alisa propped her good fist on her hip, annoyed because she knew Leonidas would hear every word, and because Abelardus seemed more affronted on her behalf than concerned that she had been hurt. Not that she wanted either feeling from him. Why couldn’t everyone keep their comments to themselves?

“The wrist does hurt,” she said, “but it’s already feeling better. Thanks for asking.”

His brow wrinkled with puzzlement. Why did she puzzle all of the men on this ship?

“Uhm, Captain?” Beck asked, poking his head out of his cabin. He glanced at her wrist brace.

“What?” she asked, the word coming out more exasperated than she intended.

“Just wanted to know if you need me to come along with you today, or if you want me to get that cargo? I talked with the chef’s representative yesterday, and he’s going to let me into the warehouse today to see if we can fit everything in his refrigerators into our hold. There’s one other fellow bidding for the mushrooms, but I think if I present myself well, and play up my interest in the culinary arts, we can get the job.”

Alisa lowered her arms, chagrined with herself for snapping at him. “Yes, you should go to the warehouse. I’ll be fine out there with Abelardus and Leonidas.” And wouldn’t it be fun going on a trek with them, right now? “You didn’t run into any trouble, did you? You seemed to be gone a while.”

“No… Nothing serious.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “Something unserious?”

“Thought someone was following me for a while, but it might have been my imagination. Either way, I took a creative route and shook him before arriving at the meeting. Shouldn’t be any trouble. This isn’t the White Dragon city, after all, right?”

“Right,” she murmured, though she wasn’t convinced that these mafia people didn’t have connections and share intelligence with each other. That Solstice woman probably had her fingers in all kinds of sauce pots. “Be careful when you go out again, please. We’d hate to lose you.”

“I’d hate to be lost.” He winked.

“Also, thank you for taking the initiative yesterday. I’ll pretend it’s because you’re eager to help your captain and not because you want to schmooze with this fancy chef.”

“I’m always eager to help my captain,” Beck said. “Also, I haven’t been looking under any of their dresses—” he waved to Abelardus’s robe, “—but nobody can possibly have hairier legs than the doc.”

“Dresses?” Abelardus's eyebrows flew up.

Alisa smiled, tempted to hug Beck for making jokes. It was too early for so much seriousness around here.

“Yes,” Alisa said, waving at his hem, “but I’ll let you know for sure once I’ve seen Abelardus on a hover bike in his robe. I imagine there’s quite a draft once those vehicles get going.”

“Really, Alisa,” Abelardus said, “if you want to see me naked so you can examine every inch, that’s not a problem.”

“Not necessary.” She headed for her cabin, pausing in front of Beck to pat him on the arm. “Thanks.”

“For what, Captain?”

Everything.

“I enjoyed your muffins last night.”

“Glad to hear it.” He saluted her before ducking back into his cabin.

• • • • •

Alisa had more company than she anticipated on the journey. She had expected Abelardus and Leonidas to come along, but Yumi and Mica had also shown up in the cargo hold, grabbing breathing masks and tossing bags on the backs of hover bikes. Yumi was understandable, since she wanted an excuse to check out fungi and it wasn’t safe to leave the city alone—possibly not at all. With Leonidas in his combat armor, a rifle slung across his back and grenades in a bandolier, they ought to be well protected on this excursion. Alisa couldn’t guess why Mica was coming along.

“Did you think you would get lonely without our company?” she asked Mica as they floated their bikes down the streets of Terra Jhero, heading toward a ground-level dome exit designed for pedestrians and road vehicles.

Abelardus and Leonidas were riding ahead of them, exchanging frequent glares with each other. Yumi puttered along behind, looking with curious eyes at every building, fountain, and spy box they passed.

“I’m avoiding the doctor,” Mica said.

“Something I enjoy doing frequently.” When she could. Alisa was leaning her left forearm on the handlebar of the bike instead of trying to grip with her hand on that side. So far, it had not affected her ability to steer overmuch, but she hoped they did not run into any dinosaurs they had to flee from at high speeds. “Has he been pestering you for some reason?”

“Yesterday, just as I was finally getting caught up with repairs and looking forward to taking my first day off in ages, he came in and asked if I could build a secret vault under the deck plating somewhere for his staff and then arm it with a security system that would shoot laser darts into the heart of anyone who tried to open it.”

“You didn’t jump at the opportunity? From the way you like making rust bangs and grenades, I would think booby traps would warm your heart.”

“It was my day off,” Mica said as they took a turn, the draft stirring their hair as they entered a wide boulevard with a guard post and an arch at the end. A forcefield glinted in the space between columns supporting the arch. “I don’t make booby traps on my day off. I told him as much.” Mica sneered. “He knocked on my hatch first thing this morning, asking if it was still my day off. Apparently, he had a medical emergency to deal with and was up early.” Mica eyed Alisa’s wrist.

“He’s worried about that staff and doesn’t appreciate that I wouldn’t cry that much if it was stolen,” Alisa said, ignoring the unspoken inquiry about her injury.

“It could get stolen by someone more loathsome than he, someone who could do more than use it for a nightlight on a dark night.”

“True. Maybe you should build him a security system. But if someone comes along who can use it, that person probably wouldn’t have trouble avoiding your booby traps.”

“Please, my booby traps are excellent.”

Leonidas and Abelardus slowed down as the bikes drew even with the guard post, and a man clad in the same pseudo military uniform that Solstice’s androids had worn stepped out.

“The city gates aren’t open for another hour,” he announced.

“We’d like to go out now,” Abelardus said.

The guard looked at him, looked at the gate, then walked back into his booth.

“Are we being ignored or is Abelardus using his brain powers?” Mica asked.

Abelardus smiled back at her and raised a finger to his lips. Next, he grabbed his mask and pulled it up over his face, tightening the straps carefully. A canister on the side would filter out the harmful compounds in the air.

Alisa and Mica did the same. Leonidas’s helmet would filter out the poor air for him. Yumi puttered up behind them and pulled out hers. The bikes settled to the ground as they idled.

“Captain,” Mica said, lowering her voice and leaning toward Alisa, “it might not be a bad idea to drop that staff into one of those swamps. It crossed my mind yesterday when everyone who was strong enough to stop me was out. But then I saw the local news feed where someone was being eaten by a dinosaur.”

“I think someone like Abelardus could find it if it was dropped off somewhere,” Alisa whispered back.

“I don’t want Emperor Markus’s kid wielding it. He’s probably bitter and jaded after losing his entire family.”

“Probably.”

The gate went from translucent to clear as the forcefield dropped. Abelardus waved for the group to follow him as he led the way between the columns. A distant screech greeted them, floating across the dim gray land from the direction of the fungal forest a mile outside the city. Marshes and mud stretched ahead of them, and the road seemed a tiny thread of civilization as it wound between the dark, still pools. It was raised up several feet and shored on either side, but a grenade would easily destroy a section of it. The hover bikes could cross the water, but finding safe landing spots would be hard once one left the road. Alisa remembered the warnings of quick-mud.

“How far to the coordinates, Abelardus?” Alisa asked.

He had paused and was looking back toward the dome, waiting for them.

“About ten miles,” he said, his gaze past her shoulder.

Three spherical gray auto-cameras floated through the gate after them, and they bobbed along cheerfully, shining lights at their group and toward the surrounding landscape as they collected footage. One of them flew past Alisa so close that she had to duck. It got close to Leonidas, circling his helmeted head, inherently knowing a cyborg ought to be good for ratings. Or maybe there was a human in a control room somewhere, telling the cameras what to do.

Leonidas parked his bike and stepped off. The next time the camera came close enough, he snatched it from the air, his hands moving too quickly for it to evade him—though it did try heroically to dart away. It continued trying to escape once he held it, but he smashed it between his armored hands, crushing it as if it were made of the thinnest aluminum. He ground his hands together, doing more than necessary to disable it. Only tiny pieces remained when he was done, littering the ground at his boots like confetti.

“Is our cyborg in a bad mood today?” Mica muttered.

“Yes,” Alisa said, not surprised when Leonidas pulled his rifle off his shoulder and blasted the other two cameras out of the sky. They exploded, pieces scattering into the mud on either side of the road.

Leonidas glared defiantly in the direction of the city gate.

“Think they’ll let us back in later?” Mica asked.

“I don’t know, but we couldn’t let those cameras follow us. I’m sure Abelardus's Starseer buddies don’t want us leading the mafia to their hideout.” Alisa waved toward the road ahead, hoping to escape sight of the city before more cameras were sent out, possibly with security androids to guard them this time.

“Lead the way,” Leonidas told Abelardus, then waved for all of them to go ahead of him. “I’ll take up the rear.”

Alisa looked at him as she floated past on her bike, but his face was unreadable behind his faceplate. He didn’t even meet her eyes, his focus back toward the gate. He was in professional soldier mode again.

She sighed, missing Leonidas-with-the-mask-down, and once again regretted her carelessness the night before. But she had something else to focus on now. She firmed her jaw and hurried to catch up with Abelardus. It was time to finally find Jelena and show her that she still had a home, that she still had a mother who loved her.

Chapter 8

Leonidas shot down two more cameras before their group made it to the fungal forest, the thick stalks appearing more impressive from below than they had from the air. They erupted from the muddy ground, freshly churned earth around them, making Alisa think they might grow with amazing speed. Some stretched as high as fifty feet with bases ten feet in diameter. A few had caps of a sort, but most were stalagmite-like with a distinctive shape that had Alisa resisting the urge to make dirty jokes. Often.

Yumi almost fell off her hover bike in a few spots because she was leaning over to examine smaller fungi that sprouted around the bases of the big stalks. She had brought binoculars and kept clunking them against the top of her mask as she peered left and right. Alisa hoped she wouldn’t accidentally knock it off. She didn’t know how much of the toxic atmosphere a human could breathe before growing sick—or worse. Presumably, the fancy genetic engineering that had gone into creating those dinosaurs had adapted them for the environment. They might look like their ancient Earth relatives, but the resemblance likely stopped there.

“Two more miles,” Mica said, still flying beside Alisa. There was room for two bikes to sail along, side-by-side. For now, the group was sticking to a road, but Alisa expected Abelardus to veer off eventually. She doubted the Starseers had set up their base at a common crossroads.

“What’s the matter?” Alisa asked. “Not enjoying your day off?”

“The screeching is getting on my nerves.”

Yes, they had yet to see any dinosaurs, but they were out there. Their cries echoed through the forest, bouncing off the rubbery fungal stalks. The sounds came from all directions, one dinosaur crying out to one side of the group and an answer coming from another. Alisa couldn’t help but feel that her team might be at the center of whatever discussion those little brains were having.

“We’re going to leave the road here,” Abelardus called back to them, slowing his bike to a stop. It floated a few inches off the ground, the hover jets causing the hem of his black robe to flap about.

Alisa supposed it was not nice to be amused by the idea of it getting caught in the wheels and him going flying off the back.

Even though you think things like that about me, I’m still willing to mate with you to breed strong Starseer children, Abelardus announced into her mind.

Your generosity is without equal.

I know.

Stay out of my head.

He looked back at her, his eyes crinkling with a grin. You’re sexy in that breathing mask.

She glared at him and imagined shoving his mask into a dark, tight place.

Kinky.

Leonidas’s helmet swiveled toward Abelardus. Alisa could not see his eyes from her position, but she suspected they were narrowed. He probably grew suspicious every time Abelardus grinned at her without apparent reason. Alisa couldn’t fault him for that.

“Don’t step off your bikes or park them on the ground unless I say so,” Abelardus said. “Some of the mud is hard to get out of, and some of the puddles that look like they’re two inches deep are twenty feet deep. And inhabited.”

“By more than mosquitoes, I suppose,” Mica said.

“I assure you that whatever comes out of the water will cause you to lose blood,” Abelardus said.

“I’m starting to regret choosing this over building booby traps.”

“It is likely to be more dangerous,” Alisa said.

“I just didn’t want to spend another day with the doctor. He’s a big pest.”

“He’s driven by his mission.”

“So are you, but you’re not as much of a pest.”

“Just a moderate one instead of a big one?”

“Precisely.”

“Keep flattering me like that, and I might give you a pay raise,” Alisa said.

“Oh? Twice nothing instead of nothing?”

“Maybe some stock shares in the nothing too.”

“And you wonder why I want to leave,” Mica said.

“It is a mystery.”

Jets rumbled and air hissed as Abelardus took his bike off the road, veering down the slope and out over the marshy water. Leonidas waved for Alisa to go ahead. She, Mica, and Yumi followed Abelardus while he came along last, the back of his hover bike scraping and bumping the gravel slope under the combined weight of his armor and his muscled frame.

More types of fungi than Alisa had seen in her life dotted the mud and the grayish-green earth between the pools. The clamor coming from the forest all around them seemed to increase in intensity, the inhabitants excited that foolish humans were delving into their domain.

Yumi hummed happily as she zipped about, leaning over to peer at interesting patches of mushrooms. Alisa hoped someone had brought rope to pull her out of the quick-mud if—when—she tipped off her bike, overly excited by some fungal find.

About a mile off the road, they were following the shoreline of a lake when Yumi cried, “Look!”

The men reached for their weapons, Leonidas his rifle and Abelardus his staff. Alisa dropped her hand to her Etcher. Mica’s fingers dipped into her satchel, where she had stashed homemade explosives. Yumi thrust an arm out, not toward the water or toward the sky, but toward a patch of orangish mushrooms that looked like they had pus coming out of them. Alisa could imagine the stench of decay even though the mask filtered out the wilderness odors.

“What is it?” Alisa asked.

“The species I told you about. Meykonghi arelexius.” Yumi parked her bike, lowering it to a mostly dry lump of ground. “May I stop to collect some? I brought a specimen kit and a harvest bag.”

She was already climbing off her bike and jogging toward the unappealing mushrooms. Alisa eyed the ground at her feet. After Abelardus's warning, she expected it to open up and suck Yumi in at every step.

“Can’t it wait until the way back?” Alisa asked. “We’re close, aren’t we, Abelardus?”

“Less than a mile away.”

“This won’t take long,” Yumi said. “They’re growing close together. This is an amazing find. Do you see what lush, vibrant specimens these are?”

A bead of some pus or ichor dripped off the squashed rim of one of the mushrooms.

“Vibrant, yeah,” Alisa said. “Are those the orgasmic ones?” She had a hard time imagining something so ugly being turned into a pleasure drug.

Mica raised her eyebrows at the adjective. “Aren’t you having enough trouble in bed without adding in another element?” She glanced at Alisa’s wrist.

Alisa flushed. “They’re not for me. Or anyone on the ship.”

Despite her words, Alisa glanced toward Leonidas, curious if such a compound might somehow bypass his cyborg circuitry, but it had sounded like he hadn’t had much luck with drugs of any kind.

“Yumi said they can be made into a valuable drug that could pay for upgrades to the ship,” Alisa said. “Or perhaps an increase in her chicken flock.”

Technically, Yumi hadn’t said what she would use the money for if she created and sold the drug.

“Is it a legal drug?” Mica asked.

“I haven’t seen a list of what’s legal and what isn’t since the Alliance took over, and we are, as you may have noticed, pretty far from their influence right now.”

“So an illegal drug,” Mica said.

“I doubt anything is illegal on this moon.”

“Comforting.”

Alisa suspected Mica would not truly object if drugs bought her equipment upgrades for the engine room, especially if some shiny new tools came in the shopping bag. After all, she’d taken Tomich’s gift easily enough, without worrying that it had essentially been given in trade for that stolen orb.

Yumi hummed a ditty as she sliced mushrooms off, nestled them in some special wrappers, and tucked them away.

“After you’re done building Doc’s booby traps, you may have to create a lab for her,” Alisa said. She had no idea what was involved in turning an ugly, pus-leaking mushroom into a high-quality drug, but she imagined counters full of beakers, burbling glass apparatuses, and centrifuges.

“Too late,” Mica said.

Alisa raised her eyebrows.

“Haven’t you been in her cabin lately? I don’t know where she got everything, but she’s got an elaborate setup in there. In addition to all the things growing in pots and hanging wall gardens.”

“Huh. Do you think the presence of a chemistry lab will make it harder or easier to rent that cabin space to a future passenger?”

“Depends on whether she leaves behind some of her more appealing compounds,” Mica said.

The clamor of screeching dinosaurs faded, leaving the forest in silence, save for the faint running of water somewhere nearby. Alisa shifted uneasily in her seat. As much as the noise had been worrying her nerves, the cessation alarmed her even more.

“Trouble coming,” Leonidas said quietly, gazing toward the forest lining the far end of the lake, the end they had not traveled through yet. Thick mist gathered there, wrapping around—and obscuring—the bottoms of the fungal stalks.

Abelardus frowned at him, then looked in the same direction. Alisa did not see anything yet, but she did not doubt Leonidas’s enhanced senses.

“Do we run?” she asked. “Or stay and fight? The bikes should be faster than anything on foot, right?”

Alisa thought of those groups of people on the videos. Even though she had faith in Leonidas’s abilities, it concerned her that she hadn’t seen anyone winning their battles against the creatures. Those scaly hides had seemed impervious to the blazers the men and women had carried.

“We can’t leave now,” Yumi said. “I’ve only collected half the patch.”

Two towering creatures came into sight, stalking through the mist on two legs. They were the Tyrannosaurus rex lookalikes, and there was little doubt regarding their path. They headed along the shoreline, straight toward Alisa’s group.

“Yumi,” Alisa said, “get back on your bike. Abelardus, can we circle back around the other end of the lake and avoid them?”

Would the creatures let her group avoid them? Even though they did not appear to be running, they were covering ground quickly. Already, Alisa could make out more details of their scaled gray hides, the muscles in their massive haunches, and the maws full of fangs that were visible as they ran.

Abelardus was not listening to her. He and Leonidas had moved their bikes in front of the women’s, to head off the dinosaurs.

“I don’t think our stalwart road companions are interested in running,” Mica said, pulling a canister out of her satchel.

Alisa sighed. “The dinosaurs are worth money, apparently. Maybe more than Yumi’s future drugs. Leonidas mentioned hunting some.”

Leonidas looked back at her, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. Yes, he wanted a battle. Maybe he wanted something bigger than drones to take his aggressions out on.

Alisa backed her bike up against two of the giant stalks so nothing would be able to attack her from behind while the men were fighting. She did not have any delusions about being much help with her Etcher, especially when she could not grip the handlebars well with her injured left wrist. Yumi climbed onto her bike and hovered next to her. Mica stood up on the rails, her grenade—or whatever that was—ready.

Leonidas fired as soon as the creatures came within range. The crimson blazer bolts streaked away, landing squarely on one dinosaur’s thick throat. It kept coming. Leonidas kept firing, trying different targets. One bolt took the creature in the eye, and its head whipped back. It roared so loudly, the earth seemed to shudder.

Abelardus lifted his staff. At first, nothing happened, but then the second dinosaur flew backward, smashing into one of the towering fungal stalks.

Though it landed hard, it picked itself up, roared, and continued its charge. The one Leonidas had struck in the eye kept coming too. Its massive leg muscles bunched, and it sprang across a pool and toward the men. Leonidas charged forward on his bike, like a jouster rushing to meet his foe with a lance. But Leonidas had a rifle, not a lance. Not that his weapon mattered. Often, he seemed to prefer the raw power he had with only his armored hands.

Alisa was not surprised when he swerved to avoid the creature, then leaped onto his seat and used it as a springboard. He landed on the dinosaur’s back as it twisted, that massive maw snapping at him. He punched it square in the snout, the force making the creature’s head jerk to the side. Leonidas took advantage, straddling it and grabbing its scaled neck. That neck was so large that he couldn’t get his arms all the way around it. How would he break it like that?

The second dinosaur had reached Abelardus. Unlike Leonidas, whose helmet filtered the toxic air, Abelardus and the others had to worry about losing their flimsier breathing masks in a fight.

Alisa lifted her Etcher, waiting for the creature to get closer. She could hit an eye if she had the time to aim.

Abelardus did not appear worried about the approaching dinosaur, even though it was larger than the one Leonidas wrestled with, looming three times as tall as he was. He held his staff out with both hands, his eyes intent on the creature, concentrating. The dinosaur stopped a few meters from him, as if it had run into an invisible wall. It threw its head back and roared.

Mica lifted her arm, preparing to throw her weapon.

“Wait,” Alisa blurted, grabbing her wrist. “It could bounce off and hit Abelardus.”

She had no idea how the Starseer energy shield worked, whether it would repel in both directions, like a wall, or if it wrapped solely around Abelardus. If it was like a wall stretching between Abelardus and the dinosaur, Alisa and Mica would not be able to hit the creature from their position.

“You say that like it’s a problem,” Mica said, but she did lower her arm.

Alisa started to respond, but a premonition made her glance around the thick gray stalk behind her. She did not see anything or hear anything. Still, her instincts screamed of danger. She looked up as a shadow fell over her, and the talons of a diving pterodactyl filled her vision.

She flung herself sideways off her bike, fearing she would be far too slow. But blazer fire slammed into one of those outstretched limbs, and the dinosaur screeched, yanking its leg up to its body. Alisa hit the mud as the creature, distracted by the sniper, slammed into her bike.

Her mask was pushed askew, and she caught a whiff of foul, sulfurous air. She hurried to shove it back into place, even as she tried to climb to her feet. Pain jolted from her wrist when she put weight on it.

Fortunately, the dinosaur did not spring at her. She glimpsed red armor leaping through the air as she moved farther away from the thrashing creature. Its other set of talons had crunched through the bike casing and gotten caught in the engine. It dragged the vehicle several feet before Leonidas leaped onto the winged dinosaur, taking it down like a wrestler on the mat.

Alisa found her feet, but she was almost knocked over again as man and creature thrashed about on the ground.

“More of them,” Mica barked. She lifted her explosive again as four more pterodactyls sailed down from the gray sky.

Alisa put her back to a stalk and found her balance—and her gun. She picked out the rearmost creature, the one farthest from the ground. It was angling for Yumi. The thing had tiny, beady eyes, and she took the time to brace her hand and make sure her grip was steady. Her wrist protested mildly, but she held it there, firing three times in rapid succession.

The first bullet found its target, one of those beady eyes. As Yumi ducked for cover behind her bike, the pterodactyl’s head whipped back. The motion upset its trajectory, and it landed several feet from them, rolling and slamming into the base of a fungal stalk. Its wings flapped frantically, but it kept jerking its head around, and it did not rise again.

As Alisa prepared to fire again, an explosion ripped through the air.

Tiny pieces of something slammed into her chest, and she staggered back, imagining shrapnel. But a glance down showed bits of guts and blood.

“Mica,” she groaned, spotting two pterodactyls with their bodies blown up, one missing its head entirely.

“You’re welcome,” Mica said.

Alisa’s comm beeped from deep within a pocket. She ignored it, searching the sky and the area around them for further threats.

Leonidas finished off his pterodactyl and stood up. One of the T-rexes lay unmoving in the shallows of the lake. Another was up to its waist in a pool of mud, fighting feebly to escape. The quick-mud at work.

Another pterodactyl hung suspended in the air over the lake, frozen like a statue. Its eyes were open, but it could not move; it merely hung there, wings outstretched, defying gravity. Off to the side, Abelardus stood with his staff pointed at it. He moved the tip in a quick motion, and a snap came from the pterodactyl. It tumbled to the ground, a wing twitching but nothing else moving. Its neck was broken.

Abelardus lowered his staff and wiped sweat from his brow. Somehow, Alisa found his way of dealing with enemies more chilling than Leonidas’s raw power. Muscle and sinew, she understood. Breaking a neck with one’s mind? She shivered to imagine Jelena with the ability to do such things someday.

Alisa’s comm beeped again. She snorted and fumbled to find it while trying not to look at the carnage spread out around them. Those camera operators would be disappointed that they hadn’t managed to record the battle. Leonidas and Abelardus might have made for great ratings. She doubted her own display would have entertained anyone.

“Can I help you, Beck?” she asked when she saw who it was.

“Hello, Captain. Just wanted to let you know that I’m heading out for the meeting. I shined my boots and my helmet, and I look good.”

“Glad to hear it.” Alisa flicked dinosaur guts off her jacket.

“If I have to wrestle with this other fellow to get the job, what’s the lowest you want to go?”

“It would be worth the trip for ten thousand.” Assuming she found Jelena here among the Starseers. If she didn’t, Alisa would hate to delay for weeks to deliver cargo, no matter what the price. Already, she was shuddering to think of her daughter living out here among these insane predators.

“I’ll try to get the twenty,” Beck said. “How’s your journey going? You find the Starseers yet? Or—what?”

Alejandro’s voice sounded in the background, but Alisa could not make out the words. Leonidas had turned to listen to the conversation, and he walked closer now.

“Uhm,” Beck said, “someone was knocking at the hatch. Someone in a black robe.”

A tendril of unease wormed through Alisa’s belly.

“Any idea who that is?” she asked, the words more for Abelardus than Beck.

“The camera caught him, but he kept his hood low to hide his face,” Beck said. “Or her face. Doc’s worried it’s a staff thief.”

“Nobody should know about the staff.”

“One of my people would be able to feel its power from a great distance,” Abelardus said.

“How great a distance?” Alisa scowled at this new information. Shouldn’t he have warned her of that before? That she had a beacon glowing on the nose of her ship?

“I can sense it from here.”

“So ten miles?”

“At least. Maybe fifty.”

Alisa grimaced. “Have you been in contact with anyone? Invited any of your people to visit?”

“I sent a message to the leader of the outpost to let her know we’re coming,” Abelardus said, “but she didn’t respond. I still haven’t heard from Durant.”

“Your people don’t seem to want to talk to you.”

“I’m trying not to take it personally.”

“Fifty miles,” she said, wondering how many Starseers lived in Terra Jhero. “Does that mean every Starseer at this outpost we’re visiting knows it’s here?”

“Possibly.”

Wonderful.

“They will sense that a powerful artifact is near,” Abelardus said. “They won’t necessarily know what it is.”

“Is the Starseer still there, Beck?” Alisa asked.

“No. We pretended we weren’t home, and he went away.”

“Keep your eye out on the way to the meeting.” She was tempted to tell him not to go at all, but he wanted to make contact with the chef even more than Yumi wanted to collect disgusting mushrooms. He might sneak out even if she told him to stay put. At least he was wearing his armor. “Avoid people in robes.”

“Always a good idea, Captain.”

Alejandro cleared his throat loudly.

“Be careful,” Alisa said and closed the channel. “We probably don’t want to dawdle,” she said to the curious looks turned in her direction. “Could be trouble coming to visit the Nomad.”

She well remembered how easily Abelardus had gotten through locked hatches on her ship. If that nosy Starseer didn’t find someone “home” the next time he visited, he might decide to invite himself in for a look around. And if Alejandro was the only one in there, he wouldn’t be a match for a Starseer warrior. As much as Alisa hated the idea of the empire having that staff, she didn’t want some stranger to have it either. There was no guarantee that the person would have good intentions. For all she knew, the Starseers were still bitter about having lost their homeland. Maybe they’d like to destroy a few planets as retribution.

You think poorly of my people, Abelardus spoke into her mind as Leonidas pulled a pack of flex-cords off the back of his bike.

Can you blame me? Your ancestors tried to take over the entire system.

Our ancestors believed ourselves the logical leaders over humanity. The planets and moons were fragmented. Many of the original colonies were struggling to survive, and few had built cities to rival those of Old Earth, even though centuries had passed. We wished to teach what we had learned and unite humanity once again. With ourselves as their benevolent leaders.

Cocky leaders, maybe.

Abelardus pressed his hand to his chest and bowed to her.

Leonidas glared at him on his way to a fallen pterodactyl. He pulled out a laser knife and cut into its neck, startling Alisa.

“Are you collecting meat for Beck’s grill?” she asked.

“Heads for the bounty,” Leonidas said, not looking up.

“You actually think anyone gets paid that bounty?” Alisa asked. “It might just be there to lure people out to get eaten for the cameras.”

“There are statues in the city of successful hunters.”

“We don’t know that they were successful. Maybe those are statues of the fallen, people who put on a good show before being eaten.”

“If nobody got paid, people wouldn’t be so eager to come out here.” Leonidas finished sawing off the head and stood up with it.

Alisa looked away from the grisly sight. “We’ll see. They might not pay you after you destroyed several valuable cameras.”

“I will be paid,” he said, then looked to the bikes and down at the head.

Searching for a way to carry them back? Alisa was not going to volunteer her bike as a cargo hauler. Yuck. Besides, it was already mangled from the clingy pterodactyl. She was relieved when it started up again.

“The ship will have weapons, and you will have combat armor,” Leonidas continued firmly, giving her a long look.

If they had been alone, she would have joked that she could survive sleeping next to him if she dozed off in armor. Or maybe she wouldn’t have. He did not look to be in the mood for jokes any more than he had been that morning. Guilt was even worse than pain. She knew that well.

Leonidas’s gaze shifted to where Yumi’s collection bag sat on the back of her seat.

“Don’t even think about it,” Yumi said, propping her fists on her hips. Alisa had never seen her say a defiant word to Leonidas, but she lifted her chin now. “It’s bad enough that you all trampled the rest of the mushrooms while fighting.”

“They’re heathens, aren’t they?” Mica said.

“Heathens who kept you from being eaten,” Abelardus said with a haughty sniff.

“My grenades kept me from being eaten,” Mica said. “And you give me that arrogant look again, and I’ll drop one down your robe.”

“I don’t think that would work.” Alisa pointed at the ground between his feet. “It would fall straight through.”

“If it blew up between his legs, I assure you it would do some damage.” Mica gave Abelardus a vicious smile.

Abelardus blinked and looked away. “Let me help you with those heads, cyborg.”

Leonidas gave a monosyllabic grunt to show his enthusiasm for Abelardus's help. He was tying the first one onto the back of his bike, sans a collection bag to store it in.

“I’m going to volunteer not to help with that project,” Alisa said.

“Can you help me try to salvage these mushrooms?” Yumi grabbed her bag and poked around the area where she had been gathering them earlier.

“Does anyone need help doing something that isn’t disgusting?” Alisa asked.

“I could use help with a shoulder rub,” Abelardus said. “It’s hard work pointing a staff at things.”

“Rub yourself,” Mica muttered.

Leonidas, his bright armor spattered with mud and dino guts, took a break from his head-collecting chore and came to stand beside Alisa. She thought he might also make a suggestion as to what Abelardus could rub, but instead he touched her arm.

“Is your wrist all right?” he asked quietly, turning his back to Abelardus and the others.

“It’s fine.” Alisa held up her wrist and what had previously been a white bandage. “But Alejandro may charge me a cleaning fee when I return this.”

“The dino heads should cover that. Though I hadn’t intended to take you on my monster-hunting excursion.”

“Ah, but then you wouldn’t get to nobly fling yourself across the swamp to rescue people.” She waved at the pterodactyl he had tackled. “Unless you’d brought Beck with you. He needs noble rescuing on occasion.”

“Yes.” Leonidas pointed at the creature she had shot. “You took that one down by yourself. A good shot.”

She thought to shrug away the praise, but it tickled her that he had noticed. “Thank you.”

“If the pterodactyls are worth five thousand a head, that’s half a set of armor right there.” He looked pleased as he held her gaze. “If we run into another one along the way, you can also shoot it, and then you need not sleep with anyone to fund your purchase.”

Alisa had her doubts about whether they would truly be able to collect rewards for these heads—if they did, she couldn’t imagine them being so lucrative—but she appreciated that Leonidas wanted to encourage her independent streak. Or maybe he just really wanted to see her in combat armor. She wouldn’t mind seeing that herself. She could get used to the claustrophobic feeling, especially if it meant being able to take hits by blazer fire and being able to breathe in places like this without worrying about having a mask knocked off.

“If we do encounter more of them—” Alisa was not quite as enthused with the idea as he appeared to be, “—will you be a gentleman and carry my severed heads for me?”

“Of course.”

The screeches started up again in the distance. He touched her arm again, then returned to gathering his prizes.

“We’re not going to want to stick around,” Abelardus said. “The smell of blood and dino guts could attract others.”

“Nothing like dino guts to rouse the appetite,” Mica muttered.

“By now, I bet you’re fantasizing about working on Alejandro’s booby traps.” Alisa brushed flecks of gore off Mica’s jacket. “You might want to make yourself a grenade launcher, too, so the fleshy things blow up farther away from us next time.”

“I’ll keep that project in mind.”

Once the heads had been loaded onto Leonidas’s and Abelardus's bikes—oddly, all of the women passed on having such trophies hung from the backs of their seats—the group set off, once again following the lake. Leonidas kept peering into the forest. Alisa hoped he wasn’t trying too hard to find a pterodactyl for her. Just because they had all survived this encounter without being injured did not mean they would fare as well in a second one.

“We’re here,” Abelardus announced a few minutes later, stopping his bike on a pebbly beach at the end of the lake.

“These are the coordinates you were given?” Alisa spun her bike in a slow three-sixty. She did not see anything except water, mud, mushrooms, and the giant fungal stalks.

“Yes,” Abelardus said.

“Did the people who gave you the coordinates actually want you to visit?” Alisa’s heart sank at the prospect of a dead end, a dead end with no clues in sight.

Chapter 9

Abelardus was smirking at her.

“I take it you know something I don’t,” Alisa said, bringing her bike to the edge of the lake.

“I know many things you don’t know.”

“It must be gratifying to be so educated.”

“It is.” Abelardus nudged his bike out over the lake, the thrusters creating ripples on the surface. “If you don’t mind floating over water, follow me.”

Mica was the first one after him. “Water will wash off the dino guts,” she explained.

“Only if you dive in,” Alisa said, trailing after them. “We’re not diving in, are we, Abelardus?” she added, another premonition jumping into her mind. If the outpost wasn’t up here somewhere, might it be under the lake?

“Not exactly.”

Yumi trailed after the group, peering left and right as they hovered over the lake, perhaps looking for some variety of mushrooms that floated on the surface. Alisa wondered if she had gathered enough of the orange pus-dripping ones to make her drugs.

Leonidas caught up with Alisa, riding protectively at her side. She smiled at him, remembering how, weeks earlier, she had hoped to one day have him in that position instead of looming at Alejandro’s shoulder, being his bodyguard. Her smile faltered as she accidentally put weight on her wrist. She should have asked the universe for more than a bodyguard. As much as she appreciated his presence, she wanted more. She wanted to have sex with him and then doze off beside him. Apparently, that was asking for too much.

He gazed over at her as they neared the shoreline of the small island. From the sadness in his eyes, she wondered if he was having similar thoughts.

No, she decided. Wanting more than a bodyguard wasn’t wanting too much. They would find a solution, one way or another. She would help him. There was a way. There had to be. They’d pin down that Admiral Tiang to solve Leonidas’s main problem, and then they would find someone else, a brain specialist if need be, to fix the nightmares. They would find a way.

“Hm,” Abelardus said, floating up to the crest of the island and peering at the ground.

A single fungal stalk stretched up into the drab sky, but there was not much else in the way of ground cover. Yumi made a disappointed noise, perhaps noting the lack of mushrooms.

“You’re not lost, are you?” Mica asked, frowning at him and then at the skyline over the forest. A pterodactyl flew over the stalks in the distance, its dark body outlined by gray clouds.

“No,” Abelardus said, pulling his staff off the back of the bike, where he had it wedged amid the grisly dinosaur heads. “I just need a moment to…”

He laid it across his lap and closed his eyes while running a hand absently along the dark metal.

“Stroke your staff?” Mica asked.

The runes on the weapon glowed faintly.

“Is it safe to sit next to him when he’s doing that?” Mica muttered, easing her bike closer to Alisa’s.

“I’m not sure it’s ever safe to sit next to him,” Alisa said.

“I am not the one who injured you last night,” Abelardus said, opening his eyes and frowning at them, and then at Leonidas.

Leonidas’s jaw clenched. Alisa regretted making the joke.

Abelardus pointed his staff at the ground. A soft rumble sounded, and a rectangular portion lifted up under Yumi’s bike. She gasped and steered away from it. The section only lifted a few inches, dripping mud off the edges. Then it slid sideways, revealing an opening about six feet wide by ten feet long. A shaft descended into darkness, and Alisa could not tell if it dropped ten feet or fifty. The faint tinkle of dripping water drifted up from the depths.

Leonidas eased his bike forward so he could look down. “It goes under the lake?” he asked.

“Yes. There may be defenses, so a Starseer should lead.” Abelardus lifted his chin. “I’ll go first and let you know when it’s safe.” He touched his temple. “I know how you all love having my gentle caress in your minds.”

“Gentle caress?” Leonidas asked. “Is that what you call it?”

“I’m less gentle with cyborgs. They have hard brains. Sometimes you have to bash your way in.”

Leonidas growled at him, but extended one gauntleted red hand toward the opening in invitation.

Abelardus nudged his bike forward to hover over the hole, then flicked on the headlight and adjusted the controls so that the vehicle descended slowly. Alisa watched as his head dropped below the level of the entrance, his lamp playing over the interior, damp gray cement streaked with water stains. When he reached the bottom, more than twenty feet down, the lamp shone into a tunnel. He hovered into it, the influence of his headlight dimming as he disappeared from sight.

Alisa waited patiently for almost thirty seconds. Even though Abelardus had not spoken into her mind, she eased her bike over the edge. She was too eager to find this outpost and Jelena to wait. She would take her daughter back with them, where she could run up and down the corridors of the ship, laughing and playing with the chickens. Mother and daughter could once again have vid nights. Did Jelena still like Andromeda Android? Or had she grown out of animated shows? A few more years, and she might be ready to watch some of Alisa’s favorite comedies with her, the less raunchy ones, of course.

I see you couldn’t wait for my gentle caress, Abelardus spoke into her mind.

I don’t like waiting on men.

Isn’t that what you’re doing with your cyborg?

Would you quit bringing him up? And stop making snide comments about him.

Anyone who loses his composure and hits a woman deserves snide comments.

If you’ve been surfing in our thoughts, you know that’s not what happened. And someone who forces his affections on a woman is even worse.

For a moment, he did not speak, and Alisa thought the conversation was over. She descended in mental silence, the sound of dripping water increasing as she neared a pool at the bottom. Then he added, I would never hurt you.

Alisa huffed in irritation. She swore that he didn’t even understand how he had offended her.

She had drawn even with the tunnel and could see Leonidas’s bike pulling over the shaft above her, ready to descend. He probably hadn’t received a gentle caress—or hard bash—either, and was simply coming because he was unwilling to fall behind.

Something dripped onto Alisa’s shoulder, and she eased her bike into the tunnel.

“That better not be dino blood falling on me,” she called back quietly, not sure how much noise they should make. Would the Starseers greet them with open arms—or with weapons? Durant and whoever else was involved in this scheme might not want to give Jelena back.

Leonidas did not respond as his bike descended. Humor, inappropriate and otherwise, did not seem to be on his mind today. Too bad. She would have preferred to make light of the incident.

Abelardus was continuing down the passage, the illumination from his lamp growing dimmer. Alisa sailed after him, trusting Leonidas to make sure nothing happened to Yumi and Mica as they descended.

The tunnel extended under the lake and seemed to go even farther, well into the land beside it. The cement walls were uniform, as drab as everything else on the planet. A trickle of water flowed along the floor of the passage, heading back toward the pool at the bottom of the shaft.

Abelardus stopped at what appeared to be a dead end. A single rune was carved into the wall, the design reminding Alisa of the ones on his staff.

“Doorbell?” she asked.

“A warning that those who aren’t invited will be dealt with mercilessly.”

“Cheery. Are we invited?”

Abelardus hesitated. “We’re not un-invited.”

“You said your brother never responded to your message, didn’t you?”

“Correct.”

“So, all we know is that he was here months ago.” Alisa tamped down her hope that they would find Jelena here. If they did, that would be stellar, but she had to brace herself for the possibility that they would not.

“Also correct.” Abelardus waggled his eyebrows at her. “You’re very good at this. Shall we sign up as partners in a trivia game?”

“No.”

Leonidas, Mica, and Yumi joined them at the end of the tunnel. Abelardus pointed his staff at the wall and closed his eyes. The rune pulsed with a silvery blue glow, and Alisa shifted uneasily, not sure whether that was a welcoming acknowledgment or a warning of impending doom.

Another rumble sounded, and the door opened inward.

Abelardus entered without hesitation. A large chamber waited inside, this one dimly lit by smaller runes that glowed from columns of stone that rose up to a ceiling twenty or thirty feet overhead.

A fortress of sorts rose on the other side of an open space, its stone front wall spanning the chamber and rising up almost as high as the ceiling. A few narrow windows overlooked the area. More runes glowed from the wall, and double doors stood open in the center. Alisa would have taken that as an invitation, but one of them hung crookedly on a broken hinge, and scorch marks marred the surface.

Abelardus parked his bike, hopped off, and ran toward something crumpled on the stone near the doors. Not something. Someone.

He crouched next to the figure, but he or she did not move.

Alisa eyed the glowing runes warily, imagining energy beams leaping forth and incinerating her, but she drove her bike closer to the doors before dismounting. Leonidas, Mica, and Yumi parked next to her.

“She’s dead,” Abelardus said grimly, looking toward them.

Alisa’s gut lurched. Her first thought was that he meant Jelena, but the figure was too large to belong to a child. The body lay sprawled face-down, legs tangled in a black Starseer robe. The woman appeared to have been running toward the doors when something struck her in the back. Leonidas pointed to one of the Starseer staffs lying several meters from her. Whatever had struck the woman must have hit hard if her weapon flew so far.

Thinking of the dinosaurs, Alisa looked around the cavern again, noting the deep shadows behind those support columns. If creatures were down there with them, Abelardus or Leonidas should have detected them, but she couldn’t help but view the place with more concern. Had Jelena been here when this person had been killed? Was she somewhere inside now? Hiding? Afraid? Alisa itched to charge in and look around, but the possible threat of Starseer traps kept her from doing so, for the moment.

Abelardus muttered something that sounded like a prayer or a blessing before rolling the body over. His face was hard to read behind his breathing mask, but his eyes appeared more serious than usual. Maybe it meant more to him when his own people died, or maybe he had known the woman.

Leonidas crouched on the other side of the body from him.

“There are no visible wounds,” he observed.

Abelardus glanced at him in irritation, but did not tell him to go away. “It wasn’t one of the dinosaurs. If it had been, she would have been eaten afterward.”

“A dinosaur wouldn’t have shot up the fortress,” Leonidas said, flicking a hand toward the scorch marks on the doors.

“Nobody shot her though.”

“No,” Leonidas agreed. “Could a mental attack have been responsible?”

“You think one of my people killed her with his mind?” Abelardus sounded incredulous.

That surprised Alisa since she had seen the Starseers crash Alliance ships with their mind powers, and crashes inevitably killed people.

Abelardus frowned at Alisa and spoke into her mind. We do that to defend ourselves and our territory, lest we become targets—which is exactly what happened as soon as the Alliance figured out how to get to our temple on Arkadius. His frown deepened. We wouldn’t attack—kill—defenseless people who were running away from us.

You mean you wouldn’t attack your own people, Alisa retorted silently. I’ve seen Starseers attack Leonidas when he couldn’t fight back. That old man was trying to push him out of that library tower and to his death.

A cyborg isn’t a person.

He’s just as human as you are.

He’s half machine. He’s an aberration. They all are.

Alisa clenched her fist, and her wrist twinged, protesting. And your people aren’t aberrations?

We are superior beings. And we don’t kill each other. Abelardus scowled down at the body for a moment, then stood and strode for the doors.

Though her instinct was to defend Leonidas, Alisa held back on further comments. Abelardus was understandably upset. This wasn’t the time to argue with him, especially since he and the others were here on her behalf.

She followed him toward the open doors, eyeing the way the left one hung free of its top hinge. It looked heavy and like it could fall the rest of the way down any moment.

“Are we leaving our trophies out here?” Mica asked, waving to the bikes.

Yumi wasn’t chancing theft—she had her mushroom collection bag slung over her shoulder.

“You think someone’s going to steal them?” Alisa asked. “It took a Starseer to get us in here.”

“Starseers must not be that rare, because someone else clearly got in here recently.” Mica nodded at the body. “We might be walking into a trap if we go in there.”

“Are you volunteering to stay behind?”

“Not necessarily. Just pointing out that trouble might be waiting for us.”

Alisa sighed. “It usually is.”

She caught up with Abelardus, who had stopped in the doorway to touch the blast marks.

“I don’t think a blazer did this,” he said, glancing at Leonidas.

“It does look less regular and linear than rifle fire,” Leonidas said.

“It could have been an energy blast from a staff,” Abelardus admitted, his voice dropping so low Alisa barely heard it.

“You think your own people attacked a Starseer outpost?”

“I don’t know yet. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Unless they wanted something—or someone—held inside,” Alisa said, Jelena’s face popping into her mind. But her daughter couldn’t be important enough to kill over. That didn’t make any sense. Even if she had two parents with Starseer blood and might be a distant descendant of Alcyone, that couldn’t mean that much, could it?

“This would still be unacceptable,” Abelardus said, his back stiff as he turned toward a courtyard that lay inside. “Even though some of our people supported the Alliance and others supported the empire, we still didn’t kill each other over our differences. We’re civilized.”

He stalked into the courtyard.

Alisa exchanged a look with Leonidas, half-expecting him to make a comment about Abelardus's civility, but he did not. Instead, he said, “I’m reading filtered, breathable air down here.”

“So we can take our masks off?” Yumi scratched around the side of hers. “Mine is making my face sweaty.”

“If you wish. I can let you know if the air gets questionable again.”

Trustingly, Yumi pushed hers up to her forehead. She crinkled her nose, sniffed, then shrugged. “Smells fine.”

When Yumi did not keel over, Alisa pulled her own mask off. The damp, chill air licked at her face, but nothing more inimical happened. Mica scowled at them and pointedly did not touch her mask.

Leonidas and Alisa followed Abelardus into the courtyard where modest one- and two-story stone structures lined the space, their backs formed by the cavern walls. Here, the windows were larger and open to the air rather than being covered with Glastica or forcefields.

Abelardus did not go far before stopping again. Two more bodies lay at the back of the courtyard, sprawled similarly to that of the woman, except the robed figures looked like they had been facing the doors when their deaths had come. Both of them gripped staffs in their hands, as if they had been fighting until the very end.

The uneasy feeling in Alisa’s gut returned when she saw that one of those figures was smaller; it wasn’t an adult. With the face down and the hood partially covering the hair, she could not identify the form as male or female.

While Abelardus examined the adult, Alisa walked toward the smaller figure, dread curdling in her stomach. What if she had come all this way only to find that Jelena had been…

She touched the back of the figure’s head, pushing aside the hood. It was a boy of eleven or twelve, not anyone she recognized. He had died with his face contorted in pain.

Alisa closed her eyes, tears threatening. Who could have done this? And why? And would they find Jelena in here somewhere, in a similar state?

“No,” she mumbled, refusing to believe it.

“This is Donika Glazer,” Abelardus said numbly. “She was a teacher at the Arkadius temple when I was growing up there. Lady Naidoo said she was the headmistress here.”

“There are again no signs of what killed them,” Leonidas said. He, too, had come over to look at the dead boy.

“It looks like they were defending the outpost,” Yumi said, her eyes wide as she joined them.

Mica was walking near the buildings, past doors, some of which had been blown open by energy blasts similar to those that marred the front entrance.

“Lady Donika was powerful with telekinesis,” Abelardus said. “Whoever defeated her in battle must have been a true master.”

“Perhaps she—they—went down to superior numbers?” Alisa pointed, including the boy since he, too, appeared to have been defending his people.

“Superior numbers shouldn’t have known about this place.” Abelardus pushed himself to his feet, glowering around at the buildings and perhaps the silence. Save for the noise their group was making and the distant trickling of water, there was not any sound in the chamber. What if everyone here was dead?

If they did not find anyone alive, Alisa would leave with more questions than she’d had before—and less of an idea of a direction to search.

“You’ve admitted it may have been your own people,” Leonidas said. “If you know about this place, wouldn’t others?”

“Not many. I had to ask Lady Naidoo.” Abelardus strode toward one of the larger buildings, one with a stove vent coming out of the flat roof. A kitchen or mess hall? Or both?

Mica and Yumi were pointing to the crumbling corner of another building, debating whether the damage had been recent or not. Everyone seemed so cool and analytical. Alisa wanted to frantically race around, hunting for Jelena, but for some reason, her feet seemed rooted to the ground. Maybe because deep down, she was terrified that her optimism would be wrong, that Jelena would still be here, and that Alisa would find her among the dead. The idea of stumbling across her in one of these robes, her small body frozen in death, left alone on some uncaring stone floor…

She noticed herself breathing too quickly and tried to slow it down. She couldn’t lose it. She didn’t even know if Jelena was here yet. Calm. Analytical. She could be those things.

“How long do you think they’ve been dead?” she asked Leonidas, her voice almost sounding normal to her own ears as she tried to ask a useful question. A calm, analytical one. She wasn’t going to turn into a frantic mess.

She gazed around as he finished his examination before answering, and considered where to look when she managed to unroot her feet. There was a two-story structure that had the look of a barracks. It stood on the opposite side of the courtyard from the building Abelardus had entered.

“Three days,” Leonidas said.

Three days. That was it?

She closed her eyes. If the Star Nomad hadn’t diverted to get that staff, the ship would have arrived here more than three days ago. They might have been in time to talk to these people, even to help them.

“Alisa?” Leonidas touched her arm. “Are you all right?”

“No.” She smiled, trying to make it a joke. Even if it wasn’t. “Will you search with me?” She nodded to the barracks. She didn’t want to explain that she had to look but was afraid to, that she didn’t want to be alone if she found…

“Of course.”

With him walking by her side, they headed for the barracks. Unlike with some of the other buildings, the door was shut. The cellulose planks held an old-fashioned knob—nothing in this place had a modern look to it. If there were cleaning robots or computerized facilities, Alisa hadn’t seen sign of them yet.

Leonidas stepped in front of her to try the knob first. It turned, and he poked his head inside. Despite telling everyone that the air was breathable, he hadn’t removed his helmet yet. Did he expect a fight? That whoever had done this remained somewhere inside the buildings?

Alisa would have welcomed a fight, a way to let out the tense energy coiled in her body.

She followed Leonidas into a foyer with a desk and chair beside the door. The room flowed into a hallway that bisected the ground floor. She eased past Leonidas, who paused to poke into desk drawers, and stuck her head around the corner. Several doors opened to either side in both directions, reinforcing her notion that this was a barracks. Perhaps where young students lived? Or had lived?

Terrified she would find bodies—and praying that she would not—Alisa headed left and started opening doors. Leonidas came behind her, sticking close. His presence reassured her, for more reasons than one.

The first room did not appear to have been lived in—there was no bedding or mattress on the simple bunk. Whoever its occupant had been, he or she was gone. The second room, also devoid of life, held an unmade bed with a boy’s clothes rumpled and left on the floor, along with a smaller version of Abelardus's staff. In the third room, the bed was made, but a bag sat on the blankets, half-packed with a pair of turquoise pants with yellow flowers on them hanging out. The first sign of a girl that Alisa had seen. She did not think Jelena would have willingly worn anything with yellow flowers on it—she had the same tomboy tendencies that Alisa had possessed as a child and shied away from “girly” clothing—but she would come back and check further if nothing else was a match.

The next room was tidy, with the blankets smoothed and tucked under the mattress at the corners, and a desk and nightstand free of clutter. A dresser stood along one wall with the drawers open and empty. Whoever had been packing must have had time to finish, because there weren’t any abandoned bags. Alisa was about to head to the next room, but Leonidas brushed past her in the doorway and strode inside, stopping at something on the floor. A block or a piece of a toy. Alisa left him to examine it, certain that the precisely tidied bed had not belonged to Jelena. It had always taken bribes to get her to clean her room.

She paused after she opened the next door, resting her hand on the jamb for support before she fully registered the contents. She knew right away. This was it.

The bed was unmade, the dresser drawers had been removed and stacked creatively with a sheet over them to make a fort, and a purple Speckles the Cat jacket dangled from one bedpost. Cups and candy wrappers cluttered the nightstand. Alisa would have smiled at this proof that whatever these Starseers might have been doing, they hadn’t been keeping the kids chained to their bunks and denying them any semblance of a childhood, but the realization that she was too late kept her feelings somber. And disappointed.

She tried to encourage herself, to feel positive instead of defeated. Finding an empty room was better than finding one with a body in it.

Still, her legs were numb as she walked inside, picked up the jacket to take with her, and checked the nightstand. Among the clutter lay a colorful embroidery thread bracelet braided with stars running down the middle. It was dusty and faded, but familiar. Alisa reached out to touch it. Her daughter had been wearing this the last time she had been home on leave. A babysitter in the building had taught Jelena to make them when she had been five or six. At one time, there had been dozens of similar bracelets lying around the flat, and Alisa had even worn an ankle version that Jelena had made one winter. She had done so until the aged threads frayed, and it had fallen off.

She picked up the bracelet, her fingers trembling. This one looked as if it had suffered the same fate, the ends too frayed to hold a knot anymore. Perhaps it had been too treasured to throw away. Jelena had never wanted to throw away anything. She’d kept a trunk full of old toys in her room, refusing to give them away even though she was “too grown-up to play with them.”

“He was here,” Leonidas said from the door.

“He?” Alisa asked, puzzled as she turned, the bracelet in her hand, her fingers stroking it. “Did you mean she? Jelena was here.” She held up her find.

“Was she? That’s good.” He had finally taken his helmet off, and his expression grew slightly bemused when he looked at the fort. “We’re close. And there aren’t any bodies, at least not in here.” Relief replaced the bemusement; he must have been thinking along the same lines as she.

He walked into the room and touched her arm before holding out his hand. A gray block meant to interlock with other blocks stood out against the red of his gauntleted palm.

“This was Thorian’s,” he said.

“Thorian? The prince?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure? I’ve seen those before. Zizblocks, right? They’re ubiquitous toys on Perun.”

“But we’re not on Perun,” Leonidas said. “I know for a fact that Thorian had a bag full of them when he was escaping from—after his parents died on that asteroid.”

“How would you know that?” Alisa asked, though she had already determined that Leonidas had knowledge of the prince’s whereabouts. That was why the Alliance wanted him so badly.

“I was there. I helped him escape.” He closed his fingers around the block. “We made a space station together out of these.”

“Did you deliver him to the Starseers?”

“Yes. At his father’s request, we took him to Dustor. I don’t know what happened afterward, if these are some of the Starseers we met there or if Durant also kidnapped Thorian.”

“Who’s we?”

“The pilot who flew our craft and me.” Leonidas’s expression grew even grimmer than usual. “He didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s a reason I would like for you to have combat armor.” Leonidas shook his head and looked at the block again. “Once we arrived on Dustor, I took Thorian to specific coordinates in the middle of the desert and handed him off to a group of Starseers who met us. They were supposed to be relatives of his, people who would train him so that one day he would have the power—and hopefully the wisdom—to lead armies, if necessary, to retake the empire.”

Alisa grimaced, not wanting to imagine the system with another version of the empire in control. She kept the thought to herself. From the way Leonidas was fixated on that block, the boy meant something to him, more than simply some last mission he had undertaken. Maybe they had bonded over that space station. Alisa had no trouble understanding caring about children and wanting to protect them. Even if the idea of some heir of Emperor Markus returning to lead armies chilled her, she couldn’t feel any negative feelings toward a ten-year-old boy she had never met.

“Do you think they escaped?” she asked, picturing the dead people outside. Had they been buying time so the rest of the outpost could get away from their assailants? “Or do you think they were captured?”

“All of the rooms I checked are empty, but it looks like the occupants had some warning and were told to pack quickly. They may have had time to flee, especially if those out front were delaying their enemies, but it’s also possible that they were overrun before they could get out. I don’t know where they would have gone to escape, unless there’s a back door out of here. I haven’t noticed cameras in the barracks or out in the courtyard, so we may not be able to find out unless Abelardus finds someone still here who we can question.”

Alisa suspected Abelardus would have known if someone was alive here and would have already said something.

“Enemies. Who would be foolish enough to make enemies of Starseers? Besides cyborgs?” She tried a smile, but it wasn’t heartfelt. She was worried all over again for Jelena’s safety.

“At one time, we were all enemies of the Starseers,” Leonidas said. “Back when they were trying to take over the system.”

“Centuries ago. I’m talking about modern times. Today.”

“I don’t know. Cyborgs couldn’t have killed those people without leaving a mark. Other Starseers could have, as Abelardus already pointed out.”

“Actually, he was pointing out the reasons why that couldn’t have happened.”

“I believe he was trying to convince himself. But the Starseers themselves admitted there were different factions among them, people with different agendas.”

Alisa gazed down at the bracelet in her hand. “I don’t want Jelena in the middle of Starseer politics. This isn’t our realm. We never asked to be a part of this, of any of this.” Her throat tightened, fear and frustration and worry all combining to make her want to cry again. She blinked back the tears. There was a mystery to solve. This wasn’t the time to collapse. If Jelena had been here three days ago, she might still be nearby.

But she could have also been taken from Cleon Moon by now. And how would Alisa track her if that was the case?

Some of her bleak thoughts must have shown on her face, or maybe Leonidas was thinking bleak thoughts of his own concerning Thorian, because he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, feeling the need for outside strength. She wished he were in clothing instead of that unyielding armor, but she was still glad he was here with her, that she had someone who understood. She slid her hand up behind his head to thread her fingers through his hair—at least that part of him wasn’t covered in armor. She stroked the side of his head with her thumb, thinking of hugging him or kissing him, or both.

He stepped back, lowering his arm. “Forgive me,” he murmured, “but I think it would be better if we didn’t… didn’t.”

“What?” She frowned at him, feeling rejected. All she had been doing was appreciating his presence and taking comfort from it. It wasn’t as if she had been thinking of shoving him up against the wall and kissing him senseless.

“Last night…” His gaze shifted to an empty spot on the wall. “I thought perhaps we could find a way, that there might be hope that I could live a normal life one day, fall in love, have a family.” He met her eyes, his own squinting in a pained expression. “But Abelardus is right. I’m dangerous even when I don’t intend to be. It’s not fair to ask that you—”

“Abelardus?” Alisa closed a fist around the bracelet. “Who in the hells asked Abelardus what he thinks about us?”

“Nobody, but it’s hard to ignore him when he’s talking into your head.”

“Well, tell him you’ll shove his head up his ass if he doesn’t stay out of yours. Or just ignore him. It’s simple.”

“It’s hard to ignore someone who’s right.”

“He’s not right.” Alisa stepped toward him, lifting a hand toward his face, wanting to touch him. “Look, I made a mistake, all right? Not you. It’s not like I haven’t heard you in there at night, thumping on the walls. I should have left when you dozed off. I knew I should have. But I didn’t because I wanted—” She paused. If she told him what she wanted, and he knew it couldn’t be, that would only make him feel worse. “It was my choice. And I won’t do it again, not until we can find a solution.”

“What solution? I’ve been having nightmares for twenty years. Even if I find Admiral Tiang and convince him to fix my other impediments, what kind of fix can there be for that?”

“You won’t know until you ask. Have you ever asked? A neuroscientist or whoever specializes in brain chemistry? Hells, Yumi might even know something about that topic. Have you asked her?” Alisa knew he hadn’t, because he didn’t like to admit his weaknesses to anyone. He didn’t even like admitting them to her, even if she had figured them out on her own.

“I’ve seen too much, done too much.” Leonidas looked down at the block he still held. “This is the punishment for all those I’ve killed. It seems fitting. If there was no price to be paid for killing, it would be easier, wouldn’t it? It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“Leonidas, nightmares aren’t the gods’ way of punishing you. They’re just…” Alisa groped for an argument, but she was no expert. She had no idea if someone tinkering with his brain could fix his problem or not. “Look, even if there’s not a solution, that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. More than friends. So what if we sleep in separate cabins? Lots of married people don’t share the same bedroom. I mean, what if you snore? I wouldn’t want to sleep with you then anyway. I don’t care how nice your muscles are to snuggle with.” She smiled, wanting to make him laugh, wanting him to stop taking this so seriously. She knew he felt guilty over the wrist, but that truly had been her fault.

“So I’ll be the troll that must stay locked inside of his room, so he can’t hurt anyone.” His mouth twisted and he backed toward the door. “If you need me for anything, I’ll always help, but I was mistaken to think that this—us—could work. I’m sorry. You deserve someone who you can share a bed with in all senses of the term, and where you don’t need to worry about being hurt if you accidentally fall asleep in his arms.”

“Leonidas—”

“It could have been worse, Alisa,” he said, looking toward her wrist, his eyes even more haunted than usual. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “I have enough reasons for nightmares without adding another one.”

He walked out without giving her a chance to respond.

Chapter 10

Alisa wanted to jab daggers into Abelardus's eyes when she found him in a building that looked to have been a mix between a schoolroom and a gymnasium, with desks around the perimeter and mats in the middle. Seeing two more bodies on those mats diffused some of her anger, reminding her that the people here had suffered far more than she, but she childishly wanted to clobber him for whatever he had whispered into Leonidas’s mind.

Abelardus was sitting at the instructor’s desk and concentrating on a holodisplay hovering over a netdisc. He only glanced up briefly when she entered the room.

“Find a clue?” Alisa asked, eyeing the bodies as she walked toward him. They belonged to another woman and a young man, both in black Starseer robes.

“I found Durant’s room and his netdisc. I guessed his password, and I’m looking around at his files.”

“Was he… in his room?” Alisa assumed that all of the living people were gone, but it was possible Abelardus's brother had been among those who had died defending the outpost.

“I didn’t see his body, no. It looked like he left in a hurry.” He waved to the netdisc, something most people would have packed if they hadn’t been rushed. “All of the staff rooms were like that.”

“So were the children’s rooms.”

He looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time. “You found where your daughter was?” He looked toward her pocket, the one where she had tucked the bracelet.

“Why do you ask questions if you’re just going to dig into my thoughts and find the answers for yourself?”

“That’s not always my intent. But I have trouble with patience. I’m glad I could at least lead you to the place where she was being held.” He shifted his attention to the holodisplay. “I hope I can find out where they went as well. But there’s something disturbing here.”

“Your brother’s porn collection?” Alisa asked, then immediately felt bad for making jokes as she glanced again at the fallen. She was irritated with Abelardus and irritated with his brother too. Leonidas shouldn’t be distancing himself from her, and Jelena shouldn’t be in trouble.

“No, that’s not disturbing. He has fairly pedestrian tastes.”

“Glad to hear it,” she muttered.

“I’m looking at his inbox, and my messages never reached him. He doesn’t have any messages at all from off-world, not for the last three months.”

“Could he have deleted them?”

“It doesn’t look like he deletes anything—there are dozens of junk messages inviting him to bet on the dinosaur hunts and the bike races in Terra Jhero.”

“Maybe he’s more interested in doing that than in talking to you.”

Abelardus chewed on his lip instead of rising to the bait. “I’m not a computer expert by any means, but I wonder if it’s possible that someone was interfering with this outpost’s ability to receive messages from the other Starseer outposts and temples. Or maybe keeping them from receiving messages from anywhere outside of Cleon Moon.”

“Wouldn’t someone have to know this outpost was here to interfere with it?”

“Clearly someone did.” Abelardus waved his hand toward the bodies and scowled. “I wish I could see the netdiscs of some of the others, but I haven’t seen any more lying around. Even if they were here, I wouldn’t likely be able to guess the passwords. Not everyone uses the name of their first pet snake for their entire grownup life.”

“Is Durant younger than you?” Alisa asked, getting that feeling, though she had previously assumed he might be older. It seemed like someone involved with nefarious plots should be out of his twenties.

“Yes. In addition to the lack of personal netdiscs, there aren’t any other computers here I can check. I already looked. They kept it simple down here. There’s an environmental control station that filters the air and provides some lighting in the buildings, but that’s it. Even though this is technically a listening outpost for Cleon Moon, and reports back to our main temples, the true point of this place is to practice one’s skills without interruptions.”

Alisa’s comm beeped, and she jumped. The fortress was so quiet and isolated that she had forgotten about the outside world.

“Captain Marchenko,” she answered, assuming it would be Beck.

“Someone’s trying to get into the ship,” Alejandro blurted.

“Is the Starseer back?” Alisa found that notion far more alarming than she had when Beck had originally mentioned a robed visitor. What if whoever had come knocking was one of the people who had attacked the outpost?

“They’re overriding the lock,” Alejandro said. “I have to hide. Damn it, they’ll find it in that cubby.”

“It? The staff?”

“Of course the staff. What else would I be worried about?”

Alisa glanced at the bodies. “Is it Starseers again? And is Beck there?”

“No, I already tried comming him. He’s not answering. Get Leonidas and hurry back, Captain. These people are breaking into your ship. They—” The words halted.

Alisa frowned at the abrupt end. Alejandro hadn’t simply stopped talking; he had closed the transmission.

She tried comming him back. He did not answer. She walked toward the courtyard as she tried getting ahold of Beck. She got an automated reply.

“Leonidas, Mica, Yumi,” she called, leaning out the door of the gym. “Come join me in the courtyard. We need to get back to the ship.”

“Wait.” Abelardus slid out from behind the desk, pocketing his brother’s netdisc. “Call them in here.”

“There’s no time for more looking around,” Alisa said.

“Before I got distracted with Durant’s files, I noticed this.” He jogged over to one corner and pointed to something on the edge of one of the mats.

Worried about Alejandro, Beck, and her ship, Alisa did not want to take the time to go look, but it would probably take the others a moment to appear. She ran to the corner. “What is it?”

“Blood.” He pointed to a dark smudge on the edge of a tan mat.

“So? This is a gymnasium, isn’t it?”

“For training Starseer skills, not for pummeling each other. Also, I sense an opening down below.” Abelardus waved her back so he could bend and lift the mat.

She was about to point out the times she had seen him hurling Leonidas against the walls, but stopped when something came into view on the floor under the mat.

“Is that a door?” she asked.

“A trapdoor. A big one.” Abelardus shoved the mat away, revealing a square in the floor, one with several hinges. “We could ride our bikes through here if we had to. Or if there was a reason to.”

He pointed to another smear of dried blood, then lifted the handle, unfolding the trapdoor in segments.

Leonidas strode into the room with Mica and Yumi behind him.

“Trouble at the ship,” Alisa said. “The doc said someone’s breaking in, and he’s the only one inside. I can’t reach Beck.”

“Shit, someone could get the staff?” Abelardus asked. He must not have been paying attention to Alejandro’s transmission.

“Among other things.” Alisa had no love for Alejandro, but she didn’t want to see him end up dead, like the people here.

“We’re heading back then?” Leonidas jerked his thumb in the direction of the courtyard.

“Bring the bikes in here,” Abelardus said. “If they went this way, we’ll want to follow them. There’s a tunnel leading away from here.”

“Someone needs to get back to the ship,” Alisa said, though she badly wanted to jump through that trapdoor. What if Jelena and the others were hiding in some subterranean encampment somewhere? What if they were only a short distance away?

“Isn’t that why you have a cyborg?” Abelardus pointed at Leonidas. “If anyone is going to stop a Starseer from taking that staff, it’s him.”

“Not you?” Mica asked.

Abelardus shrugged. “I can go, but I care more about finding my brother and Alisa’s daughter than that staff at the moment.”

Alisa stared at him in surprise. Was that true? He had wanted the staff as badly as Alejandro when they had been flying into that quarantined zone. Maybe he was telling her what he thought she wanted to hear.

Or maybe I’m not a total ass and I care about my brother. Abelardus arched his eyebrows at her. Send the mech. He’s better in a fight than I am. It’s what he was built for.

Though annoyed that he was giving her orders, and that he might also be trying to manipulate her with more than words, she had to admit that he was right. In this case, splitting up the party made sense.

She turned to Leonidas, but he was already nodding. “I’ll go.”

Alisa opened her mouth, feeling she should thank him and warn him to be careful, but she was still stung over his rejection, and the words froze on her tongue.

He turned away, his professional facade locked onto his face.

“Are we going with him or staying with the captain?” Yumi asked Mica as Leonidas disappeared out the door.

“Are those our only options?” Mica asked. “Jumping into a tunnel that could take us into the depths of one of the hells or heading back through that dinosaur-infested swamp?”

“Well, we could stay here, but this place isn’t very cheery.”

“And it lacks mushrooms.”

“It does.”

“Come on.” Alisa waved them toward the trapdoor. Even though Mica could be handy in a fight, she and Yumi would only slow Leonidas down in the swamps. He would worry about keeping an eye on them. “I’m sure this tunnel leads somewhere besides a hell.”

“Given all the bad things that keep happening to you, I’m not sure how you can keep spouting such optimism,” Mica said.

“It’s logic, not optimism. The people fleeing the intruders went that way. Presumably, they had a reason.”

“Are you sure anyone went that way?” Mica arched an eyebrow as she eyed the dark passage.

Alisa thought about pointing out the blood, but that might not be reassuring. “We’ll find out.”

Abelardus hopped down into the hole, and he soon spoke from the dark bottom, about ten feet down. “There’s a door down here that I have to open. Guarded with runes. Get the bikes, will you? We don’t know how far they had to travel. If they were on foot, and the tunnel was taking them to one of the more distant cities or another hideout, it’s possible we can catch them.”

Even though Alisa felt guilty about leaving Alejandro to his fate, the prospect of catching up with Jelena gave her energy, and she raced out to the courtyard to do as Abelardus requested. She touched her pocket as she ran.

“I’m coming, Jelena,” she whispered. “I’m finally coming.”

• • • • •

The tunnel was different from the one they had used to enter the underground compound. Carved out of the native rock, the rough and uneven walls stretched away into blackness. As soon as the group passed through the doorway Abelardus had opened, they had to put their masks back on, for the air grew noticeably foul. The only light came from the lamps on their bikes, the only sound from the soft hiss of the hover technology.

“I hope we’re not going in the opposite direction from the city,” Mica said, riding beside Alisa.

“Are you worried that dastardly things are happening to our ship?” Alisa asked, because she definitely was.

The tunnel offered room for two bikes to float side by side, at least for the women. Abelardus and his broader shoulders rode alone, leading the way, his staff jammed onto the back along with those odious dinosaur heads. Yumi, floating after Abelardus, appeared small behind him. Sometimes, Alisa forgot that he was a big, muscular man, since Leonidas made everyone appear slight in comparison.

“I’m worried that grubby Starseers are flinging things around in my engine room,” Mica said. “I’ve finally gotten everything organized and cleaned in there. I don’t want to come back to a mess.”

“Your concern for Alejandro is touching,” Alisa said.

“Alejandro is a persistent rash on our asses. I wouldn’t cry if he and his staff disappeared.”

Abelardus frowned back at them. Surprisingly, Yumi did too.

“So long as the people who make them disappear don’t make a mess in engineering?” Alisa asked.

“Precisely.”

“Beck may be missing too,” Alisa said. “Wouldn’t you be upset if you didn’t have anyone to exercise with?”

Mica looked sharply at her. “You think him not answering his comm has something to do with the Starseers knocking on the cargo hatch?”

“We don’t know for sure.” Alisa had tried again to comm Beck once they had settled into their ride, but still had not received a response.

“He’s probably busy trying to impress that chef with his jars of sauce.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is.”

“Or he managed to offend another mafia outfit, and he’s being strung up by his nails for torture as we speak.”

Yumi frowned back again, this time specifically at Mica.

“You’re full of cheery thoughts today,” Alisa said.

“It’s hard to be cheerful when you’re riding behind a bike loaded down with dinosaur heads. Three suns, Abelardus, couldn’t you have put a bag over those? That one’s leering at me.”

I hear something, Abelardus spoke into Alisa’s mind. Maybe he spoke into all of their minds, because Mica stopped talking.

A faint rumble came from somewhere ahead of them. Abelardus kept flying, but he held onto the handlebars with one hand and pulled out his staff with the other.

The tunnel widened, and the ceiling grew higher, with old, rusty excavating equipment abandoned to the sides. Alisa hoped that meant they were nearing the exit.

The rumble came again, sounding like it came from something mechanical rather than animal. They had been attacked by robots and automated combat machines before, so Alisa would not assume they were safe. She looked toward the dusty pumps and carts near the tunnel walls, wondering if the noise had to do with excavation, but that equipment did not look like it had been used for decades—or centuries.

The noise increased in volume until it seemed to come from directly overhead, from above the ceiling, which now rose some twenty feet above them. The tunnel trembled, and dirt and small pieces of stone tumbled down.

“Ouch,” Mica said, grabbing her shoulder.

Abelardus slowed his bike to a stop. Alisa frowned. Her instinct was to go faster, to get away from the raining pebbles.

“Do you know what that is, Abelardus?” she asked over the noise, noticing a lot of stone on the floor of this section of the tunnel, stone that had been there before this batch started falling.

“Yes.” Instead of expounding, he slid off his bike, leaned his staff against it, and bent to pick up something half-buried by the rocks. “Stonetart,” he said, holding up the brown seed-pocked core of the fruit. “From the gardens in the city. It hasn’t decomposed yet. Someone cast this aside recently.” He met Alisa’s eyes. “Our people came this way.”

“Good, but maybe we should keep moving.” She waved at the ceiling. The trembling had ceased, the noise fading, but that did not lessen her concern. It was as if a spaceship had flown low to the ground overhead. Someone looking for them? If so, would they be back?

“We should, but—”

Abelardus spun toward the dark passage ahead and dropped the core.

“Get back.” He snatched his staff. “More dinosaurs. Two of them.”

Alisa cursed and drew her Etcher. She debated on whether to stay aboard the bike or to park it in the tunnel ahead of them to get in the way of attackers. With the passage wider now, it wouldn’t be much of an obstacle, but the passage still wasn’t wide enough that she would be able to maneuver well on a bike.

“I knew it,” Mica growled and hopped off her bike. She dug into her satchel. “I knew we’d encounter hells down here, of one kind or another.”

Yumi, who did not have a weapon save for the laser knife she had been using to cut mushrooms, backed her bike out of the way. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Alisa parked her bike in front of Yumi and Mica, and crouched behind it, her weapon ready.

“Don’t get eaten by a monster,” Alisa said.

“Just stay back there,” Abelardus called over his shoulder. He had abandoned his bike and waited in front of it in a fighting stance, his staff gripped in both hands as he faced the passage ahead of them.

A roar came from the depths, and Alisa imagined the T-rexes. Could they fit down here? She eyed the ceiling. Maybe they would get stuck.

The first one came into view—her guess had been correct—as the rumbling from above increased in intensity again. The creature’s head nearly brushed the ceiling, but that did not keep it from advancing.

The walls shivered, more dirt and pebbles pelting down.

Alisa pointed her Etcher above Abelardus, toward the shadowy head of the dinosaur. She hoped the noise and the rain of rocks might scare it away, but it kept coming, its beady black eyes seeming to light with pleasure—or hunger—when it spotted Abelardus. It roared, drowning out the rumbles from above, and picked up speed, running on its two powerful hind legs. A second identical dinosaur stomped into view behind it.

Taking careful aim, Alisa fired at the lead creature’s left eye. Her bullet hit, but before she could tell if it had found its target, the massive dinosaur stumbled backward, as if hit by a battering ram—or Abelardus's power. He was pointing the tip of his staff toward it, and the runes glowed, shedding silvery light on the passage.

Even though the first dinosaur stumbled, the blow did nothing to affect the second one. It lunged past the leader, springing for Abelardus. Alisa fired again, trying to find one of those eyes with a bullet.

Mica came up behind Alisa and threw something. One of her grenades.

“Careful, Abelardus,” Alisa shouted.

What she meant to say was that he should lower his barrier, if he had erected one, so the grenade could go through. But there wasn’t time. The first dinosaur had not paused at all when Alisa shot. It reached Abelardus, and its head dove down, a maw full of long fangs snapping toward him.

He leaped to the side, but twisted in the air, thwacking his scaled attacker in the head with his staff. The dinosaur’s head was massive, and it seemed like it should have shaken off the blow from the slender weapon, but lightning crackled from the tip and danced over its scales. It reared back before reaching Abelardus and bellowed in pain.

Mica’s grenade toppled end over end, soaring past the first dinosaur and exploding near the shoulder of the second. That one had recovered from Abelardus's first attack, but the power of the explosion hurled it against the side of the tunnel so hard that more dirt rained down in clumps. The tiny projectiles pelted the dinosaurs in the head—and Abelardus too. He backed up, readying his staff for another attack.

But the dinosaur that he’d struck with lightning was shaking its head wildly instead of lunging for him. It paused, catching its breath and surveying the humans. Abruptly, it roared and sprang.

Abelardus crouched, ready to dodge, but he wasn’t the target. The dinosaur crashed through the parked bikes. At first, it seemed like it wanted to run down the tunnel away from Abelardus and his staff, and Alisa backed to the side, happy to let it go by. But it stopped when it knocked her bike over. It roared as it landed between Alisa and Mica.

Alisa fired at the side of its head as she scooted back until her shoulder blades bumped the side of the tunnel, and she could go no further.

Even though she pegged the creature in its small ear hole, it did not turn toward her. That head lunged downward and forward—right at Yumi.

Yumi yelped in surprise—and terror—and sprang backward as those huge jaws snapped, inches from her face. As she scrambled away, she bumped her parked bike and went down, flat on her back.

Mica screamed and leaped for the dinosaur as it lunged again for Yumi. Alisa fired again, but the bullet bounced off the scaled neck, doing no damage.

“Abelardus,” she cried, though she could see him fighting with the other creature.

Mica wrapped an arm around the dinosaur’s neck, and when it opened its slavering maw to snap at Yumi again, she jammed one of her grenades into its mouth. No, right down its throat. The fanged jaw clacked shut, and Mica yelled. Had her arm been caught?

Shouting to try and draw the monster’s attention—and get one of those vulnerable eyes to turn in her direction—Alisa rammed a side kick into the side of its leg. She doubted the blow would do anything to the sturdy joint, but her bullets weren’t doing anything either.

A masculine yell came from behind the dinosaur, and Alisa spun away in time to see Abelardus straddling the creature’s thick tail, his staff raised over his head. He slammed it down onto the dinosaur’s back, lightning coursing from the weapon again.

Abelardus did not seem to be aware of the second dinosaur behind him—or maybe he had deliberately turned his back on it to help the women. It had recovered from Mica’s explosive, and it was charging at him. Its jaw opened wide, long sharp fangs diving toward Abelardus's back.

Thanks to the illumination cast from the lightning, Alisa finally had a good target—and the light needed to hit it. She fired, the bullet striking one of those black beady eyes. She prepared to shoot again, but the second of Mica’s grenades went off, the one she had shoved down the closer dinosaur’s throat.

Moist, rubbery flesh spattered against the side of Alisa’s face as the creature’s tail lurched to the side. It flung Abelardus backward and slammed into her waist, sending her into the wall. She stumbled, catching herself before she went down. More gunk splattered onto her head. Heaving aside thoughts of disgust, Alisa forced herself to brace her shoulder against the wall and prepare to fire again.

But stillness had come to the passage, broken only by the sickly sound of moist pieces of dinosaur falling from the ceiling, where it had spattered when the grenade went off. A piece dropped squarely onto Alisa’s nose. Her stomach twisted, threatening to heave its contents. Remembering the mask still affixed to her mouth and nose, she forced herself to take deep breaths. She did not want to risk dislodging it—or having to hold her air while she tried to clean it out.

While she breathed, trying to squash her queasiness, she looked from dinosaur to dinosaur to make sure the threat truly was gone. Both of the creatures had tumbled to the ground. One was obviously no longer a threat, its head blown halfway off from the inside—the grenade must have gone off just before it could gag that canister up.

The second dinosaur had fallen behind the first, landing with its chin on the tail of its cohort. Abelardus had regained his feet and had his staff pointed at the creature, but it was not moving. Blood trickled from one shattered eyeball. The other eye was frozen open, staring straight ahead.

That was your bullet that killed it, Abelardus spoke into Alisa’s mind, looking away from the dinosaur and lowering his staff. Thank you.

Does that mean I have to carry the head back on my bike?

If you want the prize. There’s not any room left on mine.

Alisa moved toward the front of the other dinosaur to check on the others.

“Yumi?” Mica asked, doing the same thing. She stepped over the remains of the head to where Yumi sat, one hand clutching her chest. “Are you all right?”

“Are you all right, Mica?” Alisa asked. “I saw you stick your arm in that thing’s mouth. I thought you were going to lose it.”

“Me too. I yanked it out in time. Just nicked a tooth.” Mica held up her arm, the sleeve shredded, revealing a bloody gouge in the skin underneath.

“That’s a nick?”

“Considering I thought I might lose the whole limb, it’s an impressively small wound.”

“You always imagine the worst, don’t you?”

“As I’m sticking my arm in a Tyrannosaurus rex’s mouth? Yes, I do.”

Mica lowered her uninjured arm to Yumi, her hand extended. Yumi stared at it for a moment, as if she did not understand what it was for. Maybe she was in shock. Yumi wasn’t their most experienced combatant.

Finally, Yumi clasped it and let Mica haul her to her feet. She wobbled, and Mica offered her shoulder for support.

“Thank you, Mica,” Yumi said, still appearing stunned as she looked at her. “I didn’t think… I mean, I wasn’t expecting you to…”

“Be stupid enough to stick my hand down a dinosaur’s throat?” Mica asked. “I wasn’t expecting that either. I had to run risk-benefit analyses at the university, you know. That one didn’t look to come out in my favor.”

“You risked your life to save mine,” Yumi said. “I thought I was dead.”

“Did you? That’s called being a pessimist. It means being able to be delighted when things turn out better than you expected. Are you delighted?”

“I—yes.”

“Good.” Mica squeezed her arm and released her, heading toward her bike.

Yumi wore a bemused expression as she watched her go.

“Who’s going to help me cut off that dinosaur head?” Alisa asked, looking toward Abelardus, wondering if he had a tool that might be up to the task. She had a laser knife on her multitool, but imagined it would take forever to slice through that thick neck—and she imagined herself throwing up as she tried to do it. Growing up on a spaceship hadn’t involved a lot of hunting—or beheading of giant monsters.

Abelardus held up his staff. “The cyborg did the other ones. He doesn’t mind getting blood on his armor. My robe is somewhat less impervious.”

“I’ll help you,” Yumi said, surprising Alisa. She picked her way past the mutilated dinosaur, her hand shaking only slightly as she pulled out her own laser knife.

That tool wasn’t much more powerful than the one Alisa had, but at least the task should go more quickly with two of them working on it.

“Abelardus, will you stand guard and let us know if more trouble comes?” Alisa asked, glancing toward the dark tunnel.

She doubted it was wise to stay here, especially since she could still hear that rumbling, though faint now. But she remembered Leonidas’s words, that another head might be enough to buy her that combat armor. She could hack into some dino guts for a chance to be safer, especially given how dangerous her life had become. She grimaced and flicked some of the bloody spatters off her jacket.

“I will gladly accede to your wishes, my captain,” Abelardus said.

“Thanks.” Alisa kept from rolling her eyes. After all, he had leaped back to help her and the others.

Alisa and Yumi knelt on either side of the dinosaur’s neck, laser blades extended, each debating how to go about the task. Yumi was the first one to dig in. Maybe she imagined it like a giant mushroom stalk.

“Thanks for the help,” Alisa said as she cut from the other side.

“You’re welcome.” Yumi glanced at Mica a few times as she worked.

Mica had righted the rest of the bikes and was fiddling with one of them that had a fresh dent in the engine casing. Alisa hoped the insurance that Abelardus had been forced to take out covered dinosaurs.

“I owe her my life,” Yumi whispered.

“Just give her a kiss,” Alisa said, concentrating on her task. “She’ll be tickled.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

If Mica hadn’t explained her interests, Alisa wasn’t going to do it for her. Maybe Mica had figured out Yumi was more interested in men and had shied away from mentioning anything. Though Alisa hadn’t seen Yumi show any blatant leanings one way or another, at least not with anyone onboard the Nomad. An admittedly small sample size.

“I wouldn’t have expected her to,” Yumi said. “She seems very…”

“Grumpy?”

“Self-centered. She’s always talking about leaving and finding a better job. She doesn’t seem to realize what an amazing life experience this is.”

Alisa raised an eyebrow, more at the idea that riding along on her ship was an amazing life experience than at the notion that Mica was self-centered. She wasn’t sure if she had room to talk in regard to the latter. She kept resenting all of the diversions that kept her from catching up with Jelena. That damned staff—and all that could be done with it—was surely more important on the grand scale than she and her daughter were, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about it as much.

“She’s also grumpy,” Yumi added with a smile.

“It’s hard being an engineer. You’re stuck down in your box, not knowing what interesting and exciting things your pilot is doing.”

Yumi smiled as she sawed through her half of the neck, the laser blade making short work of the vertebrae. Alisa hurried to catch up—that rumbling noise was increasing again, and the floor vibrated beneath her knees.

“Also, she’s like me,” Alisa added. “Not always good at expressing her feelings. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have them, or that she doesn’t care.”

“Is there a bounty on half-exploded dinosaur heads?” Mica asked, nudging the other creature with her boot.

“I don’t think so,” Abelardus said.

“Damn.”

Yumi raised her eyebrows.

“It’s deep down that she cares,” Alisa whispered. “You might have to take a crowbar and pry it out from under the bitter, jaded surface.”

“I see,” Yumi said, smiling.

They finished with the head and loaded it onto Abelardus's bike. Despite his earlier protest, it did, indeed, fit with the others.

“I get to haul your cargo?” he asked.

“You’re the only one with flex-cords,” Alisa said. “Besides, I believe you’re delighted to accede to your captain’s wishes, right?”

“I said I was glad to accede, not that I was delighted.”

“Details, details.”

The rumbling grew loud enough that the ceiling shook again, dropping debris on them.

“Let’s get going,” Abelardus said. “We’re already too far behind.”

Too far? Alisa did not want to ask for clarification, but she could guess. She slung her leg over her bike, and their group trundled off again.

They had not gone far before misty gray light filtered into the tunnel ahead. Soon, the passage ended in a gradual slope upward, the cloudy sky visible above. The roaring sound increased, and Alisa hesitated to charge out, but Abelardus rode straight up the slope toward the opening without slowing down.

As Alisa drew even with him, something zipped past in front of the exit.

“Was that—”

“One of those cameras,” Abelardus finished for her. “It should have been following the race, but I’m not sure. It was hovering here in the tunnel. I hope it wasn’t recording our dinosaur battle.”

“The race?” Alisa nudged her bike out of the opening.

Bare lumpy ground spread out on all sides, none of the mushrooms or marshes visible, but with mist gathering in valleys between the raised bumps. A figure in sleek blue snagor-hide trousers and jacket came into view, riding a thrust bike. The dull roar increased as the helmeted man zoomed down a hill at a reckless speed. He skidded around a turn, taking it so fast that all the rules of gravity proclaimed he should have toppled over, but somehow he straightened the bike and charged up the next hill. A couple of seconds later, six more figures on thrust bikes charged into view, chasing the leader at breakneck speed. Hover cameras zipped all over the course, following the race.

“That’s what we’ve been hearing?” Alisa asked. She could barely hear her own voice as the noise of the thrusters and wheels tearing up dirt increased. The leader and the pack were heading their way.

Abelardus waved to Alisa and reversed his hover bike, backing them under the protection of the overhang.

She did not try to hide the disappointed slump to her shoulders. She’d thought they might come upon some underground hiding spot that held Jelena and the others. This… The children could have been taken anywhere from here.

The lead rider disappeared as he took a turn that would bring him closer to the tunnel. The walls shook, and dirt tumbled free again as he roared overhead. The downfall increased when the rest of the pack zoomed over the hill. Alisa covered her head with her arm. It was a miracle that the tunnel had not collapsed long ago.

“No wonder those dinosaurs were hiding,” Mica yelled as the pack raced down the back side of the hill and toward a series of ramps and jumps in the center of the course. Their tunnel appeared to be on the outside edge of it.

“Were they hiding?” Alisa wondered. “Or did someone lure them here, hoping they would jump out and munch on some of the riders?” Had they been here when Jelena and the others left the tunnel? Had they been forced to fight too?

“That’s a grisly thought,” Mica said. “You’re getting to be as pessimistic as I am.”

“That’s not being pessimistic. It’s called having little faith in the morality of the woman who runs that dome.”

Abelardus hovered out of the tunnel again, not responding to the conversation and instead watching the lead rider zip through the course. The man stayed a couple of seconds ahead of the rest of the pack, and though the others were taking great risks to catch up with him, none of them quite managed the feat.

“That man is a Starseer,” Abelardus said.

“Oh? Is he using his powers to stay ahead?” Alisa asked.

She nudged her bike back out into the open. Not because she cared about the race contestants, Starseer or not, but because she wanted to figure out which way Jelena and the others had gone. Unfortunately, there weren’t any footprints in front of the tunnel. A building and spectator stands rose at the far side of the racecourse. It hardly looked like the kind of place a group of robed Starseers trying to avoid notice would have gone. All she could imagine was that they had headed back to Terra Jhero. Which meant this diversion had been for nothing. But even if that was true, might she not still catch up with Jelena and the other children? They could be back in the very city where the Nomad was parked.

With that hopeful thought, Alisa tried to see a way back to Terra Jhero, one that would not take them through the middle of the course. The sooner they returned, the sooner they could check on the ship—and hunt for clues as to where Jelena had been taken.

“Yes,” Abelardus said after watching for another minute. “He’s being subtle. Using Starseer talents is probably illegal here. It usually is.” Abelardus sniffed derisively. “As if it’s a crime to use the skills the suns delivered unto a man.”

“I thought it was a mad scientist tinkering with your genes a few centuries ago that delivered those skills.”

“Our genes,” Abelardus said, giving her a significant look.

Alisa managed to keep from curling her lip, but only because her focus was on finding a way out. She could make out the opaque curving wall of the dome in the distance, rising up behind a forest of fungal stalks.

“Let’s head that way,” she said, nodding toward a route that would take them in that direction. The riders were on the other side of the course, as were the pack of cameras chasing them. “Before they come around again.”

Mica and Yumi followed her without argument. Abelardus did, also, but not before pausing to watch the Starseer rider cross the finish line ahead of the pack. That had to be a half-mile away, but Alisa thought she saw the figure’s helmet turn to face in their direction.

She hoped it was her imagination. They had enough trouble with Starseers already.

Chapter 11

Alisa’s group was allowed through the city gate without trouble—nobody ran out to deliver a bill of charges for the cameras Leonidas had destroyed—but they drew more attention than she would have liked when people spotted the severed dinosaur heads.

“Hunters,” someone yelled and several others turned it into a chant. A few cameras zoomed out of nowhere to follow their procession.

Alisa ground her teeth and refused to slow down or answer questions when people asked how they had slain so many dinosaurs. Had Leonidas had to deal with this? She assumed he had made it back before her group.

An older lady ran out and pretended to fall in the street in front of Abelardus while two boys tried to take advantage of the distraction to tug the heads off the back of his bike. He glared at them while pointing his staff at the woman. She floated back to the side of the street, where he set her down amid the startled watchers, most of whom skittered back. Several made superstitious gestures as they gaped at Abelardus. He ignored them and continued down the street with his chin up.

“I hope we’re not trying to blend in and avoid notice,” Mica said.

She and Yumi rode side by side next to Alisa. Alisa only shook her head. She had given up on that since Solstice had marched Leonidas to her compound. Maybe if the crowd was intimidated by Abelardus, they would be less likely to follow after her group. She was tempted to tell him to take a circuitous route back to the docks in the hope of losing the cameras, but she did not want to delay any longer than necessary. It had already been two hours since Alejandro had commed her. She had tried contacting him again on the way back to the city, but he had not responded, and Beck still wasn’t answering either.

She breathed a sigh of relief when the blocky form of the Star Nomad came into view, visible over an elegant yacht docked in the slot next to them. At least the ship hadn’t been impounded or blown up or any of the myriad images that had popped into her head after hearing Alejandro’s alarmed words. Maybe she was developing a pessimistic streak.

“Everyone’s going to be fine,” she said. “The doctor is probably in there with the hatch locked, hiding in the cubby. And there’s no reception in that cubby, so he can’t answer my comms.”

“Are you talking to one of us or to yourself?” Mica asked as they navigated the crowd thronging the main walkway.

“I’m using positive thinking to reassure myself.”

“Sounds like delusional thinking to me. Do you do that while you’re flying too?” Mica looked at Yumi. “I’m not there to witness her antics when I’m down in engineering.”

“No,” Alisa said, frowning as the Nomad’s cargo hatch came into view. It was open, with the ramp down, as if Alejandro had invited his visitors up. “I’m confident when I’m flying that things will turn out all right.”

“In other words, you’re more delusional in NavCom than you are elsewhere.”

“I’m not delusional. I’m optimistic.”

“There’s a difference?”

Optimism or not, Alisa couldn’t keep snakes from slithering around in her belly as they drew closer. Heedless of the passersby now, she gunned the hover bike. People cursed her as she veered between them, nearly knocking over a few. She banked hard, almost falling off as she drove the craft up the ramp and into the cargo hold.

She braked abruptly as Leonidas’s armored form came into view. He was flat on his back near the stairs, legs and arms sprawled out. The hidden cubby lay open behind him, the door missing. Alejandro crouched next to Leonidas, fiddling with his helmet. Trying to unfasten it? Leonidas wasn’t helping him. He wasn’t moving at all.

A man in a black robe lay crumpled a few feet away from them. He wasn’t moving either.

“What happened?” Alisa asked as Alejandro looked toward her. She leaped off the bike, barely remembering to park it as she charged toward Leonidas. The chickens huddled in the corner of their coop, not making a peep.

“Help me get him up to sickbay,” Alejandro barked at them as Yumi, Mica, and Abelardus also rode into the hold.

His worried tone did nothing to alleviate Alisa’s fears.

“Close the hatch,” she told Yumi, falling to her knees beside Leonidas. “Mica, get the hand tractor.”

As a group, they could carry Leonidas, but getting him up the stairs and through the tight passageways would be difficult.

Alisa touched his shoulder, peering through his faceplate. His eyes were closed, as if he were simply napping.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Get him to sickbay,” Alejandro said again, rising to his feet. “I’ve got to find his armor case and get the remote out. He and the Starseers were locked in combat, but I won’t know anything until we can get him out of his gear.”

“Starseers?” Alisa asked. “More than one?”

Alejandro charged up the stairs without answering. His terseness worried her far more than Leonidas’s closed eyes. She realized Alejandro couldn’t read Leonidas’s vital signs while he was encased in that armor. Three suns, what if he was already dead? No, no. He couldn’t be. He was too tough to die. But she couldn’t help but think of the ways the Starseers had attacked him in the past, hurting him internally without leaving a mark on his flesh. Then she remembered the people in the outpost, dead with no sign of wounds, and sheer terror rampaged through her. Could the same assailants have been responsible for this?

“You’ll be fine,” Alisa said, patting his shoulder. “I’m confident that you’ll recover.”

“Back up,” Mica said, running out of engineering with the hand tractor. Fortunately, she did not say anything about delusions.

The light level in the cargo hold dropped as the ramp folded up and the hatch shut. Yumi and Abelardus pushed the bikes to the side as Mica aimed her tool at Leonidas. A beam enveloped and lifted him. Alisa bounced from foot to foot, feeling useless as Mica directed his still form up the stairs. Alisa squeezed past him on the walkway and ran ahead to open the hatch to sickbay. Mica deposited Leonidas on the exam table, which creaked under the weight of cyborg and armor.

Alejandro raced in, pointing a remote control at Leonidas. Soft snaps sounded as the armor fasteners loosened. Alisa noticed her fingers trembled as she worked the ones for his helmet the rest of the way free and removed it. His eyelids did not so much as flicker. Was he breathing? She couldn’t tell. She dropped the helmet and rested her fingers on his throat as Alejandro dug into his medical kit for more sophisticated equipment.

“He has a pulse,” she blurted, relief nearly dropping her to her knees.

“Good,” Alejandro said, bringing a monitor over and attaching it to Leonidas’s temple. “Get the rest of his armor off him.”

Alisa usually bristled at being ordered around, but she did not object now. She needed something to do, a way to help. As she worked on the rest of the fasteners, Yumi peered through the hatchway, concern in her dark eyes as she gazed at Leonidas’s still form. Mica stood in the corner, fiddling with her tool. She probably needed something to do too.

“Where’s Abelardus?” Alisa asked as she removed Leonidas’s boots.

“Still in the cargo hold,” Yumi said. “I think he was seeing if he recognized the Starseer.”

It was selfish of her to think of her own mission right now, but Alisa hoped that the man might be roused for questioning. If he was one of the people who had attacked the outpost, maybe he knew where Jelena had been taken. And he could explain why his group, whoever they were, had attacked a bunch of children.

Alisa growled as she dropped the second boot to the floor.

“Can I do anything?” Mica asked quietly, none of her usual sarcasm or flippancy in her voice.

“Yes, two things, please,” Alisa said. “First, take my netdisc.” She dug into her pocket and tossed it to Mica. “Download the ship’s footage onto it and bring it back. I want to see what in the hells happened.” She looked at Alejandro, knowing he would have answers, but he was busy preparing an auto injector while frowning at the readout on the monitor.

“Got it,” Mica said. “Second?”

“Will you pay the fee and see if you can tie into the city sys-net? If we can get satellite access, we should be able to track Beck down by his comm unit inside of his helmet.” After the last time he had gone missing, Alisa had made sure to tie him into the ship’s computers. The Nomad did not have the fanciest tracking capabilities, hence the need for a sys-net tie-in, but if he was still in the city, they should be able to locate him. Or at least locate the position of his armor.

Alisa scowled, imagining someone stripping him out of his gear, the same way she was stripping Leonidas. Except with more force, because whoever had him wouldn’t have his key.

She gave herself a mental kick and pushed the image away. They didn’t know that anyone had Beck yet. He could have simply believed his meeting with the chef’s people was too important for distractions and turned off his comm.

“Anything else?” Mica asked as she headed for the hatchway.

“Isn’t that enough?” Alisa removed the last piece of Leonidas’s armor that she could manage while he was lying there—they would have to turn him on his side to get the rest off.

“I’m an engineer. I’m used to captains giving me at least three tasks to work on at once.”

“Just get me that camera feed,” Alisa said, not in the mood to make jokes.

Yumi followed Mica out to help her, or to stay out of the way in the small sickbay room.

Alejandro pursed his lips as he shoved up Leonidas’s T-shirt and attached a second monitor to his chest, over his heart. Alisa wanted to ask a thousand questions, but she stood back and stayed silent, also not wanting to distract him. There were not any visible marks or bruises on Leonidas’s chest, but that worried her instead of reassuring her, again reminding her of those who had died defending their outpost.

“Was it a mental attack?” she asked when Alejandro took a step back, a perplexed expression on his face as he surveyed Leonidas from head to toe.

“Yes. I assume so. I was busy being yanked out of your hiding place by the other one when the fight started.” He glared at her. “They got the staff.”

Alisa had forgotten about the staff. She almost blurted that she didn’t give a damn about it, not when Leonidas’s life was in jeopardy, but she knew how much it and his quest meant to Alejandro. She was relieved he was attending to Leonidas instead of grabbing her by the throat and demanding that she send a team after it. Not that she would know where to start looking.

“We’ll get it back,” she said, more to reassure him than because she thought it was true. She wanted to make sure he did not go into a funk again, not when he had a patient. “Is he just unconscious now, or is something else wrong?”

Alisa laid her hand on Leonidas’s chest. She wanted to stroke his face, to run her fingers through his hair, but felt subdued by Alejandro’s presence. He had never approved of their growing relationship. Which technically wasn’t growing, since Leonidas had pushed her away and tried to withdraw. That didn’t matter now. She would talk to him about it when he was better. They would figure something out.

“He’s unresponsive and has very little brain activity,” Alejandro said. “It’s hard to tell more with this unsophisticated equipment.” He sneered toward the counter.

“What does that mean?” Alisa asked, worried because it sounded worse than being unconscious.

“Coma. I have a monitor that can do a limited brain scan,” he said, waving at the device attached to Leonidas’s head, “but it’s nothing like you would have access to in a high-quality hospital on a core planet.”

“Would a hospital here have the technology you need?”

Alejandro sneered again. “I’ll look up the dome’s facilities in a minute, but they probably throw you out to the dinosaurs here if you’re sick.” Alejandro tapped a button on the chest monitor, and a holodisplay full of live statistics popped up. “I’ll go over everything more carefully shortly, but at first glance, he looks fine from the neck down.”

“There’s something you should know,” Alisa said, noticing that her fingers had found their way to Leonidas’s head despite her feeling self-conscious with Alejandro there. She was stroking his hair. It was still damp with sweat from whatever battle he’d had with the Starseers. If they had arrived a few minutes earlier, maybe they could have helped. Abelardus might have known how to better fight those people.

“Yes?” Alejandro did not comment on her position.

“There were dead Starseers in the outpost we found. At least five of them. None of them had obvious wounds. They were just… dead.”

“So some Starseer has a special brain-damage attack? Wonderful.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t leave more people here to protect the ship. And the staff.” And Leonidas, Alisa added silently, though he was the last person she would have thought needed protecting. Besides, who would she have left? Beck? Would the outcome have been any different if more people had been here?

Alejandro grunted. “You mean you’re sorry he’s injured.”

“Yes, but I also don’t want that staff in the hands of Starseers who can kill people by breaking their brains.”

“Too late.” He gripped the edges of the exam table. “We never should have brought it here. I was a fool to listen to Abelardus. It should have been locked up in a vault on Perun, not roaming the universe in a floating junk pile.”

Alisa ignored the slight to her ship this time. What did insults matter when Leonidas lay in a coma between them?

“Prince Thorian was with them,” she said.

Alejandro’s gaze jerked up, locking onto hers. “What?”

“Leonidas found a Zizblock on the floor in one of the rooms. He was certain it belonged to the prince.”

“A Ziz-what?”

“A toy.” Alisa held her thumb and finger up to denote the size. “Didn’t your kids ever play with Zizblocks?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there much when they were growing up.” He dropped his gaze to the monitor display again, but not before she saw regret flash in his eyes.

A few words of condemnation nearly rolled off her tongue, but who was she to judge? How much of Jelena’s life had she missed by flying for the Alliance? Was she any better of a parent than he was? Jonah had always been more of a natural at that, at understanding the baby talk, of staying calm during the tantrums and wheedling, of knowing the right thing to say to encourage good behavior. Alisa had been fortunate to have him on her team. She could enforce discipline and she could be fiercely protective, and she enjoyed spending time with children when they were acting normally, but there had definitely been moments when she’d been relieved to run off to work instead of dealing with the frustrations of parenthood. She regretted that now, feeling guilty that she had missed any of Jelena’s young life, and that she hadn’t always appreciated what she had.

“Damn,” Alejandro whispered.

Alisa pushed away her thoughts. Had he discovered something on the monitors?

“We were so close,” he added. “So close to achieving… what I promised I would achieve.” Alejandro closed his eyes.

“Look, we’re not giving up on anything yet,” Alisa said, surprising herself by experiencing sympathy for him. “Leonidas is going to wake up because he’s much tougher than any puny Starseers. And we’re going to find Beck. And then we’ll find Jelena and the prince. And then we’ll find that staff, so evil Starseers can’t use it to destroy planets or anything else.” She forced herself to smile, though the ambitiousness of that to-do list left her with a sense of bleakness.

Oddly, Alejandro appeared vaguely hopeful. Maybe he was more willing to believe her optimism than Mica was. Or maybe he needed to believe it now for the sake of his sanity.

“He’s dead,” Abelardus said from the hatchway.

“What?” Alisa blurted, touching her fingers to Leonidas’s throat to check his pulse again.

“The Starseer.”

“Oh.” She lowered her hand. “I guess questioning him is out then.”

“I’d say so. Someone broke his neck.”

Alejandro rubbed his face. “They were locked in a death grip at the end. Leonidas was fighting that one, and I was fighting the other one.”

“You were fighting someone?” Abelardus arched an eyebrow.

Alejandro flushed. “I was clubbing him in the head with the staff, desperate to keep him from taking it.”

“And it was working?” Abelardus's other eyebrow rose.

“He was older than I am. And Leonidas had already hurtled him into the bulkhead a few times.”

“I’d like to see what happened,” Alisa said, reaching for the comm to see if Mica had found her footage yet. She could imagine the Starseers being conscious of the cameras and finding a way to destroy them. They were good at keeping their identities hidden. That thought spurred another one, and she paused before hitting the button. “Did you check to see if he had an ID chip embedded, Abelardus? Or is there a Starseer database that we could run his face through? Check for a match?”

“I took a picture to send to Lady Naidoo.”

“Isn’t she blind?” Alisa asked, not impressed with the idea of that old woman serving as their database.

“She has aides. I don’t have the access privileges to do what you’re asking.”

“Because your people don’t trust you?” Mica asked, brushing past him and into sickbay. She tossed Alisa her netdisc.

“They trust me to fly Darts and brew beer,” Abelardus said.

“Brew beer?” Mica grunted. “Is that your job there?”

“My job is leading a squadron of defensive fighter ships,” he said, “not unlike the job your captain held while in the military. But we don’t always need to fly.”

“And then you brew beer? Captain, I think our highly esteemed Starseer guide just admitted to being a lackey among his people.”

“Even if I wasn’t a brilliant pilot, being a brewer would be considered a noble position. I’m very popular among my people.”

“You mean your beer is,” Mica said.

Alisa ignored them and ordered her netdisc to display the video footage. The feeds from four cameras popped into the air above the device. She resisted the urge to jump straight to the fight, instead commanding the playback to start a few minutes before Alejandro had commed her. One of the internal cameras showed him muttering to himself in sickbay while he performed an inventory. Or maybe he just enjoyed touching his equipment when he was alone.

The rear external camera showed a figure clad in a black robe and carrying a staff walking up to the closed cargo hatch. As usual, the man—it sounded like both of the people involved in the theft had been male—wore a hood pulled low to hide his features. He rapped on the hatch with his staff. Inside, Alejandro’s head jerked up. He ran to NavCom, looked at the cameras, and spotted the figure. From there, he spoke into his comm unit, presumably calling Beck and Alisa. The Starseer rapped on the door again, then bowed his head. Alejandro staggered against the pilot’s seat, lifting a hand to his temple.

“You were attacked?” Alisa looked at him. He was also watching the video playback. She would have preferred it if he continued to help Leonidas, even knowing there might not be anything that could be done. She stroked his hair again, wishing the touch of someone who cared might wake him.

“It was a forceful command,” Alejandro said as the video continued to play. “It hurt as he spoke into my mind. His voice was very compelling and harsh. He ordered me to bring the staff outside. He already knew about it.”

“You resisted him?” Abelardus's eyebrows were up again. He clearly did not think much of Alejandro’s abilities to confront Starseers.

I don’t think much of his abilities to confront anything, Abelardus spoke into her mind. Except maybe a tube of QuickSkin.

“I got the staff and ran and hid in that cubby in the cargo hold,” Alejandro said, waving as the footage showed him doing just that. “I thought he’d find a way in any second, but it was actually quite a while before the hatch opened of its own volition.”

Alisa skimmed forward on the video. The Starseer outside the hatch stood still for a few minutes more, his hood lowered, then withdrew a netdisc from the folds in his robe. For a surprisingly long time, he poked at the display, standing at an angle so that the camera could not pick it up.

“What’s he doing?” Mica asked. “Checking his stock portfolio?”

“Or playing a game while he waits for the other one?” Alisa suggested. The internal cameras were empty, not showing Alejandro crouching in the dark of the hidden cubby.

“What game is appropriate to play before you barge onto someone’s locked ship and attack everyone?” Mica asked.

A second robed and hooded figure walked up to the Nomad’s hatch, and Alisa did not answer. They conferred briefly before the one who had been waiting waved his staff. The cargo hatch opened.

“Leonidas was probably almost back to the city at this point,” Alisa said, checking the time stamp. “I wonder why this one waited for the second one to come since he could so easily get in. He would have known that there was only one old man inside, right?”

“Most likely,” Abelardus said at the same time as Alejandro snapped, “I’m not old.”

“But surely, a Starseer wouldn’t see you as a threat,” Alisa said. “Especially if you were hiding in a cubby.”

“I should have brought a tranq gun and an injector full of sedative down to that cubby with me,” Alejandro said. “That was what I was thinking while I was sitting in there, hoping the man would go away. But I was afraid to come out. He was—it wasn’t pleasant when he touched my mind. He was even worse than Abelardus.”

“Thanks,” Abelardus said dryly.

“You don’t hurt people when you talk into their minds.”

Abelardus's brow wrinkled. “I don’t know why anyone would do that. It’s certainly not part of telepathy training for our young students.” He glanced at Alisa. “Though, of course, we learn ways to defend ourselves.”

“He wasn’t defending anything,” Alejandro growled.

On the video, the Starseers walked through the now-open hatch. They strode straight to the hidden cubby. So much for delaying them by hiding. Alejandro might have done better if he’d stayed in sickbay surrounded by drugs and injectors. But he probably would not have been able to do anything against Starseers, regardless.

Especially not these Starseers, Abelardus spoke into her mind.

What do you mean? Have you figured out who they are?

I’m starting to get some premonitions, but I’ll need to hear back from Lady Naidoo. I thought—I’d always heard—that this sect had died out decades ago.

What sect? Alisa asked.

Abelardus did not answer. His gaze was riveted to the video. One of the men waved his staff, and the door to the cubby was torn from its hinges and flung across the cargo hold.

“Great, something else I’ll have to fix,” Mica said.

One of the men peered into the dark space. The camera did not show the inside of it, but it wasn’t hard to tell what was happening. The Starseer handed his staff to his buddy and leaned inside. His body jerked, as if he’d been kicked, and then he flung a hand up. Alisa imagined Alejandro being physically punished for his insolence. The Starseer pulled, and a bare leg in a sandal came out slowly, Alejandro’s brown robe rucked up around his waist.

The second Starseer whirled toward the open hatch. Leonidas rode into view, leaping from his bike before it fully topped the ramp. He charged straight at the two men.

But they’d had time to brace themselves, to prepare. One already had a staff pointed at him.

Alisa cringed, expecting Leonidas to fly across the cargo hold. But he flung a ball—a fluidwrap. It spun toward the Starseers, the crackling strands of energy unfurling in the air. Their staffs switched from targeting him to targeting it. The energy net expanded, but it halted short of enveloping them. It froze, fully expanded, hanging in the air. One man’s head twitched, and it flew up to affix to the ceiling.

“Two things to fix,” Mica muttered. “Or at least clean up. I didn’t even notice that. It’s probably gumming up the light fixtures right now.”

Eyes locked on the holodisplay, Alisa did not answer. The Starseers had thwarted the net, but it had done its job, giving Leonidas time to reach them. He threw something else at one of them, then slammed into the man who had been trying to yank out Alejandro. The robed figure flew backward, crashing into the wall above the open cubby so hard that Alisa could imagine ribs shattering even without the benefit of sound. His hood fell about his shoulders as he tumbled to the deck, his staff falling from his fingers.

The second man was fast, almost as fast as a cyborg. He’d raised a barrier to deflect the object Leonidas had thrown—a smoke grenade, Alisa realized, as clouds of grayish blue spewed into the air.

Leonidas must have deemed the Starseer he had struck to be out of the fight for a moment, because he spun toward the second one. He only managed a step before his entire body stiffened, his back arched as much as it could in the armor, his faceplate pointed toward the ceiling. He looked like he had been struck by lightning, and Alisa rested her hand on Leonidas’s shoulder as she stared, imagining him screaming with pain. As he stood frozen in that tableau, the hooded Starseer raised his staff and took a step toward him, fearlessly touching the tip to Leonidas’s chest plate. There was no lightning, nothing like Alisa had seen come out of Abelardus's staff, but Leonidas’s entire body trembled, and his hands went up to his head, gripping either side of his helmet.

To his side, the other Starseer stumbled to his feet, bracing himself on the wall and clutching his ribs. For a moment, he watched his comrade tormenting Leonidas, a grimace on his face. Alisa was certain that grimace was for his own pain rather than a sympathetic gesture for Leonidas’s agony. She gritted her teeth, trying to memorize his features in case she had to identify him later. Before she shot his ass. He had tidy gray hair, brown eyes, a neatly trimmed short gray beard, and an L-shaped scar on his jaw where the hair did not grow.

His comrade said a word, and Scar turned back to the cubby. He had to crawl halfway into it to find his prey. Alisa couldn’t help but make a noise of disgust and glare across the exam table at Alejandro. Couldn’t he have done something? Besides hiding in the back of that cubby? Hells, even if all he had done was run out and bite the one attacking Leonidas in the calf, it might have helped. Surely, if Leonidas had been freed for a half a second, he could have done something.

Then he did do something.

He lowered his hands from his helmet, seeming to focus on the Starseer. Every tense limb bespoke pain, but he found the strength to grab the staff pressed against his chest. He yanked it out of the man’s hand and hurled it to the ground. It struck so hard and bounced so high that Alisa could not believe it did not break.

The Starseer stepped away, raising his hands and flinging some invisible force. Leonidas staggered back on one leg, but managed to plant it on the deck and brace himself. Then he sprang for his opponent. The Starseer tried to block his attack, but Leonidas was too quick. He knocked the man’s hands aside and grabbed his neck.

The Starseer must have gotten off another mental attack, because Leonidas convulsed again, his back arching. He almost lost his grip on his foe’s neck, but he hung on, even as pain clenched his entire body. His red gauntleted fingers tightened around the Starseer’s neck, and his shoulders moved in a quick twitch. The man’s arms and legs flopped like they belonged to a rag doll. Leonidas dropped to the deck and rolled away from him, again gripping his helmet with both hands.

The other Starseer backed out of the cubby with not one but two staffs in his hands, his own and the ebony Staff of Lore with its rune-engraved shaft and golden orb at the top.

Alejandro groaned. “I fought. I swear.”

Intent on watching Leonidas, Alisa ignored him. Unfortunately, Leonidas had collapsed on his back, his hands falling away from his helmet. Her stomach churned anew, as if she hadn’t known all along that this was how it ended. That was the position he had been in when she charged in.

The gray-haired Starseer stood up and wiped away blood trickling from his nose, the only evidence to back up Alejandro’s claim of fighting. The Staff of Lore glowed vibrantly in his hand, both the runes and the orb on top.

“Shit,” Abelardus whispered.

Alisa looked at him.

“Whoever they are, they’ve got a descendent of Alcyone. Someone who can wield the staff right now.”

Alejandro cursed. “I didn’t see that.”

A chill ran through Alisa’s entire body. Why hadn’t she thrown that staff in a lake—or out into the middle of space—when she’d had a chance? It had glowed faintly when she picked it up, but nothing like it was doing for that man. She half-expected him to throw his head back and cackle with glee, knowing he now had the power to destroy planets.

Instead, with his face grim, the man knelt beside his fellow Starseer, touching his throat, checking for a pulse. He looked over at Leonidas’s still form, and Alisa was surprised he didn’t go over there and use his powers to finish the job his comrade had started. Maybe he knew he didn’t need to, that Leonidas would die from his injuries.

Blinking back tears, Alisa touched Leonidas’s face again. At least it wasn’t contorted in pain now. His unconsciousness—his coma—prevented that much. Would he dream in that state? Nightmares that wouldn’t end until he came out of the coma? In weeks? Months? Blessing of the Suns Trinity, she hoped not.

Scar’s head swiveled toward the cargo hatch. Alisa glanced at the time stamp. She and the others had been passing through the city’s main gate then. Could he somehow know? By sensing Abelardus, perhaps?

The man walked over to Leonidas and bent down, touching a palm to the top of his helmet.

“What’s he doing?” Alisa demanded, grasping at the holodisplay, as if she could somehow stop what had happened before she arrived. “Abelardus?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just checking to see if he’s alive.”

Whatever was happening, Leonidas did not move, did not react in any way. The Starseer straightened and strode toward the cargo hatch, pulling his hood up as he went. He must have commanded the Staff of Lore to mute itself, because the runes and orb lost their glow. He disappeared from the cargo hold camera, then reappeared on the external one, walking down the ramp and into the crowd, heading in the opposite direction from which Alisa and the others had come. She grimaced because she spotted Abelardus on his hover bike no more than twenty seconds after the man walked away.

“We were so close,” she groaned.

Alejandro slumped back against the counter, as if watching the video had drained every ounce of strength from him. “We never should have brought the staff here,” he whispered. “We shouldn’t have come.”

Alisa wanted to retort, to combat the implication that she was at fault for this, but what could she say? She’d been told how powerful that artifact was, and yet she hadn’t worried about leaving it in her unguarded ship. She was to blame, at least in part. Again, she berated herself for not spacing that thing or destroying it on the way here. What good would have come of keeping it? Of toting it around the system in a ship with no weapons and no way to defend itself?

But the staff hadn’t been her mission, damn it. How had she ended up responsible for some super weapon?

All she wanted was her daughter. And Leonidas. She leaned forward, resting her cheek against his chest, feeling dejected and forlorn.

Chapter 12

Alisa sat in NavCom, watching numbly as Mica poked at the ship’s computer console, grumbling about the slow speed of the sys-net interface and wondering if the city deliberately made it slow so they could charge more for their pay-by-the-hour access. The view screen looked out in the opposite direction of the docks, toward a street of warehouses and the domed wall that marked the boundary of the city. The light outside was growing dimmer, the suns setting on this side of the moon.

Back in sickbay, Leonidas remained unconscious. Alisa felt like she should be at his side or at least sitting in the room with him, but it had been several hours, and Beck had not responded to his comm. She had to assume he was in trouble. She couldn’t give up on the rest of her crew to hunker down beside Leonidas. He wouldn’t want that. Besides, there was nothing she could do for him. Alejandro was looking up medical facilities on Cleon Moon to see if any might be good enough to help. If there were any good enough anywhere. Could even a master brain surgeon with all the most advanced equipment combat what some twisted Starseer had done?

“Got his helmet comm pinpointed,” Mica said, leaning back in the co-pilot’s seat. “He’s in a warehouse a few miles from here.”

“The chef’s warehouse?” Alisa wasn’t sure whether to find that reassuring or not. It was good that he hadn’t been waylaid by a pack of mafia men in an alley somewhere, but why would he have run into trouble going to what had essentially been a job interview?

“It’s not the address listed on that original flyer, but…” The display changed as Mica researched something else. “According to the public records, that warehouse is owned by the Satin Scourge—I get the feeling everything here is—and is rented to a Chef Leblanc.”

“That’s the fellow whose burgers Beck was drooling over. He might have been drooling slightly over the chef too.” Alisa rubbed her chin. “We met one of the leaders of the Satin Scourge. Solstice.”

“How alliterative.”

“She said her husband leads the mafia family, but that she presides over the city.”

“Could you ask her to check and see if anything strange happened at her warehouse?”

Alisa grimaced. “I don’t think she’d give me any information. Or answer if I commed. She might tell Leonidas.”

“I don’t think he’s in a position to chat with people right now.”

“No. We’ll check for ourselves. I’ll see if Abelardus wants to go for a visit.” Alisa had never thought she would depend on Abelardus to act as her security backup, but she didn’t have much choice. She doubted it would be wise to visit that warehouse by herself. “Do you and Yumi want to come?”

The ship shouldn’t be in much danger now, but Alisa worried about leaving them behind since any Starseer who wandered past could apparently thwart the Nomad’s locks. Of course, Alejandro might not appreciate being left alone again.

“Yumi’s going?” Mica sounded surprised.

“I don’t know. I haven’t asked yet.”

Alisa stifled a yawn, trying to remember the last time she’d had any sleep. Right, that had been the night before, when she had been woken before dawn by being hurled across Leonidas’s cabin. She looked down at her wrist brace. At least it had not bothered her for several hours. Alejandro’s nanobots must have finished the majority of their work.

“The last I saw, she was ensconced in her cabin with her mushrooms,” Mica said.

“Ah, right. She must want to make her drugs. Maybe the orgasm one can help Leonidas come out of his coma.”

“If nothing else, he might at least have a good time while he’s in it.”

“Your commentary is rarely helpful, you know.” Alisa pushed herself to her feet, fighting back another yawn. She had better chug some caffeine pills before heading out to visit what might be a dangerous warehouse.

“I’m an engineer. My tools are supposed to be helpful, not my commentaries.” Mica frowned as Alisa headed for the hatchway. “Are you going tonight?”

“Seems like the appropriate time to skulk around and look for a missing person.”

“Maybe he’s not missing. Maybe he’s in bed with a pretty girl and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Somehow, I doubt Beck would let sex get in the way of his quest to share his sauces with the system.”

“That could be true. Alisa?”

Alisa paused, turning back toward her.

“I should have stayed and put together his booby trap,” Mica said, a rare hint of chagrin in her eyes. “Maybe Starseers could have defeated it and gotten the staff, but I bet I could have at least blown some up, made them pay for their thieving ways.”

“If you had stayed here, who would have saved Yumi in that tunnel?” Alisa asked. While she appreciated that she wasn’t alone in feeling guilty right now, she did not think Mica should take the blame for anything. This was even less her quest than Alisa’s.

“Yumi could have stayed here too. We could have watched vids and played with her chickens.”

Alisa rested a hand on the jamb. “I’m trying to decide if that’s kinky or just an odd version of domestic life.”

Mica grinned and saluted.

Alisa almost bumped into Abelardus as she stepped into the corridor.

“News?” she asked hopefully since he had come from the direction of sickbay.

“Yes, but not about your cyborg.” One of his eyebrows twitched, as if to remind her that he did not care a whit about Leonidas.

“What is it? Have you identified those Starseers?”

“I’m still waiting to hear back from Lady Naidoo on that—I did send her the video and a picture of the dead one. What I’ve been doing is looking up our thrust-bike racer.”

“Why?” That was the last thing Alisa cared about right now.

“If he’s a local, he might know what happened to my brother and the others. I know you’re worried about your pretty soldier, but allow me to remind you that we don’t have any leads in regard to my people—or your daughter.”

Heat swarmed into Alisa’s cheeks. She did not need to be reminded about that, especially not by Abelardus.

“Why would some bike racer know anything about what was going on at an outpost?” she asked.

“There aren’t that many Starseers on Cleon Moon—or anywhere. We tend to know about our own kind, especially if they’re local. In addition to wanting to know where my brother is, I’d like to know if this group of… belligerent Starseers has been here long or if they just showed up. They might have come to kidnap the prince. Or they might have felt the Staff of Lore on the move and somehow anticipated that we would show up here. Or it might have something to do with both.”

“So did you find him? Can you contact him?” Alisa didn’t think a bike rider was much of a lead, but since she did not have a better one, she did not point that out again.

“I got in touch with him. He was terse, but he’s agreed to meet with me. Tonight. He’s staying in the city.”

“Doesn’t everybody? The dinosaur-infested swamp doesn’t seem like a nice place to build one’s mansion.”

“Some wealthy people have their own private domes.”

“Ah, do we believe the racer is wealthy?”

“If he’s using his talents to win repeatedly, why not?”

Alisa yawned again. “I was going to ask if you would accompany me to the warehouse where Beck was last seen. Are you determined to visit this lead first?” She did not want to delay in case Beck was in trouble. If Abelardus wouldn’t come, that left going by herself.

“I’ll go with you.” Abelardus reached out and touched her shoulder. “I’m not letting anything happen to you until you wise up and realize that I’m a much better prospect than Coma Cyborg.”

“You’re a much better asshole than he is,” she said, pushing his hand away.

“Why? I just want to help you.”

“I appreciate help, but I’d appreciate it more if you could do it without insulting him.”

“Not at all? That would be difficult.”

“Try.”

“I’ll meet you in the cargo hold in ten minutes,” he said. “I want to look up how long the driver has been here and winning. It seems a strange occupation for a Starseer to take up.”

Alisa waved in acknowledgment and headed to her cabin. She buckled on her Etcher and also jammed a blazer pistol into the belt. It was one of Leonidas’s many weapons, one that he had lent her and that she had used sporadically. It was a superior tool to the old bullet-chucker, but she was developing a sentimental fondness for her gun. She had been through a lot with it—and killed two dinosaurs. Dinosaurs whose heads needed to be turned in to the bounty place—wherever that was—before they started to stink. Maybe she would assign that task to Mica. That would give her plenty of material for unhelpful commentaries.

Alisa stopped in sickbay before heading down to the cargo hold. Leonidas still lay on the exam table, the rest of his armor and his clothing now removed, and a sheet draped over him. Alejandro had wired him up to deliver—and remove—fluids. Her eyes threatened to tear up. It seemed strange to see someone so virile and muscular hooked up to hospital paraphernalia. That was for sick people, not for hale cyborgs. Not for someone she had come to care deeply about.

She walked to the exam table and laid her hand on his chest, somewhat reassured by his even breathing. She had lost too much. She refused to lose him too.

“Leonidas,” she said softly, as if he could hear her. He did have those enhanced ears, after all. “I’m going to a dark, creepy warehouse owned by the mafia to very possibly get myself into trouble. I would greatly appreciate it if you would wake up and accompany me.”

She lifted her hand to the side of his face, brushing hair behind his ear, stroking his jaw. He needed a shave. She would do it for him when she got back.

“We didn’t find Jelena or Thorian, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m hopeful that they’re in the city somewhere. There’s some Starseer thrust-bike racer that Abelardus thinks might know something. For the first time, I envy those Starseers their power. If I had a telepathic link to Jelena, I’d be able to sense when she was close, to reach out to her and let her know I’m coming. To speak with her even if we weren’t in the same room. That would be useful right now.”

Alisa slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the faded bracelet, rubbing it with her fingers.

“I keep missing the mark,” she whispered, finding the words—her failings—easier to admit with Leonidas unconscious. “I’m not used to that. I have good aim; I know I do. Mouthy or not, I was always wanted on fighter pilot squadrons. So I don’t know what the problem is here. Am I not trying hard enough? I know I’ve been letting myself get distracted when I shouldn’t be. Maybe I need to be more focused. But I’m worried about that staff now. And I can’t leave Beck here to the suns know what fate.” She lifted her gaze to his chest, the way it rose and fell slightly under the sheet, as if he were only sleeping. But he wasn’t. “And I’m worried about you. If you need to go to some fancy hospital somewhere, I’ll make sure you get there. But Jelena could be here in this very city, Leonidas. If I leave when she’s only a couple of miles away…” She swallowed. “How can you be focused when you care about more than one thing? Do you have to choose? And what if in choosing one thing, you lose another? Why can’t I just make it all come out right? Aren’t captains supposed to know how to do that? I know I’m just a captain of a freighter with a tiny crew, but even that seems like too much responsibility right now. There are too many targets to aim at.”

Alisa slid the bracelet back into her pocket and tapped him on the chest. “This is the part where you’re supposed to wake up and tell me I’m not a bad mother, a bad captain.”

His eyes did not open.

“If this were a fairy tale, I might be able to wake you with a kiss.” She touched her finger to his lips. “Of course, you would probably have to be a beautiful princess and I’d have to be a handsome prince for that to work.” She dabbed at her eyes. “I’m not feeling overly handsome today, but let’s try it, shall we?”

Alisa leaned down, careful not to bump any of his cords, and pressed her lips to his. Sadly, it was only in her imagination that he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her on top of him, and passionately returned the kiss.

So, it’s the same as usual, eh? Abelardus spoke into her mind.

Get out of my head! She pulled away from Leonidas and almost roared the words out loud.

Just wanted to let you know I’m ready to go retrieve your missing security officer.

Can’t you use the damned comm?

Then I’d have to lift my arm and press a button. Tedious.

It’s amazing you have muscles.

You’ve noticed them? I’m touched. I go to great lengths to keep them firm and perky.

Alisa sighed and touched Leonidas’s face before reluctantly backing away. She did not want to leave him, but Beck needed her, and Jelena could be out there in the city somewhere. She needed Alisa too. Besides, having someone intruding on her private moment irritated her too much to stay. She might end up breaking some of Alejandro’s equipment.

She turned toward the hatchway while wondering if Abelardus would fight back if she broke something on him.

“Alisa?” came a croak from behind her.

She whirled back toward the exam table, half-fearing that it had only been her imagination, that she would find Leonidas still unconscious. But his eyes were open, his chin tilted down to his chest as he looked toward her.

“Leonidas,” she blurted, then screamed, “Alejandro! Get your hairy brown-robed legs in here.”

Leonidas groaned, in pain she thought, but then he said, “Sometimes, it’s a shame they enhanced my hearing so much.”

“Are you complaining? Or just teasing me?” she asked, giddy energy surging through her as she returned to his side to clasp his hand and lean down to kiss him again. She kept herself from making it a fiery one, especially since he seemed more surprised than amorous, but she vowed that someday she would plant one of those on him—and he would return it.

“Which one would be most inappropriate now?” he murmured, smiling faintly as he gazed up at her, his eyes warm.

“Complaining, definitely.”

“Then I was teasing.”

“Good.” She was thinking of kissing him again when Alejandro ran into sickbay, nearly tripping over the bottom of the hatch frame.

“Leonidas,” he said, genuine delight in his voice as he came around to the other side of the exam table. Alejandro touched Leonidas’s shoulder and called up the holodisplay with his stats on it. His face soon sobered, and Alisa worried the readout was unfavorable, but he told Leonidas, “I lost the staff.” His shoulders slumped in defeat—or shame.

Leonidas closed his eyes. “I feared that would be the result. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Alejandro said, his gaze lifting toward Alisa. She clenched her jaw, expecting him to blame her, but he went on to say, “It’s mine. All my education, and I couldn’t think up a way to keep them from finding it. I couldn’t keep them from yanking it out of my hands.”

“They were strong, stronger than Abelardus,” Leonidas said.

“One is apparently a descendant of Alcyone. The staff glowed as he carried it off the ship.”

“Ah,” Leonidas said, a disturbed expression crossing his face.

Alisa did not want him worrying about that now. He ought to rest. Later, after they found Beck, Jelena, and hopefully even the prince, they could contemplate ways to get the staff back.

“Then perhaps I can feel slightly less ashamed about not being able to stop them,” Leonidas said.

“You killed one,” Alisa said.

“Did I? I wasn’t sure. I was…” He glanced at her. “Distracted.”

“Distracted? I think we know each other well enough now that you can admit when you’re in so much pain you think you’re going to die.”

“Hm,” he said. Not exactly agreement. Or a confession to pain.

“I’m relieved you didn’t die,” Alisa said softly, glancing at Alejandro, now wishing she had waited to call him in until she’d had more of a private moment with Leonidas. But he was studying Leonidas’s stats and did not seem to be paying attention. “I thought it was the same thing that happened to the people defending their outpost.”

“That thought crossed my mind when I was in extreme… distraction.” He smiled at her. “Cyborgs aren’t supposed to admit to pain. We are extraordinary soldiers who do our duty without complaint.”

“Is that in the Cyborg Corps Handbook?”

“Chapter One.”

She snorted. “I believe you.”

“You appear normal,” Alejandro said, staring at the holodisplay and sounding utterly puzzled.

“Is that a problem?” Leonidas asked.

“You were in a coma.”

Alejandro scrutinized Leonidas from head to toe, then physically tested his reflexes. As far as Alisa could tell, Leonidas responded normally. Alejandro scowled and tapped the machine that had done the brain scan, as if it might have lied to him.

“I can’t believe you’re even talking right now,” Alejandro said. “Comas take days to recover from.”

“How long was I out?” A concerned expression crossed Leonidas’s face.

“About six hours.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“A coma is a coma. You shouldn’t be fully conscious yet.”

“I’m not sorry.” Leonidas reached for the IV, as if he meant to remove it himself.

Alejandro swatted at his hand. “What are you doing?”

“I would prefer to recover in my room. This table is drafty.” Leonidas peeked under his sheet, giving Alisa a glimpse of his brawny chest. “And I’m naked. With a tube coming out of my—” he glanced at Alisa, “—naked parts.”

She snorted at this editing and decided it wasn’t the appropriate time to mention that she wouldn’t mind seeing his naked parts.

“Then I’ll get you a blanket,” Alejandro said. “You need a couple of days to rest. And to be monitored. Quit touching things.”

“I feel fine, Doctor. Cyborgs are designed to heal fast and function even in suboptimal conditions.”

“You don’t have implants in your brain, do you? I thought they left that alone.”

“For the most part,” Leonidas murmured.

Alisa squeezed his hand.

“You should be as susceptible to brain issues as the rest of us,” Alejandro said.

Leonidas lifted a single shoulder and repeated, “I feel fine, Doctor.”

“Humor me and rest anyway. In here.”

“I will agree to resting if you’ll agree to unhooking me from everything.”

Alejandro scowled.

Leonidas arched his eyebrows.

“Fine,” Alejandro grumbled and went about the task.

Alisa averted her eyes—mostly—when he lifted the sheet. She kept ahold of his hand, and Leonidas did not object. He leaned his head back on the table and closed his eyes. A good patient.

“Captain Alisa,” came Abelardus's voice over the comm system as Alejandro finished. “I am waiting for you.”

One of Leonidas’s eyelids opened. Amazing how much disapproval that one eye managed to convey. “Are you going somewhere?”

“To find Beck. He’s missing.”

“I’ll come with you.” Leonidas sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the table. So much for being a good patient.

Alejandro made sounds of extreme protest and finally managed to articulate, “You promised to rest!”

“That was before I knew my captain needed me.” Leonidas looked down at the sheet, which had nearly fallen off. He pushed it back over his groin. “Also, I’d appreciate it if you told me where you put my underwear.”

“I strenuously object to this. No matter how you feel, you should be monitored and rest for at least two days.” Alejandro planted a hand on his shoulder and scowled at him. “Ten minutes ago, I wasn’t sure whether you would live or die.”

“I can rest in my combat armor.”

“Does the Cyborg Corps Handbook also tell you to say idiotic things like that?”

“The virtues of combat armor are discussed in the appendix.”

Alisa smiled, so relieved to have him back. Even though he had not been unconscious for that many hours, it had been enough for her to worry and realize how much she would miss him if she lost him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck. She wanted to tell him to listen to Alejandro’s suggestion and rest, but she also wanted him out there with her.

Leonidas returned the hug and rested his chin on the top of her head. “This doesn’t change anything,” he said softly, sadly. “I’m glad you’re here, but we can’t… we just can’t. I never want to hurt you again.”

She scowled, leaning back to look him in the eyes. “We’ll see how you feel after we’ve kidnapped your admiral and you’ve had your surgery. Then I can seduce you. You’ll see how difficult it is to resist my feminine wiles.”

Alejandro made a noise somewhere between a gag and a sigh. “Now that you’re unhooked, I’m leaving before I lose the contents of my stomach.”

“My underwear, Doctor?” Leonidas asked, holding out his hand.

Alisa took some comfort from the fact that even though he was telling her they couldn’t have a relationship, his other arm was still wrapped around her waist. Maybe his body and heart already knew that they belonged together. His malfunctioning brain was the thing causing the problem. As susceptible to brain issues as the rest of us, indeed.

“Are you sure you need it?” Alejandro grabbed the garment off the top of Leonidas’s armor case. “Your Alliance wench may prefer you like that.”

“That’s Captain Alliance Wench,” Alisa said.

“Do not disparage her, Doctor,” Leonidas said, his tone cooling. “You may find that next time, I don’t return quite so swiftly to protect your hiding spot.”

“I won’t need protection again if we don’t get that staff back.” Alejandro tossed the underwear at him and stalked out.

Leonidas sighed, and Alisa expected him to push her away so he could dress. And because, in his own words, they couldn’t be. But his arm tightened, pulling her against him, and he lowered his face to her neck, his warm lips touching her skin. It was more of a hug than a kiss, with a sense of relief in the embrace—maybe he had been more worried about his condition than he had let on to Alejandro—but her body didn’t seem to realize that. All she registered was his closeness, the feel of his arms around her. He lifted a hand to the back of her head, stroking her hair, and electricity crackled through her as every nerve stood up and took notice.

“I’m certain your wiles are irresistible,” he murmured. “So perhaps it’s best if I don’t put myself in a position to be susceptible. Maybe my quest… is inadvisable.”

“No. It’s not. We’re going to find someone who can fix you, and afterward, you’re going to slam me up against the nearest wall and have your way with me.”

He smiled and let his hand fall away from her scalp. Disappointment surged through her. Not only was he pushing her away, he was pushing his dreams away. And for what? A broken wrist that had already healed?

“Leonidas—”

“You said Beck was waiting?” He slid off the exam table. “I’ll get armored up and meet you in the cargo hold.”

She growled, wanting to discuss this. No, to change his mind, damn it. But he was right. They had other duties, duties that were more important than this. For now.

She walked out to let him dress, her back rigid with determination. It was time to find her missing people.

Chapter 13

Alisa, Abelardus, and Leonidas parked their rented bikes a block away from the address and headed into an alley that ran between rows of warehouses, some of them towering so tall that the roofs nearly brushed the dome. They were near the outer edge, so it was much lower here than in the center of town. Lamps lit the streets, and a soft glow came from the dome itself, but shadows lurked in the alley, and people were scarce.

Alisa stifled a few yawns and told herself to remain alert rather than thinking about her bunk. If trouble had found Beck, it might still be around. Of course, she might have to deal with trouble right at her side. Abelardus kept glaring at Leonidas as they walked.

“I would like to present a united front to whoever has Beck if he has indeed been taken,” Alisa said, frowning at Abelardus. “Is there a problem we should resolve before we get there?”

Abelardus had not appeared pleased when Leonidas, once again in his armor, had shown up at the cargo hatch. That dyspeptic expression had remained on his face for the duration of the ride over. He couldn’t truly be irritated that Leonidas had lived, could he?

“No problem,” Abelardus said. “I’m just trying to figure out why he survived that mental attack when my people at the outpost didn’t.”

“I have a hearty constitution,” Leonidas said.

“You have a hearty ego.”

“I know you’re not accusing someone of having a substantial ego,” Alisa said.

“He should be dead. I just want to know why he’s not. It hardly seems fair that my people—including that boy—are dead, and he’s alive.”

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Leonidas said. “I’ve survived many battles when others haven’t.” He did not sound like he was bragging. Rather, sadness tinged the words, or maybe guilt.

Alisa touched his gauntleted hand, tempted to hold it, but the loading dock of their target warehouse had come into view. A large rectangular entrance on the back side led into the building, seemingly unguarded, but she suspected a forcefield covered the space.

“Stay here,” Leonidas said. “I’ll check the perimeter for signs of guards or automated security.” He returned her touch before jogging off.

“As if we need him to do that.” Abelardus sniffed. “I can tell you right now that there is one night guard inside, who’s asleep at the front desk.”

“Beck isn’t there?”

“I don’t sense him, no.”

Alisa kept from pointing out that he wouldn’t sense Beck if he was dead. She did not want to consider that possibility yet.

“What about automated security?” she asked.

“That’s slightly harder to detect. And slightly less likely to be asleep. I—” Abelardus frowned back toward the street. “Someone’s coming. Ah, good. It’s our contact.”

“The biker? You told him to meet us here?”

“I thought it might be more convenient than detouring to meet him at a gambling hall or pub.”

Alisa groaned. She didn’t want other people around when she was contemplating breaking into a warehouse.

“Why?” Abelardus asked as the rumble of a thrust bike grew audible. Had the man driven that noisy contraption here? “Are you and your cyborg planning something nefarious that you don’t want anyone else to know about?”

“Probably so, and you’ll be seen as abetting us if we’re caught.”

“I doubt Ostberg cares about the laws here.” Abelardus headed back toward the intersection as the noise from the bike grew louder.

“Comforting,” Alisa muttered.

She looked toward the warehouse, but Leonidas had disappeared from sight. Amazing how stealthy he could be in that big bright suit of armor.

She risked comming him. “Leonidas?”

“Yes?” he promptly replied.

“Where are you?”

“Hanging on a wall and looking in a window.” He spoke as if that was a completely normal position to be in.

“Abelardus has a Starseer contact coming to meet him,” Alisa said.

“I heard.” His voice came out neutral, and Alisa could not tell if he disapproved or not. Probably. He disapproved of Abelardus in general.

“Do you want me to join you, or should I listen in on their conversation?”

“You mean eavesdrop?”

“It’s not eavesdropping if they’re aware of me standing nearby. If they know I’m there, and they let something private slip out, then it’s negligence on their part.”

“An interesting take on the notion.”

“I aim to be interesting.”

“Go,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find a way in without alerting the night guard or breaking anything.”

Alisa felt pleased that he had noticed the night guard even without Starseer senses.

“Keep in touch,” she said and headed toward the intersection.

Their guest had already arrived. Light from a nearby lamp showed Abelardus in his robe and the rider in the same tight snagor-hide outfit he’d worn during the race.

He doesn’t want people to know he’s a Starseer, Abelardus informed her. Not everyone adores us, you may have noticed. Especially when we’re using our superior skills to humiliate mundane humans.

It’s a mystery as to why your people are unloved.

The rider, who had turned off his bike and dismounted, looked at her before she walked out of the shadows.

She lifted a hand in greeting, not sure what to say. “Have you seen any kidnapped children lately?” seemed an odd way to lead off a conversation.

The figure wore a helmet in addition to his riding clothing, and she could not make out any of his features through the mirrored faceplate. The Starseer could have been either sex, but he was over six feet tall and rail thin with no hint of curves, so she assumed he was a man.

“Ostberg, this is Captain Alisa Marchenko,” Abelardus said. “Alisa, Ostberg. Apparently, he knows my brother. And possibly knows where he is.”

“You can’t just read his mind to get that information?” Alisa asked, then offered, “Hello, Ostberg,” figuring a greeting might be in order.

Ostberg snorted. “She says exactly what she’s thinking, doesn’t she?” The voice was surprisingly young, and she revised her designation for him from man to boy.

“Yes, I find it charming and refreshing,” Abelardus said. “I’m waiting for her to think the same of my bluntness. Ostberg, I know I caught you off guard by digging up your information and contacting you, but I need to talk to someone local who knows the Starseer situation. I’m glad you came tonight.”

A long silent moment passed. The kid had to be responding mentally. Alisa sighed. Her not-eavesdropping would not go well if they communicated like that.

“Can you respond out loud?” Abelardus asked. “My captain has trouble eavesdropping when we speak telepathically.”

Alisa grimaced, sure he was monitoring her thoughts. Still, she responded with, “It’s not eavesdropping if I’m right here and you’re aware of my presence.”

“Yes, I see you have an interesting definition about that word. Ostberg?”

“All right,” he said dubiously, glancing at Alisa. “I know Durant well. He was—he is—my mentor.”

Alisa sucked in a startled breath. Was it possible this boy had been visiting the outpost? That he had seen Jelena? Even interacted with her? She resisted the urge to leap forward and throttle answers out of him. Barely.

“Do you know where he is?” Abelardus asked. “I need to talk to him. He hasn’t been answering my messages.”

Alisa made herself listen patiently. At least they were speaking out loud. But she could not assume she would hear the full truth or all of the information she sought. She wondered why Abelardus could not simply look into the boy’s thoughts and get the answers he wanted.

Starseers know how to protect their thoughts from others, the ones they wish to keep private, Abelardus spoke into her mind.

“I… know where he is,” Ostberg said. “None of us were getting our messages from off-world these last few months. They had a block on our comm relay system, and we dared not leave the school to use the city comms.”

“We?” Alisa leaned toward him. “Were you there, living with the students?”

“I am a student. One of the older ones.”

“Did you know Jelena?” she asked, her fingers twitching.

Had this Ostberg also been kidnapped once? Or had he willingly joined the Starseers? Would he be sympathetic if he had been kidnapped?

“The new girl? Not well, but yes. And I wasn’t kidnapped. I didn’t think she had been either.” Ostberg’s faceplate turned toward Abelardus, as if in a question.

Alisa grimaced again—the kid had to be reading her mind too. How did she learn to protect her thoughts from snoops?

“I doubt my brother advertised it when he was doing unscrupulous things,” Abelardus said.

“Durant is a good man.”

“Glad to hear it,” Alisa muttered, even if she couldn’t agree. It did sound like he had this boy’s respect, and that gave her some hope that the children had been treated well. After they’d been stolen from their parents.

“I wasn’t kidnapped,” Ostberg said, looking at her again. “My parents sent me to study with the Starseers when I developed the aptitude. Everything was amazing until a few months ago, when they arrived on the moon.”

“Who’s they?” Abelardus asked.

“We didn’t know at first. Just that they had Starseer powers and were watching us. Spying on us. I heard some of the teachers talking, and they thought it had something to do with… Are you sure—I mean, do you know for certain it’s all right to talk about these matters in front of her, Lord Abelardus?” Ostberg waved at Alisa.

She managed not to gag at the word lord going in front of his name.

“She has Starseer blood. I trust her implicitly,” Abelardus said. “I’m still waiting for her to learn to trust me implicitly. Right now, she reserves her trust for a cyborg who’s killed more Starseers than he can remember.” Abelardus tossed a disapproving frown in her direction.

Alisa thought to argue with him—Leonidas had gone out of his way not to hurt the Starseers in their temple—but she knew few details about his former career, except that he had loyally done as the empire bade.

Including killing Starseers, Abelardus whispered into her mind. Trust me.

Implicitly?

I have your best interests in mind.

I trust that you have your best interests in mind.

At least trust is involved somewhere. He smirked at her.

“Uhm,” Ostberg said, “we have—had—the prince. He got added to the school about three months ago, after coming in with some refugees from Dustor. They had been attacked by other Starseers. After they—he—arrived, that’s when that other group showed up here and started watching the school.”

So, Leonidas had been right about that block on the floor. Prince Thorian had been there, in the room next door to Jelena. Alisa wondered if Jelena had known who he had been. Not that she would have necessarily cared at that age. Or any age. She shared her mother’s irreverent streak and had been developing the ability to understand—and dish out—sarcasm when last Alisa had been home. A fellow parent had informed her that eight was a young age for that. It figured that Alisa would have a daughter precocious in that particular area.

“This other group,” Abelardus said, gazing intently at the boy. “Do you have names for any of them?”

“The teachers wouldn’t talk about who they were in front of us, the students.” Ostberg tilted his helmet to the side. “Do you know? I sense… something from you.”

“I have some suspicions. I’m waiting to hear back from Lady Naidoo.” Abelardus looked at Alisa. He’s going to be gifted with minds. I’m keeping my barriers up, but he’s getting a sense for my thoughts anyway.

Is that a good or bad thing? Alisa wondered.

It depends on whether you’re his friend or not. Better play nice if you don’t want him manipulating you.

Or launching mental attacks? Alisa thought of the dead Starseers and of Leonidas on that exam table.

We don’t teach that, Abelardus told her firmly.

Who does?

Abelardus turned back toward Ostberg without answering the question. Alisa glared at him. That implicit trust wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“At first, they were only watching us, but our teachers thought they might be biding their time for something. We weren’t allowed to go out into the marshes or to the city anymore, not even with adults. A guard was kept on the prince’s room and followed him around the clock. Then, all of the sudden, about four days ago, they attacked. They wore robes, just like us, and had pendants with the silver star and red moon.” Ostberg’s voice took on a tone of anguish, of betrayal.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Abelardus silently asked Alisa.

That the staff coming out of hiding might have advanced a timeline?

Yes. As I told you, any of my people could feel it if they were close enough. Some particularly sensitive minds might have felt it from across the system.

And maybe the earlier attacks on the prince had something to do with the orb coming out? Alisa suggested, thinking of the way Leonidas had implied that Alcyone’s Station itself had somehow sensed the orb’s presence and started appearing in this dimension when it happened.

Maybe. It’s possible someone very much wants to make sure that Prince Thorian doesn’t get that staff.

Once again, Alisa had the sense that Abelardus wasn’t telling her everything he knew. Even better if that someone could have the staff for himself? She thought of the gray-haired Starseer in her cargo hold.

Probably so. We are living in interesting times, Alisa.

I don’t need this interest in my life, she replied, not bothering to correct his use of her first name. I just want my daughter.

We’ll get her for you.

Thank you.

Our children should have an older sister who can babysit them when we’re off having randy times. He winked at her.

If she had been standing closer to him, she would have stomped on his foot. We’re not having babies or randy times. Three suns, every time I start to think you have a shred of decency, you say some asshole thing like that.

It’s a flaw. I’ll work on it.

Do so.

Abelardus winked at her again. She considered striding the three steps so she could stomp on his foot.

Ostberg was watching them, his eyes narrowed. He must know they were speaking. Alisa grimaced, hoping he wasn’t suspicious of their intentions.

“What happened then?” Abelardus asked him.

Ostberg hesitated, then shrugged. “They stormed into our school, attacked us without warning or explanation. I heard one accuse us of being imperial puppets, whatever that meant. I don’t even care about the empire. I never did. Neither did my parents.”

“The attack must have been awful,” Abelardus said. “What happened? Some of you obviously got away. Did Durant…?”

“He was struck by some kind of mental attack. We had to carry him out.”

Abelardus clenched his jaw.

“Some of the teachers stayed back and bought time so the prince and the rest of the students could get away,” Ostberg said. “Only Charles stayed behind among the students, because he’s so good at telekinetics. Or he was…” The helmet lowered as the boy stared at the pavement under their feet. “I felt them die. Especially those I knew well. We were halfway through the tunnels when…” He shook his head.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Alisa said.

“As am I,” Abelardus said.

“What happened when you got out of the tunnels?” Alisa felt bad about rushing him through his pain, but the boy was her only lead, and she had to find out where the others had been taken.

“The others are safe,” Ostberg said.

“Where?” Alisa and Abelardus asked at the same time.

“And Durant is… my responsibility. He needs help. I said I was old enough to get it.”

That wasn’t the answer to Alisa’s question. Once again, the urge to throttle the boy came to her. He frowned over at her, and she made herself loosen her curled fingers.

“What kind of help?” Abelardus shifted, all sign of his insouciant smirks gone. “Is it because of the mental attack?”

Ostberg nodded. “He’s still alive, but you can’t wake him up. I don’t know what to do.” His voice cracked. “I said I’d take care of him and take him to a good hospital. Like I said, he’s my mentor. But it can’t be a hospital here. They might be watching. I can still feel them out there. And I feel—I don’t know how to explain it.”

The staff.

Abelardus nodded at Alisa.

“I need to get Durant off-world and to a good hospital. I said I was old enough to handle it. And Lady Kim gave me some physical currency, enough to rent a ship that could get us to Savage Moon. But almost right away, I had a run-in with one of the rogue Starseers. I ran from him, but then smacked into a rival mafia group planning some attack in this dome. I don’t know what it was, but I got in their way.” His voice had grown tight, distressed. “This place is hellish. I showed them my powers to try to scare them into leaving me alone, but that just provoked them to torment me more.” He looked away from them, down the empty, shadowy alley. “I lost the money. But I’m not a failure. They weren’t wrong to leave Durant with me. They weren’t. I’ve been doing the bike races, making sure I win. I’ve almost made enough for the passage. One more race. All I need is to win one more without them figuring out I’m… what I am.”

“You’re doing well, Ostberg,” Abelardus said, reaching out and gripping the boy’s shoulder. “Nobody can fault you for that. Trust me. This moon is hellish. Much of the mundane system is when you’re different from them. Listen, you’ve done well, but you needn’t do this alone. Can you take me to Durant? Maybe we can help.”

“You can’t,” Ostberg whispered, his faceplate tilted downward again. “Lady Kim is a healer, and she didn’t know how to help him.”

“We have a doctor on our ship,” Abelardus said. “A good one. Take me to Durant, and I’ll get him to our doctor.”

Too bad Alejandro hadn’t known how to treat Leonidas. He had seemed to believe that he could do so if he had access to superior medical equipment. Would Savage Moon have the facilities needed? Despite the name, it was the most populated and sophisticated of Aldrin’s moons. Alisa had no idea who was in charge of it these days.

Ostberg was looking her way again. Reading her thoughts?

“Ostberg?” Abelardus prompted.

The boy stepped back, out of his grip, and lifted a hand. “I’m thinking. Look, I’ve already told you a lot, Lord Abelardus. But I don’t know you. I mean, I don’t really know that you’re Durant’s brother. You’re guarding your thoughts.”

“Of course I am. Just as you’re guarding yours from me.”

“You could be aligned with them.”

“You ought to be able to see my whole story through her thoughts,” Abelardus said, nodding toward Alisa.

“Oh please,” she said, “invite people to poke around in my head. I love it when you Starseers do that.”

“I can see her thoughts, yes, and you inserting yourself on her ship wasn’t really… I mean I don’t know if the council approved that or if you were acting of your own will. Because you want something. Because you’re with them.”

“I’m not with anybody except myself.”

“Then let down your guard,” Ostberg said. “Let me see the truth.”

That seemed reasonable enough—Leonidas had invited Yumi’s sister to look into his mind when he’d hoped to have his actions cleared back on Arkadius.

“My thoughts and memories are private,” Abelardus said, “just as yours are. You’re not sharing yours with me. We barely know each other. This is normal.”

“He’s vulnerable,” Ostberg said. “He wouldn’t be able to defend himself. I need to take care of him, and that includes not leading anyone untrustworthy to him.”

“I’m not untrustworthy,” Abelardus snapped.

“Let me think about it.” Ostberg backed to his bike.

“Wait,” Alisa blurted, alarmed that he might race off without telling her where to find Jelena.

Ostberg thrust out his hand, and it felt like a wall of air pushed her back. He frowned at her, but kept talking to Abelardus.

“If I win that race, I won’t need help. I can get him to a hospital that can treat him on my own.”

“A hospital run by mundanes who hate Starseers?” Abelardus took a step toward him. Hopefully, he could keep the boy from getting away.

Ostberg must have guessed his intent, because he leaped astride his bike, and the engine roared to life. Abelardus reached for him, but he arrowed off down the street.

“Wait,” Alisa called after him, frustration stealing her sense of caution. “Just tell me where Jelena is. Please!”

Abelardus pointed his staff after him, his eyes narrowing, but he ultimately sighed and set the butt of the staff on the ground.

“You’re letting him go?” Alisa asked, anguish flooding her body as Ostberg turned a corner and disappeared from sight.

“If I knock him on his ass, he’ll be even less likely to trust me,” he said.

“But he’s the only one who knows where the others are. Unless—” Alisa raised her brows, a hopeful thought entering her mind. “Did you see that information in his mind?”

“No, he protected it carefully.” Abelardus sighed.

“Damn it. It’s because he didn’t trust us. Why didn’t you let him see into your mind? Is it possible you realize how irritating it is when people surf through your thoughts?” Or was it possible that Abelardus had something to hide? Something that might have turned the boy against him? Something that might, if she knew it, turn her against him too?

“Some memories are uncomfortable, and you don’t want people dredging them up,” he said. “Do you not find that to be so?” He raised an eyebrow, and she found herself remembering being back at the university, going out to protest at what became the Perun Arcade Massacre.

Alisa flushed with anger and struggled to push the memory back into deep storage where it belonged. “You’re an ass, Abelardus.”

“I believe we’ve already established that. Shall we check on your cyborg?”

He headed toward the warehouse without waiting for an answer. Alisa glared at the back of his head and wondered if that had been an attempt to distract her from prying more deeply into his reticence.

What secrets don’t you want me to know about, Abelardus? she asked silently, though she had no idea if he was monitoring her.

He did not respond to her, but another voice startled her by speaking into her mind.

I don’t know where the others were taken. Only Durant does.

Alisa tripped and nearly fell.

Ostberg? she guessed.

He did not say more, and she slumped. If what the boy had said was true, the only person here who knew where Jelena had been taken was in a coma.

Chapter 14

“Come in the front door,” Leonidas said over the comm as Alisa and Abelardus approached the warehouse again. “I’ve opened it.”

“Without breaking anything?” she asked, heading around the building.

“Nothing that wasn’t already broken.”

She picked up her pace, passing Abelardus and leading the way to an unremarkable pedestrian door next to another large vehicle entrance, that one humming with the presence of a forcefield. As Leonidas had promised, the door stood ajar, so Alisa walked straight inside. A single lamp perched on a desk illuminated the entryway, but the rest of the warehouse was unlit, with the shadows thick between the aisles and aisles of refrigeration units. Here and there, tiny red power indicators glowed from the depths, making her think of predatory eyes in the night.

Leonidas stood next to the desk, where a man lay slumped over the surface. Several crumpled drones scattered the floor nearby.

“Are you sure you didn’t break anything?” Alisa frowned at the guard Abelardus had said was sleeping. He looked dead, not asleep.

Unconscious, Abelardus said into her mind. I made an error.

“Not me,” Leonidas said. “I came in through a window that was already broken.” He pointed to a row of them high up on the side of the building. “I may have widened the hole slightly.”

“To fit your prodigious self through it?” Alisa asked.

“My prodigious shoulders specifically.”

“Not your head?” Abelardus muttered.

Leonidas gave him a bland look.

“I checked some of the refrigerators,” Leonidas said, waving toward the aisles. “They’re at different temperatures and labeled with names of mushrooms. I looked inside a few, and there were crates of mushrooms on the shelves.” He sounded surprised.

“Were you expecting something else?” Alisa asked.

“Perhaps for this to be a front for the distribution of something more illicit than mushrooms. If Beck had stumbled into something illegal, that might have accounted for his absence.”

“They gamble over people being eaten by dinosaurs here. What could possibly be considered illegal?”

Leonidas spread one gauntleted palm. “He stumbled onto something.”

“Or he was targeted,” Alisa said grimly, remembering how Beck had said someone might have been following him.

Leonidas walked behind the desk to a pile shrouded in shadow and picked up a roundish object. A helmet, Alisa realized, her stomach sinking as he brought it into the light. It had gray and silver markings, as Beck’s helmet had.

“Is that his armor?” She walked around the desk for a closer look.

“Yes, and the edges are dented and charred with laser burns. Someone forcefully removed it from him.”

Alisa grimaced. It wasn’t easy to remove a soldier from his combat armor. “Is there… any blood?”

She assumed Leonidas would have told her if he had found Beck’s body.

“I haven’t noticed any yet.” Leonidas turned the helmet over in his hands, looking inside.

The guard groaned, and Alisa jumped.

Leonidas eased silently up behind him and slipped the man’s blazer pistol out of his holster. The guard groaned again, stirring this time, though he did not seem to notice the weapon being removed. Leonidas stepped back so he could cover the man, then nodded at Alisa.

Oh, was she going to be in charge of questioning him? She supposed it made sense. Beck was her employee. The guard might not be amenable to questioning, though, especially if he had been out as long as Beck had been missing. Had someone cracked him on the head? A stun gun should have worn off in twenty or thirty minutes. Someone might have injected him with a longer-acting sedative.

The man lifted his head, squinting toward the door with bleary, bloodshot eyes. He lifted blunt fingers to his swollen lip, then touched a lump on his temple. Finally, his eyes sharpened, and he noticed Alisa.

“Where’d they go?” he blurted, almost slurred. He peered at the dark warehouse around him. “How long have I been out?” He did not seem to see Abelardus, who had stepped back to a spot near the door, his dark robe blending into the shadows.

“Why don’t you tell me what happened, and maybe I can fill in some answers,” Alisa said and smiled, trying to look friendly and helpful, not like another intruder in his warehouse.

“Who are you? Did they get Chef Leblanc?” The guard frowned around again, this time turning far enough to see Leonidas. He yelped and fell out of his chair, clunking his forehead on the desk as he went down. Another groan floated up from the floor.

The fellow was not having a good day.

Even Leonidas gave him a pitying look. He leaned down and hoisted the man to his feet.

“Who do you work for?” The guard glanced back and forth between Leonidas and Alisa. “You people have made a mistake. Chef Leblanc has money, resources, and a lot of employees who will go to great lengths to get him back. If you think kidnapping—”

“We’re not with the kidnappers,” Alisa said, holding up a hand. “We’re looking for our missing friend.” She nodded toward the armor behind the desk.

The guard scowled. “That’s who they wanted. That strange mercenary carrying a suitcase full of barbecue sauce along with his guns.”

“Technically, he’s my security officer, not a mercenary.” Alisa rubbed the back of her neck. Only Beck would trot around in full combat armor while peddling homemade sauces. “Who wanted him? Who came? Solstice’s people?”

Alisa glanced at Leonidas. She doubted the woman would want Beck for her collection of one-of-a-kinds, but she might have heard that the White Dragon people had a bounty out for him. Perhaps she’d thought he would make a good gift, a way to end that feud that was reputedly going on between the two mafia clans.

“Shouldn’t have been her people,” the guard said. “We pay good rent here. Maybe Chef should have told her about those thugs wanting to set a trap.”

“Hm?” Alisa prompted, relieved the man was talking. He had no reason to believe that she was on his side.

You’re welcome, Abelardus said silently.

What?

He doesn’t trust you or your big red friend, but I’m convincing him that he might gain something from sharing information with you.

You aren’t one to let a good deed go unnoticed, are you? Alisa couldn’t believe she was calling mental coercion a good deed. She felt like a hypocrite for loathing most Starseer powers but finding it useful when Abelardus used them for her cause.

I won’t judge you for it. Most people’s morality is iffy once you dig under the surface.

I bet.

“Some mafia men came in and told Chef that they wanted to use his warehouse as a trap, that he should stay out of the way,” the guard said. “But Chef has too much honor for that. Unfortunately. I told him not to get involved, but he’s stubborn. He’s almost eighty years old, and he figures he can do what he wants, including standing up to the mafia.” He touched the lump on his temple again and winced.

“Did he need to hire someone to haul cargo? Or was that flyer part of the trap?” She imagined the White Dragon people putting that notice out as something designed to entice Beck specifically.

“Oh, he needed someone. There are refrigerators full of mushrooms back there that need to make it to the other moons before they spoil. But it was very odd that his usual freight hauler disappeared without a word.”

Remembering the way the Star Nomad had been welcomed to Cleon Moon, Alisa didn’t find a disappearing ship odd at all, not here.

“But it was right after he put that flyer out that the mafia men came. They didn’t say why, but they offered Chef ten thousand tindarks to simply let them put some people in this warehouse to lay in wait for that man.”

“Beck.”

“Beck,” the guard agreed.

“What happened after your employer refused to help the mafia? You’re sure these weren’t Solstice’s people?” Alisa wouldn’t mind if Solstice had been responsible, giving her a reason to send Leonidas to clobber her.

“Heard them say they were from another city, but wouldn’t say which one or who they worked for.”

So not Solstice, unless they had been lying to cast the blame elsewhere.

“If they were from another clan, they shouldn’t have been in here,” the man said. “I doubt Solstice would have allowed it if she’d known. But Chef isn’t the kind to whine to the authorities. He sent the men on their way and then commed one of his restaurant ships on Savage Moon, ordered them to send some security to this moon. But they haven’t gotten here yet. When the mafia came back with more men and more weapons, it was just me and Chef and the robots and drones. The bastards made it clear that objections to their presence would not be tolerated.” The guard frowned at the crumpled machinery on the floor. “I tried to distract them so Chef could go out the back, but they walloped me with something. I don’t know what happened after that. But I guess Chef is gone. That’s his earstar.” The man pointed at a netdisc and earstar on the corner of the desk.

“As is Beck.” Alisa met Leonidas’s eyes. “It has to be White Dragon. Who else would want Beck and know about his culinary aspirations? What’s the name of their city? Terra Dhwan? I bet that’s where they took him.”

“Perhaps,” Leonidas said. “They could have a hideout here. We also don’t have proof that it was the White Dragon. You haven’t known Beck that long. He may have other enemies.”

“How can a man who prefers grilling steaks to fighting have a long list of enemies?”

“I could speak with Solstice. She may have information, or, if she finds out that another mafia group was in here, she may be motivated to get the information. She has far more resources than we do.”

“How can you say that?” Alisa asked. “We have a cyborg and a Starseer and a science teacher. She has a room full of ceramic eggs.”

Leonidas arched an eyebrow.

Alisa sighed, knowing she wasn’t being logical. But she imagined that woman caressing Leonidas’s chest, and didn’t want him to have anything to do with her. Besides, it wasn’t smart going to the mafia and asking for help under any circumstances. Beck had certainly found that out.

“It may be time for me to accept her offer,” Leonidas said.

“To become one of her objets d’art?” Alisa asked.

“To become her security chief.”

“You can’t go back there without me.”

“I don’t believe she extended the offer to you,” he said.

“I don’t care. Don’t you think she’ll be suspicious that you refused her this morning, but you’re now ready to accept?”

Leonidas shook his head. “I’ll tell her we’ve had a disagreement over our relationship and that I’m now ready for new employment.”

Alisa winced. She didn’t know if he meant relationship in a romantic sense or a captain-crew sense, but either way, it seemed far too close to the truth for a ruse. Hells, what if it wasn’t a ruse? What if he truly felt that he needed to escape, lest she keep trying to foist herself on him?

She swallowed around the lump forming in her throat.

“While I attempt to gain information from her,” he continued, “you could turn in those dinosaur heads and buy that combat armor. Then, if we find that Beck is being held by the White Dragon people, you’ll be better prepared to make an incursion into their compound.”

“Are you trying to win this argument with reason, Leonidas?” Alisa propped a fist on her hip and struggled for a light tone, as if she weren’t now worrying that he wanted to flee from her. “Don’t you know women hate that?”

The guard snorted.

“For all we know, Solstice could have been in on this,” Alisa said. “What if she’s the one who told the White Dragon that our ship entered her city and that Beck was here? Just because the two clans are supposedly feuding doesn’t mean they never work together. I don’t think it’s safe for you to go to her, and I don’t think we should delay. What if Beck is being tortured right now? Or worse.”

And what if whoever had Jelena was even now making plans to move her out of the city to some new secret hideout? Alisa hated all these delays. She didn’t want to shop for armor right now. She wanted to find her daughter.

“This shouldn’t take long,” Leonidas said. “If Solstice isn’t working with them, she may be willing to part with information on their city and their compound. We could use that help. I imagine their headquarters will be fortified with weapons and men. Take Abelardus and turn in the heads. I’ll get in contact as soon as I know more.”

Alisa scowled at him. Just because she wanted to sleep with him didn’t mean he got to order her around. And what if Solstice didn’t let him go once she had him? Just what did he plan to trade her for this information he sought? Couldn’t they handle this without Solstice?

Despite her misgivings, Alisa did not say anything as Leonidas left the desk and headed for the door. He seemed determined to follow this course. What else could she say?

He paused before leaving. “You may also want to find a way to make sure the dome forcefield can be lowered in case my meeting with Solstice doesn’t go well and the Nomad needs to leave in a hurry.”

At least he was open to the possibility of problems arising from visiting Solstice.

“We’ll work on it,” she grudgingly grumbled.

He squeezed her shoulder and walked out the door, apparently believing that reporting in to Solstice late at night would not be seen as odd. Maybe it wouldn’t be. Solstice would probably be pleased when he showed up at her doorstep at midnight.

“It’s just a ruse,” she told herself, and walked over to the pile of armor. “Abelardus, will you help me carry this outside so we can bring our bikes over and load it onto them? Beck would have to sell a lot of jars of barbecue sauce to buy a new set.”

“You don’t think the bounties from the heads will be enough to buy the whole crew new sets of armor? Maybe if the doctor had some, he could hide in cubbies more effectively.”

“I wish, but I’m skeptical about how much we’ll actually get.” If they got anything at all.

As Alisa toted Beck’s helmet and chest plate out, one of the city spy boxes floated down the street, reminding her how much monitoring went on here. It was almost like being back in the empire. She hoped Leonidas wasn’t being delusional in believing he could convince Solstice that he had rejected his former employer and now wanted to be her loyal servant. As strong as he was, he would have a hard time dealing with two security androids at once. And given the woman’s wealth and influence, she might have far more than those two within her compound.

Even though she was confident in Leonidas’s abilities, Alisa worried she had made a mistake by letting him go without more of a fight.

• • • • •

After they had stacked Beck’s armor in a corner of the cargo hold, Alisa helped Abelardus secure the heads on a rented hoverboard, so he could turn them in for the bounty. A pair of chickens wandered the deck while they worked, including a white speckled one that she hadn’t noticed before. There seemed to be more of them in the coop than usual. Had Yumi found a local supplier?

“You’re not coming with me?” Abelardus asked when she waved for him to take the heads and go.

“I need to get Mica and plan a way to disable that forcefield, so we can get out if things don’t go well with Solstice. Or even if they do.”

“The cyborg better not irritate her too much,” Abelardus said. “We need time to find Ostberg again, convince him to tell us where Durant is, and I’d like time to look for the staff too.”

“Is it still in the city?” came Alejandro’s voice from the walkway. His gray hair was tousled, and he needed a shave. Maybe he’d decided to forgo his daily ablutions until he figured out how to get back on track with his mission. “Can you tell, Abelardus?”

“I can still sense it somewhere nearby, yes.”

“Can you?” Alisa asked, surprised he hadn’t mentioned it before. “Would you be able to lead a party to it?”

Not that she particularly wanted it back.

You didn’t enjoy using it as a nightlight? Abelardus asked into her mind. It lit up so nicely for you.

Not as nicely as it did for the man in that video.

“If it’s in the city, we must put all possible effort into getting it back.” Alejandro gripped the railing of the walkway.

“I’m not going on another artifact hunt until I have Beck back and I’ve found Jelena.” Alisa hoped that retrieving Beck would not end with all of them being forced to flee the city—and the moon—before they located Ostberg and Durant.

“Don’t plan anything exciting without me,” Abelardus said, waving as he departed on a bike with the hoverboard floating behind him.

“Plan, yes. Do, no,” Alisa said as she closed the cargo hatch behind him.

As much as she hated to admit it, any attempt at infiltration or sabotage would likely be easier with Abelardus around.

That’s because I’m indispensable.

You bring me back a good price for those heads, and I might start to believe you. Alisa headed for engineering to talk to Mica.

And then you’ll reward me for my indispensableness?

By not kicking you off my ship? Yes.

I was thinking of kisses.

Beck might be grateful enough to give you a kiss if you help rescue him. Alisa did not find Mica in engineering, so she headed up the stairs.

Appealing.

Alejandro frowned at Alisa as she drew even with him.

“Why don’t you do some research of your own, Doctor?” she asked, heading him off before he could cast accusations at her or inform her that she wasn’t doing enough to get the staff back. “Find out who those Starseers were and where they’re headquartered.”

“I’ve been attempting to do just that. The one who died here didn’t have any identification on him, and neither his face, nor the face of the man your cameras caught, is in the imperial database. I can’t get access to the Alliance database from here, but I suspect they just filched the imperial records.”

“Probably,” Alisa said, not wanting to get in an argument about whether electronic records were legitimate spoils for the victors in a war. “Maybe Abelardus will figure out who they are. He said he sent a request to Lady Naidoo.”

“I’ll be holding my breath while I wait for them to share the details,” Alejandro grumbled.

“I thought you two were working together now.”

“No.”

Alisa headed through the mess hall and toward the cabins. She started toward Mica’s but heard laughter coming from Yumi’s. The hatch was open, so she turned that way instead.

A chicken squawked as she approached, hopping over the raised hatchway, then hustling down the corridor, as if it had a date waiting. Alisa certainly hoped that no roosters had been added to the flock.

“Yumi, is there a reason your chickens are roaming amok?” Alisa asked, leaning through the hatchway.

She found Mica and Yumi sitting on the bed, munching on something and watching a vid. Alisa momentarily forgot what she had intended to ask, feeling a sad twinge because this was the date night she had wanted to have with Leonidas.

“The girls like to stretch their legs,” Yumi said. “Plus I didn’t want to put the new ones in the coop until the older ones got used to them.”

“New ones?”

“Someone was giving some away. Apparently, they make too much noise for the dome ordinances, and neighbors complained. Can you imagine not being able to maintain small livestock in a community? I didn’t even see any gardens when we were passing apartments. How do the people survive? They must have to import everything. It’s a crime not to be able to grow your own food.”

Alisa looked around at the tangle of things Yumi was growing, her cabin looking more like a greenhouse than sleeping quarters. Make that a greenhouse/laboratory. As Mica had mentioned, a counter made from some piece of salvaged metal was now attached to the bulkhead, with all manner of chemistry equipment set up on it.

“Do you have any of that mushroom drug yet?” Alisa asked, imagining herself finding a way to give a dose to whatever guards or workers controlled those forcefields. “Or anything else that might knock people out? An enticing little aerosol perhaps?”

Mica’s eyes narrowed, and she answered first. “What are you planning now, Captain?”

“We need to rescue Beck. The mafia got him.”

“Which one?” Yumi asked.

“The White Dragon, I believe, but it’s possible Solstice is colluding with them. Leonidas should find out soon, since he’s meeting with her.”

Mica grunted. “So, he’ll find out by being thrown into a brig.”

“Or chained to a bed,” Alisa grumbled.

“What?”

“Never mind. Whether Solstice is colluding with the White Dragon or not, I want to make sure the Nomad can escape this city when the time comes. Mica, how do you feel about infiltrating the control tower here and knocking out the forcefield?”

“So the poisonous atmosphere can ooze into the city and make everyone sick?” Yumi frowned.

“So we can get out. Everyone who lives here probably has a breathing mask for emergencies. Besides, if there’s some chaos from the bad air getting in, that could help us by serving as a distraction.”

“I suppose I can come up with something.” Mica sighed and climbed off the bed. “Will this be a stealthy incursion or one of your usual incursions?”

“Does it matter to you?” Alisa tried to decide if she should be offended by the implication that her “incursions” were usually noisy.

“I’ll make different explosives depending on whether we want everyone to know we’re destroying things or not.”

“Let’s try for not.” Alisa did not need another mafia clan after her.

As Mica headed for the hatchway, she almost bonked her head on a hanging planter with cascades of baby tomatoes flowing over the side.

“Are the vegetables for narcotic purposes?” Alisa wondered. “Or did Beck ask you to grow a garden?”

“Nightshades do have some interesting uses,” Yumi said, “but you’re right in that I’m assisting him with growing fresh ingredients for his sauce experiments. Tomatoes and peppers seem to be quite important to him.”

“You’re going to need another cabin soon.”

“Quite possibly.”

Alisa’s comm beeped.

“Are you in?” she asked as soon as she saw that it was Leonidas.

“I’ve had a short meeting with Solstice,” he said, not objecting to the lack of preamble. “She says she doesn’t have Beck and that she didn’t know anything about the trap.”

“I’ll bet,” Alisa muttered.

“She could be telling the truth. She seems vexed that some other clan set up an ambush in her city without asking for her permission.”

“Would she have let them do it if they had asked for permission?”

“I didn’t ask,” Leonidas said. “The implication did seem to be yes. Since she’s annoyed, however, she offered to let me use an unmarked ship to head over to Terra Dhwan to see if Beck is there.”

“You already have an unmarked ship.”

“The Nomad is known, if only by description, to the White Dragon clan. Solstice is offering something with weapons and maneuverability that could be used for slipping a team into their city this very night.”

“She offered you this ship for free?” Alisa asked. “That doesn’t sound like her.” Or like anyone. Who let someone else fly expensive spaceships into what could become a war zone?

“She did offer it for free, yes.”

“Then it’s a trap.”

“That possibility crossed my mind, but she does seem interested in ingratiating herself to me.”

“Why? You weren’t charming, were you? Leonidas, if you were charming to another woman, I’m going to be most distraught.”

“I was terse and aloof.”

“I can practically hear the zing zing of her heartstrings.”

“She offered a pilot as well,” Leonidas said.

“Definitely a trap. It’s clear you need me there to protect you from yourself.”

“If you want to be my pilot, all you have to do is say so. But if you join me, we could end up in this trap together.”

“Sounds romantic and adventurous.”

Leonidas did not answer right away, and Alisa checked to make sure he hadn’t closed the channel.

Finally, he said, “I’m still not quite sure what to make of your humor. Or to know when it is humor.”

“That’s because you’re not accustomed to interacting with the opposite sex. You need me as your guide to female matters. Where are you picking up the ship? I’ve got Mica making explosives. We can be there soon.”

Yumi turned off the vid and padded to the counter in her sock feet. She poked around with something in a mortar.

“Leonidas?” Alisa prompted, imagining him objecting to the idea of her flying him into a dangerous area. But surely, he would prefer her to some unknown pilot that Solstice provided.

“There’s a hangar on the south side of her headquarters,” Leonidas said. “I’ll meet you there in two hours.”

Alisa resisted the urge to ask him what he would be doing over there for two hours. She didn’t truly believe he had any interest in Solstice, but the woman’s supposed generosity made Alisa uneasy. Leonidas could take care of himself, and the two hours were probably for Mica’s sake, to make sure she had time to make her explosives.

“Thank you,” Alisa said, lowering her voice and turning her back to Yumi. “I know you don’t truly need me, but I worry about you, and if there’s flying to be done, you know I like to be in charge of it.”

“If there’s flying to be done, I also like you to be in charge of it,” he said, then closed the channel.

She smiled, warmed by the simple statement.

“Captain?” Yumi asked, turning toward her with a clear bag of powder in her hand. “I have been working on a compound. The smashed specimens needed to be washed and dehydrated promptly since they were in poor condition after being mangled in those battles.”

“I hear that premature mangling can damage the efficacy of a drug.”

“Mica was kind enough to jury-rig a dehydration machine for me.” Yumi smiled and pointed to something on her counter that looked more like a hair dryer than a mushroom dehydrator.

“You sure she didn’t just steal that from the lav?”

Yumi’s smile broadened. “It’s far more effective than anything in the Nomad’s lav.”

“I’ll be mature and not take that as a slight against my ship.”

“Excellent.” Yumi held out the pouch. “This is for you.”

“Uh, to sell?”

“If you wish. Or you can attempt to convince a guard to imbibe it if necessary.”

Alisa grimaced, remembering the debacle from the last time she had tried to sneak drugs into people’s systems. “Might be hard unless he happens to be eating some fish with a nice moist sauce.”

“I shall trust in your creativity. I’m afraid an aerosol version would be beyond the capabilities of my meager facilities.”

Alisa eyed the hair dryer. “I suppose that would have been a lot to ask.”

“The powder is ground quite finely. Ideal for snorting.”

“Is that the preferred method for dosing people with this particular drug?” Alisa was fairly certain that convincing a guard to snort powder would be even more unlikely to happen than dumping some in a coffee cup.

“Yes, but only because the effects kick in much more swiftly then. Consuming it will be fine, so long as you’re prepared to wait for digestion.”

“Maybe I’ll just sell it and buy a stun gun.”

“That’s your prerogative. Don’t forget the name is meykonghi arelexius, and the street name is Bliss. However, you might wish to try some for yourself before parting with all of it.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need a drug for sexual satisfaction.” Just a fully functioning cyborg, one who wasn’t afraid of hurting her if they fell asleep cuddling.

“It has other merits. Such as relaxation. You always seem tense, Captain.”

“Because my life is tense right now. Thanks for the sample.” Alisa waved the bag and headed for the hatchway.

“Please let me know if I can help in any other way. I would be distressed to lose Tommy.”

“If I can think of anything that needs drugging or dehydrating, I’ll let you know.”

Yumi settled cross-legged on the bed, rested the backs of her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and started breathing deeply, making a raspy noise in the back of her throat. At least someone wasn’t tense.

Chapter 15

“Abelardus, are you there?” Alisa asked, comming his unit as she and Mica headed toward the hangar Leonidas had mentioned. It was well after midnight, and the streets were not busy, but they occasionally passed pubs with huge holodisplays showing monster-hunting footage. Alisa pointedly did not look through the windows, not wanting to see what the drunks around the bar were cheering at.

She and Mica had put aside their plans for finding a way to lower the city’s forcefield since it sounded like Leonidas was on good terms with Solstice—for now. Instead, Alisa had helped Mica assemble smoke bombs and grenades during the two hours Leonidas had given them.

“I’m on my way back to the ship,” he responded, his voice subdued. If he had found the person who handed out bounties on dinosaur heads, he must not have gotten a good deal.

“I heard from Leonidas. We’re still not positive that Beck is in Terra Dhwan, but we’re going to go check. Oh, and we’re going in an armed and armored ship that’s being loaned to him by Solstice. I suspect it’s part of a trap. Would you like to join us in what’s sure to be a grand adventure?”

Mica frowned over at her. “Grand adventure? Are you being annoyingly optimistic again?”

“I’d like for him to join us so I’m putting a positive spin on it. I do have faith that with Leonidas’s strength, your cunning, and my flying, we can outmaneuver any trap that Solstice might have set.”

Mica’s expression turned dubious. Alisa refused to be daunted by the potential trap or the fact that they had to find Beck in an unfamiliar city and retrieve him from what was likely a heavily guarded compound. Having Abelardus along would be helpful.

“I know I said I’d help with Beck, but can it wait?” Abelardus asked. “I was planning to go out to the racetrack in the morning to talk to Ostberg again. And morning is only a few hours away now.”

“I’m certain we can finish this rescue and have you back by then.” Alisa looked at the time display on her comm unit. “We’ve got what? Four hours? We’ll have Beck back in time to make pancakes.”

“Pancakes on the grill?” Mica asked.

“You’re questioning that instead of my optimistic timeline? And don’t put those pancakes past him. Have you seen his muffins?”

“Since you are clearly in need of my help and pancakes are at stake,” Abelardus said, “I shall join you.”

“You are very magnanimous.”

“It’s true. I am.”

Mica rolled her eyes. Alisa was just happy Abelardus was talking on the comm instead of into her head. Maybe she was outside of his telepathy range. She gave him the location of the hangar and was about to close the channel when he spoke again.

“Aren’t you going to ask me about the dino heads?”

“Since you didn’t enthusiastically tell me about a huge pouch of money you’re lugging around, I assumed it didn’t go well.”

“Ah.”

“Am I wrong?” Alisa asked. “Were they worth anywhere near what we heard?”

“Not exactly. The five- and ten-thousand tindark bounties are for people who slay the dinosaurs with the cameras watching, thus to ensure solid entertainment for viewers and sponsors of the hunter channels.”

Alisa thought of the way Leonidas had smashed the cameras.

“I did convince the man to pay something for them,” Abelardus said, “but you may have to downgrade your shopping list slightly.”

“From combat armor to…?”

“Perhaps a toy soldier wearing toy combat armor.”

Alisa groaned. “You couldn’t use your Starseer charms to get more out of him?”

Even though Beck and Jelena were her prime concerns right now, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. It sounded like she had hacked off a dinosaur head and that they had carried the collection of them all the way back for nothing.

“His charms?” Mica asked as they turned a corner, the flat roof of Solstice’s headquarters coming into view. “You mean his mental manipulation skills?”

“More or less.”

“I did attempt to persuade him to open his coffers further,” Abelardus said, “but he was already grumpy since I’d woken him in the middle of the night—and also because I’d dumped a pile of bloody heads on the floor of the betting shop that he runs out of his basement. He informed me, with vitriol, that he doesn’t keep much physical currency on hand and that when full-price dinosaur bounties are dished out, the money comes from the city vaults. Which are controlled by the boss.”

“Solstice,” Alisa grumbled, and turned off the comm.

“So Leonidas is the one who will have to be charming if we’re to be paid decently,” Mica said.

“Yes, but I don’t want him being charming to Solstice.”

“Because it would make you jealous?”

“Because her walls are filled with displays of dinosaurs eating people. She’s probably the one who came up with that whole scheme. Bloodthirsty bitch.”

“Because it would make you jealous,” Mica repeated, this time with a firm nod.

Alisa sighed at her, but the hangar had come into view, so she curbed further responses. They turned a corner and paused, waiting for an opportunity to cross an intersection that hover bikes and automated delivery trucks zoomed through, despite the late—early—hour.

“She’s not coming with us, is she?” Mica pointed her chin toward the front of the hangar.

The giant sliding door was open, as was a smaller one for personnel. Leonidas stood in front of that one, wearing all of his armor except his helmet, which was casually tucked under his arm. Solstice stood next to him, a hand resting on his forearm. She wore a tight dress with a slit in the lower half revealing most of one shapely leg. Her eight-inch hover heels brought her head nearly level with his.

“Not in that outfit,” Alisa grumbled. “You can’t infiltrate the enemy compound in a dress like that. I doubt she could even run.”

“Will running be required?” Mica asked, as they found their opportunity to stride across the intersection. “I was hoping that stealth approach you mentioned would come into play.”

“That was for when we were infiltrating an air-traffic control tower. Now we’re infiltrating an enemy compound in a city full of White Dragon loyalists who want Beck dead and, after the help we’ve given him, very likely want us dead too.”

“That seems like more of a reason to employ stealth rather than less.”

“We’ll see what we can manage.” Alisa forced herself to smile as she walked across the landing strip in front of the hangar. “Good evening, Leonidas. Good evening, Solstice.”

“Boss Solstice,” the woman said, oozing closer to Leonidas, pressing her body against his armored side.

“Is that what passes for an honorific here?” Mica muttered.

“This is my pilot,” Leonidas said, extending a hand toward Alisa. “You’ve met.”

“Have we?” Solstice asked, feigning surprise as she looked Alisa up and down. “I must have forgotten. She looks rather forgettable, doesn’t she?”

“No. Alisa, Boss Solstice says that her spies have verified that Beck is being held in the White Dragon compound in Terra Dhwan.” Leonidas met Alisa’s eyes, and she thought there was a warning in his gaze, a let’s-not-take-her-word-for-it warning.

Alisa nodded, having exactly the same feeling. She hoped they could trust the information about Beck’s location. She would hate to break into an enemy compound for no reason.

Leonidas extracted his arm and walked to the large open door. “Which craft may we take?”

Solstice strode after him, giving Alisa a snide look down her nose as she passed.

“She probably has to be bitchy,” Alisa told Mica, as if Mica had made an opening comment. “Nobody would take a nice mafia boss seriously.”

Mica arched her eyebrows. “Insults? Shouldn’t you kiss up to the person who’s lending us a spaceship?”

“Is that the proper protocol?” Alisa asked. “I didn’t know. Nobody ever lends me anything.”

“Hard to imagine why.”

Alisa elbowed her and whispered, “You’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I’m just here to fix your engines when they get shot up, which I suppose will be inevitable since you’re eschewing stealth.”

“I’m not eschewing anything. Except kissing up.”

Solstice and Leonidas strode into the hangar without waving for Alisa and Mica to follow. They walked down a wide aisle with aircraft and spaceships parked on either side, their noses pointed toward the center. Alisa followed the pair, somewhat pleased when Leonidas avoided Solstice’s attempts to take his arm by wielding his helmet like a shield.

“This will seat six,” Solstice said, stopping to pat the nose of an imperial charger that had received a paint job, leaving it a bland off-white. “Unmarked, so they won’t know it’s mine. I had my men put some extra weapons in there since the rest of your team appears poorly outfitted.” She sneered at Alisa’s clothes and the Etcher in her holster, then included Mica in her sneer.

“I’m outfitted just fine,” Mica said, patting her satchel. “Besides, if I end up in a shootout with someone, we’re in all kinds of trouble.”

“Nonetheless, there are weapons,” Solstice said, “and also rappelling equipment in case you want to drop in on their heads.” She smiled and gripped Leonidas’s arm. “I will take it as a personal favor if you destroy a few of their buildings on your way in and then lop off a few heads on the way out, preferably Boss Medric’s. I’m sure he’s the one who sent that team into my city without thinking he needed my permission.” She bared her startlingly white teeth, her eyes glinting with predatory intensity.

“If you want me to announce to them that you’re behind our visit, I’ll attack any of them you wish,” Leonidas said. “But it seems wiser to sneak in and out without leaving carnage in our wake.”

Solstice tapped her jaw thoughtfully. “I do like carnage.”

“Shocking,” Alisa muttered.

“But I would prefer it if they not know I’m behind any calamities that befall them,” she added, ignoring Alisa. “Not over such a trivial matter. Though their presumption does vex me terribly. Leonidas, if you kill Medric while you’re there, sneakily or not, I’ll reward you handsomely.”

“I’m not an assassin,” he said, though he did not hold her gaze. “Not anymore,” he added softly, looking toward a distant corner of the hangar.

“Not to mention that the White Dragon clan has more heads than a Farol octopus has tentacles,” Alisa said. “We’d rather not have the rest of them hunting for us.”

Solstice sniffed. “Too late for that, girl. You should look yourself up on the mafia sys-net someday.”

“They haven’t seen fit to give me a passcode.”

“A handsome reward, Leonidas,” Solstice said. “Keep my offer in mind.”

Abelardus appeared in the large doorway and strode toward them, the hem of his black robe snapping around his ankles at his brisk pace.

“Forget rewards. What would we have to do in order to get the full bounties for the eight dinosaur heads we tried to turn in tonight?” Alisa asked, reminded of that problem by Abelardus's appearance.

“Eight?” Solstice asked. “There were eight dinosaur slayings that weren’t caught on camera?”

“Cameras malfunction. You know how it goes.”

“I see.” Solstice pursed her lips. “Wreck up Medric’s compound nicely and in a way that it won’t be pinned on me, and I’ll see that you’re paid well.”

“Eight-dinosaur well?” Alisa asked.

“Yes.”

The woman blew a kiss to Leonidas and sashayed toward the exit. She paused to give Abelardus a head-to-toe appraising look before she continued. He gave her a Starseer bow.

“Let’s go while night may still cover some of our actions,” Alisa said, waving toward the hatch on the side of the ship.

Leonidas led the way. Alisa still suspected Solstice might have laid a trap for them, but even if she hadn’t, Alisa cringed at the idea of being a pawn in some feud between mafia families. That might be worse than the trap.

• • • • •

It did not take long for the charger to fly across the dark swamplands between the two domed cities, but Alisa added some time to their trip by swooping up a few miles into the atmosphere before angling toward Terra Dhwan. She did not care much about keeping Solstice out of trouble, but since the Nomad was still parked in her city, she would try to make it look as if this craft had flown in from space.

While she flew, she tapped into the local sys-net and found the comm code for Chef Leblanc’s warehouse. She did not know if that guard would still be there, but it would not hurt to check.

“Looks like they have a similar forcefield regulating access into their dome,” Mica said, monitoring a sensor display from the passenger seat.

Abelardus sat behind her. Leonidas should have been in the seat behind Alisa, but he was poking through the pile of gear in the back, the weapons and equipment Solstice had included with their borrowed charger. Alisa had not taken a thorough look, other than to note that there was enough there to outfit an army. The woman either wanted them to do a lot of damage to her rival’s city, or the clans weren’t rivals at all, and she wanted Leonidas and Alisa to be in a lot of trouble when the White Dragon people caught them. Not that Alisa intended for her team to be caught.

“Do we have a plan for getting in?” Mica asked, when Alisa did not respond.

“Of course.” But Alisa had someone else to comm first. She punched in the code for the warehouse.

“Leblanc’s Fine Ingredients is closed for business right now. Please call back between the hours of—”

“What is it?” a frazzled voice asked, interrupting the automatic recording.

Alisa paused. She’d had a message rehearsed to leave, and she had to readjust her lines. “Is this the person who was on guard there a few hours ago?”

“Yes,” the man said warily. “Who is this?”

“Alisa. The woman you talked to. We’ve discovered the location of your boss.” Technically, Alisa only knew where Beck had been taken, and even that depended on Solstice’s word, but she assumed the mafia kidnapping team had taken Leblanc, too, rather than dumping him in a swamp somewhere. If nothing else, it sounded like the chef would be a valuable prisoner who could be traded for a ransom.

“Where is he?”

“The White Dragon headquarters in Terra Dhwan.”

The man swore. “You sure he’s being kept in their main compound? We’ve been planning—never mind.”

“A rescue, by chance?” Alisa asked.

“Look, we’re only going after our boss. I’m sorry your man got taken, but he’s not our priority.”

“I understand perfectly well. We’ll take care of our man. I just thought you’d want to know where to look for your fellow.”

“Thanks. Appreciate it.”

Mica was watching her curiously.

“Just being friendly and sharing information.” Alisa smiled.

The comm flashed on the console.

“That’ll be the person who operates the forcefield, I’ll wager,” Alisa said, and answered it. The charger was heading straight for the dome, only a minute away now.

“Access to the city is only through invitation,” a female voice announced.

“Is it?” Alisa asked. “That doesn’t seem like it would foster tourism, gambling, and economic growth.”

The voice turned dry. “It sounds like you don’t have an invitation.”

“You’re correct. Who do I speak with about getting one? I’m looking to sell a large quantity of Bliss, and I’d prefer to wholesale it to someone rather than working with individual dealers all over the moon. I understand the drug is popular down here?” She had no idea if that was true, though if it did what Yumi claimed, she didn’t see how it couldn’t be popular, unless there was an oversupply on Cleon Moon since the mushrooms grew here. Still, she couldn’t imagine it was easy to harvest those mushrooms with dinosaurs roaming all over the place.

“Show me your supply,” the woman said.

“Let me get a sample.”

Alisa muted the comm and pulled the bag of yellowish powder out of her pocket. With drugs sold in infinitesimal batches, the few ounces Yumi had given her had seemed an extravagant amount, but what would she do if this woman expected to see crates lined up behind her?

“Leonidas, can you make sure those weapons don’t show up in the vid pickup?” she asked, waving toward the comm camera. It was pointed toward the pilot’s seat, but would catch some of the background too. “I’ll have to turn it on to display my fine wares.”

Leonidas turned toward her, his crimson armor gleaming under the ceiling lighting, his arms full of weapons and bandoliers of grenades crisscrossing his chest. It had been a while since Alisa had thought of him as a walking nightmare sent by the empire to kill everyone in his path, but he definitely had that look at the moment.

“Ah, can you also make sure you don’t show up in the vid pickup?” she added, making a shooing motion. She thought about shooing Abelardus to the side, too, since that black Starseer robe was identifiable, but he was sitting in the seat behind Mica, and ought to be out of the picture already.

“Would a drug-dealing pilot not have a bodyguard?” Leonidas asked as he produced a tarp from somewhere to drop over the pile of munitions.

“A drug-dealing pilot who could afford an ex-imperial cyborg in full combat armor would be flying a nicer ship.”

“Ex.” Leonidas’s mouth twisted, showing his displeasure at thinking of himself in such a manner, but he did step to the side so the camera would not catch him.

“Sorry,” Alisa said.

She might never quite understand his reasons for feeling so loyal to the empire. Oh, she understood that Emperor Markus had spoken to him and treated him like a person instead of a machine or a monster, but was that enough to offset the horrors that had taken place during the centuries the empire had reigned?

“Captain?” the woman on the comm prompted.

“Maybe you should see if she’ll let us in before our route takes us crashing into the dome,” Mica said.

“We’re hovering right now,” Alisa said, giving her a flat look as she toggled the comm switch. “Yes, I have my sample here.”

She held the clear bag up to the camera, then wondered if she should have created a more artful display for something that was probably worth hundreds of tindarks an ounce. Perhaps she could have arranged it on a plate with garnishes.

“The boss’s team will have to test it before prices can be bandied about and deals offered,” the woman said.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

Alisa managed to keep her tone neutral. Inside, she was delighted. This sounded promising and not like an obvious trap. She looked at Leonidas. Was it possible Solstice’s interest in him—or in having him—might have caused her to deal honestly with him?

“Am I in the vid pickup?” he asked softly, as he stood with his back against the wall.

Alisa muted the comm again—she could hear the woman talking to someone in the background but could not make out the words. “No, I was debating your sex appeal,” she told him.

Abelardus frowned.

Leonidas blinked. “Now?”

“She debates it often, I’ll wager,” Mica said.

“Shush,” Alisa said, turning back and unmuting the comm.

“What’s your name, Captain?” the woman asked. “Your ship doesn’t have an ident. Have we dealt with you previously?”

If only she knew…

“Andromeda,” Alisa said, wishing she had thought to come up with a name that sounded like something a drug dealer might have. A cartoon character probably wasn’t it. “That’s Laser Edge Andromeda,” she added, afraid the silence on the other end denoted disbelief. “People all across the system know that if they want the stuff, I got the stuff.”

Alisa looked at her crewmates and wasn’t surprised to catch various expressions of skepticism—or maybe that was pity—on their faces.

“You’ve been watching too many vid dramas,” Mica whispered.

“Very well, Captain Andromeda,” the woman said dryly. “You have permission to come in to have your Bliss tested. Theo will take care of you. Fly directly to Comet Compound in the center of the city. I’ll transmit landing coordinates. Do not detour anywhere else unless you’re given permission to partake in our hospitality.”

“Comet Compound it is,” Alisa said and slapped the comm button. “That’s the boss’s base, isn’t it? Did we just get invited down? That was easy.”

“Because it’s a trap,” Mica said.

“You’re so pessimistic.”

“Come on, you think it’s a trap too. They’ve probably got fifty armed men waiting at the coordinates they gave you.”

“Well, we have something that can pulverize armed men.” Alisa smiled back at Leonidas.

“Do you have trouble thinking of his sex appeal at the same time as you imagine him pulverizing people?”

“Less trouble than you’d think.”

“I’m concerned for you, Captain,” Mica said.

“You’re not the first person who has said that to me.”

Alisa took the charger through the lowered forcefield and into the dome. She wanted to be optimistic that this would work out, but she couldn’t help but think Mica might be right, that they were flying into an asteroid field of trouble. Even if Leonidas could pulverize the immediate opposition, would they be able to fight their way into the depths of some compound to find Beck and then escape the city with him?

“I am glad you haven’t suggested abandoning Beck, turning around, and flying back out into space,” Alisa told Mica, remembering that she had done that previously when Alejandro and Leonidas had been in trouble.

“I want to see those grilled pancakes.”

Chapter 16

“Here’s the plan,” Alisa said, grabbing a double-barreled blazer pistol from the weapons pile.

She had brought the charger down in the middle of a circular building with a large landing pad in the center and a long tail of buildings stretching away and into the city—calling the compound a comet was ambitious. She expected a greeting party to come knocking on the ship’s hatch any moment.

“I will go out first and confront whoever awaits, while you stay inside,” Leonidas said, his helmet fastened, weapons in hand with more on his person and within reach.

“That’s actually not the plan I had in mind.”

“Your plan may need adjustment.”

Alisa stuck out her hand, Yumi’s bag dangling from her grasp. “If I go out first, shooting should be less likely. What kind of mafia employee would shoot someone holding valuable drugs?”

“You’ve used arguments similar to this in the past,” Leonidas said.

“And?”

“There always ended up being shooting.”

“Are you sure that’s right? Mica, that’s not right, is it?”

“It sounds right,” Mica said.

Abelardus came up behind Alisa. “I could hold her from behind while you storm out and shoot everyone, mech.”

Leonidas’s eyes narrowed, though Alisa wasn’t sure whether it was because Abelardus was offering to touch her or because he had called him a mech.

“Actually…” Abelardus's expression grew distant. “There isn’t anyone standing outside.”

“Are you sure?” Alisa had not seen anyone when she had been flying down—the landing pad had been well lit, despite the middle-of-the-night hour—but she had assumed guards would stream out of the building as soon as they alighted. Surely, the mafia men wouldn’t take her word for it that she was a drug dealer with wares to sell. She could have been holding up a bag of cornstarch.

“No one is in the landing area,” Abelardus reaffirmed. “The corridors of the building, however, are busy. A lot of people running around.”

“I’ll go out and check,” Leonidas said, hitting the hatch button before Alisa could argue further.

As he strode out, she hurried to rush out at his side. He glanced down at her, perhaps thinking of pushing her behind him—or punting her back into the ship and locking the hatch.

She held the Bliss bag up and waved it. “Let me try to deal before you shoot anyone.”

Perhaps it was a vain hope, but it would be so much easier to get out of the compound and the city if they could sneak down and retrieve Beck without being detected. And if some problem was already bothering the White Dragon people, might her team not take advantage of the distraction?

She crinkled her nose. “I smell smoke.”

“Yes.” Leonidas pointed at an open door on the ground floor, just visible behind the nose of one of several transport ships and yachts parked on the large landing pad. Billows of black smoke wafted out through the doorway.

“Maybe someone else is already infiltrating the compound,” Abelardus said, walking out and standing behind Alisa and Leonidas.

“Or maybe another rescue is going on,” Alisa said. She had warned the chef’s warehouse guard, hoping for exactly that, but could his people have gotten something together so quickly? Or maybe someone was rescuing prisoners unrelated to Beck and the chef? “Mafia bosses take lots of prisoners to torture and blackmail, don’t they?”

“I’m not an expert on their practices,” Abelardus said. “Starseers don’t join mafia organizations. We have higher standards.”

Alisa kept from pointing out that the Starseers were similar to a mafia organization, with their separate government, blood ties, and hidden installations all over the system. All they needed was a secret handshake and an interest in gambling rings.

Really, Abelardus said dryly into her mind.

“Let’s try that door.” Leonidas pointed toward the one with smoke billowing out of it. “I can hear shouts coming from inside. Something about escaped prisoners, but it doesn’t sound like anyone is near that exit, at least not yet.”

“Am I going on this incursion?” Mica stood in the hatchway, her satchel of grenades over her shoulder and a blazer pistol in hand. “Or do I wait here and keep the ship powered up and the hatch locked until you return?”

The ship was already powered up and ready. Alisa had seen no reason to turn everything off. Also, she worried about leaving Mica behind without anyone to protect her if someone tried to board the ship.

“Wouldn’t you be disappointed if you didn’t get to use any of your freshly made explosives?” Alisa asked.

“No,” Mica said.

“Come anyway. It’ll be safer with Leonidas.” Alisa waved.

Leonidas was already heading for that door, so she hurried after him. He halted when he reached the front of a yacht-like transport ship and held up a hand. Alisa and Abelardus stopped behind him.

“Wait behind this ship,” Leonidas said, pointing between the transport and a cargo hauler next to it. “Someone’s coming out now.”

As Alisa started to obey, she saw what he meant. Six men in gray uniforms strode out, rifles gripped in their hands and a hoverboard full of crates floating behind them. They halted, nearly tripping over each other, when they spotted Leonidas in his crimson armor.

“We’re here about a drug deal,” Alisa called, waving the bag, still hoping their ruse might work. Even if all they could do was get close enough to subdue those men before any of them could comm their employers, it would be worth it.

But the men did not seem to notice her. They only had eyes for Leonidas. Their weapons came up as they lunged back for cover in the doorway—two jumped onto the back of the hoverboard, using the crates to hide behind. Alisa found herself shoved behind the transport—Leonidas pushing her out of the way. As she stumbled into the shadow of the ship, he opened fire.

Return fire came at the same time, orange blazer beams streaking toward him. Instead of hiding, Abelardus stayed close to Leonidas, using his staff and his mental powers to deflect the bolts. Leonidas relied on his armor to do the same. He soon charged out of view, heading for the doorway and the men.

Alisa checked to make sure Mica was not in danger, but did not see her.

“Mica?” she asked, using her comm. “Are you safe?”

“I jumped back into our borrowed charger,” Mica replied. “My safety is yet to be determined. I expect someone to throw bombs at this ship any second.”

“Your pessimism knows no bounds.”

The firefight continued longer than Alisa expected, with blazer fire streaking through the landing area. Had reinforcements come out?

She ran along the body of the transport, thinking she might find a good angle to fire from at the far end. She doubted Leonidas needed her help against six guards, but who knew what else might be coming out of that building? If Solstice had androids, the White Dragon might too.

The hatch on the side of the transport was open, crates and luggage already stacked inside. Were the mafia bosses having it loaded because they thought they needed to flee? Or maybe someone inside had been preparing for a night departure before this trouble had come.

As she ran past the hatchway to the far end, an explosion ripped from somewhere inside the building. The pavement under her feet trembled, and a moment later, bricks and shards of rock pounded down around her. She leaned against the hull, covering her head with her arms. A piece bounced off the back of her hand, and she hissed with pain.

The firefight on the landing pad did not abate, and as soon as the rubble’s fall lessened, she continued to the end of the transport. She eased around the back corner, and the windows of the building came into view. She did not know what had blown up, but the walls she could see were still intact. She approached the other corner of the transport and leaned out from behind it, blazer in hand, to check on the doorway.

Most of the gray-uniformed men lay on the ground, and the hoverboard had pitched sideways, dumping its crates. Leonidas was grappling with what looked like a man, but could not be—it was matching his strength. Each combatant appeared to be trying to throw the other.

Abelardus flew out of the doorway, nearly crashing into them, his black robe hiked up to his waist.

“The way to the transport is blocked,” someone yelled from inside the building. “We need backup at the west door.”

Alisa grimaced and pointed her weapon at a man leaning out the doorway, aiming at Abelardus. She fired before he did, the blazer she’d grabbed from the pile having more kick than she expected. The sizable double bolts slammed into the figure hard enough to hurl him back out of sight.

Leonidas succeeded in throwing his opponent across the landing pad and into the hull of a yacht not far from Alisa’s position.

Watch out, Abelardus spoke into her mind as he scrambled to his feet. That’s an android.

The figure in question bounced off the hull and landed on his feet in a crouch. Not obviously damaged, he sprinted back toward Leonidas.

So I see, Alisa thought back.

“Take Abelardus and go in and find Beck,” Leonidas said over his helmet comm, his voice amazingly calm, considering he was charging to meet the android. “I’ll hold the landing pad so you can get back to the ship once you have him.”

He and the android crashed together so hard it sounded like a building falling down. They hit the ground, limbs entangling like wrestlers fighting for a dominant position. The android’s expressionless face never changed, not even when Leonidas’s fist caught him in the cheek, tearing away his fake skin to reveal the metal skull underneath.

Alisa wanted to stay and help, but Abelardus was waving at her from the doorway. Leonidas was right. If they couldn’t get Beck and got stuck here on this landing pad—or were forced to take off—this whole trip would be for nothing.

Giving Leonidas and the android a wide berth, she sprinted for the doorway, jumping over fallen men as she went. Bleakness mingled with adrenaline in her nerves. She hadn’t wanted carnage. The more people who died because of this rescue, the more the White Dragon leaders would want Beck—and Alisa—dead. Even if they flattened this place, she doubted it would leave a dent in the mafia outfit’s system-wide operation. It would only irk them further.

She joined Abelardus inside the doorway—the man she’d shot earlier was not moving. He lay on a tile floor in a smoky corridor that led deeper into the building. Shouts and the sounds of blazer fire came from that direction.

Abelardus led the way, his staff in one hand.

“Can you tell what’s happening?” Alisa asked, relieved to let him go first. Until she got her combat armor, she was vulnerable to every stray bullet or blazer bolt. Even though he did not have any armor beneath that robe, he had proven apt at defending himself with his mental talents.

“Chaos,” he said.

A crash sounded in the landing area behind them. Alisa glanced back, but smoke now hid the doorway. She imagined that noise had been Leonidas and the android slamming together again, or perhaps hurling one another against a wall.

Something stirred in the smoke as Abelardus reached a stairwell, and Alisa whirled, pointing her blazer. It might be Leonidas, but it might also be that android.

A familiar figure came into view, tousled hair sticking up in more directions than usual. Alisa lowered her weapon. Mica raced up to join them, her satchel bouncing on her hip with each step.

“Trouble at the ship?” Alisa asked.

“No, but I heard Leonidas send you in here alone. Thought you might need help.”

“Alone? She’s hardly alone,” Abelardus said.

“Alone without cyborgs,” Mica corrected.

Abelardus grumbled something under his breath and pointed into the stairwell. It was just as smoky as the corridor, if not more so. “Up or down?”

“Down,” Alisa said. “Dungeons and torture chambers are always underground, right? Nobody wants prisoners to have a cheerful daylight view that might give them hope and strength to resist.”

“Your logic is always interesting,” Mica told her.

“Interesting in an innovative way or interesting in a flawed way?”

Another explosion rocked the building, and a ceiling fixture slammed down a few feet away. Alisa jumped.

“The explosives are being set off in the basement,” Abelardus said, “and most of the chaos is coming from down there.”

“Let’s go down there then,” Alisa said, thinking again that another rescue might be going on. Maybe they could find the other incursion team and join forces.

“Definitely flawed,” Mica grumbled.

Abelardus wore a dubious expression, but he led the way down the stairs.

They descended into more smoke, and it grew darker with many of the light fixtures broken. Water spattered Alisa’s shoulders. Sprinklers going off. Mica coughed, batting at the smoke. The shouts and sounds of weapons firing grew louder. They came to a landing and headed down another flight, puddles gathering on the stairs.

“Can you sense Beck, Abelardus?” Alisa asked.

“It’s difficult to pick out individuals when there are so many people. People and—” Abelardus broke off, raising his staff with both hands and facing the corridor at the bottom of the stairs as something appeared in the smoke.

A silver metal robot with a humanoid upper body and a cart-like lower body floated toward them. It carried a serving tray in one hand and an integrated firearm in the other.

“Only in a mafia compound,” Alisa muttered. She was still several steps up from the bottom of the staircase and had to crouch to target it.

Abelardus, closer to the bottom, received the robot’s attack. A ball of orange energy crackling toward him, and he twitched his staff a few inches to the side. The energy ball struck the tip and bounced away, ricocheting off the wall and back down the corridor. It zipped past an inch from the robot’s blocky head.

Unfazed, the robot fired again.

Abelardus snarled as he blocked the second energy bolt. “I hate machines. You can’t get into their heads and convince them to wet themselves.”

“Is that a typical Starseer tactic?” Alisa asked.

“It tends to end fights in a non-violent manner.”

“So long as nobody slips and falls in the aftermath,” Mica muttered from behind Alisa.

After deflecting another blast, Abelardus made a fist, then opened it in a thrusting gesture. The robot flew backward, its bottom flying over its top as it sailed down the corridor.

Abelardus lunged after it and cracked it with his staff, that familiar lightning spreading from the shaft and to the downed machine. As he finished it off, the sound of heavy footsteps came from further up the stairs behind Alisa.

She and Mica whirled in that direction. There weren’t any alcoves or bends in the stairs where they could have dove for cover.

Alisa fired as soon as the first hulking figure came into view, but groaned when her brain caught up to her reflexes. The man was in gray combat armor, so her blazer bolt spattered uselessly off his chest plate. He lifted an arm toward her, and the barrel of a compact blazer popped out of the suit.

“Rust bang,” Alisa barked, backing down the steps and hoping Mica was already digging into her satchel.

The requested rust bang hurtled toward the armored man as Alisa scrambled toward the bottom, grabbing Mica’s arm and pulling her along with her. Their new attacker jerked his arm up, trying to shoot the rust bang before it reached him and exploded. While he was distracted, Alisa turned and sprinted down the corridor, leaping over the robot upturned on the floor. She spotted a side corridor that they could turn down, but she almost crashed into Abelardus who, instead of running, was spinning back toward the armored man. He jumped out of her way, then ran toward the base of the stairs, his staff raised.

“Run,” he barked over his shoulder.

Alisa disobeyed his order, only going as far as that side passage. She lunged around the corner with Mica right behind her.

A dead-end corridor lined with cells to either side stretched away from the intersection. Fortunately, it was empty of people. Gruesome torture implements hung on pegs and shelves on the walls, a mix of modern force-maces and archaic branding irons and gripping tools.

Alisa huffed a humorless laugh, turning her back to the implements. She had been right about the dungeon being in the basement.

“That soldier wasn’t able to deflect the rust bang,” Mica said, already turned back toward the fight and reaching into her satchel. “Clearly, he doesn’t have your aim. It’ll take a while for it to eat through his armor, though.”

Crimson blazer bolts streaked down from the stairwell, the man’s answer to the attack. Abelardus deflected some with his staff and whatever mental shield he had erected around himself. Other bolts that weren’t in danger of hitting him zipped past. Someone cried out in surprise and pain from the other end of the main corridor.

“We may be surrounded,” Mica said, waving in that direction. Smoke made it impossible to see to the end.

“This would have been much easier if someone had wanted to cordially invite us in to test my drugs,” Alisa said.

The armored guard had reached Abelardus, and they were fighting on the bottom steps of the stairs. The man couldn’t get past Abelardus's defenses, but Abelardus appeared to be having a similar problem. That lightning from his staff crackled around the armor without hurting the man inside. And the constant barrage of blazer fire probably kept him too busy to focus on mental attacks.

“Wearmouth, you down there?” someone yelled from the top of the stairwell.

“Uh oh.”

They were about to have more company from that direction.

“If Beck’s not here, I’m going to be pissed.” Mica armed one of her devices and hurled it past Abelardus, bouncing it off the wall to avoid his barrier. It clanked off the armored man’s shoulder and dropped to the stairs behind him. He glanced at it, and tried to push past Abelardus, but the barrier might as well have been made of solid brick.

“Another rust bang?” Alisa asked, pointing her blazer down the corridor in the opposite direction, where she could make out movement in the smoke. Were they about to be rushed from that side too?

“Not exactly,” Mica said.

A flash of white preceded a thunderous boom that came from the direction of the stairs. The armored soldier was lifted from his feet and hurled at Abelardus. The explosion must have startled Abelardus, because his shield dropped, and the man crashed into him. Ceiling panels and stone walls tumbled as he and the guard went down in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. The stairwell itself disappeared in smoke and dust. So did Abelardus and the guard atop him.

“That was supposed to explode farther up the stairwell,” Mica said, wincing.

Two uniformed men took advantage of the chaos and raced toward Alisa’s group. Though worried for Abelardus—and wondering how they would escape since Mica had taken out the stairs—Alisa was ready for them. Thankfully, these men were not wearing armor. They carried massive destroyer handguns—Leonidas had one in his quarters that she had seen often—and belts full of what might have been torture implements.

Alisa did not hesitate to shoot, aiming for one man’s chest. He tripped on a broken drone crumpled on the floor, and it saved him. Her blazer bolt slammed into his shoulder instead of his chest.

His buddy returned fire, huge booms of energy bursting from the destroyer. Alisa jumped back, glad she had the corner for partial protection. The destroyer blast slammed into the wall beside her, gouging a huge hole in the metal. Fresh smoke assailed Alisa’s eyes, but she squinted and leaned out, knowing those men would be on them in a few seconds if she did not stop them.

She stuck her pistol around the corner, firing high and without looking, then squatting down as another destroyer blast slammed into the smoking wall behind her at head height. She leaned one eye around the corner, just enough to aim, and squeezed off two rounds before ducking back, too quickly to see if her bolts hit.

Another blast streaked down the corridor, this one tearing into the rubble where the stairs had been instead of coming anywhere close to Alisa. Mica leaned out, another grenade hefted. Alisa started to warn her not to throw it, that they would be trapped if another corridor collapsed—they might already be trapped if there wasn’t another stairwell leading up. But Mica stopped short of throwing her weapon. She leaned back in, raising an eyebrow at Alisa, who had her back flat to the wall.

“Sometimes, I forget why the Alliance was so happy to have you flying for them,” Mica said. “Flying and shooting.”

Alisa peeked around the corner. Her last two shots had struck true, and the men were down, one still, one writhing and clasping a hand to his chest.

“Even a drunken, blindfolded monkey gets lucky sometimes,” Alisa said, glancing in both directions before running out to grab the men’s weapons, in case they had the life left in them to fire again.

She almost faltered when she had a good look at the rubble filling the stairwell from bottom to top. Only the tip of Abelardus's staff was visible sticking out from under the jumble of bricks and ceiling panels. The armored guard had been completely buried. Or so Alisa thought. A grinding and shifting sound came from deep within the pile, something stirring.

“Mica,” Alisa said, but she didn’t know what else to say after that. What could her engineer do to unbury Abelardus? Was he even still alive down there?

Of course I’m alive. Do you think it’s easy to kill a Starseer?

How are you not utterly smashed like a skirt steak under Beck’s tenderizing mallet?

I’ve armored myself, in a manner of speaking, but it’s taking a lot of my concentration to maintain it and keep from being crushed. Also this stupid guard is still alive, gouging me in the stomach with his knees as he tries to push up out of the rocks. I’d appreciate it if you would do something.

I’m not sure what I can do about the guard’s knees.

Shave them off as soon as you see him.

Mica was considering the rubble pile from different angles. “Should have brought the hand tractor.”

Alisa glanced down the corridor, worried more enemies would charge out of the smoke at them while they were distracted by Abelardus's predicament. For now, the passage was quiet.

She bent and moved rocks away from the staff, assuming Abelardus still had a hold on it.

“Or grease,” Mica said, “so we could lather him up and slide him out.”

“I’m sure if you want to lather him up, he’ll allow you to do that later.”

Mica will not give me Starseer babies, Abelardus informed her.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have sex with her. Nobody else on the ship is interested in lathering you.

If that’s true, it’s quite disappointing.

Alisa grunted as she heaved a slab of cement aside. “I see his hand.”

Mica joined her, and they hurried to clear bricks from around the staff, revealing more of his arm and a few dusty braids of hair lying across it.

Another explosion sounded in the depths of the compound, and the walls shook. More rubble came down onto the big pile.

“Just what we need,” Mica said.

“That came from above,” Alisa said. The previous explosions had all seemed to originate in the basement.

There are ships flying over the compound, Abelardus informed her. One dropped a bomb that missed the building and blew a giant crater in the street.

That bomb had missed? Alisa grimaced. She didn’t want to be there when one landed on the roof.

The ships dropping bombs are being chased by other ships. The local law enforcement, I believe. More ships are outside of the dome, firing on the forcefield and trying to get in. I believe all of Terra Dhwan may be under attack soon.

Solstice’s people?

The woman had implied that she hadn’t wanted to get involved, but maybe that had been a lie, or maybe Leonidas had commed her and asked for help.

I don’t—look out!

Rocks flew as the armored guard rose up out of the pile, sloughing bricks. A black-robed torso was visible beneath him, smothered with dust and still half-buried in rock.

Alisa kneeled back, shooting the guard before he got his bearings, a sustained burst that she hoped might melt through his armor. It should have already been damaged by the rust bang. He was facing the wall, probably disoriented from being under the rocks, but his alarms must have lit up, warning him of the attack. He whirled toward her, lifting his arm to fire.

Alisa sprang toward the side corridor again, but he never shot. Abelardus roared, his staff coming up between the guard’s legs. A regular stick striking his armored crotch would not have bothered the man, but that lightning streaked out, dancing as it spread all across his armor. An acrid scent filled the tunnel, and the guard screamed, the electrical currents finding damaged seams. His armor stiffened, and he pitched backward onto the rubble.

Abelardus shoved aside rocks and pushed himself to his feet, leaning on his staff for support. Despite the armor he had supposedly protected himself with, dust caked his sweaty skin, and several cuts dribbled blood down the side of his face.

Alisa stepped forward to offer him an arm for more support.

“Someone’s coming,” Mica said, pointing down the corridor.

Alisa groaned as the smoke stirred once again. Now what?

Chapter 17

Alisa stepped back into the side corridor, raising her pistol once again and praying to Solis-de that whoever was running toward them was not wearing combat armor. That was too hard to deal with without Leonidas with them. She also prayed that he was all right up there with that android. She hadn’t had a chance to comm him to check.

A person came into view, running. A naked person.

“Beck,” Mica blurted, recognizing him first.

“Beck?” Alisa gaped, both because of his unexpected nudity and because bumps and bruises mottled his chest and face, with cuts and burn marks appearing between them. It was amazing that he could walk, much less run. Nonetheless, he carried a rifle, and judging by the grim and determined expression on his face, it looked like he had used it recently.

“Captain! Mica!” Beck cried, his tone more relieved and delighted than Alisa had ever heard it. A toothy smile replaced his grim visage as he took them in.

“I’m here too,” Abelardus said, leaning heavily on his staff, looking like he would need to be carried if they had to go farther.

Beck didn’t look at Abelardus, instead racing up and throwing his arms around Alisa and Mica, ignoring the wounds that had to hurt with every movement.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said, dropping his rifle and crushing them to him.

“You’re welcome, glad to help with your rescue,” Abelardus said, sounding bitter that Beck wasn’t acknowledging him.

You don’t want him pressing his naked body to yours in a hug, do you? Alisa asked silently, not sure whether Abelardus would be monitoring her.

No, but some gratitude might be nice. After all, I might miss catching Ostberg in his race because of this. Also, I was crushed under rocks. I’ll probably need a massage later. He raised his eyebrows at her. I understand you like to give men massages.

I think Alejandro’s nanobots would do more for you after being crushed.

And yet, I do not find that prospect as alluring.

Someone else came trotting out of the smoke, and Abelardus wearily lifted his staff. Alisa, though she was pleased to have found Beck, shifted his arm away so she could see better. She pointed her blazer toward the smoke.

A rotund man approached, huffing and cursing.

“No,” Beck said, pushing her weapon down. “That’s Chef Leblanc. We were in the same cell and plotted and schemed all day to come up with a way to outsmart our guards.”

Leblanc faltered when he spotted Abelardus. “Beck? Are these your… friends?”

He had ruddy cheeks and a thick white mustache and wore a green beret with a feather sticking out of it. Unlike Beck, he was fully clothed, and he even held a blazer pistol and a bandolier of sphere-shaped grenades. Items taken from a guard? Had he been responsible for the explosions?

“Yes,” Beck said, squeezing Alisa and Mica again before he let them go. “I told you they’d come.”

Leblanc tore his gaze from Abelardus's dusty Starseer robe. “But let us continue, yes? The building could collapse, and we still need to find a ship if we are to escape.”

“Escape sounds excellent,” Beck said, “but I was hoping I’d stumble across my armor on the way out. Or at least my underwear.”

“We have it back on the Nomad,” Alisa said.

“My underwear?”

“Your armor. It needs repairs. I have no idea as to the state of your underwear.”

“It probably needs repairs too.” He grimaced and gingerly touched his battered chest. “I know I do.”

“This way,” someone shouted from deeper within the basement. “The prisoners are escaping.”

Beck groaned. “Not more of them. How many people are in this building?”

Another explosion went off, and the floor heaved, pitching Beck into Alisa. She tried to stop him, gripping his shoulder with one hand, but he stumbled, and his weight flattened her to the wall. She was momentarily smothered by naked flesh as more bricks clunked down from the ceiling.

“Really, Beck,” Alisa said, “this isn’t appropriate.”

He managed to grunt and push himself away. “Don’t tell Leonidas. I know he gets crabby when other men touch you.”

“Touching is allowed, but nakedly slinging your forceballs into me might make him raise an eyebrow. Or a fist.”

“I don’t mind the eyebrows.” Beck dusted off her shoulders and picked up his purloined rifle. “The fists hurt, even when I’m wearing my armor. I would especially hate to experience a fist to my, er, forceballs.”

“That last bomb hit the building,” Abelardus said, his gaze upward as dust continued to sift down. A light fixture and a ceiling panel had crashed to the floor farther up the corridor, deepening the gloom of the basement. “I don’t think we want to stay down here.”

“I could have told you that six hours ago,” Beck said.

“Do you know which way is out, Beck? Chef?” Alisa asked.

“Besides that way?” Beck pointed to the rubble-filled stairwell.

“Yes, unless we want to set another explosive and hope to blow away enough rubble to go out that way.”

“I wouldn’t,” Mica said, pointing upward. “It could collapse the rest of the basement onto our heads.”

“Clear that beam,” someone shouted from down the corridor and around a corner. The voice sounded muffled. By distance? Or by the faceplate of a helmet? “They’re up ahead. Boss’ll have our asses if we let his special prisoner go.”

“Which one of us is that?” Leblanc whispered.

“You’re the one who cooked for him,” Beck replied.

“Only so I could pickpocket one of his bodyguards and get a key fob.”

“Which I’m thankful for. I’m amazed you got your start as a thieving street urchin and cooked your way up to such fame and wealth.” Judging by the look of adoration Beck sent Leblanc’s way, the chef might be in danger of getting a naked hug too.

“All it takes is one person giving you a chance.” Leblanc gave Beck a surprisingly fond smile, and Alisa wondered how much they had been through in the last day. She also wondered if she was going to lose her security officer to a job in one of Leblanc’s kitchens. Assuming they survived and got out of this place.

A wrenching sound from down the corridor made her wince. “Mica? I think we’re going to have to risk it.” They would likely have company any minute, possibly armored company. “You better try those explosives.”

“Me?”

“You’re the engineer. You know all about structural integrity.”

“Please, you just want someone to blame when more of the ceiling falls.” Fortunately, Mica worked as she grumbled and complained.

Abelardus stepped past Beck and Leblanc, holding up his staff and facing the distant intersection.

“Are they coming?” Alisa whispered.

“Any second,” he said.

“Thanks for watching out for us, Abelardus,” Beck said. “Chef, why don’t you hide in that corridor there?” He pointed around the smoking and gouged corner Alisa had been using for cover.

“Hide?” Leblanc’s eyebrows jumped upward.

“Just want to keep you alive, sir.”

“Is it hard to do that when you’re naked?” Alisa asked.

“Not when I can hide behind Abelardus's robe to shoot,” Beck said.

“Mica, you need any help?” Alisa asked.

Mica continued to grumble as she clambered over the rubble, selecting spots to set grenades that had been meant for throwing. She dug into her satchel and pulled out a fuse roll. Alisa thanked Mica’s pessimistic streak that she brought tools for every contingency. Though next time, she would ask Mica to pack the hand tractor too. That would have been a safer way to move rubble.

“I’ll give you a raise if we get out of here,” Alisa said.

“From your huge dinosaur-hunting earnings?” Mica asked, backing away from the rubble pile, rolling out her fuse as she did so.

“I’ll find the money somewhere.”

“Promises, promises. Get behind that corner.” Mica pointed toward the corridor that Beck had convinced Leblanc to hide in. “Everyone.”

“They’re coming,” Abelardus said, his back to her.

Beck cursed and jumped up beside him as three men in combat armor charged into view. Beck unloaded his rifle, spraying the corridor with blazer fire. Numerous bolts slammed into the men’s chest plates, as Abelardus also did something, hurling power at the group. Alisa grabbed Mica and tugged her toward the corridor where Leblanc crouched, while wishing it weren’t a dead end. There was nowhere for them to run except into those cells.

The armored men ignored Beck’s rifle fire, but they did stumble back under Abelardus's assault, as if an ocean wave had struck them. One man stumbled back into a corner. The other two dropped to one knee, bracing themselves and raising their rifles.

“Move, Beck,” Alisa barked as she dove behind the corner. Abelardus might be able to protect himself with Starseer talents, but Beck’s nudity, as alarming as it was, wasn’t likely to make those men pause for long.

“Everybody move,” Mica yelled. “Get around the corner. Beck, Abelardus, you too.”

She held up a detonator, her thumb on the button.

“Wait,” Alisa said. “If we let the guards get closer, maybe we can bury them in the explosion.”

“I planted the explosives so that people hopefully won’t get buried,” Mica said as Beck leaped into the corridor with them, amazingly spry for someone with so many wounds. Once his adrenaline left him, he probably wouldn’t be able to move for days. “Besides, we’d be in a lot more trouble if—”

“Now,” Abelardus cried, the last one to fling himself around the corner. Blazer fire filled the corridor behind him.

Mica pressed the button as she skittered backward. “Get back farther—hurry!”

Footsteps thundered in the corridor. As the first armored guard came into view, his rifle pointing around the corner toward Abelardus, the explosion erupted.

Alisa covered her ears, wincing as white light filled the corridor. The guard flew sideways, combat armor and all. One of his comrades might have yelled, but it was hard to tell over the roar of the explosion. The floor quaked, and Alisa tottered, catching herself on the wall. Ceiling panels smashed down behind her. She didn’t know which way to turn.

Abelardus turned and scrambled farther away from the intersection as rubble flew past with as much velocity as blazer fire. A snap came from the ceiling above Alisa, and she lifted her hands, as if that would do anything if it fell. Abelardus grabbed her and Mica, startling her by pulling them close.

“Shielding you,” he explained.

Beck and Leblanc, several paces away, did not get the same protection. Maybe they were too far away.

From the roar of the explosion, one grenade going off after another, Alisa thought the entire building might fall atop them. Dust filled the corridor, and she couldn’t see anything. Someone screamed in the distance.

Finally, the crashes of debris smashing to the ground slowed down. A man groaned nearby. A thump sounded, and a rock skittered across the intersection.

One of the armored guards sprang into sight again, aiming his rifle at Alisa. She tried to jump back, but Abelardus held her tight with one arm. He released Mica with his other and pointed his staff at the guard.

The other two guards stomped into view, their armor dusty but undamaged, and Alisa groaned. Even Abelardus would not be able to handle all three. And there was nowhere left to run.

As the lead guard squeezed off his first round, a red blur slammed into him from the side. Leonidas.

The man’s shot flew wild as Leonidas bowled him over. He clipped one of the others, too, and the man stumbled back against the wall. Leonidas lashed into them, his limbs moving too quickly to follow. Soon, all of the guards were focused on him instead of Alisa and the others, trying their best to deal with the red tornado that had landed in their midst.

Abelardus released Alisa and ran toward the intersection to help. Beck sprinted after him.

Leblanc had fallen down, and Alisa offered him a hand as the pounding of blows and firing of blazers came from around the corner. She kept an eye out, in case one of the men decided to flee from Leonidas and look for more vulnerable targets. Though Beck would probably get whoever did first. He stood in the mouth of the corridor, holding a steady stream of rifle fire on someone.

“If he cooks with as much determination as he fights,” Leblanc said, accepting Alisa’s help up, “I look forward to trying his sauces.”

“His food is good.” Alisa kept herself from saying that Beck was better at cooking than fighting; that seemed an ungrateful thing to say of someone who was bravely—and nakedly—defending their corridor from threats.

An armored man, his helmet somehow ripped off, flew across the intersection and toward the stairwell. He did not look to be alive. A few more thumps sounded before the sounds of battle died down. Alarms still blared from the upper levels of the building.

Leonidas strode into view, gesturing for them to come his way. “We need to get out quickly. The building is being bombed. One of the ships on the landing pad took a direct hit.”

“Not ours, I hope,” Alisa said.

“Not yet.”

“Who’s attacking?” Leblanc asked.

“There are several ships with food murals on their sides that are dropping bombs while avoiding the mafia and police ships. It’s not clear how they got into the dome to start with, but they’re making a mess.”

“My people!” Leblanc clenched a fist.

“Do they know you’re in the basement?” Mica rubbed her head—something must have fallen on it.

“Maybe that’s why there haven’t been any direct hits yet. I must contact them. To the exit.” Leblanc pointed and strode past Leonidas.

“We can’t leave yet,” Beck said. “We have to go upstairs. I want to kidnap the boss here. Medric. He’s one of the brothers that leads the whole organization. If I can convince him that I didn’t poison his brother, maybe they’ll stop hunting me.”

“How will kidnapping him convince him of your innocence?” Alisa understood Beck’s desire to be out from under this particularly onerous yoke, but it seemed far too late to fix things. Wouldn’t the mafia men blame him for the devastation their building was suffering even now?

“I’m going to use my charm to convince him that a mistake was made.”

“Will you be naked when you’re doing it?” Mica asked.

“Do you think that will help?”

“Just don’t hug him.”

Another boom sounded outside, and the building quaked again.

“Let’s go,” Leonidas said, striding toward Alisa as the few remaining ceiling panels tumbled down around the group. His face determined, he looked like he would fling her over his shoulder and carry her out if she didn’t move quickly enough.

“I’m coming.” Alisa jogged up and swatted him on the back. “Missed you. How was the android?” She eyed several new dents in his armor as they strode into the main corridor.

“Vexing.”

“More vexing than a captain who uses humor at inappropriate times?”

“Slightly so, yes.”

“I hope you jackhammered him into the pavement.”

“I ripped off his arm and threw him on the roof.”

“That’s acceptable too.”

Alisa picked her way over the rubble that remained in the wake of Mica’s explosion. It wasn’t an easy route, but the stairs were visible in places now, so they could clamber through. If Leonidas could make it, the rest of them could find room.

Mica caught up to Alisa as Leonidas paused to make sure everyone could make it up the obstacle course. She looked at what remained of the ceiling as they scrambled up the rocks. “Someone needs to give that chef a comm unit so he can call off his people.”

“If he did, we’d be facing more mafia men,” Alisa said as they reached the landing at the ground floor. The lights were off, and more smoke than ever filled the corridor. She tried to stifle a series of coughs. “Possibly more androids.”

“I have three grenades and one rust bang left,” Mica said as Leblanc and Beck joined them, with Leonidas and Abelardus coming behind.

“Is that a lot or are you letting me know you’re short on ammo?” Alisa asked.

“It depends on whether we’re kidnapping someone before fleeing.”

“No time,” Leonidas said, sliding past Alisa and Mica, careful not to step on their feet in the cramped space.

Beck raised a finger. “But if I don’t—”

“No time,” Leonidas repeated, not looking back as he led the way toward the door where they had originally entered. “We’ll be lucky if our ship hasn’t been bombed already.” He glanced toward a window and picked up his pace.

“I bet he’s worried Solstice will be mad if he loses her ship,” Mica said, following after him.

She appeared relieved at the prospect of leaving. Beck was the only one distraught, but Abelardus was back there, using his staff like a cattle prod to ensure he did not fall behind.

“I’m sure he just wants to get us out of here alive,” Alisa said.

“So he doesn’t lose his sexy benefactor’s ship.” Mica gave her a wicked grin.

“I’m revoking that raise I offered you.”

“Darn.”

A pair of uniformed men ran out of a side corridor. They looked like they were heading for the exit, rather than to block Alisa’s group, but Leonidas laid down fire around their boots. They shrieked and leaped back into their corridor. When Leonidas reached it, he pointed his rifle in the direction they had gone. They must have been fleeing, because he did not bother shooting after them again.

The door leading to the landing pad came into view, and Alisa started to believe they would escape unscathed—aside from Beck’s battered body. But as she joined Leonidas in the doorway and he stretched his arm across it to block her, she gaped at what came into view. Several of the spaceships parked in the landing area were smoking, some nothing but charred lumps of twisted metal. More than that made her stare. The air was filled with ships firing at each other. Dozens. At least.

Most were fighters, everything from strikers to bombers to chargers, but there were also freighters with heavy weaponry, somehow maneuvering in the tight space between skyscrapers and tenements and the dome ceiling. Daylight had not yet come, but so much weapons fire lanced through the darkness, oranges and yellows and reds, that it seemed as if dawn had arrived early.

Alisa stared at Leonidas, the energy blasts reflected in his faceplate.

“How are we going to take off without getting blown up?” she asked.

“You’re the pilot,” Mica said from behind her. “Shouldn’t you know the answer to that question?”

“My answer would be try to skulk away and hope they don’t notice us. I’m not sure how realistic that is.”

“The charger has some shields,” Leonidas said, waving toward the ship. It did not appear to have been hit—yet. The transport that Alisa had hidden behind earlier had a gaping, smoking hole in the top of its fuselage. “An alternative is to flee into the city on foot and wait for this to end. But we may not be able to get back to the charger if we do that. The mafia boss will likely reestablish—”

“Those are my people,” Leblanc blurted, his round belly bumping against Leonidas as he tried to see out. “In the freighters!”

“They’ve got the mafia ships and all the local law enforcement ships after them,” Leonidas said.

“Nice donuts on the hull of that one,” Mica observed. “I wonder if you feel unmanly as a pilot when you’re shot down by a ship painted with donuts.”

“I prefer feeling unmanly as a pilot.” Alisa pointed her chin toward the landing pad. Despite the smoke, nobody was dropping bombs at the moment. “I think we can make it to the ship.”

She tapped Leonidas’s arm, the one barring the doorway.

He started to lower it, but a door on the other side of the landing pad sprang open, and six men in combat armor stormed out. Leonidas shifted to block their doorway and lifted his rifle. Alisa lost her view, but she wasn’t foolish enough to push past him to try to get out there now.

“They’re not coming for us,” Abelardus said from the corridor. He had stayed behind to guard their backs and should not have been able to see what was happening on the landing pad, but he wore that distracted expression of his. “They’re running to their ship.”

“So I see,” Leonidas said without looking back. His rifle was still up, but he had not fired.

With curiosity driving her, Alisa squatted so she could see under his arm. The six armored men had run out, two heading straight for a transport and the other four standing guard in a line between the door and the ship. Three were pointing their rifles at Leonidas, just as he pointed his at them. No one had fired yet. Several more armored men ran out, and Alisa hoped Leonidas wouldn’t fire. They couldn’t fight that many. And it didn’t look like they needed to—those men were guarding the way to the ship for—

“Is that Medric?” Beck asked, crouching by Leonidas’s other side to peer out. He pointed as a man with a long black tail of hair ran behind the guards and toward the transport, glancing up numerous times as he did so. “That’s the mafia boss,” Beck growled.

The ship’s running lights came on as one of the men inside fired it up. Several other men and women in civilian clothes followed after the long-haired man.

“That is him,” Beck said. “And all of his minions. Leonidas, if we can get them—”

Beck tried to step out. Leonidas latched onto his shoulder and shoved him back.

“Don’t be a fool,” Leonidas said.

“Then you go. I’ll pay you well with—uh, well, I’ll get the money.”

“No,” Leonidas said, not moving, not looking away from the armed men staring him down.

Medric disappeared inside the transport, but a ship veered low over the landing area as the rest of his people filed in. It was one of Leblanc’s freighters, the craft sporting so many weapons it was thornier than a Delgottan cactus. The belly nearly scraped against the roof as it flew past, and the hot air from its thrusters stirred Alisa’s hair even inside the building.

“Lower,” someone said from behind her. Leblanc. He had snatched an earstar off some fallen guard and was speaking to someone on it. “Can you land? I can’t fly up there, Garcia.”

A shadow blotted out the landing area as the massive freighter hovered over it, dropping lower, a hatch opening in its belly.

Across the landing area, the White Dragon people had loaded into their transport, and their armored guards were backing toward the hatch, keeping Leonidas in their sights.

“This could be our chance to get to our own ship,” Alisa told Leonidas.

“That’s my ship,” Leblanc said, trying to push past Leonidas as a ladder unfurled from an open hatch in the freighter. “Let me go out there. Tommy and you other people, you’re welcome to join us.”

The shriek of weapons fire filled the air as two mafia chargers dove toward the big freighter. An e-cannon blast slammed into the side of the ship, and it rocked, the ladder wobbling. A muffled explosion came from somewhere within it.

“They don’t have shields up,” Alisa said, stating the obvious. With the hatch open, they couldn’t. “Go, Leblanc,” she added, ducking under Leonidas’s arm and making room so he could run out. “You have to hurry before your people get skewered.”

The armored mafia guards had disappeared into their own transport and were closing the hatch. Leonidas stepped aside, letting Leblanc run out. Beck started out, too, looking like he would go to the mafia transport instead of following the chef. Alisa tried to grab him—he wouldn’t truly charge up to that ship full of armed men, would he?—but without clothing, there wasn’t much to grip.

Before Leblanc made it halfway to the ladder, another wave of mafia fighters swooped down, weapons blazing. The cacophony hammered at Alisa’s eardrums, and the scent of burning metal filled the air.

Leblanc was only steps from the ladder when the freighter lurched away. It crunched against the edge of the building’s rooftop, then wobbled higher. The mafia fighter ships were harrying it like a pack of ghorettins snapping at wounded prey.

A bomb dropped onto the top of the freighter. It exploded with such power that the ground rocked. Once again, Alisa stumbled toward a wall. Leonidas caught her, as solid as a mountain, even in the chaos of shrapnel tumbling down around them.

The freighter struggled valiantly to achieve lift, but it did not make it far. Under the relentless assault of the fighters, it veered toward the roof.

Another armed freighter, this one with a hamburger on the side, lowered toward the compound, firing at the mafia ships to draw them away. But it was too late. Metal screeching and its hull smoking like a forest fire, Leblanc’s ship crashed onto the roof of the building. The ladder and his escape route had disappeared.

“This way,” Alisa called to him. “Our ship is still intact.”

Whereas the building behind them might not be for long. She could hear beams snapping under the weight of the freighter and the power of its impact.

Cursing far more caustically than she would have expected from a chef, Leblanc followed her. As did Abelardus, Mica, and Beck. Leonidas ran ahead, watching the doorways and also that mafia escape ship as he did so. The White Dragon transport was parked only two ships away from Solstice’s borrowed charger. But it was lifting off, and Alisa doubted the pilot cared about anything other than getting his master away.

Leonidas reached the hatch of the charger first, but he waved for Alisa and the others to run past while he guarded the entrance. Alisa was only a few steps from the threshold when he yelled, “Down!”

Before she knew what was happening, she found herself smothered by a suit of red armor. Light flared, and an explosion thundered in her ears as Leonidas sheltered her with his body. The noise was so loud, she feared their charger had been blown up right next to her. What else could it have been?

“The mafia ship,” Beck yelled, his voice sounding distant even though he was flattened to the ground right beside her.

Alisa turned her head, trying to peer past Leonidas’s shoulder. Thick gray smoke rolled over her group, and she could barely make out Mica and Leblanc crouching against the hull of the charger. Their ship was still intact. Good.

Leonidas sprang to his feet, yelling, “In, in, now.”

Alisa pushed herself to her knees, coughing as smoke rolled down her throat. Had the ship next to them been hit? No, it was the one two berths down—the transport that had been taking off. Now, it lay flattened to the ground, its hull peeled open from above like flower petals.

“Hurry,” Leonidas said, picking Alisa up as if she were a doll and setting her on her feet next to the hatchway. “They may be targeting indiscriminately.”

The hulking body of one of Leblanc’s war-freighters flew away, but it banked, as if to come back to finish the job.

A scream of pain came from the blown-up ship. There were people still alive in there.

Beck jumped to his feet, but instead of running into the charger, as a sane man would, he sprinted around the next craft and raced toward the downed one.

“Beck,” Alisa yelled, taking a step after him, though she knew she had to get her team out of here.

“I’ll get him,” Leonidas growled, lifting her again and plopping her through the hatchway of their ship.

Mica and Abelardus already waited inside. Abelardus grabbed Alisa, as if he thought she might turn around and run out. She was tempted. They hadn’t come all this way to rescue Beck only to let him get killed doing something idiotic.

“He’s not still trying to kidnap that man, is he?” Mica yelled.

Alisa could only shake her head and grab Leblanc’s arm. That big freighter was coming in for another pass, its weapons hot. She didn’t know where all of the mafia fighters had gone, but they weren’t there to intercept.

“Chef,” she said, “do you still have that earstar? Can you call off your men? At least until we’re out of the compound?”

Leblanc looked dazed, his gaze locked to the rooftop where his crashed ship smoldered. Maybe that Garcia he had been talking to had been a good friend.

Alisa shook his arm. She was sympathetic, but who knew what his people were targeting now? Did they even know he was still alive down here? Or did they think he had been on the ship that crashed? They could be on some revenge mission.

“Leblanc, please,” Alisa urged, on the verge of searching his pockets for the comm device so she could send the command herself.

He tore his gaze from the rooftop. “Yes, yes, of course.” He snatched the soot-covered earstar out of his pocket. “This is Leblanc. Who’s in command up there? Hold your fire until we get out. Do you hear?”

If they heard, it was too late. The freighter unloaded at least four kinds of weapons into the landing area, all aimed at the mafia transport.

Alisa gripped the jamb of the hatchway, staring in horror, not even wincing as the sound of exploding rounds and screeching weapons fire pummeled her ears.

“Leonidas?” she croaked. “Beck?”

Three suns, had they been on that ship? Even combat armor wouldn’t save a man from that assault.

She lifted a foot to step out as the freighter flew away, but Abelardus and Mica both grabbed her.

“We need our pilot,” Mica said. “Get us out of here, Captain, or we could all end up like that.”

Alisa tried to shrug out of their grips, but they would not let her leave the ship.

“We need to check and see if—”

Leonidas ran into view with a man slung over each of his broad shoulders. One was Beck, his naked bottom to the skies, and the other wore civilian garb. Leonidas raced to the hatchway, not slowed by his burden, and leaped into the ship.

“We’re not in the air yet?” he asked Alisa, dumping the men from his shoulders. He was none-too-gentle with Beck.

Alisa wanted to hug him, but she had no idea if that freighter would be back to raze every ship on the pad. Was anyone listening to Leblanc’s orders? He was buckling himself into a seat, trying again to reach someone.

“Getting there.” Alisa slapped Leonidas on the arm and raced for the pilot’s seat.

Abelardus pulled the hatch shut. A groan came from the men heaped on the floor. Alisa did not know if it was Beck or his prisoner. With her hands flying over the controls, she did not have time to look.

Smoke thickened the air outside so much that she could barely see. She had to rely on the sensors as they lifted off the pad. Fortunately, the modern charger had far better ones than the Nomad. Unfortunately, they showed countless ships clogging the air above the city. They were still fighting, mafia versus Leblanc’s people. Did either side have any idea if their employers were even alive?

The smoke lessened as Alisa took them over the rooftop, avoiding the crashed freighter but staying low, hoping not to attract notice. Maybe nobody would care about the bland off-white ship slinking away. It wasn’t as if the charger could easily be identified as belonging to Leblanc or the White Dragon people.

The rear cameras showed the armadas of ships swooping and banking, firing with abandon. Alisa wondered what kind of chef Leblanc was that he inspired such loyalty in his people, that they would go to these lengths to rescue him. Too bad they didn’t know that he no longer needed rescuing.

Alisa flew over a main arterial as she headed for the dome entrance where they had been let in. Nobody opened fire on the charger as she left the scene of the battle, and she relaxed an iota. Leonidas settled into the seat next to hers, tugging off his helmet.

The exit to the dome came into view, and Alisa groaned. The forcefield stretched across it, cutting off their escape route.

Chapter 18

“What are the odds that offering them drugs will open the door for us again?” Alisa asked, activating the comm.

“Poor.” Leonidas scraped his fingers through his hair and glanced back. “Any idea how your people got in here, Leblanc?”

“No, sir,” the chef said, leaning forward in his seat.

The sir surprised Alisa, especially coming from the corporate head of a giant restaurant business, and she wondered if he had some military service in his background. No time to ask now.

“Greetings, air traffic controller,” Alisa said over the comm. “This is Captain Andromeda again. We were unable to make arrangements for a wholesaling deal, and we’d like to leave the dome now.”

Mica snorted from the seat behind Leonidas. Abelardus had been left in the back—or had chosen to stay in the back—standing over the mafia man, who seemed to be unconscious. Beck was also standing over him, a fist on his hip, as if he had something to say and was annoyed the man wasn’t awake to hear it.

If there was anyone in the air-traffic control tower, the person did not answer Alisa’s message. She eyed the weapons panel as she guided them in circles in front of the forcefield. Would shooting at it do anything? The next time she came around, she tapped the weapons. A blazer bolt streaked out, landing in the center of the forcefield. It absorbed the energy with bland indifference.

“That’s not going to work,” Mica said. “We’ll have to find the air-traffic control tower, blow it up, and hope the forcefield generator is inside.” She pointed between the seats. “That’s probably it there.”

“Blow it up?” Alisa banked, taking them in another circle. “This is a city. Those are normal people down there, not imperial soldiers.”

Leonidas gave her a flat look and reached for the comm.

“Think they’ll be more likely to respond to a cyborg?” Alisa asked.

“I’m not comming the tower.”

“Uh oh,” Alisa said, noticing a change in the battle taking place over the Comet Compound. Several ships were veering away and heading in the charger’s direction. “Leblanc? Those look like food freighters.”

Leblanc waved his stolen earstar. “I got through to Captain Varesh. They’re coming to protect us.”

“I’d rather they came to open the door.”

Not surprisingly, at least a dozen of the mafia ships took off after the freighters. Alisa groaned. She had preferred it when nobody had been noticing them. She had a feeling she was going to have to do more than fly in circles shortly.

“Just hit the traffic tower,” Mica said. “The city is already in ruins. Look at all the smoking buildings. What does it matter now?”

Alisa admitted that having a war going on in the airspace over a city was not healthy for its citizens. But she did not need to add to their problems.

“We’re not going to shoot at non-mafia civilians,” she said.

“I bet they cleared out of the tower when this started. Wouldn’t you have? Especially if you were the idiot who let all these angry enemy ships inside?”

Alisa hesitated, tempted by the logic.

“This is Solstice,” the woman’s voice came over the comm, and Alisa looked at it incredulously. “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

“You have her private comm code?” Alisa whispered, unable to believe she had answered personally and also unable to believe Leonidas was comming her. What could she do to help from thirty miles away?

“We’re trapped in the city with the forcefield up,” Leonidas said. “Can you do anything to lower it? The odds of us returning your ship to you are poor if we can’t escape.”

Alisa ground her teeth. She hated the idea of asking that woman for help. Even though they needed it, she hoped Solstice did not have the power to provide it. It wasn’t as if she would have a remote control to some other mafia family’s dome, right?

“Which means the odds of you returning would be poor, too, I imagine,” Solstice said. “That would distress me far more than losing a ship, Colonel.”

Mica made a gagging noise.

Alisa might have done the same, but those two armadas of ships were drawing closer, and she had to concentrate on flying. She broke away from her circling pattern, eyeing that control tower again, and she headed along the dome away from the forcefield. The freighters turned to follow her. Or were they trying to cut her off? No, she realized, as a big one moved to flank her. They were protecting her.

“Captain Varesh,” Leblanc said from the back seat. “How did you get in before? We need to get out before those mafia ships realize we have one of their leaders.”

Something he didn’t need to announce over an unsecured channel…

“We bribed someone for a code, Chef,” came the response over the earstar. “It’s not working anymore. Looks like they shut down all access in and out of the city.”

Weapons fire slammed into the interior wall of the dome less than a hundred feet ahead of the charger. Alisa hit the button to raise the shields. Thanks to Leblanc’s buddies, the mafia ships were now firing at them too.

“What if we land, rent some bikes, and ride back?” Abelardus said. “I’d rather deal with dinosaurs than the mafia.”

Leonidas glanced back at him. “We should return the ship we borrowed if possible.”

Alisa kept herself from glaring at him. Barely. It wasn’t his fault that Solstice had taken a fancy to him, and he was saying the honorable thing, not the enamored thing. Technically, Alisa agreed with it. She would not ditch a ship she had borrowed, not unless it was a last resort, no matter who the owner was.

“I’ll wake up my hacker and see what she can do, Colonel,” Solstice said over the comm.

“I’ll hold my breath waiting for magic,” Mica muttered.

“Pardon?” Solstice asked.

“The crew appreciates your help,” Leonidas said.

“Who knew the cyborg would be the diplomat here?” Abelardus said from the back.

Blazer fire slipped past the freighter attempting to guard them and kissed the charger’s shields. More mafia ships seemed to take to the air with every passing minute. Alisa had a feeling the daring rescue Leblanc’s people had planned was going to end in an ugly way if someone couldn’t lower that forcefield. Their charger might meet an ugly end, too, if she relied upon the food freighters to protect her. As it was, she could barely see around them to figure out what threats were coming.

Alisa spotted a surround-flow holo option on the control panel and flicked it on. The display wrapped around her head, showing her the three-dimensional layout in all directions with the charger at the center. Ships and anything else moving were highlighted, showing up more brightly than the contours of the dome and the city lying below, and the computer quickly sorted out enemies and non-aggressors, displaying the former in red and the latter in blue. The amount of red floating in the air around Alisa was daunting. Nonetheless, she saw the field better now and started flying more defensively instead of simply letting the freighters try to protect her charger from fire using their bulk. She swept down toward the streets, zipping between buildings, hoping the mafia would be reluctant to shoot up their own city.

“Beck,” Alisa called back without looking, “is your new friend awake yet?”

“No.”

“How about finding a first-aid kit and stabbing him with something to rouse him? I can’t help but feel that we shouldn’t be getting shot at by mafia ships when we have the mafia boss aboard. That is who we have, isn’t it? You didn’t just pluck up a random passenger, right?” She glanced at Leonidas.

“He’s the brother I wanted to kidnap, yes,” Beck said. “Medric. A lot of the others were already dead or buried under a collapsed deck. Medric was injured and needs medical attention too.”

“I thought you were torturing him,” Mica said.

“I just want his people to stop hunting me.”

“He’s going to wake up airsick and puking if Alisa keeps flying like that.” Mica groaned, perhaps on the verge of airsickness herself.

No less than eight mafia fighters streaked after them, following the charger as Alisa dove through streets that were empty, either because of the hour or because of the battle raging overhead. She flew between buildings and around corners, trying to make sure their enemies were as likely to hit friendly targets as they were to hit her if they fired.

It worked to a degree, with the shots coming less frequently, even though the mafia ships chased after her, but she couldn’t do this indefinitely. They had to figure out a way to lower that forcefield.

“Abelardus,” she called, banking hard to whip the charger around the corner of a dome-scraper and into a wide boulevard leading to a green, tree-filled park that looked like it belonged on Perun rather than this marshy gray hole. “How close do you need to be to people to manipulate them?”

“Depends on if I’m familiar with them,” he said.

“How familiar are you with air traffic controllers?” She weaved between oak and maple trees brought from Old Earth centuries before, their branches stretching toward the top of the dome, leaves fluttering down in the charger’s wake. One of her pursuers cut his turn too close and smashed into a park fountain in an attempt to avoid the trees. Unfortunately, most of the mafia pilots were wiser—they were simply flying above the city, tracking the charger’s path from above. The surround-flow showed other ones zipping ahead, trying to find a way to cut her off or corner her.

“Not very,” Abelardus said.

“I’ll fly close to the tower, so you can try to acquaint yourself and convince whoever’s in there to lower the forcefield, since the city could use a breath of fresh air right now.”

“Fresh air or toxic air?” Mica asked.

“No need to quibble. Abelardus, will you do it?”

“Yes, I’ll try. Get me close. There are thousands and thousands of people in the city, and it’s hard to isolate a single aura.”

The charger’s shields clipped a streetlamp as Alisa cruised out of the park and into an industrial part of the city. The post tipped over, cracking as it fell.

“Oops,” she said. It was the first thing she had hit, which seemed miraculous given her wild path, but she glanced at Leonidas, her expression sheepish. She liked to think she was good enough not to wreck cities when she flew, especially since this craft was faster and more maneuverable than the Nomad.

Leonidas rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he watched the broken lamp recede in the rear camera.

“No follow-up from Solstice, eh?” Alisa asked, though they all would have heard it already if she’d come over the comm.

Leonidas shook his head and leaned forward, pulling up a holomap in front of his seat, the virtual edges overlapping the edge of her own map. “I have an interesting thought.”

“Interesting? Does it involve me in underwear?” Alisa asked.

He blinked and looked over at her.

“That’s extremely interesting. I assure you. One day, you’ll realize that.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again, appearing more puzzled than interested.

Alisa took the charger around a bank of warehouses, the curve of the dome visible up ahead. Aware of four Cobras and Strikers angling in to cut her off—it was as if they knew she was heading for the control tower—she rose up above them and gunned the engine. The ship burst forward with impressive speed, but their enemies opened fire at once, targeting her more easily without the buildings in the way. She weaved, dipping back low and flying through the shop-lined arcade of a mall. One ship’s e-cannon blast took off the roof of a building.

“That wasn’t my fault,” Alisa said. “What’s your thought, Leonidas?”

Leblanc was muttering into his comm again, trying to get a couple of his freighters to provide protection at the control tower, but with the map floating around her head, Alisa could see that his people’s ships had trouble of their own. The mafia had finally had time to get all of their forces into the air, creating a fleet of attack craft. They were swooping all about the bulky freighters, dodging their cannons and pummeling them with weapons of their own. Alisa doubted the charger would get more help from that quarter. In fact, if they didn’t find a way to open that forcefield soon, the mafia ships would take down all of Leblanc’s people.

“Abelardus?” Alisa said—Leonidas was frowning at the map and hadn’t answered her yet. “How’s that tower looking?” It was dead ahead, along with the still-closed forcefield. “Any sexy ladies in there waiting for you to manipulate them?”

“No ladies at all,” Abelardus said grimly. “Or men.”

“What do you mean? It’s abandoned?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. There’s nobody in there to manipulate, and I’m not familiar enough with the controls to operate them. Mechanical devices aren’t my specialty.”

“Guess you and Mica will never get together then.”

“I hadn’t realized that was a possibility, regardless,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” Mica said. “You’re going to have to manipulate that tower the physical way, Captain.”

“What, by blowing it up?”

“That is physical.”

“Some manipulation.”

Though Alisa hated the idea of willful destruction, especially when that tower rose up from tenement buildings where people were probably pressed to the windows, gawking out at the chaos, she lifted the nose of the charger so she could fly toward it. She skimmed the rooftops, one hand resting on the weapons panel. Would blowing it up do anything? She had no way of knowing if the generator that controlled the forcefield was inside of that tower. She might hurt—or kill—innocent people for no reason.

“Here,” Leonidas said, zooming in on three black rectangular buildings a third of the way around the dome from them. The dark, windowless lumps rose from amid open pavement, with fencing around them littered with warning signs. “These are the geothermal power generators for the city. If we knock them out—”

“Yes,” Alisa said, banking to head in that direction, immediately liking the idea. If they knocked out power to the whole city, the forcefield should go down, and it would create chaos—and darkness—everywhere. Even better, there weren’t any tenements around those generator buildings.

She was tempted to reach over and thump Leonidas on the shoulder to thank him for the idea, but a pair of Cobras sprang out from behind the control tower as she veered away from it. They hadn’t shown up on the display, and she cursed, urging the charger to greater speed as she streaked away from them. They zoomed after her, weapons firing. Alarms lit up as the blasts slammed into the rear shields.

“I think they knew what we had in mind,” Alisa muttered, diving for the streets again.

She would have preferred to fly straight toward the generators, but she was forced to whip between buildings again, using the structures for cover from the fire. The charger had decent shield power, but it couldn’t take hits indefinitely, and she had no idea if Leonidas’s plan would work. What if there was backup battery power allocated to the forcefield? Or what if the generators were too shielded to blow up, even with e-cannons?

“The sexy mind manipulation of air-traffic tower employees?” Mica asked.

“Exactly,” Alisa said. “Though technically, it was the employees I thought would be sexy. Not Abelardus's mind manipulation.”

“It’s possible I’m offended,” Abelardus said.

“You don’t know for sure?”

Alisa turned into an alley to avoid a Striker flying directly overhead and shooting downward. Its blasts struck the street she had left as she flipped the charger on its side to make room for the wings.

“I won’t know until I see whether you actually get us out of this,” Abelardus said.

“I’m sorry about this, Captain,” Beck said from the back. “I didn’t mean for you all to get in trouble on account of my being predictable to the White Dragon folks and getting trapped.”

A mafia ship waited for her when she came out of the alley. Instead of veering—which would have opened her flank up for fire, Alisa drove the charger straight toward it. Their enemy only got off one shot before pulling up in an alarmed jerk. Alisa flew them through the airspace it had occupied and onward. The bank of generators came into sight.

“Don’t worry about it, Beck,” Alisa said. “We managed to find trouble of our own without you. This is part of a typical day.”

Leonidas looked over at her.

“Going to argue?” she asked him.

“I thought to nod in agreement, actually.”

“It’s good when we’re in agreement about things.” She smirked at him, but dared not look away from the controls for long.

The Striker she had startled into moving had gotten over its surprise and was chasing after them. Four Cobras appeared behind it, and several more jumped into the pack. The alarms beeped as weapons fire found the charger’s rear shields again. The display flashed yellow at her, the power dropping below forty percent.

“Any particular one look nice to you?” Alisa asked as they sped toward the generators. “I don’t think we’re going to get a chance to do this more than once.”

Even as she spoke, more ships veered away from the fight with the freighters. She had a feeling the mafia people knew what she had in mind. Their rush to defend the generators made her hope that Leonidas was on to something, that this might work.

“All of them,” he said and reached for the weapons panel in front of his seat.

She fired her weapons at the same time as he did. The charger reverberated with the power of both of the ship’s e-cannons firing. The blasts slammed into the dark, featureless buildings, and Alisa held her breath as they flew past. Were they shielded? Had they gotten them?

The rear cameras caught an explosion, and she found that encouraging. As she banked, willing to risk the fire of all those pursuers in order to unload the charger’s weapons one more time, the dome went dark. Every light in every building went out, and so did every lamppost lining the streets—the ones that remained standing after Alisa’s wild flight.

“That’s it,” Abelardus said. “The forcefield is down. Go, go!”

Alisa could not see the exit from halfway around the dome, but she took his word for it and flew in that direction, weaving only if someone was firing at them. She did not bother returning fire to the ships along the way. She wanted to get out of there.

Someone gripped the back of Alisa’s seat. Leblanc? She didn’t turn to look, saying only, “Tell your people to get out while they can, Chef. I doubt it’ll take these people long to get backup power going.”

The ship’s running lights played over the dark city below—and over the hulking body of a freighter ahead of them. It was blocking the exit.

Alisa almost cursed at Leblanc and ordered him to get his people out of the way, but that ship had the familiar gray paint of the rest of the mafia craft. It rotated toward them, weapons hot. She pulled the charger up, nearly kissing the dark dome as she contorted them in evasive maneuvers. Fiery white energy blasts lit the air, scant meters behind them. She could glimpse the dome exit behind the freighter, the forcefield down, but its bulky body was as effective as a plug.

“These people really don’t want us to leave,” Alisa said.

She glanced back, wondering what would happen if she had Beck roll their captive out the hatch. Did his people like him enough to fly down and get him?

“My captain is coming,” Leblanc said as Alisa noticed a heavy freighter barreling toward the one blocking the exit. “He’s low on weapons, but he said he has an idea.”

“Sounds alarming,” Mica said.

Alisa did not disagree, but was relieved when the freighter that had been trying to shoot them, turned to face this new menace. The chef’s captain did not fire, but instead bore down on the mafia vessel.

“Ah, they’re taking a maneuver from my flight manual,” Alisa said, “one that is admittedly more appealing when you’re flying someone else’s ship and don’t have to pay for repairs.”

As the mafia freighter shifted further to face the Leblanc ship, all of its power going to its forward shields to repel the attack, the rectangular exit came into view, the first hint of a grayish dawn making it brighter than the dome interior. There wasn’t much space, but Alisa’s borrowed charger was not a big ship. She streaked around the hull of the freighter, almost skipping off its shields, and let out a triumphant whoop as they finally escaped the dome.

She did not hesitate. She turned their nose toward the sky, the rising Rebus sun warming the charger’s belly as she aimed them into space.

“Are we taking the scenic route?” Mica asked.

“I figure those people wouldn’t have much trouble tracking us back to Terra Jhero if we fly straight there,” Alisa said. “Solstice didn’t want the White Dragon to know this was her ship, so if there’s a chance we can fly off their radar before coming back down to the moon, I’ll take it.”

“Solstice?” came a slurred groan from the back of the craft. The White Dragon man. He was finally awake, and was that fear in his tone as he said the name?

“We’re heading to Terra Jhero,” Alisa said, though she couldn’t even see the man. He was still on the floor with Beck and Abelardus keeping an eye on him.

Another groan came from the back, one of dread.

Maybe that meant Alisa’s concerns about Solstice arranging a trap for them had been for naught. If the White Dragon people feared her, they probably weren’t working together. Alisa shuddered to think what Solstice had done to elicit that kind of response from a powerful mafia lord.

She looked at Leonidas as the charger accelerated toward an orbiting position, wondering if he had similar thoughts. He gazed at her, a pleased smile on his face. Ah, maybe he wasn’t contemplating Solstice at all.

She reached over and patted his arm. “Nice thinking with the generators.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you think Solstice will give us that dino money and let us go?” Alisa asked.

“We shall find out.”

“You might have to use your charms on her again.”

Leonidas raised his eyebrows. “You wish me to be terse and aloof with her?”

“Apparently, she likes that.” Alisa grinned at him. “And you do it so well. You could throw in some gruffness and grumpiness to truly make her heart flutter.”

“You are an odd woman, Alisa Marchenko.”

“Endearingly odd, right?”

“Perhaps.” His eyelids dropped to half-mast, making her think bedroom thoughts, even though she was positive he did not have such things in mind. Unfortunately.

She resorted to making a joke, as usual. “Your proclamations of heartfelt adoration are making me melt into a puddle in my seat.”

Mica made a gagging noise.

“Still sick from my crazy flying?” Alisa asked.

“Not your flying, no.”

“We can’t leave Terra Jhero until we get Durant,” Abelardus said. “And the staff…” He trailed off, frowning as his eyes grew distant.

Alisa sighed. She wouldn’t have minded a few more minutes of enjoying the fact that they had escaped certain death before having those problems dumped back in her lap again. She doubted Jelena was on this moon anymore, and she was more than ready to leave herself, but Durant might be the only one who knew where the children had been taken. As to the staff, she disliked the idea of it in the hands of people who had nearly killed Leonidas with a mental attack, but she wasn’t some protector of Starseer artifacts. Abelardus and Alejandro could go off on that mission by themselves if they wanted the staff.

I have helped you a great deal, Abelardus said into her mind, slathering on the guilt like Beck spreading condiments on his sandwiches.

What would you have me do? Alisa took the charger out of a low orbit and headed back toward the moon, setting a course for Terra Jhero. I’m just a pilot.

We need a ship to get Durant to a medical facility, a good one. And for the staff… He sighed into her mind.

Alisa glanced back and caught a forlorn expression on his face. What?

I no longer sense the staff.

We’re over a hundred miles from Jhero. That may be why.

Abelardus did not answer. When Alisa looked back again, she spotted an uncharacteristically glum expression on his face.

I’ll help you get Durant, she thought, but did not know if he was still listening. She also did not know if he would consider the offer of help particularly unselfish and noble, considering Durant was still her only lead on Jelena. We’ll find him, she added, just in case it mattered to him.

Chapter 19

The Terra Jhero forcefield opened before Alisa had to comm anyone to ask for permission to land. Apparently, someone there knew this was Solstice’s ship, whether it was marked or not.

The charger glided over the city, a peaceful slumbering city waking from its night’s sleep, a stark contrast to the dome they had left behind. They had made it back down to the moon’s surface without any sign of pursuit, for which Alisa was thankful. Leblanc had been on the comm with his men, urging them to get out while they could. From his gloomy, defeated tone, she sensed that his “rescue” had been expensive, both in terms of ships and lives. She almost regretted having alerted his people to where he was, but she couldn’t, not when their involvement was the only reason she had been able to get in and out to retrieve Beck. Beck… and their prisoner, who was now sitting in a seat, staring moodily at the view screen. Beck, still devoid of clothes, leaned against the wall behind him, his arms crossed over his chest, his bruised skin sporting even more shades of blue and black than before. He needed some time on Alejandro’s exam table.

The hangar doors were still open, and a ground guide rushed out to help them land. Alisa did not need help landing or maneuvering the craft into the hangar. She would have preferred it if Solstice and all of her people were gone, so they could simply hop out and leave without having to deal with her.

But as soon as Alisa flew the craft into the hangar, she spotted the tawny-haired woman lounging on a sofa in a waiting area near the door. She had her netdisc out, perusing who knew what. Maybe whatever channel that covered news in the White Dragon dome.

“Doesn’t that woman sleep?” Alisa asked.

“Maybe she doesn’t like to sleep alone and is waiting for someone handsome and muscular to come entertain her,” Mica said.

“You haven’t been that helpful today.”

“It’s not my fault you didn’t have any engines for me to fix.”

Maybe Alisa should have ripped some bolts off the charger to give Mica and her mouth something to work on. Leonidas did not remark on the conversation, merely unfastening his harness as the ship came to rest in its slot.

“I will go out first,” he said, standing up, his helmet tucked under his arm.

“Because you suspect trouble?”

Alisa kept herself from making a snide comment about him being eager to see Solstice. She knew that wasn’t true, and it was petty of her to be bothered by another woman finding Leonidas attractive. It wasn’t as if that was mystifying. She supposed she would feel smug instead of threatened if he were sleeping with her, but his proclamations that he intended to stay away from her in the future left her uncertain as to their status. She sighed at herself, missing the assurances of marriage for more reasons than one. Now, she felt like she was back in school, playing games and competing with other girls.

“Always,” Leonidas said. He touched her shoulder before heading back between the seats.

“My people in this city are coming to pick me up,” Leblanc said, also rising to his feet. “I thank you for your graciousness in helping me escape along with your own man.” He turned to face Beck, pointedly looking into his face and not any lower—actually, he was closer to addressing Beck’s forehead. “It may take me some time to get my business back in order after this fiasco, but I’ll let you know if I need freight hauled in the future. And do send your sauce and marinade sampler to me. You remember my address?”

“Yes, Chef,” Beck said, his hand lifting as if to form a military salute. He turned it into a thump on his chest instead, and then winced when he smacked a cut. “I memorized it.”

“Good.”

“Take me with you,” Medric blurted as Leblanc moved to pass him. Someone had found intellicuffs to bind his wrists to each other and to the seat in front of him, and he lifted them imploringly. “Or distract Solstice so I can escape. I don’t want to be that witch’s prisoner again.”

“You think I’ll help you, after you tortured my friend here?” Leblanc waved to Beck, who beamed brightly at the word friend. How someone with that many bruises on his face managed to beam, Alisa did not know, but he did. “And after your people destroyed many of my ships when the crews nobly came to rescue me? I hope this marks the downfall of your entire dirty clan.” Leblanc lifted his chin, fearless as he strode out the hatch after Leonidas.

Medric looked at Beck, then at Abelardus, and finally at Alisa. His brows rose hopefully.

“You and Solstice don’t have the best of relationships, eh?” Alisa asked.

Beck’s forehead crinkled, as if he couldn’t understand why she was being friendly to the leader of the people who had nearly kept them from escaping that dome. Because the first inklings of a plan were forming in her mind. Maybe it was foolish to believe she could deal with Medric, but he wasn’t tough out here, with his city in ruins. Alisa wondered how many of his staff had been killed when their ship had been bombed. Maybe he didn’t have that many resources left with which to threaten people, or maybe he dreaded the idea of reporting to the rest of his family about what had happened.

“She likes to see people in pain,” Medric said. “If you cross her, and she gets her hands on you later… Just don’t get into bed with her. She’s a vengeful woman.”

This statement did not surprise Alisa, but it did make her worry that Leonidas would find his path made more complicated if he refused her offer of employment. She had already implied that he would. Even now, Alliance soldiers could be skulking in the hangar, preparing an ambush for him.

“I’ll make a point to stay out of her bed,” Alisa said.

Mica snorted.

“If you could let me go,” Medric said, “I might someday be in a position to help you. I’ll get back on my feet. I’m the youngest in the family. I’m used to having to pick myself up after a beating.” His mouth twisted wryly at some memory—or many memories.

“I don’t need any favors,” Alisa said, “but my friend there, the one your people tortured—”

“With reason.” Medric’s face grew hard. “He killed one of our brothers.”

“Actually, he didn’t.” Alisa waited for the man to look back at Beck before raising her eyebrows at Abelardus. She tried to make the gesture significant, to imply that if he could manipulate the man into believing what she said about Beck that she would appreciate it.

Abelardus was leaning against the hull by the hatchway, his fists on his hips, looking sullen. He did not miss her look, but he spoke into her mind, rather than simply nodding as she wished.

I’ll do my best to help you with this, as I helped you get Beck, but you must give me your word that you’ll help me.

With Durant? I already said I would.

With Durant and with getting the staff. Those people can’t be permitted to keep it. They’re too dangerous. They’ll use it to do something that neither you nor Alejandro wish, something that has nothing to do with the empire or the Alliance.

Like what? You said you weren’t sure who they were.

Agree to help me, Abelardus urged, not answering the question. Your window of opportunity with him won’t be large. The White Dragon man was glaring at Beck, who was glaring right back. He’s rattled and scared now. That won’t last. He’s a pompous ass underneath.

I don’t know what you think I can do in regard to the staff, but I agree to help, after we find Jelena.

Abelardus hesitated, his eyes narrowing. Very well. He nodded toward Medric. Do your best to convince him. I’ll make sure he finds the argument persuasive.

“Did your people ever start an investigation?” Alisa asked, drawing the man’s gaze back toward her. “Or did they just assume Beck was the culprit? And if so, why would they assume that? He’s a simple man from an algae farm. Why would he pick a fight with an entire mafia clan? Who would be that foolish?”

“My brother died at his restaurant.”

“Yet another reason Beck couldn’t have been responsible. Who would kill a powerful mafia leader on his own doorstep? Again, it would have been foolish of him.”

“Well, he doesn’t look that smart.” Medric eyeballed Beck again.

“It’s hard to look smart when you’re naked and beaten,” Beck said. “If you’d like, I could put on some spectacles and nibble thoughtfully on a pencil.”

“As if you’d nibble on something without grill marks on it,” Mica said.

“Who said there wouldn’t be grill marks on the pencil?” Beck winked at Mica, though it seemed half-hearted. He was alternately looking at the mafia man and at Alisa, a hint of hope in his eyes.

Alisa knew he had planned to use force on Medric, to make him tell his people to leave him alone, but she doubted that would work. He might go along with them now, but he would only turn on them later, once he was free of their influence. Of course, she also did not know if Abelardus could permanently persuade the man to leave Beck alone. Abelardus had admitted that the Starseer mind manipulations tended to be temporary and couldn’t usually get a person to deviate far from his natural tendencies. What would the tendencies of a youngest brother in a mafia clan be?

“If you were to do a little research into what happened that night,” Alisa said, “perhaps you could discover who really killed your brother. Right now, someone is feeling very smug that they pulled a bag over the heads of your clan and got away with some plot. If you were the one to get to the bottom of what happened that day, your brothers might be proud of you, might even forgive this little mishap.” She waved vaguely in the direction of Terra Dhwan.

“I…” Medric chewed on his lip, and Alisa imagined she could see Abelardus sending invisible beams of power at his head. “It would be good to be the one to avenge Alric’s death. I wouldn’t be the screw-up then. The one in the family who…” He frowned at her, as if he had forgotten she was there for a moment, that he was essentially in the hands of enemies.

“You know Beck didn’t do it,” Alisa said. “Think of how good it will feel to find the person who did. If that person is left to roam freely, he or she could plot against your people again. You don’t want that, right? You want to be the hero, not the screw-up.”

She felt as manipulative as Solstice for trying to twist the man around her finger so, but it seemed to be working. He was nodding, a little jerkily, but nodding all the same. Abelardus, standing out of his sight, wore that distant expression; he must be working hard to have this influence. Alisa prayed that it stuck. She refused to feel morally squeamish about what they were doing. This man belonged to the clan that had been trying to kill Beck—and anyone around him—for months, and the suns knew he must have killed countless others. He’d certainly ordered Beck tortured without any qualms.

“The hero, yes.” Medric bit his lip. “I do want to be the hero. For once in my life.”

Alisa’s comm beeped.

“Alisa?” Leonidas asked. “Solstice is ready to take her ship back.”

“I guess that means we’re supposed to clear out,” Mica said.

Medric’s eyes widened. “Not me. I can’t get caught by her people. I—” He stood up, forgetting that his cuffs were attached to the seat in front of him.

“Of course not,” Alisa said soothingly. “That’s the deal, right? You find out who really killed your brother, call the White Dragon attack dogs off Beck, and we turn our backs while you sneak out. Solstice never needs to know you were here.”

“Yes. Deal.” Medric did his best to thrust his hand out with the cuffs restraining him.

Alisa clasped his hand. “Who’s got the keys?”

Beck made a sour face, but he clicked a fob, and the cuffs released. He looked skeptical that this would work—maybe he believed that his tormentor was playing them, saying what he thought they wanted to hear. But he didn’t know that Abelardus was surfing around in the man’s head.

“Follow us out,” Alisa said, as Medric leaped to his feet. “Turn toward the rear of the ship and sneak out around the back of the hangar as we go forward.”

“Got it,” he said.

Alisa waved for Mica, Beck, and Abelardus to walk out with her. She turned her back on the man. If he couldn’t escape the hangar on his own, then he didn’t deserve his position.

They found Leonidas standing near the hangar exit with, predictably, Solstice standing entirely too close to him for comfort. For Alisa’s comfort. She had no idea if it bothered Leonidas. He had his armor to protect him. At least she wasn’t massaging his chest plate this time. Her two armed androids stood by the door, keeping an eye on the situation. Nobody shouted and pointed behind Alisa’s group, so she assumed Medric had disappeared, or was staying out of sight until everyone left.

Leblanc was nowhere in sight. Had Solstice let him walk right out? Maybe she knew he was a faithful renter of one of her warehouses.

“I’m pleased that you were able to escape even though we couldn’t remotely lower their forcefield in time,” Solstice was saying to Leonidas as Alisa came within earshot. “I trust you’ll reconsider my offer in the future. I would so enjoy having you. And I can’t tell you how delighted I am by the damage that’s been done to Terra Dhwan. I’ve got footage coming out of there, and it’ll bring excellent ratings on the networks. I’ve already sold it to an off-world media corporation. They won’t take the dinosaur maulings, but this is simply news. Delightful news.” She gripped his arm with two hands. “I saw your fight with that android. It was also delightful. Bravo and Bruno may have gotten a little nervous.” She grinned and tilted her head toward her own androids.

They gazed back blandly. Alisa highly doubted their programming would allow them to feel nervous. If they felt anything, it ought to be jealousy, since their employer was trying to replace them.

“I’ll remember your offer,” Leonidas said, “but I’m currently needed elsewhere.” He inclined his head toward Alisa.

“Surely, she can’t deserve such a fine specimen as you.”

Alisa was tempted anew to punch the woman, but she had let them use her ship. And it hadn’t even been a trap. Maybe Solstice had anticipated the “carnage” that would happen when Leonidas went to rescue people and had been drooling at the prospect of good vid footage. She’d probably had a hacker working to get access to the Terra Dhwan feeds as soon as her ship left. The involvement by the chef’s team must feel like a wonderful bonus.

“She deserves much,” Leonidas said, meeting Alisa’s eyes. “More than I can give her.”

Solstice sneered.

Alisa ignored her, wanting instead to hug Leonidas, to make the sadness in his gaze go away. She also wanted to object to the idea that she deserved anything special. He was the one who deserved a chance to be a fully functioning person again.

“Normally, I just have women who irk me shot,” Solstice said, “and that wardrobe irks me even when she’s not speaking, but since you’ve caused great distress to my rivals, I’m going to be magnanimous and let you all go on your way.” She noticed Abelardus and turned a speculative eye upon him, looking him up and down from hood to hem.

Alisa supposed it was too much to hope that he would get and accept a job offer, so she needn’t worry about going staff hunting.

Please, you would miss me dreadfully, he spoke into her mind. I wouldn’t deprive you of my company.

Ever?

You’ll grow bored of your broken cyborg soon and see the wisdom of me as an alternative who can please you in all manner of ways.

As Alisa hurried out the door, not wanting to linger lest Solstice change her mind, she decided she’d liked it better when Abelardus had been moody and not speaking to her.

She took comfort from Leonidas’s presence—he strode at her side, not looking back as they left Solstice’s hangar.

• • • • •

“You forgot to get your dinosaur head money, Captain,” Mica said, as Alisa and the others turned onto the docks, the bulky shape of the Star Nomad coming into view farther down.

Relieved to see her ship again, Alisa quickened her pace. “I was too happy to get out of there without being shot at to worry about it. Besides—” she patted a lumpy pocket, “—I still have the Bliss that Yumi gave me. If you’re worrying about that raise I promised you, this may cover it. As soon as I figure out how to sell it.”

“Your drug-dealer persona wasn’t terribly convincing. It’s possible you’re not qualified to be a criminal mastermind.”

“I’m stung.”

“Ouch,” Beck said, almost stumbling into a lamppost lining the walkway. “How do you walk in this dress?”

“It’s a robe,” Abelardus said, “and I walk in it easily, since I’m a bigger man than you and don’t trip over the hem.”

Since Beck’s nudity had been attracting strange looks—and the attention of spy boxes—Alisa had talked Abelardus into letting him borrow the Starseer robe. Since he wore hide trousers and a vest under it, it had seemed a reasonable request. Unfortunately, Beck walking barefoot in a black robe and tripping frequently still attracted strange looks.

“You mean you’re a taller man than I am,” Beck said, squinting at Abelardus.

“That too.” Abelardus smirked.

His mood had improved—if returning to his usual cocky self could be considered an improvement—since Alisa had agreed to chauffeur him around on his staff hunt.

I still don’t sense it, he said into her mind, losing his smirk. I doubt it’s on Cleon Moon anymore.

We’ll figure it out after we find—

Leonidas touched her arm, distracting her. He pointed toward the docks on the opposite side of the Nomad.

Bracing herself for police or Solstice’s androids heading them off because their boss had changed her mind about letting them go, Alisa did not expect to see a young black-robed person approaching. He carried a staff and a duffle bag over his shoulder while a long hoverboard floated after him on a leash.

Alisa halted. Her first thought was that this was one of the Starseers who had attacked the outpost and stolen the staff, but Abelardus ran forward, knocking Beck aside as he raced toward the young man.

“Ostberg,” he called, lifting a hand.

“Oh,” Alisa said. “He looks much different without his riding gear.”

And helmet. She hadn’t seen his face before.

Ostberg faltered, and the hoverboard bumped against his back. His face wrinkled in confusion as he saw Abelardus, or perhaps Abelardus without his robe, and then Beck following along behind.

“This is the contact from the warehouse?” Leonidas asked.

“Yes,” Alisa said.

She kept from running forward with thoughts of throttling him for information. That had likely been part of what had driven him off before. Besides, he’d promised her that only Durant knew Jelena’s whereabouts.

Abelardus touched Ostberg on the shoulder, but soon rushed past him. A tarp covered the hoverboard, and Ostberg looked uneasily around as Abelardus peeled back the corner. Alisa glimpsed a patch of wiry, curly hair before Abelardus dropped an arm over the tarp and laid his head next to the one on the pallet.

“I believe that’s Durant,” she said.

“The Durant we’ve been looking for?” Mica asked, stopping beside Alisa.

“I assume so. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to be in a condition to tell us where Jelena went.” She glanced at Leonidas and lowered her voice—the morning had grown late enough that numerous people were walking to and from ships along the docks. “Or Thorian.”

Alisa continued forward, figuring they should take this meeting into the ship. Even if they were currently on reasonable terms with Solstice, that didn’t mean other unfriendly eyes couldn’t be about. As she walked, she opened her comm.

“Alejandro? Are you still aboard?”

She half-expected that he would have taken his belongings and left now that the staff was gone. But he answered her with a distracted, “Yes.”

“We have a patient for you.”

“I’m busy with research,” he said, his tone growing chilly. He was probably using the overpriced sys-net to hunt down staff sightings and spitefully charging everything to her.

“This patient might have some insight that will be useful to your research,” Alisa said, “if you can find a way to wake him up. We’re bringing him into the cargo hold.”

Alejandro closed the channel without answering. She hoped that meant he was coming to see for himself.

“He had a seizure this morning,” Ostberg was telling Abelardus as Alisa drew closer. “I didn’t know what to do. I realized…” He glanced at her. “I need help. I don’t know enough. And since the others are gone, I can’t even ask Lady Kim.”

“Gone?” Alisa asked, her hopes that Jelena might be somewhere in the dome wavering.

Ostberg was even younger than she had guessed. Thirteen or fourteen. His height made it easy to think him older, but that was not the face of anyone who had ever needed a shave.

“They left right away,” Ostberg said. “After the attack. In a ship.”

“So they’re not even on Cleon Moon anymore?” Alisa groped for something to grab for support and found Leonidas’s arm.

Ostberg shook his head distractedly, looking toward the Nomad’s cargo hatch. “Is the doctor in there?”

“Yes.” Alisa risked coming forward and gripping the boy’s arm, doubting that he would tear off again when he had Durant in tow. “Do you know where they went? Which planet or station?”

Ostberg met her eyes. “No. They didn’t tell me in case I was caught and questioned. But as I said, I believe Durant knows. He’s one of the senior staff, one of the planners.”

“Let’s get him inside,” Abelardus said, waving to the cargo hatch.

Alisa released Ostberg and stepped up to the sensor, though she couldn’t help but gaze out toward the docks and the city around them, feeling disappointed that Jelena hadn’t been here after all, at least not for more than passing through on the way to some ship. Some ship that could be headed anywhere in the system.

She touched the pocket that held Jelena’s bracelet. Her goal seemed farther away than ever.

The cargo hatch opened, the ramp unfurling next to her. Alejandro waited at the top of it. He had raced right down at the promise of research assistance, hadn’t he?

Alisa wondered if Durant might have insight into the other group of Starseers and where the staff had been taken, in addition to knowing where the children had gone. As odd as it seemed, she and Alejandro had the same goal now. Healing Durant.

“What happened?” Alejandro asked as Ostberg and Abelardus steered the hoverboard into the cargo hold.

As soon as Mica, Beck, and Leonidas came in, Alisa closed the hatch. More than one set of eyes had been looking at the group’s cyborg armor and Starseer robes.

“A mental attack,” Abelardus said. “Very likely the same thing that knocked out the mech.”

“Leonidas was more than knocked out,” Alejandro said, pulling back the tarp to look at the man. “He was in a coma.”

“So is my mentor,” Ostberg said bleakly. “Are you the doctor? He’s been like this since the attack. More than four days.”

“Let’s get him up to sickbay,” Alejandro said.

Alisa watched as Beck and Mica helped him maneuver the hoverboard up the stairs. She was tempted to trail along, but what could she do besides wait for directions on where to fly? Besides, it wasn’t as if she even knew Durant, except as the person who had kidnapped her daughter. She selfishly wanted the information inside his head, nothing more.

“There’s some hope for you now,” Leonidas said quietly, brushing against her shoulder.

“Is there? Jelena seems farther away than ever.”

“But we have someone who knows where she was taken.”

Alisa leaned against his armored arm. “Alejandro was clueless when it came to treating you. If you hadn’t come out of that on your own…”

“Perhaps the Starseer will be able to do the same. When I spoke to Alejandro after you left sickbay, he apologized for being able to do little besides steal my underwear, but he said he could have if he’d had better equipment and could see how to program his nanobots. That’s not quite the same as being clueless.”

“True. And if he took your underwear, then he at least has a clue as to what the ladies appreciate.” She smiled up at him, even if her heart wasn’t entirely in the joke.

“An unconscious man’s genitals?”

“Yes. They were nice. I hope to see them again someday.”

“Hm.” He glanced at her wrist, and his eyes took on a worried aspect.

She sighed sadly and headed for the stairs.

Epilogue

After checking in on Alejandro in sickbay, Alisa headed to NavCom. It was time to get the Nomad out of Solstice’s dome before she changed her mind about letting them go. She could send an android brute squad to try to gather up Leonidas for her collection of one-of-a-kinds at any moment.

Her step faltered when she found Abelardus sitting in the co-pilot’s seat. She still wasn’t comfortable alone with him and might have retreated if she hadn’t needed to fly them out of dock.

“Not staying in sickbay with your brother?” she asked.

“The doctor said he would let me know what he found. And I had a message to read.” Abelardus shifted his body to reveal a netdisc on the console, a holodisplay open, a familiar face frozen in the middle, one with blind white eyes.

“Lady Naidoo?”

A jitter of nerves teased Alisa’s stomach. Abelardus had said he would message her about the staff thieves.

“Yes.” Abelardus leaned back in the seat, gave her a long look, then flipped to another screen. “Remember this fellow?”

The face of the Starseer Leonidas had killed came into view. She had only seen it once—one of the men had arranged for the disposal of the body—but she remembered it well.

“Yes,” she said.

“Lady Naidoo looked him up. He used to belong to the Arkadius Temple, but he broke away in his early twenties and became… we call them the chasadski—pariahs. They call themselves prophets and disciples of the gods, the zhadski. They study dark powers.”

Alisa raised her eyebrows. She would consider most Starseer powers to be dark. Manipulating the minds of people, crashing warships… These weren’t the talents of benevolent people.

“Really,” Abelardus murmured. “We can do benevolent things. There are a few among us who are good at healing people. Our males are, of course, excellent at pleasuring women.” He wriggled his eyebrows. “With their minds.”

Alisa snorted. “I’m glad you’re taking this discussion seriously.”

“Trust me. You may prefer jokes when I get to the end.”

Wariness encroached. “Oh?”

Abelardus looked at the picture of the dead man. “The chasadski practice their dark powers in private for the most part, but they pop up from time to time, doing some callous act or another and ensuring that the system doesn’t forget that they exist. Much of the fear that exists today among the general populace is because of their acts. You see, they believe in the original Starseer mission, the one we had when we first left Kir and set out to take over the rest of the system.”

“Enslaving humanity?”

“Not enslaving. Ruling over. The way the emperors ruled over the empire. People with power governing over those without power.”

Alisa couldn’t see that ending up as anything other than enslavement for the majority of the population. It sounded even worse than the empire.

“The chasadski have been a small splinter group for centuries,” Abelardus said, “since the Order Wars nearly wiped our people out. But they’ve never gone away or forgotten their mission. They believe that if they can increase the number of Starseers in the system again, their goal could be accomplished.”

“But the rest of your people consider them pariahs, you said? So they wouldn’t join in?”

“They consider them boat rockers, making trouble for the rest of us. But… others do share some of their opinions. If it became clear that the chasadski had gained some significant advantage and that they could actually win if they made another attempt to take control of the system, more Starseers might join them.”

“Significant advantage?” Alisa asked. “Like that staff?”

“Like that staff. Add in the fact that the system is in a vulnerable state after the war, and they may believe the time is perfect for them to act.”

Alisa spread her fingers and rested her face in them. Three suns, why hadn’t she found a better hiding place for that staff? She had been negligent with it, indifferent. She hadn’t truly wanted it, and now someone who did want it had it.

“You suspected these people were behind this all along, didn’t you?” she asked, lowering her hand.

“I feared it was possible, yes. I wanted to hear from Naidoo before saying anything. I’d hoped there might be a less unpleasant explanation.”

“I understand why they would want the staff, but why attack that outpost? Why go after the prince?”

“Perhaps for the same reason the Alliance wants him out of the picture. To ensure that he can’t show up later, leading armies.” Abelardus tapped his fingers on the console. “It’s also possible they hope to capture him and use him, and perhaps the other children, as well. Mold their young minds to their purpose.”

Alisa closed her eyes. She had already worried about Jelena being indoctrinated into Starseer ways. This sounded even worse.

“You don’t know where their hideout or base is, do you?” she asked.

“No, and neither does Lady Naidoo.” Abelardus turned back toward the holodisplay. “I have more news you won’t like hearing.”

“What?”

Abelardus changed the display so the second man popped up, the one who had walked out with the staff. “This is someone else who hasn’t been seen much in the last thirty years, but Naidoo knew who he was.” He fell silent, merely gazing at her.

That uneasy feeling returned to her stomach. “What? Who is he?”

“Stanislav Schwegler.”

Alisa swallowed. Stanislav.

“It’s not necessarily the same person,” she said slowly, the dedication on the title page in her mother’s book burning in her mind. “It’s not—”

“Your father? We’d have to do a blood test to know for certain. I suppose we could go over those videos again and see if he left any blood spattered against the wall when the cyborg threw him around. Or maybe the doctor clawed at his eyes as he was being dragged out and got some skin under his nails.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I’m being serious.”

Alisa stared at the picture floating in the air above NavCom, the gray-haired man with a tidy gray beard. Was there a resemblance to her? Was that her father? Was it possible? And if so, was he truly in this organization of which Abelardus spoke? If so, why would her mother have fallen for someone like that? Or maybe that was why they had broken up all those years ago.

“I’m getting us out of here,” Alisa said, sending her hands over the controls, somewhat comforted by the familiar routine, even if there was an odd little tremor to her fingers.

“Where are we going?”

“The doctor hasn’t told me yet, but somewhere with high-quality medical facilities, I’m sure.”

The Nomad flew away from the docks and over the city buildings. Alisa waited for a challenge to come over the comm when the freighter approached the dome exit, but the forcefield lowered for them.

Abelardus raised his eyebrows as they sailed out without hassle. “What did the cyborg do to win that woman’s regard?”

Alisa resisted the urge to let her mind wander down labyrinthine corridors and into dark places. “I believe he was charming,” was all she said.

“A charming cyborg? Sounds alarming.”

“About as alarming as a charming Starseer.”

Alisa pointed the Nomad toward the sky, more than ready to leave the moon.

“Can you close that down?” she asked, nodding toward the image of Stanislav Schwegler hovering over the netdisc.

“You don’t want to sit there and gauge the family resemblance? I think I can see it in the nose.”

“I think you should be in sickbay with your brother, reading him bedside stories and chatting to him about the family.”

“He’s unconscious.”

“Perhaps news from back home will excite him enough to wake up.”

And once awake, Durant could tell her where Jelena had gone, and there would be no need to go hunting for medical facilities. Alisa dreaded the idea of inadvertently heading off in the opposite direction from where the children had been taken.

“Our home life was never that interesting,” Abelardus said, but he did close down his netdisc and leave NavCom.

Alisa let out a breath and tried to relax her shoulders. As the misty gray marshlands of the moon receded, she hit the comm button.

“Doctor?” she asked. “Have you decided on a route yet?”

“Arkadius,” came the prompt reply.

Alisa slumped. All the way back across the system to Arkadius? “None of Aldrin’s moons have the facilities you need?”

“It’s possible, but I know for certain that Arkadius has state-of-the-art medical facilities with all the latest equipment. It also crossed my mind that the people who took the staff might take it to the Starseer temple there, since it seemed to be the core of their civilization.”

“You’re the boss,” she said.

“I know that’s not true.” Alejandro cut the comm.

From what Abelardus had said, Alisa doubted the rogue Starseers would head to Lady Naidoo’s bosom. But maybe she was wrong. He had implied that some of his people might be talked into joining the cause if they had sufficient reason to believe it could work. Maybe the thieves would go home to recruit.

Alisa shivered at the idea of the system being controlled by people who could wave their hands and kill others—or put them into comas. If nothing else, didn’t she have an obligation to warn the Alliance about this new threat? Of course, the Alliance ships stationed on Arkadius would not be happy with her after she had appeared to ally with the Starseers against them. Would they listen to her now?

“When is my life going to get less complicated?” she muttered, glancing at the stuffed spider hanging over the passenger’s seat. There was nobody else there to talk to. “I just want to find Jelena, make chocolate with her, watch children’s vids together, and fly around the system delivering freight. Nice and simple. I’ll even deliver Beck’s chef’s mushrooms.” She didn’t mention Leonidas in her list of just-wants, afraid that might be wanting too much, right now. But she also did not plan on giving up on him.

The dangling spider did not comment.

The comm beeped again.

“Alisa?” Leonidas asked. “Would you join me in the cargo hold when you’re free?”

“Are you planning a date for us?”

He hesitated, and she worried he would remind her of his insistence that they not date, that he was too dangerous.

“I have something better for you,” he said.

“Oh? My curiosity is suitably piqued.”

A clang sounded over the comm.

“I’ll be here for a couple of hours,” he said.

“Be down soon.”

They were already heading into a low orbit, so it did not take long for the Nomad to clear the moon’s influence. Alisa set a course for Arkadius, turned on the autopilot, and strode toward the cargo hold, pausing in the mess hall on the way. Beck had several pots gurgling on the stovetop, and he bent over one, stirring vigorously. Yumi and Mica sat at the table, playing a game of Banakka on someone’s netdisc and discussing the merits of psilocybins. At least, Yumi was discussing them. Mica was silently planning her next move. Alisa wondered if Yumi had tried out her own recently made concoction yet.

“Has the doctor treated your wounds?” she asked Beck. Shouldn’t he be in sickbay instead of cooking? At least he had put on clothes—sort of. He wore his plaid pajama bottoms and a loose yellow shirt that reminded her of broken egg yolks.

“He said to stop by soon, and I will. I just had a couple of ideas I want to try out. I’m preparing a box of sauces to ship to Chef Leblanc from—where are we going?”

“Arkadius.”

“Arkadius. Yes, excellent. They have a reliable postal system. This could be my big break, Captain.”

Alisa would consider it a big break if their chat with the White Dragon brother panned out and the mafia stopped hunting him. She patted him on the back as she passed through.

More clangs drifted up from the cargo hold as Alisa stepped out onto the walkway. A chicken squawked and ran past her, heading for the mess hall.

“Escape artists,” she murmured, eyeing the coop in the corner.

When she reached the top of the steps, Alisa spotted Leonidas. He had changed out of his armor and into his exercise togs, and set up a makeshift gym, using some of Mica’s spare engine room parts for weights. He was kicking and punching a set of battered hover pads with enough ferocity and speed to have developed a sweat. The computerized equipment zipped around, making difficult targets, but he never failed to connect.

“Did you call me down here to watch you work out?” Alisa asked, ambling down the stairs.

“No.” He launched a final flurry of blows at the pads, then lowered his arms and turned to face her.

“Because I wouldn’t object, in case you were wondering.” She resisted the urge to openly admire his physique, since that reminded her too much of something that Solstice would do. Still, she couldn’t help but be aware of it as he grabbed a towel and a netdisc off a bench.

“I want to spend the trip training, in case we catch up with the Starseers who took the staff. Abelardus seemed to believe that would be a possibility. I don’t want to be knocked out and left for dead again.” He clenched his jaw and glowered at the deck in front of the hidden cubby. “While an invaluable artifact is stolen.”

Alisa rested a hand on his arm. She hadn’t considered how he must have felt when he woke up and learned the staff had been taken. Like a failure.

“I know the feeling,” she murmured. “I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate that there would be thieves—everyone wants that thing—and take stronger measures to protect it.”

“It wasn’t your mission,” he said, perfectly willing to forgive her even if he wouldn’t forgive himself.

She could feel the heat of his bare arm under her hand, the corded steel muscles. She was certain he hadn’t called her down to seduce her, alas. If she thought it would work, she would definitely try to seduce him. Or at least lick that vein snaking down his biceps.

“It’s my ship,” she said. “I could have had Mica set some booby traps.”

“I doubt booby traps would have stopped those men.”

Men. One of whom was possibly Alisa’s father. She opened her mouth, on the verge of telling him, when he lifted the netdisc.

“This is why I called you down,” he said. “To show you my bank account.”

“Oh? Are you going to impress me with your cyborg riches?”

Her hand fell away from his arm as he poked at the controls, but she stayed close, drawn to him, wishing he would also be drawn to her. One day, perhaps. If he pulled his head out of his ass and decided to find—or kidnap—help.

“Solstice transferred the money for the dinosaur heads into my account,” he said, turning the holodisplay so she could see the columns.

“Ah, you do have cyborg riches.” Riches that had come courtesy of Solstice. Alisa couldn’t tamp down a grimace. “You know that woman is going to expect a favor from you someday.”

She kept herself from implying it would be a sexual favor, because that would be admitting to her own insecurities. And captains didn’t do that. Not wise, mature, comfortable-in-their-own-skin captains.

Sometimes being mature was a pain.

“Very likely,” he said, no hint of disagreement in his tone. “But in the meantime, we can use this. You brought down one of those dinosaurs with me and, I heard, another one fell to your marksmanship after I left. I want to transfer you the money for those two so you can buy combat armor when we get to Arkadius.”

Her first instinct was to object, but she had shot those dinosaurs. And she did want combat armor. That sleek blue suit called to her.

“Thank you. That’s a good idea. Then I’ll be protected enough to walk across a battlefield. Or to sleep with you.” She grinned up at him, not entirely serious, but she supposed it would be one way to make the situation work. When Beck had been armored during their sparring sessions, he had walked away after Leonidas had hurled him across the cargo hold and into bulkheads. “After you have the surgery that you will have,” she added. She’d kidnap that admiral herself if she had to.

“It’s hard to cuddle under the blankets while wearing a hundred pounds of armor,” he said, not responding to the second comment.

“Hard but not impossible? You know I like a challenge.”

“Alisa…” He sighed and lifted his arm.

Judging by the warning in his tone, she thought he might push her away or step away himself, but after a moment’s hesitation, he laid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. She went happily, resting her hand on his chest.

“I appreciate your… you,” he said. “And it means a great deal that you care enough to want me to have what I thought I wished. But I’m afraid of what could happen if we…” He rested his chin against her head. “I wish I could have a future with you—and I want to choke Abelardus with his ridiculous braids every time he leers at you—but you should have someone who isn’t broken.”

“Everyone’s broken in some way or another. If they aren’t, they haven’t led very interesting lives.”

“I don’t want to hurt you again,” he whispered, and her heart ached at the emotion in his voice.

How could she fix his guilt? Guilt that she was responsible for because she’d made a foolish choice. Perhaps logic would do what feelings couldn’t.

“You still want to have children, don’t you?” she asked. “A family. That hasn’t changed, has it?”

He hesitated. “What I want and what would be best for a family may not be the same thing.”

Alisa leaned back so she could frown into his eyes. “You’re not giving up your dream, Leonidas. Not because I fell out of your bed. That’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lay down with you. That was my choice.”

“A child wouldn’t know the perils of making such choices. To hurt one would be even more unacceptable.”

“So, we find a neurologist who can help you with the nightmares. There must be such a thing. And even if there’s not, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a family. You just don’t let yourself fall asleep with children draped over you. And your wife can wear her combat armor if she wants to sleep at your side.” She wasn’t sure why she spoke in terms of some hypothetical wife when she meant she wanted to sleep at his side. She was falling in love with him, if she hadn’t already, and she loathed the idea of anyone else having that spot. She would find a way to make this work; she swore it to herself.

“What a bedroom life that would be,” Leonidas said. “I suppose there’s a reason cyborgs don’t have families.”

“Yeah, because your asshole government wanted killing machines instead of fathers.”

“I signed up for it willingly,” he said, lifting a hand to touch her cheek. Then he cleared his throat and stepped back, raising the netdisc again. “If everyone else is amenable, we’ll take the rest of the money and outfit the ship with weapons. Abelardus and the others did help with slaying the dinosaurs, so we’ll have to ask for their votes.”

Alisa frowned again, completely uninterested in talking about weapons right now.

“There’s something you need to know before we get back to business,” she said, pushing the netdisc down. “The Starseers who attacked you and stole the staff? One might be my father. The one who got away.”

Leonidas arched his eyebrows.

“Unless there’s some of his blood spattered on the deck somewhere, we can’t find out for sure,” she said, “but he has the name of the lover my mother had before I was born, and he looked about the right age. Abelardus says these people are part of some evil offshoot of Starseers who want to finish the mission their ancestors started centuries ago, taking over the system and ruling over humanity.”

Alisa gazed up at him, almost defiantly, wanting him to know that she was responsible, if in a circuitous way, for him being hurt. Someone in her family had attacked him and would likely do so again if Leonidas tried to retrieve the staff. She wasn’t sure it was a logical argument, taking the blame for her father’s actions, but a broken wrist seemed nothing compared to a coma.

“That should lead to interesting conversation topics at family dinners,” Leonidas said, lifting his eyebrows.

That wasn’t the response she had expected.

“Are you trying to be inappropriately funny?” she asked.

“Yes. Did I not succeed? You’ll have to coach me on my delivery and timing.”

She didn’t know whether to slap him or to hug him. The latter sounded much more appealing, so she slipped her arms around his waist and rested her forehead against his shoulder.

“My life is a mess and nothing is working out how it’s supposed to,” Alisa said. The raw honesty wasn’t as easy to share as it had been when he had been unconscious, but he had become someone she felt she could confess to, and she needed someone she could be straight with. It was hard always being the captain, keeping up a stoic facade even when she kept missing her mark, when Jelena kept slipping through her fingers. “I need someone to lean on. I need you. Don’t pull away before we even know…” She tightened her hug. “Just don’t pull away.”

“I’m here,” Leonidas said, returning the hug. “And I’m not going anywhere. We’ll get her.”

It wasn’t quite what she wanted from him—or not all that she wanted from him—but it had to be enough. For now.

THE END

Afterword

Thank you for continuing to follow along with the Fallen Empire series, and thank you, too, for the reviews and for telling friends to try the books. Since they’ve been doing well, I’m able to justify taking my time with the story arc. I currently expect to finish the series in eight books, and I hope you’ll stick around for the conclusion. Things will be coming to a head in 6, 7, and 8. (Ahem, that wasn’t dirty.) (Unless you want it to be.)

If you want to get in touch in the meantime, I’m often on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email me through my website. Thanks for reading!