Cleon Moon

by Lindsay Buroker

  “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 shou
lders. 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.