End Game

by Lindsay Buroker

  The man yelled something, his helmet muffling it, and launched himself at Beck instead of turning toward Alisa. They went down, wrestling, limbs entwined, and Alisa had to stop firing. Up on the walkway, one of Leonidas’s opponents went sailing through the cargo hold. He landed a few feet shy of the ramp, and she started toward him, thinking to roll him out before he could recover. Some of the soldiers who had already been knocked outside found their feet and ran up, trying to get back into the ship, but Abelardus leaned against the wall nearby, watching the spot. An invisible barrier kept the men from getting inside. Mica and Bravo Six had made their way into the ship at some point—Alisa glimpsed them following the wall and running to engineering. Maybe Mica had some grenades in there.

  A truck door slammed behind Alisa. She turned, raising her arm to fire, but she was too slow. Two soldiers sprang from the cab and crashed into her.

  She went down hard, her elbow clunking into the deck. She tried to lift her legs, to kick the men off her, but one already had her pinned.

  “That’s the captain,” he barked.

  A gauntleted hand clasped around her neck. Her armor protected her, but warnings flashed on her display, and something in her helmet groaned as he squeezed.

  “Use her for a trade,” the second man said. “Her for Tiang.”

  “She should die,” the one with his hand around her neck growled. “Traitor.”

  Again, Alisa tried to buck them off and roll away, but they were both on her, the strength more than matching hers.

  “Abelardus,” she called, hoping he was still leaning against the wall on the other side of the truck. Could he see her predicament? “Little help! And I am not a traitor.”

  Her suit groaned again, and a faint hiss reached her ears. If that neck armor gave away, she would be dead in an instant.

  She twisted again, this time only trying to get her arm up. She fired, hoping to angle the beam toward her assailant’s suit. His rage-filled face filled her vision, and at first, she thought her aim went awry, that she was burning through the ceiling instead of him, but then surprise flashed in his eyes, and he glanced to the side of his helmet, observing some reading. Hoping he was distracted, Alisa tried to get her legs up again.

  This time, she managed to free one knee and ram it into the soldier’s hip. It jostled him, but he kept his grip on her neck. She rammed him again and twisted. His hands slipped, but the second man reached in, a large gauntleted palm gripping her faceplate, as if her helmet were a forceball, and he was going to use it to hurl her across the hold.

  A blur of red flashed through her half-blocked vision, and the man gripping her helmet let go as he was hefted from the deck. The one still pinning her shouted a startled curse. Finally, Alisa had her distraction. She got both legs under him and pressed them into his chest plate. She rocked and thrust upward with all of her armor-enhanced strength.

  The soldier flew straight up, past the top of the truck, nearly reaching the ceiling. Alisa leaped to her feet as Leonidas threw his man through the hatchway. Abelardus must have lowered his barrier, because the soldier sailed through, crashing into his fellows before they could make headway into the ship.

  Alisa’s attacker landed on the deck three feet from her and bounced. She lunged in and grabbed him as if he were a doll. Grinning maniacally, she hefted him into the air over her head, the servos in her suit groaning but giving her the strength for the movement. As Leonidas had done, she pitched her man toward the hatchway. He didn’t fly as fast or far, but he landed with enough velocity that he rolled toward the ramp. Maybe a Starseer gave him a nudge, because he continued onto and down it, joining the pile of men at the base. A huge pile of men.

  “That’s all of them,” Leonidas called. “Close her up.”

  The ramp raised slowly, since there were still men on it. Someone must have given mental shoves, because they all toppled off. The hatch closed, locking the Alliance team out.

  “Abelardus?” Leonidas propped a fist on his hip and looked at Alisa.

  “What?” she asked.

  “When you needed help, you called for Abelardus instead of me.” Judging by the distaste on his face, this was an inexcusable faux pas.

  “Only because the last I saw, you were fighting three men at once up there.” Alisa waved toward the walkway, but all of those men were gone now, thrown out with the rest. “He was leaning against the wall, like he was looking for a cigarette to smoke.”

  “Really,” Abelardus said, strolling around the back of the truck to join them. “I was using my prodigious mental talents. Some of us use our brains to fight and not our beefy muscles.” He sniffed disdainfully at Leonidas.

  Mica and Bravo Six walked out of engineering, Mica holding what appeared to be grenades, and the android gripping a crowbar. Mica looked toward the closed hatch, a hint of disappointment in her expression. Sorry to have missed the battle?

  Leonidas put an arm around Alisa’s shoulder and turned his back to Abelardus.

  “Whenever you need me, I’m there for you,” he said quietly. “No matter what I’m doing.”

  “I understand. Thank you. Next time, I’ll make sure to cry out for you when I’m being squished to death.”

  “Excellent. If, for some perplexing reason, I’m not able come to you, cry next for Beck.”

  “Oh, I see. You just don’t ever want me to ask Abelardus for help.”

  “He’s not reliable,” Leonidas said.

  “I heard that, Beefy,” Abelardus called from the end of the truck.

  “Also,” Leonidas said, not turning back toward him, “don’t expect me to obey orders to run away.”

  He raised an eyebrow, and she recalled that she had yelled that when he first leaped down from the roof of the ship. She’d hoped she might avert the battle if she acted quickly enough, but she could understand his unwillingness to leave her in a questionable situation. And she appreciated that.

  “Not when you’re in danger,” he added.

  “It seemed like a good thing to suggest,” Alisa said, wondering if she should bother explaining that the soldiers had been under Starseer control until he showed up. No, it didn’t matter now. And she had been the one to frantically comm him and tell him to come as soon as possible.

  “I will never run and leave you alone with twenty enemy soldiers.” He looked at the food crates, his brow crinkling. “Even if they were in the process of unloading your groceries.”

  “I don’t want Alliance soldiers to be enemies,” she said with a sigh and leaned against his shoulder. “I’m tired of having so many enemies.”

  “I know.” He patted her shoulder.

  “Sergeant Kapoor?” a tinny voice came from someone’s comm.

  Alisa spotted an abandoned helmet and walked over to it.

  “This is Captain Marchenko,” she said. “If you’re looking for the head of your ambush team, we’ve decided not to allow him access to my ship.”

  A banging came from the closed cargo hatch. They would need to take off soon, before the soldiers could come up with another plan to get in.

  “Marchenko,” the man on the other end growled. Was that Admiral Agosti again?

  “I offered to let Tiang go with your team, but he wasn’t interested. Why don’t you come down here personally to talk to him? I’ll guarantee your safety. At least in my ship. I don’t have any control over the dome here.”

  The growl that came through was inarticulate, and then the channel clicked off.

  “How am I ever going to get that man to like me?” Alisa asked.

  “By giving him his admiral back?” Leonidas suggested.

  “Trust me, it’s crossed my mind, but Tiang doesn’t want to go.”

  “So make him go. It’s not as if they want to torture and interrogate him for state secrets. They just want to put him to work.”

  “But apparently not the work he wants to do.”

  “You don’t sign on to the military to do the work you want to do. You do the work the out
fit needs.”

  “I’m not sure if that’s true for medical research admirals.”

  “It’s true for everyone,” Leonidas said, his voice stern. He wasn’t backing up Admiral Agosti, was he? “You don’t get to run off when you don’t get the assignment you want.”

  “Well, he’s doing the work I want him to do—I think—so I’m going to let him stay here as long as he likes.”

  “That man is going to be severely disciplined when they get him back, if they ever figure out this is his fault and not yours.” Leonidas lowered his arm. “I wonder what that will look like. Admirals don’t usually need to be disciplined.”

  “He’s not like other admirals.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  Leonidas’s gaze shifted upward, toward the walkway and the corridor. A small, black-robed form crouched there, looking down with wide eyes. Jelena.

  Alisa grimaced. How had she slipped away from her tutors again? And how much of the battle had she seen? Her gut squirmed at the idea that she might have been that close, somewhere she could have been trampled by men in heavy armor, or cast aside and injured, as if she were nothing but some obstacle.

  Alisa strode toward the stairs, unfastening her helmet as she went.

  I only came at the end, Jelena blurted into her mind, shrinking against the bulkhead.

  Alisa had reached the walkway, but paused, startled by the words and also the fear that came with them. Was Jelena afraid of her? She’d only intended to be stern, maybe to send her to her cabin as punishment for disobeying.

  You’re scary in that… that blue thing, Jelena thought, and shared an image of Alisa, as she appeared from her eyes, tall and fierce in her armor, anger stamped on her face.

  Alisa lowered her helmet and took a breath, trying to paste a calm expression on her face. And into her heart.

  So is he, Jelena added, sharing an image of Leonidas pummeling soldiers, breaking their helmets, hurling them across the cargo hold as if he were an android rather than a man. From Jelena’s perspective, he seemed even taller and more imposing.

  Alisa continued forward, her helmet dangling from her fingers.

  “All right,” she said, though it stung that Jelena saw Leonidas—and even her own mother—as scary because of the armor and the fighting. “You’re not in trouble.” The Starseers had been a part of the fight, too, standing in their ominous black robes and waving their staffs. Why didn’t Jelena see them as scary? Alisa did. Maybe because Jelena was used to them now? Or because she was one of them? “But let’s take you back to Lady Westfall for now. Or do you want to come up to the cockpit with me? I’m going to fly us…” She wasn’t sure where yet. If she left the dome, she would be an easy target for the warship, but if she stayed here in the docks, those soldiers would return with blowtorches. “Somewhere.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Jelena said, tentatively lifting her hand.

  Alisa clasped it gently, and they walked toward NavCom together.

  “Did Westfall let you out because the battle was over?” she asked. “Or did you sneak out?”

  Jelena smiled slyly up at her.

  “I see.”

  A soft clang sounded behind her, Leonidas following at a distance. Alisa smiled over her shoulder at him. She should have told him that she appreciated his help. She would later. And she’d also have to figure out how to get him out of his armor and into a position where Jelena would find him less intimidating.

  “Nobody’s staying to help me unload the groceries?” Beck called plaintively.

  Alisa assumed Young-hee, Abelardus, and the others were leaving too.

  “We need to get started cooking right away,” Beck added.

  “Leonidas will help you chop celery after he changes out of his armor,” Alisa called back.

  “Never mind. I don’t need help.”

  Alisa grinned at Leonidas as he turned toward the crew cabins. She caught a few faint words. “Pickiest cook I’ve ever met.”

  Chapter 8

  Terra Jhero had a junkyard. It was only five miles from the docks, and Alisa doubted it would take the Alliance long to locate her freighter parked in the back corner, but she hadn’t had the option of flying far. As she had been reminded as soon as she’d taken off, Bravo Six had piloted the newly acquired twice-stolen shuttle back to the Nomad and, with Leonidas in a rush to get inside to help, parked it on the freighter’s roof. Her ship had protested mightily when she had taken off with it still there, but several of the soldiers had returned by that point, so that had seemed more plausible than sending Bravo Six outside to move the craft. After lifting off, it had been a slow balancing act to get it even the few miles to the junkyard, and Alisa imagined they had been quite the sight to the passersby below, people wondering if the shuttle would pitch over the side and land on them. But freighters were designed to haul cargo; nobody had ever specified that the cargo had to be on the inside.

  “You’re clear,” Alisa called up the ramp and into the hold, waving to Leonidas in the cab of the delivery truck.

  At the rumble of the vehicle’s engine, a rat scurried out from under the ramp and toward a pile of debris stacked nearby. The furry black creature was the length of Alisa’s forearm and had fangs that reminded her of the dragons in the marshes outside the dome. It wasn’t the first rat she’d seen since landing. She would hate to be stuck here at night.

  Leonidas drove the truck out, pointing it toward an uncluttered spot in the junkyard. Alisa had already moved the shuttle off the roof, finding a mostly bare spot to park it. A couple of plastic chairs might have been sacrificed since nobody had rushed out to clear the area for her.

  Mica, who stood to the side of the ramp, readying cans of spray paint, said, “So, we’re returning the stolen truck—sort of—but we’re keeping the stolen shuttle?”

  “Somewhere, a poor grocer is lamenting that his truck was hijacked by a bunch of Alliance soldiers,” Alisa said. “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll send a message letting him know where he can find it. As for the shuttle, I didn’t tell you to pick up a stolen one and not pay for it.”

  “Leonidas made that decision. He seemed affronted that an imperial shuttle had made its way here without an imperial pilot or master.”

  “Was he in command of your shuttle acquisition mission?” Alisa asked.

  “I figured I was just there to make sure the thing could fly.”

  “I only ask because a few weeks ago, you were pointing out to him that the chief of engineering outranked the chief of security.”

  “You never verified that. We were left to wonder.”

  “I’m still waiting for a chart to be posted somewhere in the ship,” Leonidas said, joining them, the truck parked against the wall of the junkyard.

  “I think Mica likes to keep things flexible,” Alisa said, “so she can be in charge when she wants to be and not in charge when she wants to foist the responsibility on someone else.”

  “Uh huh.” Mica waved one of the spray cans she’d prepared. “Who’s helping me paint? I’ve got the materials printer working on stencils, so artistic skills won’t be required.”

  Alisa looked at Leonidas. “I believe she’s implying that she doesn’t expect such skills from either of us.”

  “She hasn’t seen my needlepoint.”

  “Neither have I. When do I get my gift of a battlefield dotted with wildflowers?”

  “You two are an odd couple,” Mica said and tossed a can of white paint to Alisa. “Let’s lay down a base—we can’t show up to a mafia event with black imperial paint smothering the catering shuttle.” She lifted a can toward Leonidas. “You staying and helping?”

  “I’ve been forbidden from assisting in the kitchen,” he said.

  Mica tossed him another can.

  “I suspect we’ll get more helpers soon,” Alisa said. “People who couldn’t master the rolling chop or find that working with Beck isn’t to their tastes.”

  “He better not be a tyrant,” Mica said. “T
he children are in there helping.”

  “The last I saw, he was only letting them carry things. Jelena and two boys were arguing over who got to play with the hand tractor. Abelardus was encouraging them to eschew such mundane tools and use their minds.”

  “Abelardus used the word eschew?” Mica asked, lowering a mask and setting to work on the shuttle.

  “Perhaps not that exact word. Did you get a chance to look at that tracking device you two bought?”

  “It’s already modified.”

  “Excellent.”

  “But its range isn’t infinite. We’ll have to stay close to the ship you stick it in if we don’t want to lose them.”

  “I expected as much.”

  Alisa and Leonidas moved around to the front of the shuttle and also started painting.

  “Is Tiang helping with the kitchen work?” Leonidas asked.

  “I don’t think Tiang knows there is kitchen work. Or that his people came and tried to forcibly remove him from my ship.”

  “We’re fortunate that none of those soldiers were killed. If the Alliance keeps trying, it may be impossible to prevent deaths.” He looked at her sidelong as he sprayed white paint over the black. “Is keeping him here worth that? Especially when he could be traded for Stanislav?”

  “Well, I have known him longer than I’ve known Stan.” Alisa smiled, but it was a poor joke, and she knew it. Leonidas’s mouth didn’t so much as twitch. She lowered her can and sighed at the hull of the shuttle. “I hate to say this, but I don’t trust the Alliance in this instance. I don’t trust Agosti. He’s proven himself to be…”

  “Intractable? Dense?”

  “An asshole.”

  “Ah. Of course.”

  “An intractable, dense asshole. I don’t trust him to actually make the trade if I agree to it. And I know it’s horrible to be thinking about tactics above people, but Stanislav has already faced Tymoteusz and lost. As have we. Maybe I’m being delusional, but I very much want what Tiang is cooking up in his cabin to be a brilliant way to defeat the chasadski.”