Fallen Empire: Starseers Part 3

She tried vainly to pull them up, but the Nomad struck down again, this time staying down and skidding. White shards of ice flew up, spattering the external cameras. Alisa bounced around in her seat as the s.h.i.+p sc.r.a.ped and b.u.mped across the lumpy surface. A cry of pain came from somewhere within the s.h.i.+p.

The Nomad jerked to a halt, and the lights went out.

Chapter 3.

Images flashed through Alisa's mind of the last time she had crashed. Too many s.h.i.+ps, too much going on at once. Pandemonium. Dodging debris and other s.h.i.+ps. Flying recklessly. Firing. And then hearing the imperial message that was relayed throughout every Alliance s.h.i.+p: "We surrender." A surge of relief. Until the kamikaze fighter came out of nowhere, streaking toward Alisa, taking her out even after the surrender had been promised. The stars disappearing. The desert spinning below. Red sand everywhere. Red sun. White light. Pain. So much pain.

Alisa drew in a shuddering breath and blinked away the memories. The blackness of the present replaced the harsh red light in her mind. She grew aware of her seat on the Nomad and the s.h.i.+vers still coursing through the s.h.i.+p around her.

"Did you turn off the s.h.i.+elds?" Alisa demanded as soon as the world grew still. The lights had not come back on, and the cameras and view screen were out too. A few blinking red alerts came from the dashboard, but did not provide enough illumination for her to see much. She could barely make out Leonidas in the co-pilot's seat.

A groan came from behind her. Yumi.

"Me?" Leonidas asked. As indomitable as he was, he also sounded shaken from the crash. Or from something. Alisa remembered that strange tingle that she had felt before running into the other s.h.i.+p.

"You're the only other person with access to the helm controls," Alisa said, but even as she spoke, she realized how ridiculous it sounded. Why would Leonidas have shut down the s.h.i.+elds? He could have been killed in that crash too.

"No, I don't-at least I don't remember..."

The confused way his words came out, so unlike the confident way he usually spoke, sent a s.h.i.+ver of unease down Alisa's spine.

"I'm not sure what happened," he said. "I remember seeing the other s.h.i.+p and hitting it, and then it's fuzzy. We-" A snap sounded, his harness unbuckling. He jumped to his feet. "The other s.h.i.+p. They're out there, and they're not far from us. Beck," he called and charged out of NavCom.

Alisa reached for her own harness fastener, but her hands were still shaking. She fumbled with it unsuccessfully.

"Captain?" Mica's shaky voice came over the comm, none of her usual brusque sarcasm present.

"I'm here," Alisa said.

"I don't know what-for a minute there, I couldn't concentrate on anything, and then we hit something. We hit everything."

"Yeah, we had the same experience up here. We're not far from the mafia s.h.i.+p, and I don't know what their status is. Beck and Leonidas are going out to meet them if they try to board us." Alisa a.s.sumed that was what Leonidas had been planning when he charged out of NavCom. "Can you get me a damage report, find out if we can get back in the sky? Or in the fog, as the case seems to be."

"I thought I'd try to get the lights turned on first," Mica said, a hint of her usual dry humor returning, though she still sounded shaky. Alisa hoped she hadn't hit her head.

Worrying about other people and their injuries helped Alisa steady herself, and she finally got her harness unfastened.

"Yumi?" she asked, standing up.

"I'm alive," Yumi said quietly, still sitting in her seat. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Why don't you check on your chickens? Go check on Alejandro, too, will you, please?"

"Yes. Where are you going?"

Alisa dropped her hand to her holster. "To make sure no mafia thugs board my s.h.i.+p."

Following the emergency lighting lining the walkways, Alisa made her way down the corridor toward the cargo hold. She paused at the intersection that branched to the crew and pa.s.senger quarters, hearing several thumps coming from the direction of Leonidas's room. He was probably getting his armor on. Since she had no armor, she continued to the cargo hold.

Irritated squawks greeted her before she reached the stairs. The poor chickens. It was a wonder they were laying any eggs at all with the constant stress of living on a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. On this s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, at least. In the last month, the Nomad had seen more action than an Alliance wars.h.i.+p during the war.

"Captain?" came a m.u.f.fled voice from the deck of the cargo hold.

Alisa gripped the railing to guide herself down the stairs. "That you, Beck?"

He sounded like he was already in his combat armor.

"Yes, ma'am. By the hatch. The mech said we should go out and check on the other s.h.i.+p, said they might have crashed too. That right?"

"I'm not sure. Sensors and cameras are down. I did see them hit a cliff, but unless their s.h.i.+elds also suspiciously dropped right before that, it wouldn't necessarily have damaged them."

"Suspiciously?"

"Talk later," Leonidas said, startling Alisa as he came up behind her. His voice was gruff, but he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. A gentle armored hand. "Beck and I will go check. Stay here."

He tried to guide her to the side, so he could pa.s.s her on the stairs.

Alisa stubbornly continued down. "There's nothing I can do here. I'm going with you."

"You won't be able to see much out there without a helmet with night vision, Captain," Beck said. "I think we flew past the terminator into night."

"Unless your helmets have fog vision, you won't be able to see much out there, either," she said.

"Oh."

Guided by the squawking of the chickens, Alisa found her way to the hatch, almost smacking against Beck's armored shoulder on the way. With his night vision helmet, he saw her and stepped out of the way, stopping her with a hand out.

"It will be cold out there too," Leonidas said from behind her shoulder.

Alisa remembered her earlier thoughts-had it just been a few hours ago?-about wis.h.i.+ng that he was her bodyguard, or worked for her in some capacity if body guarding was too lowly for him, and that he would loom at her shoulder. This wasn't quite how she had imagined the scenario.

"Let us go," he added. "You've got your comm unit? We'll report in to you."

"Let's just see what we're dealing with. If we can get the hatch open." Alisa found the bulkhead with her hands and patted her way to the hatch controls. The b.u.t.ton wouldn't work without power, but there was a mechanical override behind a panel, if she could find it in the dark. Why hadn't she stopped in her cabin to grab her mult.i.tool and a jacket? Maybe it wasn't too late to get them. She just hated to delay because her instincts were itching, suggesting that delaying might be a bad idea.

A beam of light appeared on the wall where she was patting around.

"Oh," she blurted, almost ridiculously pleased. She smiled over her shoulder and found that Beck was the one providing the illumination with a flashlight built into his suit. "Thank you."

Leonidas was a few feet farther down the wall, the panel Alisa had been searching for already open in front of him. He looked over at them, frowning slightly for some reason.

"See," Beck said, "I'm useful, Captain."

"I never said you weren't useful. You make excellent duck."

"Stand back." Leonidas tugged on the latch, and a hiss sounded as the seal on the hatch released. He crouched by the side of it as it rose and the ramp automatically unfolded and extended.

The temperature seemed to drop thirty degrees in a second. Fog rolled into the s.h.i.+p, hazing over the p.r.i.c.ks of emergency lighting on the deck of the hold.

An alarming crack came from outside, and Alisa jumped. Her first thought was that someone had fired a weapon, but she s.h.i.+vered when she realized what she had heard. Ice snapping. As she had noted earlier, they had landed on the frozen sea, not solid ground. Her s.h.i.+p, which weighed thousands of pounds, even without cargo in it, was resting on a sheet of ice. She had no way of knowing if that ice extended downward for hundreds of meters or if they were on a shelf only inches thick.

"How is there mist when it's so cold out?" Beck asked. "The thermometer in my suit says it's forty below out there. Isn't mist or fog droplets of water?"

"Part of the charm of this place, maybe," Alisa said. "You could ask Leonidas. He was reading the encyclopedia entry."

Leonidas had started down the ramp and did not look back. It was dark outside, not as absolute as inside the s.h.i.+p, but Beck was right. They had left the sun behind, with twilight descending upon them. The fog did not help. It was so thick that Alisa could not see past the end of the ramp.

She started down, thinking to catch up with Leonidas before he disappeared. Outside of the s.h.i.+p, the temperature dropped drastically, and she rethought the wisdom of going out without a jacket. Without a jacket, mittens, scarves, boots, snow pants, and three or four blankets.

Leonidas halted at the base of the ramp and unslung the rifle on his shoulder. "Get out here, Beck."

"Something you want me to see?" Beck was walking right beside Alisa.

"I hear people, not far from here. We're not alone out here."

"White Dragon people?"

"We'll go ask with our rifles," Leonidas said, "unless you plan to hide behind Marchenko."

Beck lifted his head. "I do not." He slapped his own rifle. "If they are White Dragon, they're my problem."

Very true, Alisa thought but did not say. She was surprised Leonidas was willing to lead the way to deal with mafia thugs who presumably wanted nothing to do with him. Though, upon reflection, she wasn't sure why she was surprised. She had yet to see him shy away from any battle. It even seemed to put him in a good mood.

"Alisa," Leonidas said, "close the hatch and wait inside. We'll let you know if it's safe to come out for repairs if they're needed."

Alisa bristled at receiving orders and also at the idea of hiding inside, but she reluctantly admitted that her Etcher wouldn't do much good if the White Dragon crew was wearing combat armor. And without the protection of a climate-controlled suit of armor, she could freeze before she reached the other s.h.i.+p. Already, she was s.h.i.+vering as the frigid air needled right through her clothing. There wasn't a wind-of course not, or the mist would dissipate-but the bite to the air had her stuffing her hands into her armpits.

"He calls you Alisa now?" Beck murmured from her side.

"I told him to," she said.

"Oh."

"I bet he'd call you Tommy if you called him Leonidas."

"What a treat that would be."

"You're not bitter about his suggestion about the celery seed, are you?"

"Yes, I am. Is that immature?"

"You did ask for his opinion."

Beck grunted.

Leonidas walked away from the ramp, apparently trusting his ears or his sense of direction when it came to where the other s.h.i.+p had landed. The fog soon swallowed the bright red of his combat armor. It felt like they were on some unexplored alien world rather than Arkadius with its billions of residents. Billions of residents who were not crazy enough to live anywhere around here.

"I better go see if I can get the White Dragon more p.i.s.sed with me," Beck said with a sigh and trotted off after Leonidas.

Alisa grimaced, realizing he was right. Every time he defended himself from them, he destroyed some of their equipment, and he might have killed some of their men by now. Alisa thought back to her first encounter with them when she had dropped a cliff onto the heads of a squad of men. After that, she could not be certain that the mafia clan was only after Beck now. She might be on the list of people they were hunting for too.

"They'll have to get in line," she muttered and returned to the cargo hold.

The lights were still off, and it was not much warmer inside than outside. Even though she hated the idea of closing the hatch while her men were out there, she shuddered to imagine enemies sneaking into the s.h.i.+p while everyone was working on repairs. Alisa liked to think she could take care of herself in a fight, but she wouldn't be a match for men in combat armor, and she knew it. With a tug of the handle, she activated the ramp mechanism, drawing it in and closing the hatch.

A lit candle appeared on the walkway above, Yumi coming to the cargo hold. Both she and the flame appeared blurry-some of that pervasive mist had found its way inside the s.h.i.+p and lingered in the air.

"Coming to check on your chickens?" Alisa asked.

"Yes. I didn't know our flights would be so incident-filled when I decided to bring them along with me."

"Sorry about that. Maybe you can sell them to a friendly Sta.r.s.eer who wants the insides of her s.h.i.+p fertilized regularly."

Alisa wondered if the mist surrounded their temple. If so, and if they never had sun s.h.i.+ning on them, maybe it wouldn't be an ideal place for critters. Did Sta.r.s.eers keep animals for pets or livestock? She knew so little about them. Except that they did not have a reputation for being friendly toward outsiders. She remembered that tickle in her mind before she had struck the White Dragon s.h.i.+p. Maybe she just wanted to give herself an excuse for that crash, but she couldn't help but think that the Sta.r.s.eers had seen the two s.h.i.+ps coming into their territory and had arranged it. Was someone paying that close of attention to their borders? Or had they set up the obstacle course and now trusted in that to keep people from finding them?

"Really, Captain," Yumi said, making her way down the stairs, "you bring up fertilizer often, but I clean their pen regularly, and I have a compost tumbler in my cabin. I'm turning their droppings into a wonderful medium for growing things."

"You're composting p.o.o.p next to your bunk? My mom didn't even allow pa.s.sengers to eat in their cabins."

"Sounds draconian." Yumi smiled and crossed to the chickens, who had grown oddly quiet since Leonidas opened the hatch. Maybe they were cold.

A curse and a clank came from the direction of engineering. Alisa headed that way to check on Mica. She was surprised the lights were not back on yet, especially since the crash had been fairly controlled, all things considered. They had landed on their belly, after all. But the s.h.i.+elds had been down for that last blast from the enemy s.h.i.+p. Alisa hoped the hull had not been breached.

A moan sounded, not from within the s.h.i.+p but from outside. It seemed to float across the frozen sea, as if some animal was out there and in pain. A snap echoed up from below, from the ice.

Alisa quickened her pace, rubbing her arms as she went. The sooner they were airborne again, the better.

"Mica?" Alisa asked, opening the hatch and poking her head into engineering. Several lanterns were propped on consoles and machinery, driving the shadows back from the room. "You might share some of your lights. Yumi is using a candle to check on her chickens."

Mica lay on her back on a rolling platform tucked under the engine, and she pushed herself out to scowl up at Alisa.

"Judging by the expression on your face, the news is not good," Alisa said. "Either that, or Beck's duck skewers aren't agreeing with you."

"The skewers were excellent. The news is that I can't figure out why the lights and non-emergency systems are out. I'm sure the hull is dinged up after that landing, but the engine is fine. All the connections I've checked are fine. The gum I've got holding the oxidizer valve in place is even still there."

"Gum? That doesn't sound ideal. Did you mention needing valve holder thingies on your shopping list?"

"Thingies?"

"Thingies."