Fallen Empire 1: Star Nomad (22 page)

Alejandro stopped in front of one of the walls, placed his palms on the drab gray metal, and thumped his forehead against it. Maybe Yumi could teach
him
to meditate.

“What’s that mean?” Mica asked.

“Turns out the pirate leader is someone in matching red armor,” Alisa said, scooting over to sit against the wall beside her. “Oh, and they know each other. Malik is the leader’s name, but he calls himself Sublime Commander. He called Leonidas
Colonel
.”

Alejandro was still leaning his hands against the wall, his head down, but he rotated his neck to look at them.

“But I figure the doctor already knew that,” Alisa said. “That Leonidas was an officer high up in the Cyborg Corps.”

Alejandro dropped his head again. If he knew, he didn’t care. Not right now. What had he been carrying in that bag that was so important? Some secret plans that would magically bring the empire back to full power? That was an appalling thought, but probably a silly one. One man couldn’t undo what had happened, not when it had taken tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people and fifty years of planning and four years of all out combat to bring down the empire.

“What does that mean
exactly
?” Mica said. “He’s not going to help us?”

“I don’t know,” Alisa said, “but he and Malik walked off practically arm in arm, and he didn’t look back at me. He seemed fine with the idea that we’d be sold into slavery.”

“Slavery?” Mica pointed a finger at Alisa’s nose. “Captain,
this
is why I’m always pessimistic. Bad things happen
all
the time. Good things are an oddity.”

“They certainly have been this week.” Alisa let her head clunk back against the wall. It hurt, but not any more than the rest of her body. “Alejandro?” she asked carefully, worried that he would snap at her and blame her for all this. “If you know something about Leonidas that could help us… I mean, should he deign to visit us or if our paths should cross before we leave this ship, if there was something we could say to persuade him—”

“You mean to blackmail him,” Mica interrupted.

“
Persuade
him,” Alisa emphasized. “If there is something, I’d sure like to know so I could try to use it.”

“I would be open to blackmailing him,” Beck said. The pirates had removed his armor, and he almost looked small without it. It did not help that he wore a sad, defeated expression as he slumped against the wall.

“I only know him by reputation,” Alejandro said, looking at the wall instead of her. “He was around the capital from time to time, getting orders for his troops.”

“The Cyborg Corps?”

“The Cyborg Corps.”

“Was he in charge of them? All of them?”

Alejandro lowered his hands. “Do you have any thoughts as to how to get out of here?”

“Not yet,” Alisa said, surprised he was looking at her. “Why, did you expect some genius ideas to pop out of my head?”

“You’ve done satisfactorily so far. And you seem determined.”

“I’ve got a reason to be determined.” Alisa pictured her daughter’s face in her mind, wishing it hadn’t been so long since she had seen it in more than a photograph.

“Good. As do I.”

“Not just taking the tour of the system and spreading your religiosity then?” Mica asked.

“Not exactly. Though I can prepare a lecture or sermon for you later, if you feel the need.”

“I vote you lecture the pirates, Doc,” Beck said.

“Seconded,” Alisa said.

Yumi pressed her hands together in front of her chest and inhaled noisily through the back of her throat. Alisa wasn’t sure if that counted as a third or not.

Alejandro crouched in front of Alisa, looking her in the eyes. “I have to get my bag back, and we have to escape. There’s something in there—the pirates can’t have it. It cannot be permitted. Our escape
has
to happen.”

“I’m amenable to that,” Alisa said, though she questioned whether they would truly be able to find the pirates’ booty room in this giant ship. If she got out of this cell, she intended to beeline for the
Nomad
and pilot it out. Unfortunately, with that grab beam of theirs, it would not be easy. She did not want to escape the bay, only to be sucked back in again. No, they would have to distract the pirates and find a way to disable the grab beam generator. She already had a daunting task without promising to hunt for the pirates’ loot. She didn’t even know yet how they were going to get out of this cell.

“I’ll tell you what I know about Leonidas if you swear to help me get that bag. Swear it.” Alejandro sounded like a boy on the playground rather than a man in his fifties, but it was clear from his eyes that he was utterly serious.

Alisa licked her lips. Hadn’t she just been listing all the reasons why looking for a few duffel bags would be suicidal? Was satisfying her curiosity about Leonidas worth making this deal? She might never even see him again. Even though she would like to think he would not take up with a pirate, he had taken up with
her
, hadn’t he? Someone he clearly disapproved of, someone he had caught stealing cyborg implants to sell… This Malik had a lot more power and resources to get him to wherever he needed to go for whatever the next step in his quest was.

Aware of Alejandro looking at her, his dark eyes earnest and determined, Alisa took a deep breath. She hated to make false promises, but maybe she could somehow pull this off. With as many other things as had to go right for them to escape, what would adding one more detour to the list matter? Besides, if one of her people found the loot room and threatened to blow it up, maybe it would distract the pirates while the rest got to the ship. The brutes probably had a huge vault of goodies they had stolen from the miners and anyone else who had flown into their web.

Alisa looked through the bars toward their cellmates across the way, wondering if they might be a resource. Eight men were packed in there, and she had seen numerous people in the other cells too.

“If we can get out of here,” Alisa told Alejandro, “I’ll make sure we look for your bag on the way out. I promise.”

Alejandro frowned slightly, no doubt noticing that she had not exactly given a promise to get the bag back, but what could she do? She wasn’t in a position of power here. She wasn’t even sure why he thought she would be more likely to come up with a plan and lead an escape than he. He had to be twenty years older than she was, more experienced in life. But, she reasoned, perhaps not more experienced with getting out of jams.

“As long as we’re making promises,” Beck said, “can we promise to get my combat armor on the way out too? That’s the most valuable thing I’ve ever had in my life, and until my sauce line gets going, I reckon I’m going to have to fight for my tindarks. Can’t fight without a good suit.”

Alisa patted his shoulder. “Maybe they’ll be stored in the same place.”

“Just so long as some slimy pirate hasn’t claimed it for his own. I don’t like another man’s sweat in my suit.”

“I have nothing I need in my trunk,” Yumi said, “but if we can get it, I would also be pleased. After all, half of my fare is inside of it.”

“Can I say,” Alisa said, looking around at her little group, pleased that nobody was curled in a ball on the floor and moaning that the end was near, “that I’m glad that everyone is so certain that we
are
going to get out.”

“Not everyone,” Mica grumbled. “I expect we’ll be raped and tortured and made to watch, and that half of us will get killed before we get thrown into this slavery ring. And then the other half will wish they had been killed too.”

“Sounds like a good reason to expedite our escape then.” Alisa pushed herself to her feet.

Alejandro stood up next to her.

“About Leonidas,” she said, “should I work him into my plans or not?”

“I probably know less about him than you wish, but he’s known to be an honorable man.”

Alisa lifted her brows. She had already guessed that. The problem was that she didn’t know if Leonidas considered
her
honorable and worthy of helping out.

“His name is Colonel Hieronymus Adler,” Alejandro said. “I would guess Leonidas is a call sign, though he could have made it up on the spot. He
was
the commander of the Cyborg Corps for the first couple of years of the war. I’m not sure what he did after that—you have to understand that I wasn’t a military doctor, and I rarely interacted with soldiers—but I believe he may have done some special assignments for the emperor.”

“Oh.” Alisa didn’t know what else to say. If Leonidas had been the emperor’s special man, that meant he was even more of an enemy to her and the Alliance than she had realized. She definitely shouldn’t factor him into her plans or expect him to risk himself for people that he, too, would consider enemies. “Do you know what his mission is? Why he was so determined to go out to that research station? And if he was one of the emperor’s favorites, why was he stranded on Dustor?”

“He hasn’t confided in me. I don’t think he recognized me when we met or considered me someone who might be a confidant.”

Might be a confidant? Was Alejandro saying that he would help Leonidas if he could? Or just that they were both from the empire and could have stuck together?

“Do you think his mission is personal or that someone sent him out here? Is it like Malik said, that the cyborgs were drawn to the research station because they wanted upgraded parts?”

Alejandro hesitated. “After the emperor was killed, I don’t think there was anyone left back home who could have sent him on a special assignment.”

Alisa held back a frown, though she noted that hesitation. Did that mean he was lying?

“So, you think his mission is personal?” she asked.

“I have no way of knowing.”

“All right.” Alisa walked the three steps to the bars, not sure she had gotten any useful information in exchange for her promise. Just Leonidas’s name and confirmation that he was someone she should go on hating, or at least thinking of as an enemy. If he had truly been that high up in the fleet chain of command and that close to the emperor, having him roaming around free out here was a dangerous thing for the Alliance.

She nodded toward one of the men across the way who looked over at her movement. She tapped a bar to make sure it wasn’t charged with electricity, then draped her arms around them. “Any chance you fellows would like to chat?”

“Not unless one of you girls wants to come over and keep us company,” one of the scruffier men said. He was missing an eye. The wound looked recent. “Those bastards didn’t see fit to supply our cell with any women.”

Alisa had seen the women in another cell, and they hadn’t looked like they wanted to be molested by fellow prisoners. They had looked like they had already been molested enough. She shuddered, thinking of Mica’s pessimistic predictions. She needed information, so she forced herself to continue the chat, to be friendly.

“Any preferences as to which one?” she asked.

“You’ll do. They haven’t even uglied you up yet. Come on over.”

Alisa ticked the bar. “It seems the pirates don’t want us commingling.” She pressed the side of her face into the gap between the bars, peering as far up and down the hall as she could see. She spotted someone’s sleeve next to the exit. They had at least one guard.

“I don’t care what those mother-forsaken thugs want,” one of the other men grumbled. “I just want to get out of here.”

“How long have you been in that cell?”

“Months. Sparky and Phan are the only ones who get to go for walks now and then.” The speaker waved toward two men lying on one side of the cell.

“Why are they special?”

“Engineer and mechanic. The pirates aren’t a real educated lot. They’ve got no use for those of us who were just miners, but if something goes wrong with the ship, they come and collect someone who knows how to fix it.”

Alisa moved along the bars so she stood in front of the specialists. Aware of the guard and the cameras, she made a
psst
sound and waved, hoping one would come closer. One man did not acknowledge her at all. The other one glowered.

“You want them to move, you’ll have to show Sparky some tits,” the man she had been speaking with said, giving her a lurid wink.

“Actually,” someone else said, “I’ve heard Sparky would rather see the tits of her muscleman back there.”

Beck’s eyebrows flew up, and he touched his chest in a self-conscious gesture.

“I’ll arrange that if we all get out of here,” Alisa said.

“Really, Captain. That
wasn’t
in the job description.”

“I’m positive I asked for open-mindedness and versatility down in the fine print of my recruiting flyer.”

“Which of those things was supposed to imply I’d disrobe for other men?” Beck asked.

“The first, I think.” Alisa nodded to the glowering engineer. “Sparky, how often do they come get you?”

“Every few days. This ship is fifty years old. Things go wrong often, especially since they’re not caring for her like they should.” He sighed and ran the palm of his hand along the wall of his cell in a sad caress.

“And you fix the problems for them?”

“Don’t have much choice.”

“Have you ever thought of—” Alisa lowered her voice, “—
creating
a problem? Sabotaging something and using the diversion to escape?” She ticked the bars again. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t go away if the power went out. It was too bad the cells did not use typical forcefields.

“The
last
engineer had thoughts like that,” Sparky said. “They scalped him, then dumped his body into a vat of molten ore.”

“Did the last engineer have a pilot with a freighter in the bay, ready to give you a ride out?”

“Kiss that ship goodbye, girl. They’ve probably already scrapped it.”

Alisa forced herself not to shudder or be daunted by that idea. “So, you wouldn’t be willing to sabotage something the next time you’re out? Even if Beck took off his shirt and danced for you?”

“
Captain
,” Beck said in a pained voice.

Sparky shook his head.

One of the other miners said, “You’re not going to escape. You think everyone who gets shoved in here doesn’t think about it? Forget it. We’ve tried everything. Chances got even slimmer after the cyborg took over. The guards pay more attention, and you better believe they’re recording you right now. If you make trouble, they’ll kill you. Best to go along with things and hope for a good owner or a chance to escape once you’re sold on the auction block.”