Star Nomad

by Lindsay Buroker

  “At least one person lives inside here doing research,” he said, then repeated, “The air will be fine.”

  “Then why did you get all suited up?” Mica asked.

  “It’s combat armor,” Leonidas said.

  Mica’s brow furrowed. “Yes…”

  “You’re expecting trouble?” Alisa asked. “From the one person you think is in there? Or from something else?”

  “Back before the war ended,” Leonidas said, “this station hadn’t been heard from for months. There were plans to send someone out to check on it, but all of the empire’s resources were otherwise occupied.” His words came out clipped, annoyed. Probably because he was talking to some of the people who had been occupying those resources. “I don’t know what’s been happening since the war ended, and yes, I am prepared for trouble if it should arise.”

  Right. He had been busy squatting in her ship in a junkyard full of crazies since the war ended. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder how he had gotten down there in the first place. She had been left behind because she needed medical attention. What was his story? Had his people simply forgotten to take him home? Or had he volunteered to stay behind when things had fallen apart and the imperial forces had retreated? Had he failed them and been left as a punishment?

  “Well, if there’s going to be trouble, how about I go with you?” Beck asked. “I wouldn’t mind a walk to stretch my legs, and I’m suited up. I’m the logical one.”

  “You’re not integral to the operation of the ship,” Leonidas said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re expendable.”

  Beck glowered at him. “I really hate you, mech.”

  “The engineer comes with me,” Leonidas said.

  Alisa sighed. This was ridiculous. Hadn’t she risked the ship in that battle with the White Dragon rather than leaving Beck behind? Did Leonidas truly trust her so little that he thought she would go to extremes to get rid of him? It was true that she had not given him a reason to trust her, and she certainly didn’t trust him, but she still felt disgruntled by the situation. It didn’t help that she had been considering leaving him. It made her feel like she had been caught doing something naughty.

  “If the air is acceptable, I’ll go with you,” Alisa said. “The ship isn’t going anywhere without a pilot.”

  She expected him to object, since he’d objected to everyone else’s attempts to alter his plans. Instead, he nodded and said, “That would be acceptable.”

  “What? No, it wouldn’t,” Mica said, gripping Alisa’s arm. “What if something happens to you? He just said there might be danger waiting in there. You think I can fly this rusty relic? It doesn’t even have gravitational calculation computers. I’m surprised there isn’t an abacus hanging in NavCom next to the plush spider.”

  “She won’t be in danger,” Leonidas said. “I’ll protect her.”

  Alisa grimaced. She didn’t need a damned protector, certainly not when that protector was basically kidnapping her from her own ship.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mica said. “You know what happens when non-expendable crew get sent out on stupid missions that have nothing to do with them? They get expended. What are we going to do without a pilot? Besides, the captain is…” Mica seemed to grope for the words, turning a distressed expression on Alisa.

  Alisa hoped that meant that her engineer would object to her death for more reasons than the logistical.

  “What’s going on?” Yumi asked from the walkway over the cargo hold.

  “A discussion,” Alisa said, sighing again. She didn’t want to involve the passengers.

  “Have you decided whether we can go out there with you? I would be curious to look around.”

  Leonidas looked up at her, and Alisa assumed he would reject the notion, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Well, I’m certainly going,” Beck said. “Whether the mech wants me or not.” He came to stand beside Alisa, on the opposite side from Mica.

  Having people who wanted to watch out for Alisa made her feel appreciated, but she still wished this had played out another way. Going out to explore meant she could keep an eye out for salvageable material, but how was she supposed to gather it with Leonidas hovering over her? He seemed like the type to object to the looting of an imperial station, abandoned or not. Of course, if he expected to find someone here, diligently working along and perhaps not realizing that the war was over, her plans for salvage might be moot.

  “I wouldn’t mind having the science officer along,” Leonidas said, ignoring Beck.

  “Science officer?” Mica frowned up at Yumi, who smiled and waved back.

  “Remember how I said she was a science teacher?” Alisa asked. “It seems Leonidas has promoted her.”

  “Leonidas?”

  “Yes, we’ve named our cyborg.”

  “I miss so much being buried in engineering.”

  “I’ll start sending out memos to keep you apprised of these cataclysmic events.”

  Leonidas turned toward the airlock, where a green light proclaimed the passage ready for use. Apparently, discussion time was over.

  “Let me get my gun and my bag, and we’ll go,” Alisa said.

  Chapter 11

  Alisa stepped out of the airlock behind Leonidas, taking a few tentative sniffs of the air. The sensors on the ship’s panel had proclaimed the mix to be adequate and for gravity to exist inside of the station, but the place was utterly dark and had a definite creepiness to it. The air smelled stale, and the temperature couldn’t have been more than a degree or two above freezing, but her lungs did not object to the substance she inhaled.

  “Should have brought a parka,” Alisa said, not that she had anything heavier than her flight jacket.

  Not commenting, Leonidas moved away from the airlock, not hampered by the darkness. He held his rifle in the ready position as he walked a large semicircle, looking out into the gloom of a large room with crates littering the floor in a random mess.

  Alisa could barely make them out and pulled her multitool off her belt, thumbing on the tiny flashlight embedded in the tip. The haphazard arrangement of the crates made her suspect the gravity had gone out at some point before being restored.

  “Can cyborgs see in the dark?” Beck asked, stepping out of the airlock beside her. “Or does he just have a better model suit than I do? I couldn’t afford the night vision upgrade.”

  Alisa would have guessed that the fleet-issued suits were top-of-the-line with every upgrade imaginable, but Yumi offered another possibility.

  “They usually can see in the dark,” she said brightly, joining them. She produced a handheld flashlight and shined the beam around the chamber, including the walls and the ceiling. Her light paused on a panel next to large double doors on the far side. They were closed. “In addition to numerous enhancements to their skeletal, nervous, and musculature systems, the imperial military cyborgs often received optical, nasal, ear, and tongue implants to improve their senses.”

  “Tongue?” Beck asked. “It’s important that they taste well?”

  “To better detect poisons,” Leonidas said, his helmet swiveling back toward them.

  Alisa wished he would take it off. He looked too much like an enemy she should be shooting in that crimson armor. An enemy who might shoot back at any moment.

  “Maybe he’ll be better able to appreciate your culinary offerings when you get around to grilling something for us,” Alisa said.

  “Something I’m planning to do as soon as I can get some fresh meat. Ms. Moon has informed me that the chickens are off limits.”

  “We might be able to find you something here,” Yumi said, shining her flashlight over some small animal droppings.

  “I have been known to create wonders, even with subpar ingredients,” Beck said.

  “I’m not eating space rats,” Alisa said. “I don’t care how amazing the sauce is.”

  “The secret is in the marinade. You can tende
rize anything with enough acid.”

  “Marchenko,” Leonidas said, his voice cutting through their conversation like a knife.

  “Yes?” Alisa asked.

  He had walked over to the door with the control panel. He pointed to the floor next to him.

  “She’s not your dog, mech,” Beck said.

  Leonidas ignored him and kept pointing at the spot.

  “Guess he thinks he can’t protect me from across the room,” Alisa said, hoping that was the only reason he was presuming to order her around. Since they had been the only ship in the dock, that meant that the Nomad was his only option for getting off this asteroid, so he ought to be invested in keeping her alive.

  “Captain,” Beck said softly. “Here.” He pulled a double-barreled blazer pistol from his pack and handed it to her. “I’ve got my rifle and onboard weapons. You keep this. It’s got a lot more kick than your Etcher, and it’ll fire five hundred times before needing a reload.”

  Alisa was tempted to ask if it would cut through combat armor, but Yumi’s implication that Leonidas had enhanced hearing made her keep her mouth shut. She tapped the tiny comm unit embedded in her multitool, missing her earstar, which would have allowed her to have a private subvocal conversation with the recipient. A new earstar was definitely on the wish list of things to purchase once she had some money.

  “Mica, do you read me?” Alisa asked.

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Everything all right in the ship?”

  “Fine so far. The doctor and I are having a chat up here in NavCom.”

  “Don’t tinker with my controls. I’ve got my equipment set up the way I like it.”

  “Yes, he was just commenting on your stuffed animal.”

  Alisa snorted. “We’re heading in. Stay in contact.”

  “Will do.”

  As she finished the conversation, Alisa walked across the room to join Leonidas. She tried to decide if he was irritated that she had taken her time in doing so, but he watched her approach without comment or eyebrow twitches. Beck strode after her, sticking close. Yumi came more slowly, pausing here and there to read the labels on the crates.

  When Alisa joined him, Leonidas tapped the control panel with one gauntleted finger. The door beeped and slid aside. He walked into a wide corridor lined with machinery, with wires and tubes disappearing into the walls. Alisa couldn’t tell if it was mining equipment or something to do with life support. Perhaps a mix of both. The equipment appeared eerie and skeletal under the wan illumination of her flashlight. Some of it might have been valuable, but everything was too large to consider unhooking and dragging back to the ship.

  Something scurried past a dark corner.

  Just a rat, Alisa told herself, or some other small scavenger. Such creatures always seemed to find their way aboard ships and ended up anywhere humans settled, even stations in the depths of space. Or the depths of an asteroid.

  Leonidas walked through the wide corridor, pausing to wait when Alisa dawdled. His intention might be to stay close to protect her, but she felt like she had a keeper. She wondered if he knew she had scavenging in mind. If so, he would probably be affronted. He seemed so loyal to the empire. Maybe that had been indoctrinated into him at the same time as he had received his implants. There were many stories about how the empire had manipulated people’s minds. She wouldn’t be surprised if they had done it to their own soldiers.

  “Did it hurt?” Alisa asked as she and Leonidas headed for another door.

  “What?” he asked.

  Behind them, Beck had stopped next to Yumi, who was bent over by the wall, her long black braids falling over her shoulder as she shined her light into a low alcove. Maybe Alisa should tell her to look for valuable materials while she kept Leonidas occupied.

  “Getting all those things implanted and enhanced,” she said, not quite sure why she was asking. This probably wasn’t the time for idle chitchat.

  “It was a long time ago.” Leonidas hit the controls to open the door, then stepped inside first, once again pausing to scan the new area, his rifle at the ready.

  “I guess that’s a yes.”

  “I was sedated for a lot of it.”

  “But not all of it?” Alisa could not imagine lying on some surgeon’s table—or maybe it had been an engineer’s table—letting someone cut all over her body to stick things in. If his bones had been enhanced, did that mean they’d had some way of doing that with shots? By injecting something? Or had they cut down and removed his organic bones and replaced them with non-organic ones? If the latter, that had to have hurt. Being unconscious for a surgery didn’t help with the pain afterward.

  “What made you sign up for that?” she asked. “Bonus?”

  She knew the imperial military had offered signing bonuses to people willing to go into high-demand or highly dangerous fields. Turning oneself into a cyborg seemed like it should qualify.

  “I’m not reading any life forms in this part of the station, aside from a few rats,” Leonidas said, touching the side of his helmet. “But the walls are thick, with a lot of dense rock behind them, so my sensors are limited with how far they can detect.”

  “But you’re expecting someone to be alive here?” she asked, taking the hint that he didn’t want to talk about his past or admit to having experienced pain in his life.

  “Ideally.”

  “Is that what you’re here for? To talk to someone? Or to take that someone off the station?”

  They walked into another room full of crates. They were stacked in neat piles along the walls. These crates were either magnetized, or the gravity hadn’t gone out here, as it had in the other room.

  “This isn’t a kidnapping mission, is it?” Alisa asked. “Aside from the kidnapping you’re doing right now in parting me from my ship, that is.”

  “Do Alliance pilots always talk this much on missions?” Leonidas strode through the room, barely glancing at the crates.

  “Oh, yes. We’re a chatty bunch.”

  Beck and Yumi were discussing something behind her, and Alisa was tempted to fall back to walk with them. They wouldn’t mind her chatter. But Leonidas would probably say her name and order her to heel if she slowed down.

  A few passages opened up to the sides, barely noticeable in the darkness. Since the station had gravity and life support, Alisa wondered why the lights were out and if it would be possible to turn them back on. She would prefer fewer shadows about.

  She shined her flashlight into the corridors and along the ceilings, picking up cobwebs dangling in the corners. A layer of dust coated the crates. If anyone was still working here, it had been a while since they ran the cleaning robots through the place.

  Ignoring the side tunnels, Leonidas opened the door at the far end of the room. He stepped in, but then halted. Alisa almost bumped into him.

  “What is it?” she whispered, steadying herself with a hand on the back of his armor.

  Though curious, she didn’t try to look past him, not yet. If something was in the next room, he had the better means to deal with it.

  Leonidas took a couple of steps, scanning this new room as he had done with the others. Alisa shined her flashlight across the room—it was another space filled with crates, boxes, barrels, and bags of materials. A few of the bags had been cut open, with fine powder spilled out onto the floor. Cement mix, or something like it? If so, someone had not been careful unloading it. A few crates were scattered in the middle of the room, knocked on their sides. Maybe something had happened to the gravity in here too.

  Leonidas let his rifle dangle from its strap and lifted his hands to remove his helmet. It came off with a soft hiss of escaping air. After tucking it under his arm, he looked around again. No, he was sniffing the air in short quick breaths, like a hound.

  “It smells like some animal’s den,” he said.

  Alisa followed his example, sniffing gingerly. There might have been something more than the scent of stale, recycled air, but she could
n’t identify it.

  “Rat droppings?” she guessed.

  “No. And it’s from more than that,” Leonidas said, pointing at the floor. “Something big and with a strong musky scent has been in here. Recently.” He looked toward a corridor that opened from the side of the room, the dark tunnel uninviting.

  “Not that strong,” Alisa muttered, barely noticing a scent.

  She pointed her flashlight at the floor, not sure what he’d been talking about when he’d said that. Under the light layer of dust, a stain darkened the gray metal. A puddle shape, a couple of feet across.

  “What is it?” she asked. Could he tell? Just from looking?

  He looked at her, his face not much more telling with the helmet off. But he did look… grim.

  Without putting the helmet back on, he walked about the room slowly, his rifle in one hand again, aiming toward the shadows.

  “Is that blood?” Beck asked, coming through the door behind Alisa.

  Her stomach flip-flopped as he bent over for a closer look at the stain. It did look like dried blood. Yumi squeezed in, too, also looking down.

  “I don’t know,” Alisa said, trying to sound calm and not disturbed by the eeriness of the station, even if she was wishing she had stood her ground back on the ship and told Leonidas to go explore on his own.

  He was now looking down at something between two crates. Alisa debated if she wanted to know what he had found. It wasn’t until he crouched down and poked at something with his rifle that she walked over to join him.

  “Might be something valuable,” she muttered, though she knew she was only trying to fool herself.

  She saw the ripped shreds of cloth first, the remains of a curtain or tablecloth in a garish floral pattern. No, she realized with a jolt, glimpsing more of it. Not a curtain. A dress. There was the sleeve. It was bloodstained, the same as the floor.

  Leonidas held up a single boot with punctures in it. Teeth marks? Claws? Alisa didn’t know if her mind was traveling to ridiculous places—how would some big predator have found its way onto a research station? Still, the punctures did not look like bullet holes or laser burns.