She pulled herself out of the cubby, grabbing Leonidas’s arm to keep from floating away. The darkness was still absolute in the cargo hold—Mica had rigged it so that even the emergency lights had not come on—but it stank of smoke, and Alisa thought she could feel something in the air swirling against her skin.
Energy blasts echoed from up above.
“If you’re here, who are they fighting?” Alisa whispered. Beck hadn’t leaped out into the fray, had he?
“Their imaginations,” Leonidas said. “I had some smoke bombs and rust bangs, so they’re struggling to see. The smoke works on sensors as well as eyes. Still ready to go to the tug?”
Alisa wrinkled her nose. “More than ever. Mica?”
A hand latched onto Alisa’s shoulder. “If it’ll get me out of zero grav, I’m ready. Three suns, I get sick in this crap.”
“Turn your head if you’re going to throw up.”
“We don’t have much time.” Leonidas started walking across the hold, his boots keeping him affixed to the deck.
Alisa felt silly floating along behind him like a tethered balloon. Mica, attached to her instead of Leonidas, probably felt the same way.
“Check down there,” came an order from above, near the head of the walkway.
Alisa tightened her grip on Leonidas’s shoulder. If someone stepped out on the walkway, all of the cargo hold would be in view if that smoke wasn’t as thick as he had implied. Unable to see or walk, she felt utterly helpless.
Leonidas quickened his pace, though he was careful not to make any noise, and he set each foot down carefully before lifting the other. It wouldn’t do for them all to be floating around down here.
The control panel inside the airlock hatchway came into view, an irritated red button flashing that something had been damaged when the soldiers forced their way in. At least their tube was securely attached. A camera display on the panel showed suction lines like octopus arms holding the two ships together, the tube stretched in the middle of them.
Boots clanged on the walkway, followed by a thump and a noisy grunt. “Will someone figure out how to get the suns-cursed gravity and lights back on? And clear this damned smoke.”
Must have been an officer. Someone who didn’t want to do things himself.
Leonidas pulled Alisa and Mica into the airlock tube. Usually, Alisa’s stomach did not object to zero grav, but there was a weird mix inside, gravity wrestling with null gravity and creating currents. Mica made a gagging sound, one she immediately tried to smother.
“Who’s down there?” the officer barked.
Alisa found herself pulled farther into the tube, as Leonidas brushed past her and Mica. He fired at the same time as the man on the walkway did. Alisa banged into the hatch that led into the tug. The lighting in here wasn’t much better than in the cargo hold, but she groped her way to a control panel.
“Let me,” Mica whispered, shouldering her aside.
Alisa let her take over and pushed herself up so she could peer through the small circular window in the hatch. She should have expected that someone would be guarding it, but surprise and fear lurched through her when she found someone staring back at her.
“Help us,” she mouthed, remembering that she was supposed to be a prisoner. She lifted her cuffed wrists to the window while widening her eyes and glancing back. She didn’t have to feign her fear much, because red beams splashed against the rim of the hatchway on the Nomad’s side of the tube.
“Can you get that open?” Leonidas asked, ducking back into the shelter of the airlock tube as more beams ricocheted off the floor and the jamb. For now, the men on the walkway did not have a good angle to fire straight in, but if that changed, Alisa and Mica, lacking any kind of armor, would be much more vulnerable than Leonidas. “They know where I am now,” he added. “They’ll all be down here in a second.”
“How many?” Mica asked, fiddling with the controls.
“All of them,” he said grimly. “Since I wasn’t shooting to kill.”
On the other side of the window, the armored soldier was talking to someone.
Alisa shook her wrists again and mouthed, “Please. Help us.”
No need to specify that the help she needed was in escaping her own people. The soldier glanced over his shoulder. Four armored men appeared in the distance, trotting around a corner and into his corridor, all carrying blazer rifles that looked big enough to blow a hole in Leonidas’s chest plate. The closest soldier gave her a firm nod, but held up a finger.
“I’m trying to get them to open the hatch for us,” Alisa said, making sure to hide her mouth from the window. No need to let the Alliance men know she was helping her cyborg captor.
“How’s that working?” Mica grumbled.
The soldier turned away, looking at the oncoming men again.
“We may need to look more helpless and needy,” Alisa said.
No less than eight beams of red energy struck the hull and deck all around Leonidas, forcing him away from the hatchway. Alisa grimaced. The hull of the Nomad could take a lot of abuse, but if the flexible material of the tube was struck, she and Mica might be sucking space dust.
Leonidas backed farther, forcing Mica and Alisa against the tug’s closed hatch. Mica was still fiddling with the control panel. Leonidas turned toward the similar control panel next to the Nomad’s entrance. He punched a button, and the hatch swung shut with a clang and a sucking noise, the seal activating to make the ship airtight.
“Uhh,” Alisa said, not sure they wanted to be trapped in the airlock tube with enemies on either side.
A hiss-suck came from behind her, and the tug’s hatch opened, sliding sideways. Since she was still leaning on it, Alisa would have tumbled through, but Leonidas leaped past her, pushing her down. Mica joined her on the floor of the tube as he sprang through the hatchway, slamming into the soldiers waiting there with the speed and deadly power of a lightning bolt.
Alisa felt that she should help, but as soon as those rifles started going off, she grew acutely aware of how vulnerable she was with nothing but clothing to protect her. Some protection. She rolled to the side and curled up in the corner of the tube, trying to make herself small enough that the exterior of the ship’s hull would protect her. Mica occupied a similar spot on the other side of the hatchway, glancing up at the control panel over her head, perhaps thinking about shutting the door.
A bang came from the Nomad’s hatch, barely audible over the fight in the corridor of the tug, Leonidas battling the soldiers hand-to-hand, intentionally staying close enough to prevent them from aiming weapons at him. The faceplate of an armored soldier appeared in the window of the Nomad’s hatch. Alisa couldn’t see the man’s face through two layers of glastica, but she held her cuffed wrists in front of her and tried to look helpless. It wasn’t hard.
She hoped the soldiers would not charge in and start firing with two civilians hunkered in the tube. They could probably get the hatch open, since they had already forced their way onto the ship once. At the least, the locking mechanism would be broken.
The soldier on the Nomad watched the battle taking place in the tug’s corridor and must have seen something he didn’t like. He waved someone over, and from the way his head bent, Alisa knew he was working on the controls, trying to get the hatch open. So much for not charging in with civilians in the way.
“Got a plan, Captain Optimism?” Mica asked, almost shouting to be heard over the clangs of gauntleted fists and boots striking armored torsos. One man flew against the corridor wall, his helmet striking it with such force that his head must have been ringing like the clapper in a bell. He slumped to the deck, not moving. Another man leaped on Leonidas’s back, an arm snaking around his neck.
“We’re going to have to get in there.” Alisa waved at the corridor where the men fought. “Then withdraw the tube, so the rest of them can’t join in.”
“That strands us on the tug. And leaves all of those angry soldiers on your ship.”
Alisa made sure nobody was aiming at the open hatchway, then slipped around the corner. A fallen soldier, still alive as evinced by the moans coming from his cracked faceplate, lay sprawled on the deck. His rifle had fallen from his fingers, and Alisa was tempted to pick it up. But if she did, and if she did not then aim it at Leonidas…
She bit her lip. She wanted to help him, but she could not shoot Tomich’s people—her people.
Instead, she lunged across the corridor to the controls inside the hatchway. She doubted she could release her ship from here, as the grab beam still held it tight to the belly of the tug, but—yes, there was the button for the tube. She jabbed it, hoping it wouldn’t demand a passcode.
The hatch on the Nomad flew open at the same time as the hatch on the tug slid shut. The soldiers—there had to be at least twenty of them crowded at the airlock now—started forward before they realized what was happening. Red light flashed inside the tube, and they skittered backward, nearly falling over themselves to get back to the Nomad’s cargo hold. They managed to get inside and slam the hatch shut a half second before the tube detached, the darkness of space visible as it withdrew back into the hull of the tug.
Realizing it had grown quiet behind her, Alisa turned around. Mica was staring at her from a spot pressed against the wall with a soldier moaning at her feet. Leonidas stood in the center of the corridor, dents and black burn marks in his crimson armor. The rest of the soldiers were down around him, some moaning, some not. She hoped he was still trying not to kill anyone, as her conscience was already in knots over this mess. She told herself that if she had let Leonidas go without helping him, and without extracting his promise to try not to kill, it would have been worse.
“We’ll have to get to engineering to release the grab beam,” Mica said. “What you want to do after that, I have no idea, because we won’t be able to get back to the ship.”
“We’ll just have to take over the tug,” Alisa said.
“Oh, I’m sure that will be easy.”
“This way,” Leonidas said. “You can talk on the way.”
He turned down the corridor, not asking for directions. Maybe he had the specs for all of the Alliance and imperial ships in the system memorized.
“Better keep your prisoners in front of you,” Alisa whispered, striding after him. “If there are cameras, someone might wonder why we’re not wandering off.”
Leonidas paused, waving for them to pass him. Alisa glanced at a fallen rifle again, this time wondering how good of an idea it was to leave all these men behind, still armed. If all they were was wounded, they could get up and join the fight again. But taking their rifles probably would not matter, since they had extra weapons built into their suits, and it wasn’t as if she could simply tie a rope around someone in combat armor. The men would easily break free. Besides, she didn’t have any rope.
Worried they would end up facing those people again, she hustled to join Mica in the lead. Her face was bleak, but she strode quickly down the corridors, presumably heading toward engineering. Alisa had never been on a tug and had no idea where anything was.
Her comm beeped. She might have ignored it, but that was Beck’s number.
“What?” she whispered, glancing down corridors as they passed through intersections. The passages stood empty now, but she doubted it would take long for the tug’s commander, that Bennington woman, to realize what had happened and to send down reinforcements.
“Some angry-looking soldiers are trying to force their way into navigation,” Beck whispered. “Is Leonidas dead? Where are you?”
“We’re with him on the tug. We had to pull the airlock tube.”
“Leaving all these pissed soldiers with us?”
“Sorry. They might be less pissed if you just let them in and they don’t have to break down the hatch. And I would appreciate it if there weren’t any more broken doors on my ship than necessary.”
“Not like you’d be the one fixing them,” Mica grumbled.
“Tell them you’re prisoners and that you were hiding up there to avoid the fighting.”
“I’m in my combat armor, Captain.”
“So?”
“You think they’ll believe I’m a prisoner?”
“You can point out that Leonidas can best you whether you’re in combat armor or not and he wasn’t worried about it.”
“That’s not a thing I’m eager to point out to people, Captain.”
“Just make up a plausible story.” Alisa followed Mica into a lift, where she pressed a diagram of the ship, the big section at the bottom marked engineering. The doors shut. “I don’t have much time to talk, but stay safe and be careful. Tell them you fought for the Alliance in the war.”
Banging sounds came over the comm.
“And am I telling them that our doctor fought in the war too?” Beck asked quietly. “He’s sitting on his box and looking concerned.”
“Did he comm the imperials?”
The doors opened, and Alisa glimpsed a large open room with high ceilings before Leonidas stepped in front of her, waving for her to stay put as he slipped out.
“He did,” Beck said. “But he’s not sure if they’re coming, or if they believed him.”
“That’s reassuring. Tell him to hide the box under my seat and lie to them. I’m sure he can manage that.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Weapons fired somewhere in front of Leonidas, and Alisa cut off the comm. Once again, she felt helpless as she pressed herself to the wall next to the lift doors. Mica had her thumb on the touch-display, keeping those doors from closing.
A bolt of energy sizzled between them, slamming into the back wall. Alisa crouched and threw her arms over her head and neck.
Silence soon fell outside, only the hum of machinery and computers breaking it.
“Clear,” Leonidas called.
Alisa eyed the smoking and melted wall at the back of the lift, then stepped out. Mica turned left and strode straight toward a workstation.
Alisa joined Leonidas in the middle of engineering. He had disarmed two men in uniforms, ripping up one’s shirt to make strips of material to tie them together, back to back in the middle of the deck. From the way their heads lolled, neither appeared conscious. Leonidas kept them in his peripheral vision, but he watched the lift and another door that must lead into the rest of the ship.
“If this works, what’s next?” he murmured, not looking directly at her. Maybe he had cameras on his mind too.
Alisa feared that someone who sat and watched a video of this would immediately be suspicious of how easily she and Mica were going along with Leonidas, especially since he had not pointed a weapon at them once. A stranger might simply think they were cowed, but Tomich knew her. If he saw this, he would wonder why she wasn’t trying to get away—and also why she wasn’t making rude gestures and throwing sarcasm and insults at Leonidas.
What’s next, Leonidas had asked. Alisa feared it would be an arrest warrant for her, assuming they somehow managed to get away. She wasn’t sure how that would happen right now, unless she left her ship and her people behind and stole the tug. That would definitely result in an arrest warrant. Or more likely a shoot-on-sight warrant.
“Marchenko?” Leonidas prompted.
“I think you can call me Alisa now.”
“Seems overly familiar for a captor-prisoner relationship.”
“What about for a captain-passenger relationship?”
“Are you going to keep Dominguez and me as passengers if we get out of this? I thought you might make us walk the plank.”
“He paid your fare to Arkadius. You’re staying.”
“You’re an interesting woman, Captain Marchenko.”
He said that in the way a scientist spoke of an unexpected result from a specimen rather than in the way a man spoke of a woman he wanted to get to know better, perhaps over dinner and subsequent recreational activities. She told herself that was fine
and looked around the engineering space, searching for inspiration. Their predicament was slightly more important than thoughts of dinners.
They couldn’t steal the tug. Even if it did not have a crew of dozens, if not hundreds, it would not have been logical. No, they had to force the tug to release the Nomad, disable the grab beam, and somehow get back to her ship. Oh, and they would still have to deal with the squadrons of soldiers that were currently banging at the door to NavCom.
“What are the odds of finding spacesuits that fit us down here, Mica?” Alisa asked.
Mica, busy cursing and scowling at a console, did not answer the question. Instead, she said, “This is locked down. I need a retina scan from someone with access. Or a computer hacker.”
Leonidas promptly strode toward his tied men. Alisa headed for the first storage cabinets she spotted. She was certain there would be spacesuits somewhere on the ship, as exterior repairs sometimes needed to be done, but she worried they would be close to an exterior hatch rather than here in engineering. Still, engineers would be the likely ones to go out on repairs. Maybe she would get lucky. She could use some luck this week.
“They should have attacked by now,” Leonidas said from the console—he had toted the two men over, lifting both rather than untying them—and had one’s face turned toward a scanner. A slender beam shot out as he pried the man’s eyelid open.
“I’m pleased that they haven’t,” Alisa said.
“They must know we’re here.”
“Might be planning some other trouble for us,” Mica said.
“How about some optimism here?” Alisa asked as she poked through cabinets. “Maybe they’re confused as to what’s going on. Maybe they think we’re still on the Nomad, and they haven’t figured out that we’re here molesting their engine room.”
A click sounded, followed by a faint hiss.
Leonidas’s helmet spun toward the direction of the noise, his gaze locking onto a vent near the ceiling.
Mica scowled at Alisa. “I hate optimism. It has no place in space.”
The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker Page 44