Relic of Sorrows: Fallen Empire, Book 4 (8 page)

“All right, so these are the genes of a crazy person who’s somewhat resistant to radiation,” Alisa murmured.

She dug her netdisc out of her pocket and took a picture. Next, she poked around on the machine until she found where Alejandro had inserted a sample on a small tray. She slid the tray out and started toward the sink but realized he might want to look at it again. Instead, she hunted through the paraphernalia strewn across the counter until she found an eyedropper and another tray. She didn’t see anything she could use to prick her own skin and settled for pulling out her multitool. The laser knife would simply cauterize, but there were a couple of small physical blades tucked into the tool. She washed the small knife and her finger in the sink and also found some sanitizer to use. Since she did not truly know what she was doing, she hoped she could take a sample without contaminating it with all manner of outside bacteria. With her luck, she would end up sequencing the DNA of some microbe that hung out under fingernails.

Once she pricked herself and dropped a sample into a fresh tray, she paused. This probably wouldn’t work without Alejandro’s help, which she did not want to ask for, but what if it did? Did she truly want to find out that she had the same mutant genes as Abelardus and all those asteroid kissers in that temple who had looked down their noses at regular humans and cyborgs?

No, these were the same mutant genes that
Jelena
had, she told herself. Her daughter. And Jonah had possessed them. Yumi had them too. Perfectly normal people. Besides, as she had told Abelardus, it wasn’t as if it would change anything about her. It was too late for her to manifest any weird talents. All it would mean was that if she had more children, she could pass the genes along, and
they
could manifest weird talents.

“Lucky them,” she said and shoved the tray into the machine.

It beeped indignantly, and she thought she had done something wrong, but it locked down on the tray, and she could not pull it back out again. The display on the screen changed. Red, green, yellow, and blue squiggles scrolled past on an axis with the letters they represented underneath.

Alisa shifted from foot to foot, waiting impatiently, and reminded herself that this had taken years when they had first started doing it back on Old Earth. Since she hadn’t tinkered with the settings, she had no idea if the machine was doing all of her DNA or only looking for Starseer mutations. She was on the verge of going to find something to eat when it beeped, and the word
complete
flashed on the screen. A readout similar to the one that had been on it before filled the screen. Mutations were highlighted. She brought up the holodisplay on her netdisc, the picture she had taken floating in the air. The mutations were the same.

For a long minute, Alisa merely stared at the displays, the reality slowly sinking in.

“Congratulations, Alisa,” she finally said. “You’re a freak.”

She snorted at herself.

“What’s new? Nothing.”

She removed the tray, washed away her blood, put everything back where she had found it, and walked out of sickbay.

Chapter 5

Mica was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat in NavCom when Alisa woke from her nap and walked in to check on their flight. It hadn’t been a particularly restful nap, thanks to several trips to the lav. She might have Starseer blood, but apparently, that could not save her from the side effects of Alejandro’s potions.

Fortunately, Mica did not look as pale as she had before. The mess on the deck had been cleaned up.

“Anything interesting happening up here?” Alisa waved at the view screen as she slid into her seat.

“Just looking at the stars and wondering if my hair is going to fall out.”

“Would you miss it much?” Alisa looked at Mica’s short, tousled locks. “It’s not like you brush it or spend any time primping it.”

Mica gave her a sour look. “I still like to
have
some. Gives my partners something to grab onto in bed.”

Alisa grimaced. “Mine just gets in the way in bed. Someone’s usually lying on it or accidentally trapping it under a hand or arm.” Maybe short hair would be easier.

“Someone? Nobody specific?”

“Jonah.”

“I thought you might have experimented with others.”

“Well,
before
him I did.”

“And since?”

“Of course not. It wouldn’t be—it hasn’t been long enough.” Alisa looked toward the stars and pointedly did not think about Leonidas. “I still miss him a lot.”

“Ah.”

Alisa tried to decide if there was skepticism in that short noise. Her words were not untrue, but she had been so busy since she got out of the hospital that she hadn’t thought of him as much as she should have. She wished there had been more time to spend with Sylvia, time to go out to the farm to see the rest of Jonah’s family, and time to truly say goodbye. After she found Jelena, perhaps they could do those things. Or hold a memorial of their own.

That thought made her reach for the comm controls. She wanted to know if Abelardus had sent messages to his brother, or if he was lying, telling her what she wanted to hear. After all, why would he care about Jelena? He was here for the orb and the staff, the same as the rest of the galaxy.

Mica looked at her hand, and Alisa hesitated. She usually reserved eavesdropping and snooping for when she was alone. Oh well. Mica knew she wasn’t a paragon of virtue.

She pulled up a list of all the outgoing comm messages from the last week, the headers of everything everyone had sent since the ship left Arkadius. Most people encrypted their communications, or had mail services that did it automatically, but she could see the side of the videos and messages that had been recorded here, before they were encrypted and sent, since they had to be boosted through the
Nomad’s
transmitter. She wouldn’t necessarily get the other side of the message, but they hadn’t had real-time communication since they had moved away from the core worlds, so any recent messages would be one-way, regardless. Besides, all she needed to see was one side of Abelardus’s message to know if he had commed his brother.

“You’re reading people’s mail?” Mica asked as Alisa skimmed through the accounts.

“Not everyone’s.”

Alisa glanced at the hatch to make sure nobody had a nose pressed to the window, then selected the messages on Abelardus’s account.

“Good, because mine is private. I don’t want people knowing about the smutty romances I order.”

“Do engineers watch romances that don’t involve tools and machinery?”

“Who says mine don’t?”

Alisa waved her fingers in a semblance of a salute. “I wasn’t looking at your vid collection or opening your messages, though I did notice a lot of mail going out to engineering firms and exploratory mining operations. Résumés?”

“Résumés. I need to get out of here before I get irradiated.”

“I’m wounded that you’re so determined to leave. Once we get rid of our artifact hunters, life would be normal again. Just me helping Jelena with her schooling while cargo sits in the hold as we carry it from moon to planet to station.”

“Will that schooling involve teaching her how to hurl cyborgs against the wall?”

Alisa grimaced. “I hope not. But she probably will need to learn about her new talents. Maybe I can hire her a Starseer tutor. An innocuous one.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Yumi’s sister seemed decent. Maybe she would like to have adventures in space for a while and teach Jelena the fine art of not being an ass.”

“Adventures? See, I knew you had more planned than simple cargo hauling.”

“Don’t you think you would be bored at a job that didn’t have at least some adventure?” Alisa ignored several messages that Abelardus had sent to Lady Naidoo, though she might watch them later. It
would
be good to know if Abelardus or the other Starseers had been alerting people to the coordinates they were heading out to explore. “After all, your time in the army couldn’t have been that sedate. I know we had excitement on the
Silver Striker
.”

“The fighter pilots had excitement. The engineers sat inside the heavily shielded warship and waited for the wrecked remnants of that excitement to come in for repairs.”

“Hm.”

Alisa spotted the name Durant Shepherd in one of Abelardus’s earlier messages, and her heart seemed to thud harder in her chest. She glanced at the hatch again as she pulled it up. She did not know why she bothered to check it. Abelardus would find out later that she had been spying. The next time he surfed through her thoughts, he would pluck out the information. She wouldn’t feel bad about it either. He spied on her thoughts, so she could spy on his mail. It was only fair.

Abelardus’s face appeared on the small monitor nestled into the console. Alisa did not tie in her netdisc to get a holodisplay this time. This would be harder for someone looking through the window behind them to see.

“I wonder what kinds of vids he orders,” Mica said.

“If it’s romances involving tools and engines, would you fall in love?”

“I might fall into his bed. He’s pretty.”

“I thought muscular men weren’t your type.”

“I can make an exception if they’re pretty. Look at those cheekbones. And that perfect skin. And all that hair. Plenty to grab onto.” Mica offered a wicked grin.

“Uh huh.” Alisa imagined sex with
two
people with long hair and wagered it would involve even more hair getting caught under body parts. “You’re going to make Yumi jealous if you drool openly on him.”

“Sadly, I keep seeing Yumi chatting with Beck. I think he’s winning her over with his cooking.”

“Maybe you should show some interest in her hobbies.”

“I tried meditating with her. It was boring.”

“What about the chickens? Do you like animals? Birds?”

“Absolutely. They taste excellent.”

“Maybe the mushrooms and whatever else she’s growing in her cabin. Have you gone in to take a look?” Alisa hit play on the message, interrupting the conversation.

“Durant,” Abelardus said—the recording date was seven days earlier, the day they had taken off from Arkadius. “Have you been kidnapping little girls? Naidoo is concerned for your soul, and the mother wants her kid back. Let me know what you’re doing out there and if you’re still on Cleon. Your last message was cryptic. Mom’s worried about you. Out.”

Alisa dropped her chin to her fist. She had almost expected to find that Abelardus either hadn’t commed his brother or hadn’t inquired about Jelena. That he had actually done what he’d said he had done left her feeling nonplussed. Maybe because she preferred thinking of him as a jerk and being irritated with him. This did not necessarily make him less of a jerk, but it left her less irritated with him.

“He has a mother, huh?” Mica asked. “I suppose that’s usually how it works, but with some people, it’s hard to imagine them having parents. Like your cyborg. You kind of just imagine that he was always this killing machine, and that’s how it was.”

Since Alisa now knew Leonidas’s story and how he had signed up for the cyborg program to help his mother, she had no trouble imagining him as a young man or even a boy, before he had become a “killing machine.” She kept the thought to herself. If Leonidas wanted other people to know about his past, he could tell them.

“There aren’t any return messages,” Alisa said, disappointed.

She might not have been able to listen to them, but it would have been nice to know that Durant was in communication with Abelardus. He—and Jelena—would seem closer then, more attainable. The implication that Durant was missing and that his family did not know why worried her.

Another message flashed into existence at the top of her queue. According to the time stamp, it had just been sent. She did not hesitate to open it.

“Durant,” Abelardus said, his face appearing on the monitor again, “talk to me. Are you getting my messages? Are you in trouble, or just ignoring me? Look, we need to talk. I won’t judge you for backing the imperials and not giving up on them, even when they’ve been smashed. There’s some interesting stuff going on. People are hunting for the Staff of Lore, and it looks like someone might actually find it this time. I’ll give you more details if you give
me
some details on what you’re up to. Why’d you take that girl on Perun? I’m on the ship with the mother—did I mention that? I just found out she has Starseer genes. I suppose that stands to reason, if the girl’s got them, but she thought they only came from the father. The girl might have a lot of potential with two parents of Kirian descent—you know how rare it is for offspring to come out of those unions. But maybe you already knew that, eh? When you picked that girl? What are your plans? The mother could be a part of them. That would be the right thing to do. Though you might have to brainwash her into going along with whatever your plans are, especially if they have to do with the empire. Damn it, Durant, I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re missing out by not answering my messages.”

Abelardus signed off, his face disappearing and the display returning to a list of messages. Alisa sat back in her chair, digesting the information—and shivering inside at the idea of some Starseer wanting to brainwash her. She already knew they could do that in the short term, such as to suggest that flying up to visit an enemy ship was a good idea, but could they make brainwashing stick long-term? Did she want to know?

“I think he likes you,” Mica said.

“What?” Alisa had forgotten she was there.

“Usually, when men talk about doing the right thing for a woman, they mean doing the thing that’s going to allow them to jump into her bed.”

Alisa turned off the display, leaving the other messages for later snooping. “You seem to have sex on your mind a lot.”

“It’s been months since I got any. What can I say? I’m horny.”

Months. It had been more than a year since Alisa had been home on leave and seen Jonah in the flesh. If she had known that would be the last time she ever saw him… She rubbed her eyes, thinking of the last night they had spent together. She wished she had realized how special it was and enjoyed it more, appreciated him more. She wished she had
told
him how much she appreciated him.