Perilous Hunt

  “You missed a spot,” Alejandro said, pointing.

  “I’m coming back to it.”

  He made a disapproving noise. Technically, he was supposed to be welding, too, but there hadn’t been a second mask, and he’d refused to risk an injury, so he was advising. Alisa kept hoping someone would trip, skin an elbow, and need his services in sickbay. She was amazed there hadn’t been injuries during the battle, especially when she had learned that a fire had broken out in engineering.

  “You’re not very good at welding in straight lines,” Alejandro observed.

  “I can’t draw straight lines either. You’re welcome to take my spot if you think you can do better.”

  “I can, but it may behoove you to master this, since your ship frequently gets into trouble and I won’t always be here.”

  “Darn.” Alisa wished she were out on the hull of the ship with Leonidas and Beck, certain their repair-related discussions would be less irksome. Now that she had combat armor, she could go on exterior repair missions if need be, but Mica had said two people would be enough. “Weren’t you and Tiang working on a project together?” she asked. “Maybe he needs your input now.”

  “He needed my tools, not my input. I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing, just that he believes it could help with retrieving the staff.”

  “Ah.” Alisa would prefer it if Tiang went back to the Alliance, so they would stop pestering her. He could work on staff-retrieval projects on one of their lovely warships.

  Bravo Six strode out of engineering, carrying an atmospheric pressure reader and a box of panels. Alisa felt a guilty twinge for putting him to work on her ship, even if Mica, feeling less guilty, had been the one to assign him tasks. He was supposed to belong to the Starseers, not Alisa or the Nomad. But they had yet to find his scientist boss, and the Starseers aboard her ship had not shown any interest in utilizing him or getting to know him. Maybe they saw androids the way they saw mundanes, as lesser beings.

  Bravo Six swung toward Alisa on his way to whatever task Mica had given him. “Greetings, Lady Captain,” he said.

  “Greetings, Six.”

  Looking into his face, specifically at his missing eye, aroused more feelings of guilt.

  “You should suggest to Mica that you would enjoy getting a new eye,” she added.

  “One eye is sufficient for me,” he informed her. “Unlike with humans, both android eyes are capable of gauging depth perception and a range of other metrics independently. I also have sensor cells in my skin that can analyze much of the environmental data that humans assess visually.”

  “Handy. But for aesthetic purposes, it might be nice if you had both eyes again.”

  “You do not find me aesthetically pleasing, Lady Captain?”

  Alejandro’s eyebrows lifted.

  “You’re fine, Six,” Alisa said, imagining the commentary she might get later. “Can I help you with something?”

  “I came to see if you require my assistance with anything,” he informed her. “Performing repairs engages only a minimal percentage of my processing core. I used to run figures for my scientists while performing manual tasks around the station.”

  “I see.” Alisa couldn’t think of any tasks she needed processed, and almost said so, but then she decided it might be helpful to get another eye—or processing core—on her main problem. “Yes, I could use help. Ask Yumi for the data on the asteroids when you get a chance. We’re looking for a hidden base where the Starseers may have fled. Your scientists might be there too,” she said, extending her hand, feeling she should offer him some incentive for doing the work. “You could be reunited with them and go back to doing important research.”

  “That would be most gratifying.”

  “Yumi has a big list of asteroids that are physically capable of holding a base, but I’m hoping to narrow the field further. For example, which asteroids are free enough of surrounding clutter that ships of various sizes might approach? Which ones were used in the past for mining and might already have had tunnels hollowed out when the Starseers started looking for a base? Which would be easily defendable, perhaps due to a location within the core of the belt? Does that make sense?”

  “Indeed, yes, Lady Captain. I believe I can add a few more parameters too. I will contact Yumi and begin sifting through the data.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.”

  Bravo Six strode away, soft music notes drifting behind him. Alisa blinked. Was that android humming?

  “Are you still planning to look for the staff after you find your daughter?” Alejandro asked, not paying attention to Bravo Six’s departure. Instead, he looked toward one of the Starseers coming down the stairs.

  Durant.

  “I told Abelardus I would,” Alisa said.

  “He said that,” Alejandro said, shifting his attention back to her, “but I was skeptical if you would keep your word to him.”

  Alisa scowled at him. “Why does it matter? You still think you’re going to have a chance to steal it away when all these Starseers are around? I’m sure they think it should be returned to their people.”

  “It will be returned to their people. To one of them.”

  “Thorian? From what I’ve heard, the kid is more interested in Zizblocks than super weapons.”

  “For now,” Alejandro murmured.

  “At the rate things are going, we’ll be lucky to get out of this asteroid belt so we can look for the staff in the next five years.”

  “You do seem to be courting delays.”

  “I’m not courting anything,” Alisa snapped.

  “No? You’ve spent more time trying to fix Leonidas’s problems than you have hunting for your daughter.”

  “That’s not true at all. It’s just that he’s here and I could try to fix his problems. I’m helpless to do anything for Jelena, or even find her, damn it.” She took a deep breath, refusing to let him rile her. She wasn’t going to cry. And she wasn’t going to punch him. Even though both options sounded appealing at the moment.

  “Perhaps you subconsciously wish to avoid meeting your daughter again.”

  “Of course I don’t. What a ridiculous thing to say.” Alisa lowered her mask, turned her back to him, and started welding again.

  “Do you not fear that she will resent you for your long absence? That she won’t understand why you were gone? That she’ll feel betrayed? Or perhaps that the Starseers have influenced how she feels about you?”

  “No,” Alisa growled, turning up the welding torch. Why would he say such things? Certainly, she had those fears, along with worrying that Jelena would believe what Alisa often believed, that a good mother never would have left for so long. But she wasn’t intentionally delaying because of that. It was the universe that was conspiring against her and throwing obstacles in her path.

  “I would hate to think you’d allow your obsession with Leonidas’s functionality to get in the way of being a responsible mother.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Alisa growled, turning her torch toward him and thinking about burning off the bottom half of his robe, “but that wasn’t an obsession. And it was about far more than functionality. And even if I was overly preoccupied by it, he’s fixed now, and I’m still finding ways to get us in trouble and delayed.” She growled again. That hadn’t come out nearly as articulately as she had imagined.

  Durant paused at the bottom of the stairs, looking toward engineering—Abelardus was saying something about flowcharts. Alisa assumed Durant would head over to join his brother, but he walked in their direction.

  “Your patient needs you,” Alisa said, turning her back on both of them and hoping Alejandro was the reason for Durant’s approach. She didn’t want to talk to either of them.

  She welded the rest of the seam, though she could feel the men’s eyes upon her.

  “What?” she finally asked, turning around to scowl at both of them.

  “Do you think I’m well enough to speak with her?” Durant
asked Alejandro.

  “I doubt it,” Alejandro said. “I’m not.”

  “And yet you’re here pestering me,” Alisa said.

  “Perhaps Admiral Tiang needs my assistance, after all.” Alejandro headed for the walkway.

  “Doubtful,” Alisa muttered.

  Alisa narrowed her eyes at Durant, wondering if Alejandro had left because he thought Durant would say something to piss her off. Thus far, he had never addressed her, and he’d usually ducked his head when passing her in the corridors.

  “Captain Marchenko,” Durant said, folding his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his robe. He had little of his brother about him, seeming far more sedate and far less cocky than Abelardus. Alisa would have guessed him the older of the two, if Abelardus hadn’t said otherwise. His hair was also a lot shorter, though it had grown bushy during the weeks he had been aboard the ship. Apparently, a coma couldn’t keep good hair follicles down.

  “Can I help you, Durant?” she asked politely, though she still had urges to throttle him. Maybe he had come to apologize for kidnapping Jelena and explain what possibly could have motivated him to take her from her legal guardian and a family member.

  “You are still loyal to the Alliance,” Durant said with a frown.

  “More or less.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not happy with them for chasing me all over the system and not realizing what a loyal and wholesome veteran I am.”

  He squinted at her, as if he were peering into her mind. Maybe he was. Alisa thought about playing her old trick of thinking of Leonidas naked to thwart telepathic Starseers from knowing her thoughts. Now that she had seen all of his bits and pieces, if not at the same time, she could form a particularly thorough image.

  “You are still loyal to the Alliance,” Durant said, nodding. “Despite a fascination with imperial cyborgs.”

  “Just one.”

  “The empire will rise again.”

  “Sure it will. I quake in my new combat boots every time I see their massive fleet of three ships roaming around this asteroid field, hopelessly clueless and behind in the staff search.”

  “Senator Bondarenko’s meager forces do not represent the true empire. There are powerful mundanes and powerful Starseers who have hidden away the necessary resources to fuel the regrowth of the empire when the time comes, when the system grows frustrated by the Alliance’s pathetic inability to bring law and safety to the people of the system.”

  “Was there something in my eyes—” Alisa pointed to her unamused face with the welding torch, “—that suggested your delusions would be of interest to me?”

  “You would be wise to join the imperial loyalists now.”

  “I’d ask if you’d hit your head recently, but I suppose there’s no need.”

  “A child should be with her mother.”

  Alisa’s grip tightened on the torch handle. She had been on the verge of turning her back on him again, but he had her full attention now.

  “Of course she should. Why would you—”

  “You are not fit to raise a Starseer child, since you are powerless and would have no common ground with the girl.”

  “I have all kinds of common ground with her. I know her favorite cartoons, her favorite candy, that she loves climbing and horses, and that she had trouble with fractions. She loves chocolate, giant planetpots, and glazed doughnuts, and we’ve made all of those things together. We have lots of common ground.”

  “She’s improved at math.”

  Alisa had been about to list more of their common interests, but she faltered. “What?”

  “Fractions. They don’t trouble her much anymore. She’s precocious and just needs good tutors.”

  Heat rushed to Alisa’s cheeks at the implication that she hadn’t been teaching her daughter well enough. But could she truly object? When she had been gone for so much of the last four years? They had done homework a few times during their sys-net chats, but she had usually left that to Jonah, whose passion had always been more history and the arts than math.

  “You could be a part of her life if you were a part of our cause and accepted that your daughter will one day be a Starseer and loyal to the empire,” Durant said.

  “Could be a part of…” Her grip tightened even more around the torch, and Durant glanced at it. Yes, she would like to club him with the tool. “I will be a part of her life. She’s coming back to live with me on the Star Nomad. She’s certainly not going anywhere with you. What utter gall you had to take her from her aunt in the first place. You must have looked up her family when you looked her up, and you had to know I was alive. That I would come back for her.”

  “I knew no such thing. You had been out of her life for years, fighting in some abysmal and pointless war that never should have been. Her father was dead, and you were on the other side of the system.”

  “So you thought she was yours to take?” Alisa yelled, almost screaming. Mica leaned out of engineering. Alisa didn’t care.

  “You must see that it’s better for her to be raised by her own kind,” Durant said, patting the air placatingly. Condescendingly.

  “Her own kind? She’s not a wolf cub you found in the forest. I am her kind.”

  “No. You are a grub.”

  “Fuck you.”

  She shoved the welding tool at his chest, not sure whether she was handing the chore off to him or just wanted to hit him with something. He lifted his hands defensively and stumbled back. The tool clanked to the deck.

  Alisa stalked toward the stairs, but paused at the bottom to glare back at him and say, “Your arrogant hairy ass better walk off my ship the next time we stop somewhere, or I’ll space you while you’re sleeping.”

  Durant’s eyebrows twitched, but he did not reply.

  Good. She’d had enough of him.

  As she took the stairs three at a time, she glimpsed Abelardus leaning out of engineering beside Mica.

  Bet you didn’t realize I was the charming brother, he spoke into her mind.

  Fuck you too.

  She was so damned tired of Starseers. She wished all of her robed passengers would disappear.

  I’m not loyal to the empire, he said more soberly. I wouldn’t try to take your daughter from you.

  No, you just want to give me another one.

  Yes, but I’ve realized that is unlikely.

  Congratulations on finding a clue. She strode through the mess hall and toward her cabin, hoping that when she clanged the hatch shut, he would take the hint and stay out of her mind. That they all would.

  Chapter 16

  Alisa lay on her bunk, replaying the conversation with Durant and wishing she’d said far more clever things during it. She wasn’t sure if it was ten minutes or an hour later when someone knocked at her hatch. She was still furious with Durant and regretted that she hadn’t done a lot more than shove that tool at his chest. He deserved a punch to the nose. Or a kick to the balls. Assuming that arrogant kidnapper had any.

  “Who is it?” she asked, having a very short list of people she was willing to see, even though she admitted she was being childish. Her ship needed repairs, and she ought to be out there helping with them, not pouting while Mica handled everything herself.

  “Leonidas,” came the muffled reply.

  “Come in.”

  He was on the list. Always.

  The hatch opened, and Leonidas poked his head inside. He was in his armor, save for his helmet, which was tucked under his arm. She winced, reminded that others had been out working on repairs while she seethed in her cabin.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly, almost warily. Maybe he thought the wince had been for him.

  “I just need a hug,” she said, forcing a smile.

  She rolled out of bed and met him in the middle of the cabin, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and promptly wishing he wasn’t wearing all of his gear. He returned the hug with his free arm, wrapping it loosely around
her waist.

  “You didn’t mention that Stanislav didn’t make it,” he said quietly.

  No, when she had visited him in his cabin, she’d had other things on her mind.

  “I know,” was all she said, not sure she wanted to talk about it now. Or about anything. She just wanted to be held by someone who cared. By him.

  “Are you done on the outside of the ship?” she asked. “Can you change into something more cuddly?”

  “Cuddly?”

  “Yes, like clothes. Or un-clothes. I can’t even tell if you’re excited to see me when you’re wearing all that.” Alisa wriggled her eyebrows at him, though she didn’t know if he would understand the innuendo.

  His lips thinned in what might have been a wry expression. “I’m excited most of the time now. I’m not sure if I should see Tiang about that or not. I remember this from being a teenager, of course, but it seems like a man of my years shouldn’t be… stimulated so often.”

  “Maybe your libido is making up for being locked up for so long.” She looked down, though as she had pointed out, the featureless red armor hid everything. Would it be too soon to suggest that perhaps he should find an outlet to let off any pent-up steam? The suns knew she could use an outlet for letting off steam. “I imagine it’ll mellow a bit with time,” she offered, since he appeared more distressed than pleased.

  “Maybe so. It’s a little frustrating when you’re encased in armor and can’t do anything about it.” He shifted his hips and made a face.

  “Nothing at all? My armor has a lot of interesting features.”

  She was only teasing him—the only thing the armor did down there was offer a hookup so she could pee if needed—but from the way his brow furrowed, he seemed to be puzzling over whether it was possible.

  “The features in imperial cyborg armor all have to do with war,” Leonidas said. “It’s likely the designers knew there was no use for anything else.”