Fallen Empire 1: Star Nomad (21 page)

His lip quirked up in what seemed a regular gesture for him, half smile, half sneer. “You think I’m
working
for them? I
lead
this outfit now.”

Alisa looked to the ring of pirates and got a few nods of confirmation.

“Imperial officer,” the cyborg called again. “You’ve had your warning.”

Before Alisa had a chance to brace herself, his thumb dug into the tender flesh under the edge of her jaw. Her body went rigid, her spine stiffening, and a gasp slipped out. His other hand went down to the side of her stomach, digging in like a knife, finding an excruciating pressure point. She couldn’t keep from crying out, especially since the iron bar from that grid had dug a gouge near that spot earlier. She started bleeding again, warmth trickling down her side. She barely noticed, as he switched to other carefully selected points, knowing better than she what would create pain so intense that she couldn’t keep from crying out. And feeling utterly useless. A failure. How had she even ended up in this mess? She just wanted to find her daughter and make a new home, start over with the only family she had left.

Metal clanged.

With the pain hazing her mind, it took Alisa a moment to realize what it signified. The cover on the hidden hatch being kicked out.

The pain lessened as the cyborg loosened his grip on her, letting his fingers merely rest on the pressure points rather than digging in. Warm tears trickled down her cheeks. She hated herself for it, but she was relieved that the others had given themselves up.

The cyborg’s grip tightened again, and she cringed, anticipating more pain. But he wasn’t attacking her. He had stiffened himself, his head turned to the side, toward Leonidas. He was walking toward them slowly, his helmet off, his hands empty at his sides, though he still wore his armor, armor that appeared identical to that which the pirate leader wore.

“
You
,” the pirate cyborg breathed. He sounded stunned.

Though Alisa didn’t want to look at Leonidas, didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes or how weak she had been, curiosity made her turn her head. This new cyborg recognized him.

“Me,” Leonidas agreed, his voice cool, his face a mask. His eyes were locked upon the pirate leader; he did not acknowledge Alisa whatsoever.

“Never thought I’d see you hide behind a woman’s skirts, Colonel.”

Colonel? No wonder he had been so comfortable flinging commands around. So much for her initial guess that he was a sergeant. The revelation did not matter much now, though, not unless he had outranked this would-be pirate king and could cow him.

“That wasn’t the original plan,” Leonidas said.

“No shit.” The pirate cyborg laughed. The men stirred, exchanging uncertain glances with each other. “So
you’re
the one who killed my bombers. Damn, sir, one of those was my own craft that I flew out here. You know, back before I had an enormous ship.” He spread a hand toward the ceiling and walls to encompass the lumbering mining vessel.

Alisa held her breath, finding that “sir” that had slipped out worthy of hope.

“You’re working with pirates now?” Leonidas asked, his tone neutral, not as condemning as Alisa would have expected.

“As I was telling your girl, they’re
my
pirates.” The cyborg clenched a fist and smiled.

None of the ten men watching said anything to deny the statement.

“I took the ship, made the current leader my lieutenant,” the cyborg continued. “We’re going to start a whole fleet out here. I even thought I might get more of our old battalion to join. You interested, Colonel?”

Alisa nearly choked on his audacity. After Leonidas’s talk of honor and after he had balked at her scavenging that station, she sincerely doubted he would be interested in joining up with people who fired on unarmed freighters and wore scalps on their belts.

“You want me to work under you, Malik?” Leonidas arched an eyebrow.

“I
did
commandeer the ship and do the hard work whipping these men into shape. I wouldn’t be looking to lord it over you, Colonel. You were always fair. Not like those human officers, all stiff from having their pricks shoved up their asses.”

“We’re human too,” Leonidas said in that familiar dry tone of his. Alisa could read the disapproval in there. She wasn’t sure if the pirate cyborg—Malik—could.

“We’re
better
than human.”

“I see.”

“Join us, Colonel. Join my team. If you don’t… well, I’m sure you can understand. I’d rather not get in a fight with you, but I can’t have you competing with me, either.” Malik’s dark eyes narrowed, a warning in them.

Alisa lost some of her hope that he might stand down if Leonidas gave an order.

Leonidas tilted his head. “I’d have to consider it. Let’s talk.”

Malik hesitated, his eyes still slitted. “And your people?” He flicked his fingers casually toward Alisa, but she sensed a trap being laid. If Leonidas demanded that she and the others be left alone, would this Malik find it suspicious? How far did he trust what sounded like his old commander?

“My people?” Leonidas grunted. “I needed a ride out here. She’s the pilot of this barge. I’ve known her for a week.”

“So you don’t care about her fate? You rushed out here quickly enough when she started crying.”

Alisa glared at the cyborg. If not for that armor, she would have kicked him. She was tempted to do it, anyway, but she would only end up breaking her toes.

“I’m not an animal, Malik,” Leonidas said, that dryness in his tone again, as if none of this particularly bothered or concerned him. “I don’t want to see a woman tortured.”

“Who cares about human women? You’re too damned noble, Colonel. You think any of them care worm suck about us?”

For the first time, Leonidas looked over at Alisa, meeting her eyes. She held his gaze, but she couldn’t help but think of the way she had called him “cyborg” for most of the week. And “mech,” Beck’s favorite slur, when she had been pissed at him.

“No, likely not,” Leonidas agreed.

“Well, we don’t have to torture them. These craven bastards used to kill people, scalp ’em and make jewelry from their bones before I came along. They were trying to make themselves seem scary, or so they say. I figure let’s make some money. Sell them into slavery. The trade’s picking up nicely without anyone out here policing the Dark Reaches. We can make a lot of money. Carve out an empire of our own. There’d be nobody telling us what to do anymore. Say, were you in the station? Did you find the doctor? I figure the same thing brought us both out here.”

“Oh?”

“The latest parts he was working on—to make us stronger, faster.” Malik clenched his fist again, his eyes lighting up.

Alisa shifted uneasily. Leonidas was hard to read right now. Was that what had brought him to the station? A desire for improvement parts? A little upgrade to the operating system?

“I did come out to see him,” Leonidas said. “He’s dead.”

“Damn. I was afraid of that when I heard from my new men that they’d found the place but half of them had gotten themselves eaten by animals while investigating it.” Malik thumped his fist against his torso, the gauntlets clanging hollowly off the chest plate. “I plan to deal with those animals later, but let’s go talk in private without the goons listening, eh?” He pointed at one of his “goons.” “Take the woman and whoever else is in that bolt hole and dump them in the pens with the others.” He extended a hand toward the open hatchway, an invitation. “Colonel?”

Leonidas inclined his head once and walked toward the hatch with Malik. He did not look back as the pirates closed on Alisa, grabbing her and hoisting her from her feet.

Chapter 15

Beck put up a fight, but he was too vastly outnumbered. Already disarmed, Alisa could not help at all. The pirates searched them, removed their weapons and valuables, hoisted them all over their broad armored shoulders, and took them out of the
Nomad
and into a bay the size of a hangar in the air yard back on Perun. Four dirigibles could have fit in it with room to spare.

Alisa found herself twisting to give the freighter a long look as they traveled away from it. When she had first decided to find it and refurbish it for the trip to Perun, she hadn’t liked the idea. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with the
Nomad
. But flying it this last week had stirred up old memories, memories of more than learning of her mother’s death. There had been memories of the past and of good times growing up in the ship, of going on adventures with her mother and of meeting interesting people and seeing interesting places.

As her captors passed another ship and the
Nomad
disappeared from sight, Alisa felt a twinge of distress that had nothing to do with her injuries. She was afraid she wouldn’t see the freighter again, and that disturbed her more than she would have expected.

As they traveled through the vast mining vessel, Alisa tried to note their route so she could find her way back later. Unfortunately, she did not have the best view as she flopped about on her captor’s shoulder, her pain renewed as the armor banged against her injuries. But she had a sense of massive rows of mining equipment, of an indoor smelter with robots processing metals, and of huge storage rooms of unprocessed ore. Now and then, flying robots zipped overhead on some errand or another.

They seemed to walk a half a mile before they reached corridors filled with what she assumed were crew quarters and the main living areas. All she saw were pirates and more pirates wearing all manner of scruffy clothing with all manner of weapons hanging from their belts. Many of them had scalps dangling from those belts, even boys who could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen. Alisa wondered if Malik truly meant to spare her people’s lives long enough for them to reach some slave auction. And how insane was it that such a fate sounded like an improvement over their current situation? Slaves. What a crazy notion. Slavery had always been outlawed in the empire. She couldn’t even imagine life toiling for someone else with no freedom to be found.

But it was life, and if she was kept alive long enough to be sold, she could find a way to escape. One way or another, she would make it back to her daughter. Of course, she would prefer to do it with her ship and to escape sooner rather than later.

Her captors turned into a narrow corridor with old-fashioned iron bars lining the fronts of a dozen cells. Still dangling from a man’s shoulder, Alisa glimpsed unfamiliar people packed into almost all of them. Most had contusions, scrapes, and other signs of injury. Some of the women were naked. Her gut twisted with unease as she remembered how the one pirate had shown an undue interest in her ass.

A pirate stopped in front of one cell and leaned a garishly beaded earstar toward a reader while others moved to cover him with rifles. The chip in the wall chatted with the chip in his personal device, and the iron bars slid up into the ceiling. Alisa found herself dumped inside, her wounds protesting anew and eliciting a gasp of pain. She rolled to a stop in front of a familiar gray robe as the bars slid back shut. The pirates left without a word.

Alejandro helped her to sit up.

“I’m afraid I can’t say I’m happy to see you here, Captain,” Mica said—she sat against the wall, her knees drawn up and her arms hugged around them.

“Not happy to see you two here, either.” Alisa started to scoot toward a wall as Beck and Yumi were ushered in behind her—she needed something to lean against for support.

Alejandro stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Captain, I must ask.” He glanced toward the bars, but the pirates had already shuffled away. He also glanced toward a corner of the ceiling where a dark round smudge might have been a camera. Or a squashed spider. “I must ask,” he whispered, “did they loot the ship?”

“Mica’s ruse fooled them,” Alisa said. “They left in a hurry.”

He slumped back against the wall.

“None of our equipment was scrounged as far as I saw,” she said, “but the
Nomad
is stuck in their docking bay, I’m afraid. Oh, and I watched the video footage when I was trying to figure out where you all went. They did steal our duffel bags, probably stuffed in whatever looked valuable in our rooms. Which wasn’t much in my…” She trailed off, the horrified expression on Alejandro’s face making her stop.

He lurched to his feet, almost tumbling over her in his agitation. “Shit, shit,
shit
.”

He paced to the wall, slapped it, and pushed off and paced in the other direction. There was only room in the tight space for four steps. A handful of gaunt, bearded men in the cell opposite from them watched him with hollow eyes.

“Is he allowed to swear when he’s wearing that robe?” Mica asked.

“I don’t fully know the rules,” Alisa said, watching his agitated pacing. She supposed this was not the time to ask him to look at her punctures and gashes. They didn’t have a first-aid kit, anyway.

Alejandro gripped his hair, then shoved his fingers through it with both hands as he turned again. He muttered furiously to himself, and Alisa only caught snatches, “…get caught up in this… a fool… shouldn’t have trusted… fail. Failure. Can’t fail.”

Alisa did not know what to say, or if she should say anything. She already felt guilty for getting everyone involved in this. Oh, Leonidas was truly the one to blame, but she had known they would be taking a detour when she invited her passengers on. And she hadn’t been up front with them. She had waited until they were underway to announce that the
Nomad
would be heading out to the T-Belt. And now this. If they didn’t find a way off this ship, the time lost for the detour would be the least of their problems.

“Where’s our cyborg?” Mica asked as Alejandro continued to pace.

“Communing with his own kind,” Alisa said. She looked at Yumi, half expecting her to lose her composure the way Alejandro was. At the least, Alisa expected one of her passengers to curse at her and make accusations. She surely deserved them.

But Yumi had found a corner of the cell and was sitting cross-legged, her eyes closed as she practiced some breathing exercise. Interesting time to meditate.