Fallen Empire 1: Star Nomad (17 page)

“That’s the shooter game, right?” Alisa asked. “You’ll never touch my score on the piloting one.”

“Probably not, but I’m doing well here. The doctor keeps losing his man in the practice area before you board the ship and try to take it back from smugglers,” Mica said. “I didn’t know you could actually die before you got to Level One.”

“It’s not necessary to report
that
,” Alejandro’s voice sounded in the background, extremely dry.

“She asked what was interesting. I found that interesting. And amusing.”

“It wasn’t that funny.”

“No? Then why did I laugh so hard that tea came out of my nose?”

“Sounds like a problem with a deviated septum. You should have a doctor look at that.”

“My nostrils aren’t available for study.”

“We’re fine in here,” Alisa said, rolling her eyes. “Thanks for asking.”

“You’re welcome, Captain,” Mica said.

Alisa turned off the comm. Yumi and Beck were looking at her, eyebrows raised.

“The others are fine,” she told them.

“Clearly,” Beck said.

Alisa headed through the doorway and into a rectangular room. Three of the walls held shelves and cabinets, many of them broken. Carbon had scorched the floor, leaving giant black marks, as if someone had set off an explosion in here. The fourth wall was mostly made of glass and had survived whatever bomb had been detonated. Another room stood behind it, one full of desks and workstations and equipment. One of the labs, presumably. It appeared to be mostly intact.

Relieved by the lack of bones and bloodstains on the floor, even if the carbon was puzzling, Alisa walked toward the closest set of shelves that wasn’t mangled. She had to walk around a broken grid in the floor, metal bars warped or completely blown away. Water trickled past down below. She almost pulled out her flashlight again to investigate, but the shelves were far more of a pull.

She did not know what she had expected the lab to hold, but the rows of strangely shaped molds were not it. She stared at a shelf full of pieces of a puzzle that looked like they could be assembled to form a forearm. Another shelf held kneecaps. Another squishy, gelatinous implant of some sort. Her first thought was that they had come to a plant for assembling androids, but she had seen prosthetic limbs before, and this was something different. These looked more like they would be inserted in—

It struck her like a hammer on a gong.

“Cyborg parts,” she blurted, turning toward Leonidas.

He had already opened a door in the glass wall and entered the lab. Beck and Yumi were talking quietly in the other doorway and had not yet entered the room.

It might not be noble or wise to think of scavenging when there were dead people twenty feet away, and their own safety was in question, but Alisa couldn’t help but realize she might have found her moment—and her prize. Cyborg implants ought to be worth quite a bit on the black market. She had no idea how to sell things on the black market, but she could learn.

She slipped her hand into her satchel and pulled out an empty sack. Leonidas had his back to her. Good. He would object to the theft. No, not theft, she told herself.
Scavenging
. She wasn’t a thief, damn it. She was an opportunist, and there was nothing wrong with that. This place had been empty for months, and the empire wasn’t around anymore, not in anything like its previous incarnation, so it was highly doubtful anyone was going to come out here to claim these items. The cyborg assembly line would probably be on hold indefinitely. Not a bad thing, in her opinion.

Looking for the least damaged items, Alisa turned her back to the lab—and Leonidas—so she could surreptitiously slide some of the implants into her bag.

A soft splash came from behind her, from below that broken grid in the floor. She paused and looked toward it, not certain if it was something to do with the station’s water filtration and plumbing system or if some of the cyborg parts needed to be tested in liquid for some reason.

Another splash sounded. Were those noises a result of the way the water was running through the channel? Or—she swallowed—was something down there?

Her gaze shifted toward the lab, as she wondered if Leonidas and his superior cyborg hearing had detected anything. Her hand shifted toward the blazer Beck had lent her. He and Yumi were still arguing about something by the doorway.

“Beck?” she started to ask.

A thump and a big splash from below made her stop, dropping into a crouch. Something dark and huge flew up through the opening in the grid. It whirled and jumped straight at her.

Chapter 12

Alisa had the impression of fur, fangs, and at least four hundred pounds of muscled bulk before the creature was in the air, springing toward her, and all she could see was her death in its yellow eyes. She fired, shooting it in the chest, and dropped to the floor at the same time, doubting that even Beck’s powerful blazer pistol would slow its momentum.

She meant to roll, to scramble out of the way as fast as she could, but she was too slow. The massive creature slammed into her, smashing her against the shelves.

Its bulk crushed her, and pain exploded from both sides of her body. Shelves and implants tumbled down as fur filled her eyes. She sensed it raising a paw to strike with deadly claws. She shot again, point blank this time, then tried to fling herself to the side. Half-pinned against the broken shelves, she could not go far. She glimpsed light and pushed toward it, trying to escape, but it only spun to follow her. It raised its paw again, as if those blasts had not hurt it at all. She tried to fire again, but the heavy paw smashed against her wrist, thwarting her aim. The blast of energy flew harmlessly wide, slamming into the ceiling.

She dove away, not caring which direction she went, just needing space between her and the monster so she could think, figure out something. Before she could think of anything, the ground disappeared beneath her. The stupid broken grid. She had been too busy fleeing to notice it.

A bar gouged her ribs as she tumbled down, flailing, unable to find anything to grab onto. She splashed into two feet of water.

Afraid the creature would be right behind her, she yanked out her Etcher, ignoring the fresh wounds that shouted out for attention. She’d dropped Beck’s blazer somewhere, so this would have to do.

Shouts came from above. With water rushing past around her legs and blood roaring in her ears, she couldn’t understand them, but she couldn’t see the creature, and that was a good thing. A dark furry paw flopped down onto the grid. She flinched but aimed her gun at it. She almost shot, but it wasn’t moving. The shouts had died down too.

A crimson suit of armor came into view. Leonidas knelt next to the hole and peered into her oubliette.

“You all right, Marchenko?” he asked.

Alisa lowered her Etcher. “I’m alive. Things hurt. I hope our semi-retired doctor doesn’t have cold hands. I hate being worked on by doctors with cold hands.” She clamped down on the stream of words, barely conscious of what she was babbling.

Worrying about cold hands was ridiculous right now, but being hurt and thinking of medics made her flash back to those months in the hospital, those first weeks she had been awake and when she hadn’t been sure if she would live or die. Too many bad memories flooded her brain, threatening to take her over the edge.

She took several deep breaths, struggling to calm herself. Pain came with those breaths, but she welcomed it. Pain was grounding. It meant she was alive, that her body was working as it should. Thankfully, she did not think she had broken any bones. Not this time.

“Can you give me your hand?” Leonidas lowered his gauntleted hand, the red of his armor making her think of blood, of the fact that he was a cyborg, the enemy.

Alisa eyed the dark depths from which the water was flowing. From which that monster had come. What the hell had that thing been? And were there more of them? What if there were more coming right now?

“Yes,” she said, reaching up and clasping his hand. Enemy or not, he was a lot more appealing than that monster had been.

Leonidas lifted her as easily as if lifting a feather, rising to his feet and wrapping his other arm around her waist, so he could pull her away from the broken grid. A piece of her jacket hung from the jagged bar that had snagged her on the way down.

Alisa glowered at it, then at the dead monster. Animal. Creature. Whatever it was. It lay between the grid and the broken shelves, cyborg implants littering its body like dead leaves.

Beck leaned against the shelves, catching his breath. Blood spattered his white armor.

“I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to put an oubliette in the middle of a lab, but I think they should be flogged. I know the empire was more into mental manipulation than flogging people, but there really should be an exception.” Her voice sounded squeaky in her ears, and she forced herself to go back to breathing. She was fine. A few scratches, but she’d had much worse. Funny, though, how much more terrifying it was when her fate wasn’t in her own hands. She
much
preferred facing death from the pilot’s seat, the flight stick firmly in her grasp.

“I apologize,” Leonidas said, releasing her and stepping back, though he kept a hand close, maybe not certain she wouldn’t fall over.

Considering the blood dripping down her sleeve from somewhere, that was a possibility.

“For the lack of flogging?” she asked.

He wore a serious expression, and she immediately regretted her sarcasm. It had sounded like a heartfelt apology, even though she wasn’t sure what had prompted him to make it. He—and Beck, too, it looked like—had killed the creature that had been intent on killing
her
. He didn’t owe her an apology. She ought to be thanking him.

Instead of ignoring her joke, or giving her one of his irritated narrow-eyed looks, Leonidas actually smiled faintly. The gesture disappeared so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it.

“For letting myself be distracted,” he said quietly, his gaze flicking toward Beck. But Beck wasn’t looking at them. He’d knelt down to lift the head of the creature, scrutinizing it. Yumi stood by the wall, her hand to her chest, a woman who, like Alisa, had gotten more on this trip than she bargained for. “I promised I’d protect you,” he added.

His jaw clenched, some of that irritation springing into his eyes. For once, it did not seem to be directed at her, but inward, at himself.

Feeling uncomfortable at seeing that he actually cared about keeping her alive—or at least about keeping his word regarding keeping her alive—Alisa shrugged and looked away.

“The creature is dead,” she said. “That’s all that matters, right?”

It also mattered if there were more of them around. She wondered if there was a way to tell.

“I think it’s an Octarian Blood Bear,” Beck said.

“It is,” Leonidas said. “We had training missions where we had to hunt and kill them with only a knife when I was a young soldier.”

“Guess that’s why you were so quick and efficient at killing it now, eh?” Alisa asked.

“Not that quick,” Leonidas muttered.

“But I helped, right?” Beck smiled at Alisa and stuck one of his boots up on the bear’s shaggy backside. Or maybe that was its butt. If man-eating bears had butts. “You saw me, mech. I hacked the hells out of that back leg and shot it twice.”

“After Marchenko shot it in the chest twice,” Leonidas said dryly. “It would have died from those wounds.”

Maybe, but not before it flattened her. What if it had followed her down through that grid? All it would have had to do was land on her with those four hundred pounds, and she would have been crushed and drowned. She shuddered, glad the men had jumped in.

“Don’t take my victory away from me, mech,” Beck said. “There have been precious few of them this week.”

Leonidas sighed. “Call me Leonidas.”

Beck’s mouth twisted, like he wasn’t sure about that.

Leonidas walked over to the other side of the bear—such an innocuous sounding name for something that had been eating people here for months—and picked up the blazer Alisa had dropped. He thumbed on the safety and tossed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said.

She was on the verge of also thanking him—and Beck—for helping, but stopped when he noticed the bag she had been filling. The bear had half-buried it when it fell, but the top half stuck out from under its body. Not wanting everyone to know she had been pillaging, Alisa hoped the dead bear would be too heavy, and that nobody would be able to extract her bag.

But Leonidas lifted the side of the bear as if it weighed nothing and withdrew it.

“That’s nothing,” Alisa said, reaching for it.

He looked inside.

She winced.

“You planning to make your own cyborg?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Three suns, would he believe that if she claimed it? No, he was being wry. She could see it in his eyes. He knew exactly what she had been doing.

“Sell the parts.” She walked over, her stiff and aching body not keeping her from snatching the bag from him. “How else am I supposed to pay for that combat armor?”

He didn’t say anything, and he didn’t try to keep the bag from her. Maybe it was only in her imagination that his eyes seemed to judge her, but she couldn’t keep from defending herself.

“You dragged me here,” she blurted. “Isn’t it fair that I get some compensation for my time?”

Leonidas said nothing, merely looked back toward the lab. Because she wasn’t worth looking at? A sick feeling of disgust welled inside of her. She wanted to be mad at him, but she knew that the problem was within her, not with him. She dropped the bag, though she hadn’t decided yet if she would leave it. Taking things she could sell was logical, damn it. This place was a desecrated mess. The empire was gone. Whoever had done this research was gone. Eaten, probably. If she didn’t take these things, some other scavenger would be along to do the same thing.

“Stay close to me,” Leonidas said, and headed into the lab again.

She followed him. Even if she hated being ordered around by someone who wasn’t a superior officer in her army, and even if she resented being told what to do under the best of circumstances, she did not want to get hurt again, more because he would blame himself than because of the actual risk to her person. She did not know what that meant. Probably that she was going crazy, caring what a cyborg thought and felt. But he had said himself that he was human. It seemed strange to think of him that way when cyborgs had been nothing but superhuman enemies to her during the war, but he clearly believed it. He admittedly acted as human as the next person.