Perilous Hunt

by Lindsay Buroker

“Nightmares?” Tiang asked, a spoon clanking in a bowl or a mug.

  “Yes.”

  “Typical.”

  “Yes. Do you know if it’s a side effect of the various surgeries we endure? Or is it just a result of too many memories of unpleasant situations?”

  “Oh, it’s highly likely the surgery that quelled your libido affected your brain’s modulatory networks. Have you experimented with supplements for increasing serotonin?”

  “We used to try some drugs. They all either wore off long before the night ended or they made me sick. The serotonin booster messed with my blood pressure and made me twitchy.”

  “Hm, yes. Given the metabolic tinkering that went into you men, it’s surprising any of you live past thirty.”

  “Most don’t,” Leonidas said grimly.

  Alisa leaned against the corner of the intersection and closed her eyes, new dread curling through her. When Leonidas had first told her about his problems, she had wondered if his life expectancy might be shortened as a result of everything that had been done to him. He seemed so healthy, so strong, that it was hard to imagine him dying from a disease or anything less than a nuclear weapon dropped on his head. How long would he live if he didn’t die in combat first? How long would he have with her? Tears moistened her eyelashes as she thought of losing someone else she cared about, maybe even loved. Wasn’t it enough that the universe had taken Jonah from her and kept dangling Jelena just out of reach?

  “But not because of medical reasons,” Tiang said.

  “It depends if you consider a bullet to the heart a medical reason for dying.”

  “It certainly wouldn’t be considered dying from natural causes.”

  “There’s not much natural about us,” Leonidas said. “Is the Alliance really putting together a cyborg program? Or were your people just trying to distract me when asking me about that?”

  “There’s one in the works, yes. Would you recommend that everything that was done to you be done to our men, or, living through what you’ve lived through, would you leave the brain surgeries out of it?”

  Alisa expected Leonidas to give an emphatic yes to the latter part, and to say that no man deserved that fate, but he paused so long that she began to wonder if he had left the room. She was tempted to creep forward and peek into the mess hall. He probably knew she was there eavesdropping, even if Tiang didn’t.

  “It’s hard to say,” he finally said. “If there wasn’t a downside, you’d get men signing up left and right, many for reasons that had little to do with defending the empire. The Alliance,” he corrected, a twinge of bitterness in his tone. “Further, one wonders how easy men would be to lead without the… oh, I don’t even know what all they did to us, but I often noticed that cyborgs were easier to line up and get walking in the same direction than regular soldiers. We’re not without aggressions, especially in battle, but there always seemed to be fewer pissing contests in the unit.”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen Dr. Bartosz’s notes, but I believe that was intentional and was a result of his tinkering.”

  “I have copies of his files,” Leonidas said, almost casually, but Alisa had come to know him well enough to know the comment was anything but. Was he hoping Tiang would volunteer to look at them and help him? He had to be.

  “Mm,” was all Tiang said.

  The spoon clinked in the mug with the sound of stirring. Alisa bit her lip, wishing Tiang would offer to do Leonidas’s surgery. Even if this wasn’t the safest time for it, they might not be able to wait. How long would Tiang be authorized to spy on her ship? Maybe she should try talking to him, seeing if she could convince him to help. She could be diplomatic and persuasive when she needed to be, right? If nothing else, maybe she could have Beck bribe him with his cooking.

  “Have you reconsidered joining the Alliance?” Tiang asked.

  “No.”

  “Ah.” That ah didn’t sound promising.

  Yes, Alisa would definitely need to work on the admiral. Of course, she had no idea how many of Leonidas’s problems could be cured, if any of them at this late date, but she let herself hope that the brain surgery might do more than just return his sexual desires. If it could help regulate his hormones, so the nightmares would be less frequent and less intense, it would be well worth a try. Leonidas deserved to get more than two hours of sleep a night.

  She was thinking of going into the mess hall to join the men, and perhaps plead her case right there, but a hatch creaked open down the corridor. She jumped and skittered back into NavCom, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping. Even if Leonidas knew she had been listening, she didn’t need the rest of the crew and passengers to think their captain was a nosy snoop instead of a stately professional.

  The bench in the mess hall scraped as someone stood up.

  “I’m going to head to the gym and throw some weights around,” Leonidas’s voice floated up the corridor. “See if I can wear myself out.”

  “Does that help with the nightmares?” Tiang asked.

  “Not really.”

  Someone passed through the intersection between NavCom and the mess hall, and Alisa leaned to the side of the hatch to avoid being noticed. The lighting was dimmed, so she couldn’t tell who it was. Someone going to the lav, most likely.

  Alisa turned back to the spider and gave it a swat, feeling foolish for fleeing. It was her ship, her intersection, and her mess hall. If she happened to be standing in one of those places, listening to people, she had the right to do so.

  After checking the sensors one more time, she headed back toward the cabins. She was tempted to go down to the cargo hold and find Leonidas, perhaps to hug him without any combat armor between them, but, despite her self-talk, she was hesitant to walk past Tiang and have him think she had been eavesdropping. He was still in the mess hall, tinkering with that spoon.

  Alisa headed for her cabin.

  “Alisa?” came a soft voice from behind her.

  Stanislav. Yes, on his way back from the lav.

  Alisa grimaced and faced him. She should have been faster. She didn’t want to talk to him.

  “Sorry,” he said quietly.

  He wore what could have passed for pajamas, but what were probably the clothes he wore under his robe. It wasn’t as if he had boarded with a suitcase in hand. He looked different without the black robe cloaking him. Less sinister.

  An illusion, she decided. “What do you need?”

  “Nothing.” He stopped several feet away. “I saw you and thought you might like to talk.”

  “To talk? To you?” Alisa couldn’t keep the scorn out of her voice. Maybe it was unfair, but he hadn’t been around for the thirty-odd years of her life, including the years when she might have wanted a father, might have thought it sounded nice. To have him wanting to chat now seemed ludicrous.

  He held out a hand, palm up. Was he reading her thoughts? Probably. Abelardus always stuck his nose in her head. Why wouldn’t he?

  “I can see where I wouldn’t be your first choice,” Stanislav said. “But I am awake. And I’m not—” He tilted his head, as if listening. Listening with his mind. “Brutalizing a hover pad in the cargo hold.”

  “He can brutalize anything down there that he wants.”

  “There are Starseers sleeping under the stairs.”

  “I doubt he’ll brutalize them.”

  “No, just wake them up.”

  “They shouldn’t have set up camp next to his gym.”

  Stanislav smiled faintly. “Perhaps, but it would have been considerate of him to post his unorthodox gym hours.”

  As if Leonidas wanted to be down there. He had to do something when he couldn’t sleep. Maybe she should have feigned enthusiasm for a needlepoint battlefield gift.

  “You care about him a great deal,” Stanislav said quietly.

  “Yeah, I do.” What was the point of lying to someone who could surf through her thoughts?

  “Perhaps I could…” He put a finger to his lips and gazed thought
fully down at the deck.

  Even though she wanted nothing from this man, Alisa caught herself leaning forward, waiting to hear the rest. He couldn’t do something to heal Leonidas, could he? He’d mentioned he had originally been trained as a healer. She had no idea what that consisted of, but he’d apparently had a hand in Leonidas recovering from that coma so quickly. Was it possible that Starseers could do with their minds what doctors needed tools for?

  “Let me think about what I could do,” Stanislav said, lowering his finger. “I—”

  A beep filtered down the corridor from the direction of NavCom. The proximity alarm.

  Alisa cursed and ran past Stanislav. She’d just checked the sensors.

  She burst into NavCom, almost jumping when something zipped past the view screen. The feed from the forward camera was currently on display there. She scowled and checked the sensors to identify what she had seen.

  “Imperial star clipper,” she breathed. “What are they doing out here?”

  As she stared at the sensors, trying to predict the clipper’s destination, two more imperial ships came into sensor range. Warships this time. She braced herself for trouble, but they zipped past the Nomad almost as quickly as the clipper had.

  The comm remained silent. Whatever had brought them to this section of the system, it wasn’t her or her ship.

  “Where are they heading?” Stanislav asked, leaning into NavCom.

  She projected their courses out ahead of them, though her gut knew the answer before her mind confirmed the facts.

  “The Kir Asteroid Belt.”

  Chapter 4

  When the asteroid belt came onto the view screen, boulders of all shapes and sizes tumbling along what had once been Planet Kir’s orbit, Alisa half-expected to find hundreds of ships zooming in and out of them. The Nomad’s sensors had lost track of the trio of fast-moving imperial spacecraft hours ago, but if the empire was here, she figured everyone else would be too.

  The question was, how did they know something was happening here in the belt, a spot largely ignored in the centuries since the Order Wars? And did they believe that something had to do with the Staff of Lore? Or had they heard Prince Thorian was out here somewhere, and did they want him? Maybe the empire hoped to claim him before the Alliance did. If they were here for the prince, how had they figured out he might be here? Alisa had been on a quest for weeks—no, months—to find the children, even if she hadn’t at first known Thorian had anything to do with Jelena.

  “Has Abelardus given you the coordinates to the station yet, Captain?” Yumi asked from the sensor station.

  She had shown up that morning as the first asteroid tumbled past the ship. Maybe she expected to find special space mushrooms out there.

  “Sort of,” Alisa said. “He gave me coordinates to a point that I gather is somewhere near Sepiron Station.”

  “My sister wouldn’t tell me exactly where it is, either, but it sounds like all the Starseers aboard know, so I’m not sure how much of a secret it is.”

  “I just hope Tym and the empire don’t know where it is.”

  “I think that’s why the others are being close-mouthed,” Yumi said. “So that we mundane individuals can’t have the coordinates read by some unscrupulous telepath flying past.”

  “I believe the term is grub.”

  “So it is,” Yumi said, a wistful expression entering her eyes, the one she got when thinking about how badly she had always wanted to develop Starseer powers.

  “Are you and your sister getting along well?”

  “Yes. She and the others don’t mind me sitting with them when they’re meditating or teaching Ostberg. They’re too busy ensuring he grows into an acceptable young man. I’m not sure how delighted he is to suddenly have six more tutors.”

  “I can imagine. Is Durant teaching?” Last she’d heard, he wasn’t himself yet. Alejandro had frowned at her when she’d mentioned in passing that she would like to question him about why he had taken Jelena. Or maybe he had frowned at the implication that she wanted her hands to be around Durant’s throat as she questioned him.

  “Mostly just sitting in,” Yumi said. “Ostberg still spends a lot of time talking to him, but he gets these vacant expressions a lot, like he can’t remember things. I think homesickness has started to encroach for Ostberg. He’s been talking often about a brother and parents. And a dog.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t miss the family dog?”

  “You like dogs? The next time we have more time to explore a station, I could search for a dog for the ship.”

  “No need,” Alisa said. “The chickens are enough. And don’t think I didn’t notice that two more found their way aboard when we were at Caravan Circle.”

  “Ah, you’re quite observant, Captain. I hadn’t realized you were that familiar with them.”

  “I’m not, but the two new ones aren’t as fat as the others. Yet.”

  “Ostberg has been caring for the flock. Enthusiastically.”

  “He needs to get them on an exercise plan.”

  “Perhaps more worms and insects and less corn. That would also improve their droppings.”

  On that note, Leonidas walked into NavCom and sat down in the co-pilot’s seat, his eyebrows elevated slightly.

  “You heard we were discussing the digestive habits of chickens and couldn’t wait to join us, eh?” Alisa asked him, pausing to search his face for signs of weariness. Had he gone back to sleep the night before? She had knocked on his hatch after sighting the imperial ships, but he hadn’t answered, so she’d assumed he had still been working out. He did look tired, with lines at the corners of his eyes, and a hint of dried blood on his upper lip. Had one of those hover pads punched back? She wished she could kiss him, blood and all, and make him sleep better.

  “Actually, I came to look at the sensor logs if that’s permissible,” he said, nodding toward Yumi’s seat.

  “Of course,” Alisa said, though as soon as the words came out, she wondered why he wanted to look. Was he curious about those imperial ships?

  Since he had agreed to work for her, she had stopped worrying about his loyalties, and wanted to believe that hadn’t been a mistake, but she had to remember that he had originally been diverted from his personal mission to join Alejandro’s because of the staff quest. And because of the prince. What would happen if something, such as the prince’s safety, put him at odds with her own mission to get Jelena back?

  Alisa chewed on her lip as Yumi traded seats with him, the frame of the fold-down seat creaking under his muscled weight. She did not want to twist around and openly stare at—spy on—what he was doing, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

  “Captain,” Alejandro said, stepping into NavCom with a netdisc on, the holodisplay up. “Abelardus gave me this to give to you.”

  “He didn’t want to come see me himself?” Alisa said, accepting the netdisc. “I’m heartbroken.”

  “I believe there was an altercation.” Alejandro glanced at Leonidas, but said nothing else. “He didn’t wish to come up here.”

  Remembering the dried blood, Alisa sighed. She might question Leonidas about it later, but she might not. It wasn’t as if Abelardus was unpredictable. He must have taunted Leonidas about his sexual dysfunction or whatever else was bothering him currently.

  “Are these the coordinates to the station?” Alisa asked, placing the netdisc to the side of her controls.

  “I believe so.”

  “What happened to make him decide that we mundanes should be informed about them now?”

  “From what I’ve gathered from passing comments by the various Starseers, they believe time is of the essence.”

  Yumi nodded, her face unusually grim as she gazed at the asteroids ahead.

  “They worried about Tymoteusz showing up here?” Alisa asked. As if dealing with imperials wouldn’t be bad enough.

  “Among other things,” Yumi said.

  Alisa plugged in the coordinates and turned her own attent
ion to the controls. She would fly them manually through the belt. Her sensors might have trouble picking out ships from all the floating debris out there, and she did not want to round an asteroid and come face-to-face with those imperial ships. They might have ignored her on the way in, but if they spotted her snooping around where they were searching, they might decide that a freighter would make good target practice.

  “I believe those ships came from Perun,” Leonidas said, as he pored over the sensor logs. “I recognize one. It used to be in the emperor’s personal fleet. It’s likely Bondarenko absorbed it, along with many others.”

  “Into his personal fleet?” Alisa asked. “It must be nice to have a personal fleet.”

  “Perhaps if you remain friends with Tommy after he’s established his sauce empire, he’ll assist you with the purchase of your own fleet, Captain,” Yumi said. “If that’s your aspiration.”

  “It’s not. But if I ever get the itch for a fleet, I bet I could fund it if I simply confiscated the drugs in your cabin.”

  Yumi smiled faintly. “I don’t believe I’ve created enough to purchase a fleet.”

  “I’d settle for an armada.”

  Alisa swooped under a sizable asteroid with a green tint to it, and her running lights caught something metallic in the distance as she came out from its shadow. Another ship?

  “Leonidas?” she asked.

  “Imperial star clipper,” he said.

  The ship disappeared behind an asteroid and did not come into sight again.

  Alisa kept the Nomad on course for the station, but she was tempted to take a circuitous route in the hope of throwing off anyone tracking them. She didn’t. If she played games, the delay might mean arriving too late, after the empire had already found the station—and those aboard it.

  “I think we may be within communications range of the station,” Yumi said a while later. “This isn’t the middle of nowhere, despite its desolate appearance. I believe there are boosters on some of the outer asteroids.”

  Yes, Kir had once been a desirable core planet.

  “Do you think they’ll answer if a random freighter captain comms?” Alisa asked, the first twang of nerves assaulting her belly. She couldn’t wait to see Jelena again, and yet she was apprehensive about how the reunion would go, especially after her daughter had been with the Starseers for months. Who knew what propaganda they might have been pumping into her head? Who knew what they might have been telling her about her mother?