The Fallen Empire Collection by Lindsay Buroker

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  “No, that’s not my point. Never mind. Are you collecting your net?”

  “Yes.” Leonidas stepped past her and found the casing for the ball, which had split open into several segments to release its electric cargo. He deactivated the energy aspect, then tugged the slender tendrils of the net off the supine figure. The boy leaped up and tried to dart off. Leonidas caught him by the collar of his shirt. As he proceeded to tie the kid up, he asked Alisa, “If I call the police, what are the odds that they’ll get here before someone comes by and mugs our muggers?”

  “If you call the police, someone will probably come for you, wanting to collect—” She cut herself off, glancing at the boy, who was listening. “They’ll probably come for you,” she finished.

  He appreciated that she hadn’t mentioned the warrant. Even if these three weren’t a threat, who knew who they knew?

  “I can call them,” she said, slipping a comm unit off her belt. She never wore an earstar comm-computer, as was common. “No idea on the mugging the muggers part. Beck was right. The station seems rougher than the last time I was through here.”

  “I’ll wager that the last time you were here, the empire controlled the station and maintained order.” He hadn’t brought it up with Beck, but he couldn’t help himself this time. He supposed he wanted Alisa to see reality, to realize that she’d fought on the wrong side, that her people had made the system a worse place, not a better one.

  Alisa grimaced. “Yes, the empire was excellent at maintaining order.”

  “That order meant you wouldn’t be mugged on the way to a coffee shop.”

  “We’re not on the way to a coffee shop. We’re on the way to some smithy located on the dubious side of the station. Besides, under the old regime, I would have been arrested for walking around after curfew, and my gun would have had to stay on my ship, a ship that has no weapons of its own because the empire forbade civilians to be armed, even if they were lugging freight through pirate-infested space. Even you have to admit it’s been inconvenient that we haven’t had a way to defend ourselves this past month.”

  “Pirate-infested space was rare when the empire ruled, unless you were way out near the border worlds.”

  “People on those border worlds like freight delivered to them too. My mom and I had more than our share of run-ins when I was growing up on the Nomad.”

  “That was your mother’s choice to go somewhere unsafe, to take a child somewhere unsafe.” Leonidas couldn’t stifle the distaste in his voice, though it was directed more toward his resentment that the Alliance had destroyed the empire without having anything sufficient to instate in its place. If the war had created a better universe, perhaps he could have accepted being on the losing side more easily, but it hadn’t.

  “My mother,” Alisa said coolly, “flew freight because she couldn’t stand the stifling rules of living on an imperial planet, which was all of them in the last century. She should have been allowed to defend herself out in the system.”

  “Rules exist for a reason. They keep people safe.”

  “Safe.” Her lip curled, and she said it as if it were a curse. “You can get arrested, be thrown in a jail cell, and be safe as a bramisar in its den, but you’ll never see the stars again. People love to give up their freedoms for safety. Pretty soon, you can’t walk where you want, when you want, and you might as well be a dog instead of a human being.” She issued a disgusted noise somewhere between a grunt and a growl, then stalked down the corridor in the direction they had been headed before the attempted ambush.

  “The Alliance is overflowing with freedom-seeking idealists,” Leonidas called after her, though he doubted she was listening. “It takes a few pragmatists to run a government. You’ll see. When the entire system collapses and your government is replaced by chaos, you’ll see.”

  Alisa did not look back. Leonidas glared down at the tied-up muggers.

  “You sure you don’t want to let us go so we can catch her and sell her to slavers?” the boy asked.

  Leonidas grunted and walked away, hoping Alisa would remember to comm the police to pick them up. If police even existed on Starfall Station anymore. Star fall, indeed.

  • • • • •

  Leonidas put out a hand to stop Alisa. They were in the wide corridor leading to the smithy—it was more like a street with buildings to either side, a high ceiling arching about thirty feet overhead. The area was very quiet, considering how many of the shops kept night hours. To their left, a window display showed all manner of netdiscs and personal comm assistants, and floating holosigns promised inexpensive repair rates. Two buildings ahead, the roll-up door of the smithy was closed, though a glowing sign shed light from the window beside it.

  A faint odor reached Leonidas’s nostrils, that of a butcher shop—or a battlefield.

  “More muggers?” Alisa looked down at his hand.

  “Perhaps,” he said, scanning the buildings more intently than he had when they first turned onto the street.

  “You’ve accused me of being someone whom trouble always finds, but I think it’s even more likely to find you.”

  “I believe I said you’re someone who makes trouble wherever she goes. You’re quick to mouth off to people, even those it’s unwise to be mouthy with.”

  “Like cranky cyborgs?” She smiled, her irritation from ten minutes earlier apparently forgotten.

  After years of outranking most of his peers and having them defer to him, he was never quite sure how to handle her irreverence. This time, he said, “I’m not cranky,” and regretted that it sounded petulant rather than authoritative.

  Her smile only widened.

  He sighed and walked down a maintenance passage between the computer repair building and the next structure, checking to see if the shops had back doors. He couldn’t yet tell where that smell was coming from, but striding through the front entrance of the smithy might be unwise.

  A waist-high, bug-shaped trash robot rolled through the alley that ran parallel to the street, sucking debris into its proboscis, incinerating it in its carapace, and shifting the ashes to a bin in the rear. It reminded him of the chase that he’d been on with Alisa and Dr. Dominguez in the sewers below the university library on Perun. They had temporarily escaped pursuit by catching a ride on an automated sewer-cleaning vehicle. He and Alisa had sat side by side in the cargo bed, their shoulders touching. It hadn’t exactly been pleasant since they’d both stunk of the sewers, but she hadn’t been mouthy then, perhaps being too tired to make quips. For some reason, the image came to mind now with a feeling of fondness. Odd.

  His memories faded as he turned into the alley and saw the robot trundling toward a charred box lying on the floor. A hole burned in the side displayed destroyed interior circuit boards and wires.

  “That’s an imperial spy box, isn’t it?” Alisa asked, stopping beside him.

  His armor case stopped, too, just shy of bumping into his back.

  Leonidas nodded. “Yes.”

  The boxes were usually floating through the air when one saw them, built-in cameras observing from above and sending the feed to police monitors.

  “Guess the Alliance decided they didn’t want to use them when they took over,” Alisa said.

  “No.” Leonidas shook his head as the trash robot widened its nozzle and sucked the box in, the same way it had the other debris. “That was shot down today, not months ago when the Alliance took this station.”

  “Good point,” she said quietly, looking up and down the dim alley. “Someone was doing something they didn’t want observed, eh?”

  “So it would seem.”

  Leonidas waited for the trash robot to incinerate the box and continue down the alley, then walked to the back door of the smithy. Unlike the vehicle-sized, roll-up door in the front, this was a simple door for humans. There were no windows on the back of the building, so he couldn’t see inside, but he caught that butcher-shop scent again.

  He paused, looking down at Alisa. �
�You may wish to wait outside.”

  “Oh?” Judging by the curiosity in her eyes, waiting outside wasn’t what she had in mind.

  Even though he had served with some female soldiers and knew they could be tough, his instinct was to protect women from gruesome experiences.

  “I don’t think my armor case will fit through this narrow doorway,” he said. “Perhaps you could watch it for me.”

  “Afraid the trash bot will come along and suck it up? I don’t think it’ll fit inside its maw.”

  “Nevertheless, I’ll purchase your chocolate beverage later if you wait here.”

  He thought that might draw an agreeable smile from her, but her eyes closed to suspicious slits. Still, she leaned her shoulder against the wall and nodded for him to go inside.

  The door was locked with an old latch-and-bolt system, rather than with electronics. He gave a quick tug on the handle, snapping the mechanism. If he was wrong and nothing had happened inside, he would pay the smith for the damage.

  The area he stepped into was dark, but his eyesight was better than human, and he could make out most of his surroundings. An aisle ran the length of the back wall, with tools, crates, and unidentifiable clutter rising over his head and blocking the view of most of the building. All manner of machinery towered at one end, a mix of modern and computerized with old-fashioned and antiquated. At the other end, laser smelting equipment dangled from a ceiling beam, the tip resting against an anvil and a rack of mallets of various size. Heat radiated from a furnace behind the equipment.

  Leonidas stood quietly and listened before venturing away from the door. The scent of blood was stronger inside.

  When he did not hear anything, he walked down the aisle and turned toward the front of the building. The holosign glowing in the window, proclaiming the business open, shed some extra light. To his eyes, it clearly illuminated the prone person lying on an open stretch of floor near a front counter and payment machine. It was a man, blood pooling on the floor next to him, a rivulet of it leading to a drain nearby. It had dried, but only partially. This hadn’t happened long ago.

  Though he shouldn’t have disturbed a crime scene, curiosity drove him forward. He knelt, careful to avoid the blood, and rolled the body over. With his keen night sight, he easily saw the hole in the man’s clothes. Something—most likely a knife—had punctured deep into his flesh, slipping between his ribs and piercing his heart. It had only taken one stab to kill him. Someone had either gotten lucky or had known exactly what he was doing.

  A draft stirred the hair on the back of Leonidas’s neck, the door he had used opening. He sniffed, then sighed as he caught Alisa’s scent, a mix of simple, warm feminine skin and the lavender hand soap in the lav on the ship. She bumped against something in the dark, but otherwise moved quietly as she maneuvered through the shop toward the front of the building.

  He turned to face her, his nose and ears having already determined that they were alone in the shop, aside from the dead man. Whoever had stabbed him had since left.

  The holosign must have provided enough light for Alisa to see his outline in the front of the room, because she lifted a hand toward him. “Turns out your armor case fits through the door fine if you tilt it on its side.”

  “Ah.” He stepped toward her, thinking she might not notice the body, the shadows being thicker along the floor. Maybe he could usher her away from it. But her gaze fell upon it before he reached her.

  “Uh, not your work, I assume?”

  She didn’t appear overly squeamish about the body. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. If she’d fought in the war, she must have seen plenty of death, even as a pilot.

  “No,” he said. “I believe this is Master Tech Camden Meliarakis, the owner of the smithy.”

  “The one who was going to fix your armor?”

  “Yes. I spoke directly to him about six hours ago and made the nocturnal appointment.” Leonidas lowered his voice to murmur just for his earstar, “Time?”

  It responded by speaking a soft, “Twenty-three twenty-seven, Starfall Station time,” into his ear.

  “I’m three minutes early for my appointment,” Leonidas told Alisa.

  “Very punctual of you.” Alisa frowned as the armor case floated to a stop beside her, almost bumping her arm, as if it wanted attention. Or maybe it wanted to know when the armor inside would be repaired.

  Leonidas started to wonder who else he could contact for the job, but that made him feel selfish—and guilty. So he walked around the shop, thinking he might figure out what had happened. It wouldn’t matter to the dead smith, but it would make Leonidas feel better about thinking of his own needs first. Besides, it was hard to forget that he’d had a hand in keeping the peace for a long time. It was hard to shed that responsibility. Granted, he’d been more of an interplanetary peacekeeper than a police officer, but he’d always fought to protect civilians.

  “Shall I call the police again?” Alisa asked. “Or should we just disappear without touching anything? Reporting a mugging was one thing, but I’d hate to be detained because we were suspects in a murder. You, especially, shouldn’t be caught here.”

  “No,” Leonidas murmured, peering at the closed roll-up door. Since the lock in the back had been intact, he presumed the murderer had come in through the front. Given the shop’s around-the-clock hours, the door had likely been unlocked at the time.

  He confirmed that it was still open without touching anything. Leaving fingerprints behind wouldn’t be a good idea for exactly the reason Alisa had alluded to. He did not need the Alliance adding civilian murders to the list of reasons they wanted him arrested.

  “Unlocked,” he said. “The murderer may have come in, pretending to be a customer. The smith was stabbed in the front, so he might have even known the person. At the least, I bet he didn’t expect trouble.”

  As Leonidas moved away from the door for a closer look around the premises and the counter, he was aware of Alisa watching him.

  “Are you going to attempt to solve the crime?” she asked.

  “You don’t approve?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to belittle this man’s death, but you investigating it won’t get your armor fixed, and I’m worried that if we’re found here, you’ll be in a lot of trouble.” She walked to the window and peered out into the street, her gaze flicking upward, as if to look for spy boxes.

  Leonidas could now guess why the one in the back had been shot down. Had the murderer gone out that way? So as not to be seen? Locking the door as he went?

  “You don’t think you’ll be in trouble too?” he asked.

  “Oh, I reckon my mouth could also get me into trouble—” Alisa flashed him a quick smile, though it appeared more distracted than heartfelt, “—but you’re the one my people want.”

  “Your people.”

  “The Alliance people.” She shrugged. “The ones with two hundred thousand tindarks on your… not your head, exactly, because they want you alive. That’s one boon for you. I can’t imagine less than an army taking you in alive. Even that army would need some tanks and armor-piercing rounds.”

  Cyborgs were not quite as invincible as that, but Leonidas did not correct her. No need to educate her on the various poisons and chemicals that could act on his unique mecho-biology. And it wasn’t as if he was impervious to blazer bolts or bullets. In his armor, he nearly was, but that armor was in shambles now. He needed to get it fixed, one way or another. Was it selfish to hope the smith had an apprentice that he might contact? He leaned around the clerk’s counter to eye the shelves and display screens.

  “Hm, what is this?” Leonidas mused, pulling a large case out from behind the counter. The case was familiar, since one very similar to it floated in the middle of the room. This one was resting on the floor rather than hovering, but it was the same size as his.

  “Combat armor?” Alisa asked.

  “Red combat armor.”

  “You mean crimson,” she said quietly. “And o
nly cyborgs have that, right?”

  “The color isn’t—wasn’t—forbidden in the private quarter, but it’s somewhat infamous, yes, since it was issued to soldiers in the Cyborg Corps.”

  The case was unlocked, so Leonidas opened it, wondering if he would know the owner. He also wondered what had brought one of his people here after the war ended and the imperial army largely dissolved. He supposed Starfall Station was as likely a place as any to move on and look for work. He’d heard rumors that some of his cyborg colleagues had become mercenaries, others bodyguards and heads of security for wealthy civilians. It seemed demeaning employment after working for the empire for so many years, maintaining order and keeping the people safe. Though it was not as demeaning as piracy—he’d already run into one of his people engaged in that, planning to carve out an empire of his own in territory no longer being patrolled.

  “Sergeant Lancer,” Leonidas read off the plate fastened to the inside of the lid.

  An image of a big farmer turned soldier came to mind. Sandy blond hair and freckles, a boyish look even after more than ten years in the army. Yes, Leonidas remembered him, and a twinge of excitement ran through him at the idea of reconnecting with someone from the unit. Even if Lancer had been along for many of the battles that were the fodder for Leonidas’s nightmares, he still wanted to see the man. He hadn’t had a chance to say a proper goodbye to anyone when the empire had lost and the unit had been disbanded. He had been too busy on a last mission for the emperor.

  “Anyone you know?” Alisa asked.

  “Yes, I remember him. We fought together on many occasions.” Leonidas found a receipt on the top of the set of armor and read it. “This was just finished. He’s scheduled to pick it up at midnight station time.”

  “That’s not far off, but I’m not sure waiting here for him would be wise.” Alisa leaned closer to the windowpane. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Someone who looks like he might need the services of a smith? Or someone who might be a smith?” Leonidas hoped it would be the apprentice, though it might not help him if it was. The man would be too distraught over his master’s death to fix armor tonight. Besides, Leonidas twitched at the idea of an apprentice handling his most prized possession—and one of the few possessions he had left. He would have to do some research to find out if anyone else on the station was qualified.