Abelardus and Yumi arrived together, trailed by two chickens that Alisa couldn’t remember seeing before. A third, a chubby gold one, squawked contentedly in Yumi’s arms.
“I didn’t know you would bring an entourage,” Alisa said, waving them into NavCom. It was going to get tight in here, especially if the chickens stuck around.
“We were in the middle of a discussion with the chickens,” Yumi said.
“A discussion with them or about them?”
Yumi smiled. “Some of both. They’ve been providing excellent droppings for the compost I make for my plants and mushrooms, but I was thinking of increasing the sources from whence I get my organic matter, to promote biodiversity and perhaps improve fruit, vegetable, and mushroom production.”
“And Abelardus was a part of that conversation?” Alisa asked, finding it hard to imagine that he cared about the chicken poop, but she had said we.
“It was a one-sided conversation. The chickens aren’t an interest for me.” Abelardus eyed the one in Yumi’s arms. “Even though they follow me and pluck at my robe.”
He frowned down since one was showing an interest in his hem as he spoke. Alisa spotted Leonidas and Beck walking up, both clad in their armor, helmets under their arms, and waved for them to come in.
“In regard to diversity,” Yumi said, “I was asking the chickens if they would mind a few ducks or geese sharing their cargo hold.”
“Uh, don’t ducks and geese need ponds?” Alisa asked.
“Not technically, but they would thrive with a pond. Captain, have you considered adding an aquaponics system?”
“Absolutely not,” Alisa said, getting a gist of where this was going. She didn’t want to talk about ponds now, or ever, but especially not when there were imperials to worry about.
“Tommy has informed me that he has some amazing sauces for grilled fish,” Yumi said.
“He has amazing sauces for everything.”
“Why, thank you, Captain.” Beck offered a salute as he squeezed past Abelardus and into NavCom.
The chickens, alarmed by all the combat boots going by, squawked and raced down the corridor. The one in Yumi’s arms flapped her wings, insisting on being released too. Unfortunately, at the intersection, they turned toward the lav instead of toward their coop in the cargo hold where they belonged.
“Looks crowded up there,” came Mica’s voice from the corridor. “Are you sure you need me?”
Mica still sounded tired, and Alisa regretted waking her up, since it had only been six hours since she finished her repairs, but if they were about to get into a fight with an imperial ship, she needed her engineer awake and in engineering.
“We always need you,” Alisa said.
“So comforting to be indispensable.”
Abelardus moved so Mica could come inside, but she stopped outside the hatchway instead of trying to wedge her way inside. Perhaps wise, since she wore pajamas and socks. She might have the same worries about being stepped on as the chickens.
“There’s an imperial ship waiting at this asteroid,” Alisa said, pointing to the sensor panel.
Yumi pulled down the seat there and slid in for a look.
“Just one so far,” Alisa said, “but there may be others. Yumi, can you scan the asteroid for signs of life?” Such as her daughter… “Or, if we’re not close enough for that, let me know if there are any empty spaces inside that might represent a base.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Also watch for more ships,” Leonidas said.
“Hoping to get a ride home?” Abelardus asked him.
Leonidas’s eyes narrowed.
“With your imperial buddies,” Abelardus said. “Didn’t they send you messages a few days ago? Rude of you not to answer.” He smirked, and Alisa had no trouble imagining him saying something else. Silently.
Leonidas’s expression never changed, his eyes boring into Abelardus’s. “Do not intrude upon my thoughts.”
“I figured you’d be more cheerful once your penis worked, cyborg. This is disappointing, I must say. Are you at least cheerful with Alisa?”
“If you two are going to break into a fight, will you warn me first?” Mica said. “I don’t want anyone stepping on my feet.”
“There won’t be any fighting,” Alisa said. “There’s no time for it. That imperial ship—”
“Is heading this way,” Yumi broke in, sending an alarmed look at Alisa.
“Damn, I knew they’d see us.” Alisa turned in her seat, reaching for the thruster controls. There was no point in staying back now. Should she comm the imperials? Try to talk her way out of a confrontation? Try to wheedle information out of them? “Yumi, the asteroid? Is there anything inside?”
Alisa flew toward it instead of in the other direction. It wasn’t as if she could outrun an imperial warship. She might as well give Yumi a closer look. She did pick a route that would keep the hulking asteroid—the thing had to be over a hundred kilometers in diameter—between her freighter and the imperial ship for as long as possible.
“I’m reading a hollowed out area near one pole,” Yumi said. “If you get closer, we may be able to see if there are any people inside.”
“On it,” Alisa said.
“Why did you call us all up here?” Abelardus asked. “To watch you fly? Or were you hoping a sexy Starseer would dither with the minds of the people watching the sensors over there?”
“If Young-hee is available for that, I would love it.”
“I’ll let her know you’d like us to work on it,” he said dryly.
“Thank you. As to the rest, I called you all up here to apprise you of the situation and ask for opinions on how to get in to check the asteroid without the imperials noticing. It may be too late for that.”
“We won’t be a match for a warship in battle,” Leonidas said, “even with our upgrades.”
“If you’re referring to your little e-cannons,” Mica said, “those hardly count as true upgrades.”
“My cannons aren’t little. Ostberg blew up a ship with them.”
“I’m not sure it’s appropriate for you to let youths handle your weaponry.”
Leonidas looked at Alisa. “Innuendo?”
“Innuendo.” She nodded without taking her focus from the controls. The warship was following the Nomad around the asteroid, and gaining ground. “Ostberg can handle the weapons all he wants if he can halt our enemies with them. I recall that ship blowing up spectacularly, and its shields coming down at just the right moment for that to happen.”
“Starseers have some handy tricks,” Beck said. “Are Leonidas and I going to have to fight a bunch of imperial soldiers if we get boarded? And if so, what if there are cyborgs in red armor? How will I be able to tell him apart from the rest of the imperials?”
“I have a bigger cannon,” Leonidas said, so deadpan that Alisa didn’t quite know what he was talking about. Then he smiled slightly and met her eyes. “Did I do it right?”
“The innuendo?”
“Yeah.”
“It was good,” Alisa said, though she was more interested in finding an opening to the interior of the asteroid than fostering Leonidas’s sexual education. She was also somewhat shocked that he’d made a joke with battle impending. Maybe he was getting excited at the prospect of hurling people across the cargo hold. He did have that special gleam in his eyes, but she couldn’t tell if it had to do with combat eagerness or pride over his joke.
“Uh.” Beck scratched his head. “I wasn’t planning to pull off people’s armor to check cannons.”
“The last I heard, Senator Bondarenko hasn’t hired any cyborgs,” Leonidas said. “There won’t be any red armor. Just the usual black.”
Alisa’s route took them to the dark side of the asteroid, no influence from any of the system’s suns brightening the pockmarked surface. She flew low so the Nomad could skim above close enough for the lights to shine on the rock.
“I’m moderately reassured,” Beck
said. “How many soldiers in combat armor will they have on that boat? My company usually avoided picking fights with imperial warships when I was in the Alliance.”
“A few hundred soldiers,” Leonidas said.
“My reassurance just unassured itself.”
“Did that make sense?” Mica asked.
“I know what I meant.”
“There’s an opening,” Alisa blurted, pointing to a spot much darker and deeper than the rest of the asteroid. They were near one of the poles, just as Yumi had said.
“The sensors show power coming from inside,” Yumi said. “I can’t tell if it’s from a base or a spaceship. It’s another ore-dense asteroid, and all that rock is blocking my scans.”
Alisa imagined an armada of imperial ships waiting inside to capture them. Or blow them up.
“Look,” Yumi said, as the Nomad flew closer. She pointed at a dark figure in combat armor arrowing toward the opening. “There’s someone going inside. A person, not a ship.”
“Several someones,” Abelardus said, assuming his distant, concentration-expression, the one he’d apparently perfected in front of a mirror. “Most have already gone in. I count twelve people in spacesuits or armor. They have propulsion, and they’re going toward the back of a hollowed-out chamber in there.”
“Are we going in after them?” Beck asked.
Alisa glanced at the sensors. The warship was gaining fast. Should she fly away and hope they didn’t follow? If they had dropped off people, wouldn’t the ship stick close to the asteroid? But if there was a chance Jelena was in there, Alisa couldn’t leave her to be found and possibly taken away by the imperials.
“Can you tell if there are any ships in there, Abelardus?” she asked. If soldiers were floating into the asteroid with only their armor on, that implied they hadn’t been able to get a ride closer in. As she had a better look at the hole, she realized it wasn’t that large. It would be a tight fit for the Nomad, and that warship definitely couldn’t fit through.
“A shuttle, I think,” Abelardus said, “but nothing bigger.”
Alisa’s breath caught. “Is anyone in the shuttle?”
“No. But I believe there are people deeper in the asteroid. I’ll try to get in touch with them if we get closer.” He tapped his temple.
“Then the answer is yes, Beck, we’re going in,” Alisa said.
• • • • •
As Alisa lined up the Nomad with the hole so she could fly straight in, the warship appeared on the rear camera, coming around the curve of the asteroid’s body. She raised the shields and made the approach faster than was wise. A jagged entrance that appeared natural rather than manmade, the hole was barely large enough for her freighter.
The Nomad’s lights shone into a dark chamber inside, glinting off something metallic at the far end.
“There are airlocks back there,” Yumi said, her face to the sensor panel.
“Is the shuttle attached to one?” Alisa asked.
“It is. And another one is open. I think that’s where the soldiers are— The warship’s firing,” she blurted.
A torpedo slammed into the back half of the Nomad, exploding against the shields. Thanks to Mica’s repairs, they were back at full power, and they held, but the ship trembled under the heavy blow. An alarm flashed on the control panel, a warning about the abrupt energy drain.
“I better get down to engineering,” Mica grumbled. “I expect this ride will only get bumpier.”
Busy navigating through the hole, which turned into a short, narrow tunnel before opening up into a hollowed-out chamber, Alisa did not say anything. The sides of the Nomad’s thruster housings nearly scraped the walls, but they made it through. The warship wouldn’t be able to fire again unless it lined its torpedo launcher up with the hole. Just in case the weapons officer planned to do just that, Alisa took her ship off to one side as she glided through the chamber.
“There,” she said, as they sailed along near the wall. “Unless they have energy-seeking torpedoes, they won’t be able to hit us. We’re out of line-of-sight.”
Leonidas looked at her. “They likely do have energy seekers.”
“Oh.”
“But their own people are in here.” He pointed toward a flashlight beam ahead of them, the dark shape of a man in combat armor just visible at the source. The soldier looked to be the last of the group, using a jet pack to navigate toward an open airlock hatch ahead of him. Another man in black combat armor leaned out of that open hatchway, waving for his comrade to hurry up. “The warship shouldn’t risk firing,” Leonidas added.
“There’s the shuttle,” Yumi said, pointing off to their port side.
Alisa adjusted the exterior cameras. Aside from the ship’s running lights and that soldier’s flashlight beam, the chamber was utterly dark, making it tough to see anything.
Just as Alisa was having that thought, illumination flooded the area, and she jumped in her seat. Her first thought was that someone had turned on the lights, but it was coming from the tunnel. The imperial ship must have moved right up to the mouth, shining a powerful search beam inside.
“Like a dog with its nose in a rabbit hole,” Abelardus said.
“We may be safe while we’re in here, but it’ll be difficult to escape,” Yumi said, her eyes concerned when they met Alisa’s.
“We’re not worrying about escaping right now.” Alisa toggled the view screen to display the side camera feed, the one pointing at the shuttle, which, thanks to the sun-like imperial search beam, was now in sight. “That looks like the shuttles that were in the station,” she said. It reminded her of the sleek Darts she’d first encountered back at the temple on Arkadius, with a similar ice-like hull.
“It is,” Abelardus said.
Alisa looked at Leonidas and found him gazing back, the significance of the moment not lost on him. They might finally have caught up with the children. He nodded solemnly at her.
“Bravo Six,” Alisa said over the comm. “Can you come to NavCom?”
The last soldier made it through the airlock, and his light disappeared inside. A moment later, the hatch swung shut.
“I guess they’re not inviting us to follow them in,” Alisa said. “Quite rude.”
Not that she wanted to run into them. She planned to dock at one of the other airlocks—there were four open in addition to the one the soldiers had used—in the hope that they came out in different places inside.
“They are imperials,” Abelardus said.
One of Leonidas’s eyebrows twitched upward.
“Will you be able to fight them?” Alisa asked him quietly.
“I hope to talk to them first and find out what they want.”
“They want to blow us up,” Abelardus said. “Perhaps you felt that torpedo striking us.”
“They don’t know who we are,” Leonidas said.
“Are you sure about that?” Alisa asked. “My freighter has grown rather infamous of late.”
“On Arkadius.”
“We also had a little trouble on Perun, as you’ll recall. And the imperials saw us at Sepiron Station too.”
Leonidas hesitated. “I still want to talk to them before opening fire.”
“Or, maybe we can avoid them altogether, find the children first, and get out without ever exchanging a word.”
“What about them?” Abelardus asked, pointing toward the blocked exit.
“I’ll sic Ostberg on the warship,” Alisa said.
“If he’s our secret weapon, I’m concerned.”
Alisa guided the Nomad toward an open airlock, careful to avoid traveling through the warship’s line of sight. She snugged them up adjacent to the shuttle, stealing several glances at it as she docked, wondering how long it had been there and how long Jelena and the others had been inside the base. Did they have adequate supplies? Were the children scared and tired of being chased and having to move every week?
“How can I assist you, Lady Captain?” Bravo Six asked, poking
his head through the hatchway. A coil of cable hung from one of his shoulders, so Alisa assumed Mica had put him to work on repairs somewhere.
“I have two requests,” Alisa said. “First, can you tell me if that’s the shuttle that the children and your scientist left the station in?” Having seen it on that video footage, she believed it was, but she hadn’t caught a name on the hull, and she wanted to make sure.
“Yes, it is,” Bravo Six said after a glance.
Delight thrummed through her. Finally, finally.
“Second, can you familiarize yourself with the Star Nomad’s flight manuals? It’s a Nebula Rambler 880.” She tapped the controls, and the first manual came up on the monitor. “I would like you to be the backup pilot. I’m going onto the base, and—”
“What?” Leonidas asked sharply.
“I’m going with you and Beck, and I’d like Bravo Six to be able to fly the ship away if need be. Six, Mica will be in command, and she’ll let you know if you need to leave.” Such as if more imperial ships showed up, ships small enough to fly into the chamber, and they fired at the Nomad.
“Yes, Lady Captain,” Bravo Six said, the words barely audible, since Leonidas was speaking over him.
“There’s no reason for you to go in there,” he said. “Abelardus said there are twenty soldiers. There could be more, multiple squadrons. Avoiding them won’t be practical if the base is small, and they’re going to the same place we are.”
“I’m going in,” Alisa said, half-standing as she finished the docking procedure. She would have to hurry to her cabin and change into her armor. She did not want to delay since those soldiers had a head start. She imagined the Starseer adults had some means of defending themselves, but if the warship had unloaded squadrons of men, that might not be easy. Further, those soldiers must know they would be facing Starseers. They had probably brought some tricks to deploy.
“Alisa.” Leonidas gripped her shoulder, and she sensed that he wanted to push her back down into her seat, but he didn’t use his strength against her. “Beck, Abelardus, and I will go in and get the children. We’re trained to deal with soldiers, and your combat training still needs—”