Relic of Sorrows: Fallen Empire, Book 4 (21 page)

She also worried that seeing Leonidas armed would send Tomich’s men reaching for their triggers. He had only given her a flat look when she’d suggested that he might find different attire more comfortable for dining. She had no idea if he intended to eat. If the scents of barbecuing meat and spices wafting into the cargo hold delighted his taste buds, he gave no indication of it.

Another clang sounded, followed by a knock. Alisa almost laughed. That had to be Tomich.

She started forward, but Leonidas stuck his hand out to stop her and strode toward the hatch. She went with him, determined that her unarmored face be the first thing that the soldiers would see.

The inner hatch already stood open, and she tried to slip past Leonidas to enter the airlock chamber so she could unlock the outer one.

“Alisa,” he said softly, again stopping her with a hand out. “You can’t assume that past relationships will play a role here. He will have his orders. This may be a trap. Like all the others, he may simply want the orb.”

“If that’s the case, you can shoot him just as easily from over there—” Alisa pointed to a spot three feet behind her, “—as you can from here.” She pointed at the floor of the airlock chamber.

“You would be in the way of my fire,” he said stubbornly. “And in the way of theirs. They could easily grab you.”

“I appreciate your concern, but as the captain of this ship, I insist on greeting visitors personally. I’m afraid that if they see you first, there will be a scuffle. Or an all out war. And my cargo hold can’t handle another battle.” She waved to indicate the patches on the walls and the destroyed stairs—the mangled remains had been shoved under the walkway, and an improvised rope ladder hung in its place for now. “If you’re going to work for me, you’ll have to accept me as the captain and take orders. That’s how it works. Chain of command and all that. I trust you’re familiar with the concept.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.

He frowned. She waited for him to point out that he hadn’t taken the job yet, or for him to simply scoff at the idea of taking orders from a lowly freighter captain. Instead, with his face grave, he stepped back. He didn’t step back as far as the spot she had pointed at, but he did give her the space to open the hatch first.

The knock came again. Alisa turned and, with snakes slithering about in her stomach, pressed the hatch release button. Even though she wanted to trust Tomich, a part of her worried that Leonidas was right, that the Alliance soldiers might snatch her, take over her ship, and take anything they wanted.

The hatch opened, and Commander Tomich stood there, looking dapper in his uniform, a bottle held in one hand and the other pointedly held away from the blazer pistol holstered on his belt. He grinned at her, a roguish grin that always made him look closer to twenty than to forty and that won many ladies to his bed. Not that she’d ever been one of them. He was notorious for pursuing higher-ranking women. She wondered who he was luring to his bed these days. Leonidas’s Admiral Tiang had sounded male.

“It’s good to see you, Alisa,” Tomich said, though his grin faltered when his gaze shifted toward Leonidas. “It is so odd seeing you with a cyborg standing at your back.”

“I’d say it’s odd seeing you with a bottle of alcohol in your hand, but we both know it’s not.”

The grin returned, if slightly more forced now. “No, it’s not. Though I don’t usually imbibe during duty hours. Our superiors frown upon that, as you may remember. This is for you.” He thrust the bottle of clear liquid toward her with both hands. “A dinner gift.”

“Thank you.” Alisa accepted it, relieved he had brought sake instead of weapons. “Is this the part where I invite you in to enjoy the luxuries of my humble ship?”

She peered past his shoulder. Several young soldiers in combat armor were lined up behind him, though nobody was pointing a weapon in her direction. A couple of older officers waited at the far end of the airlock. The admiral and the science officer, she presumed.

“Luxuries?” Tomich looked at the patched walls. “You have luxuries here?”

“We have good food, if nothing else.”

“That would be a welcome reprieve from our cook’s rehydrated offerings.”

Alisa turned to lead Tomich and his people into her cargo hold. Having all of those armored soldiers striding after her made her uneasy, but she felt better knowing that Tomich was between them and her. Leonidas stuck close, never straying more than a couple of feet from her side.

When the soldiers strode out of the airlock, they spread out, looking all over, presumably hunting for threats to their admiral. Every one of them gave Abelardus a long look, an even longer look than Leonidas received.

“Didn’t you say a
few
soldiers?” Alisa asked, watching more than she expected enter the hold. “That looks more like twenty or thirty to me.”

“Does it? Huh.”

She propped a fist on her hip.

“Admiral Moreau only agreed to let Admiral Tiang come over if he came with a suitable guard,” Tomich said.

“Moreau wasn’t worried about you having a guard? Or your science officer?”

“Not really.” He grinned again. “Tiang has a brilliant mind. He’s not expendable.”

“What does he do with his brilliant mind?” Alisa hadn’t gotten much out of Leonidas when she had asked how he knew the doctor. He’d simply said he had been briefly involved in the military’s cybernetics research division.

“Whatever he wants. He’s published groundbreaking articles in thirteen different fields.” Tomich waved toward the walkway as the last of his troops filtered in. “Nice ladder.”

“The ship you drove away caught us in a grab beam and spewed drones, tanks, and androids in our direction.”

“Its commander wanted the key, I presume?”

“You seem to know more about that now than the last time we met,” Alisa said.

“I’ve been briefed.” He looked down at her. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, watching the soldiers stalking about, waving their weapons.

Tomich bumped her arm with the back of his hand. “If I give you a hug, will your bodyguard punt me across the room?”

Alisa looked up at Leonidas, but his faceplate was turned toward the soldiers, his hand resting on his rifle as he watched them.

“Probably not,” Alisa said, “as long as you keep your pistol in your holster while you do it.”

His grin was more of a leer this time. “That’s a hard thing to do when talking to a pretty girl.”

She swatted his arm, aware of Leonidas’s faceplate turning toward them.

“You say things like that, and I’ll tell Commander Kristia that your eyes are roaming,” Alisa said.

“Alas, Commander Kristia and I are no more. I’ve got my eye on Admiral Fukusaku now.”

“You don’t have
another
admiral out here, do you?”

“No, she’s back on Arkadius.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixty, but she’s very fit for her age.” Tomich winked at her.

A throat cleared in the airlock tube. The two other officers had come forward, the white-haired one with medical insignia on his collar frowning slightly as he regarded Alisa and Tomich. Admiral Tiang, she presumed. He had dark, sharp almond-shaped eyes, and Alisa fought the urge to squirm. She almost saluted before remembering that she was a civilian now. The science officer wore captain’s rank pins and appeared to be about fifty, a dark-skinned woman with wiry black hair shorn close to her head, and a perky yellow and orange earstar hooked over her helix. It was displaying a compact holodisplay in front of her eyes, data scrolling, and she only looked at Alisa briefly before returning focus to the display. Perhaps she was receiving updates about the energy anomaly that Yumi had noticed.

“Admiral,” Tomich said, “this is Captain Marchenko. She was one of our fighter pilots during the war.”

“Yes.” Tiang’s gaze passed over her with indifference before scanning the rest of the cargo hold and settling on Leonidas.

Leonidas lifted his hands to his helmet and unfastened it. A few of the soldiers who had been keeping an eye on him fingered their weapons uneasily, but nobody pointed one at him.

When Leonidas’s helmet came off, the admiral nodded to himself, as if he expected nothing less. Tomich’s mouth opened, surprise flickering in his eyes. Alisa was surprised too. She had assumed Leonidas would remain fully armored in the presence of the Alliance soldiers.

“Dr. Tiang,” Leonidas said.

“Colonel Adler. I heard you were over here. It is good to see you.”

Leonidas inclined his head. “I should like to speak with you if you can make time this evening, sir.”

What was this? Leonidas hadn’t mentioned pulling aside admirals for private chats.

“I—if there’s time, certainly.” Despite his cordial greeting, Tiang appeared slightly uncomfortable under Leonidas’s gaze. It was far from one of his worst gazes. Leonidas almost appeared affable, which Alisa found strange. Shouldn’t he be irked that such a high-ranking imperial officer had gone over to the other side?

“Good.” Leonidas inclined his head once.

“Something smells tasty, Alisa,” Tomich said. “Is that the dinner you promised?”

“Yes, follow me.”

Alisa led the officers to the ladder, lamenting the awkward way that they had to get to the upper portion of the ship. Mica was toiling away in engineering, making more permanent solutions for those patches. Alas, stairs weren’t high on the repairs priority list.

Alisa?
Abelardus spoke into her mind as she led the procession up the ladder.

She almost missed a rung and fell.
What?

I can’t read the admiral’s thoughts.

Alisa wished Abelardus had that problem when it came to her.
Is that highly unusual, or does it happen sometimes?

It happens sometimes, but I also can’t read the commander’s thoughts. I believe they may have taken some drug to inhibit me. There are a few things like that out there.

Yes, Alisa remembered Yumi saying that she had something in her cabin that would befuddle telepathic Starseers.

You get anything from the rest of them? The soldiers?
Alisa climbed onto the walkway and waited for her guests to join her.

Nothing duplicitous
, Abelardus said.
They believe they’re here to guard their officers during this dinner.

It could be that Tomich and Tiang didn’t want you to be able to learn about the anomaly and what the Alliance has been researching out here.

Once again, Alisa wished she hadn’t warned Tomich that she had a Starseer onboard. If she hadn’t, they wouldn’t have thought to take precautions, and Abelardus would now have free rein to surf through their thoughts and discover all manner of secret information. As much as she hated it when he was in her head, she had to admit that it was useful to have an ally with such powers.

Of course it is
, he said smugly.
As to the rest, I suspect you’re right, but you may want to watch them carefully, see if your simple intuition might be useful in detecting treachery.

My simple intuition and I will do so.

Tomich brushed his hands off after he climbed onto the walkway and came to stand next to her. “Your ship took a lot of damage, didn’t it?”

“I wasn’t lying when I said we need time for repairs,” Alisa said.

“I’ll do my best to see that you get it.” Tomich glanced at his admiral and stepped away from her.

Leonidas jumped up to join them without using the ladder. The damaged walkway shivered as he landed on it. A few of the soldiers below started, fingering their weapons. Alisa waved for the officers to follow her, not wanting to test how much weight the damaged walkway could withstand, not until Mica had time to look at it.

More than a dozen of the soldiers scrambled up the ladder after their officers. A few took Leonidas’s route, eschewing the wobbly rope and using the extra power from their combat armor to jump the twelve feet. The looks they gave him seemed to hold a challenge, as if they were pointing out that they, too, could do inhuman feats, at least while in their armor.

“Evening, Captain,” Beck said, saluting her with tongs when she walked into the mess hall. He wore his apron, but a sheathed dagger and a blazer pistol hung from his belt underneath it.

As her guests filed in, Alisa did her best not to cringe at the mismatched and dented cups and plates set at the table. They were clean but that was the highest accolade she could give them. As with everything else on the
Nomad
, upgrades were needed. She imagined the admiral being accustomed to lavish dinners on flagships, both imperial and Alliance, with dedicated mess soldiers scurrying about, keeping crystal wineglasses full.

Yumi must have been recruited for this service because she walked about the table, filling the cups with tea. Alisa almost wished she had suggested that Yumi put something more potent into people’s beverages, something that might make tongues flap freely and put people at ease. She hoped the officers wouldn’t invite any of the soldiers to dine with them. There were only ten plates, those representing the extent of the
Nomad’s
tableware collection. She also was not sure how the benches would stand up under the weight of armored butts.

Four jars of some kind of liquid—sauce?—with homemade labels sat in the center of the table amid platters of food. Two were a normal-looking reddish color. One was green, and one was blue. Alisa could already imagine the admiral regarding the blue with skepticism. Hopefully, Tomich was not thinking of poisonings.

“Come on in, everyone,” Beck said, waving his tongs in invitation, appearing as casual as always, though Alisa had come to know him well enough to recognize nervousness in the pinch of his brows. He licked his lips and glanced at her when the admiral walked in. “Sit anywhere,” he offered. “We’ve got Arkadian sausage, Senekda short ribs, beans, and slaw. Pan-grilled cornbread with jakloff butter and honey too.”

As far as Alisa had noticed, Beck cooked everything on the grill if he could. The
Nomad
had an oven, and it usually worked with minimal fiddling and prodding, but he did not feel a dish was complete unless it claimed some char marks.