Star Nomad (Fallen Empire, Book 1)

  Chapter 17

  Alisa jerked the gun up, pointing it at the door as it slid aside. Leonidas stood there. Alone.

  Not certain what their relationship was now, she did not lower the weapon. He had removed his combat armor and wore the clothes he’d worn on the Nomad, the partial uniform with the jacket that proclaimed him a member of the Cyborg Corps. The leader of them, she reminded herself. Or at least he had been at one point during the war.

  Leonidas glanced at the gun, but then looked to her neck and her torn shirt, the blood spattered on it. His gaze shifted toward Bruiser, then back to her.

  “Good.” He nodded. “I thought I would once again be too late to protect you—I don’t have free rein here.”

  Leonidas glanced up and down the corridor before taking a step inside. He arched an eyebrow at the gun. He was close enough that he could have used his enhanced speed to rip it from her hand before she could fire, but he didn’t move anything except the eyebrow.

  Alisa lowered the weapon. “You weren’t too late last time.”

  “Just unforgivably tardy?”

  “Not unforgivably so.” She managed a wan smile, though her whole body hurt. She might not know if they had a relationship or not, but she knew she was glad he was the one standing here, rather than Malik. “Besides, I didn’t think that promise of protection extended past our excursion to the research station.”

  “You’re always supposed to protect people when you’re in combat armor and they’re not.”

  “You’re not in combat armor now.”

  He grunted softly. “Yeah, I am.” He lifted a hand toward her, as if to check her injuries or offer support, but lowered it without touching her. “Are you all right?”

  No, she wanted to curl up in her bunk on her ship far, far away from any pirates. And for the first time in a long time, she wished her mother would be there to take care of her, as she had been when Alisa had been a child. She would have also been pleased to have Jonah there to take care of her. Why had all of the people who could take care of her left her?

  “I’m fine,” was all she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Why did you tell them I had a clue about the orb?”

  “I needed a chance to talk to you.”

  “Been pining away in the absence of my company, eh?” Alisa backed up to the table. Relaxing probably was not a good idea, but she needed a second to gather her wits and recover her strength, so she laid the gun down and sat in a chair.

  “Your humor is still intact,” Leonidas said.

  “You’re supposed to sound more approving when you make observations like that.”

  “Ah.”

  Leonidas walked to the table and paused, again lifting his hand like he meant to pat her shoulder or maybe say something reassuring. She must look awful to elicit such feelings from him. He didn’t seem to know if she wanted to be touched, though, because he ended up lowering his hand once more. He pulled over another chair, sitting on the edge and turning it so he faced her and also the door.

  “Is the orb the doctor’s?” he asked.

  Alisa shot him a wary look. It crossed her mind that Malik might have sent him in to pretend to be a friend and get the answers from her that way. Maybe Malik had known Bruiser would fail.

  “I really don’t know,” she said.

  “Ah,” he repeated, a hint of sadness in his blue eyes. Sadness that she didn’t trust him? Well, could he blame her? When he sat there in that uniform and when he had, as far as she could tell, joined forces with Sublime Commander Malik? “Let’s get to what I wanted to talk to you about then.” He leaned forward, draping his forearms across his thighs. They were just as meaty as Malik’s. There must be a rule against scrawny cyborgs. “If I can arrange for the gates to open on the cells in the brig, do you think you can make your way to your ship? And will you take the other prisoners with you? Drop them off someplace safe along your way?”

  He looked in her eyes, and she sensed that the request meant a lot to him. For some reason, it stung that he was more concerned about getting people he had never met to safety than her. It wasn’t as if she had ever given him a reason to care, but she wished he wanted first and foremost for her and her crew to get out safely.

  “If I can get out of here, I will absolutely take everyone I can with me,” Alisa said, pushing aside her silly feelings. She might have to steal some food and water to sustain those people until they got to civilization, but Alejandro already wanted her to go on a trek to find his orb—which Malik was apparently carting around with him—so what was one more stop?

  “Good.”

  “What about you? You’re staying here?”

  “I’m going back to the station with Malik to do a more thorough search. He also seems excited about hunting a few bears.”

  “So, you’re buddies now, eh?”

  “He was in the Cyborg Corps,” Leonidas said, as if that made everything fine.

  “He’s a creep.” Alisa pointed at the dead pirate. “He set that up to happen.”

  Leonidas frowned as he looked at the body.

  “Not the killing part,” she said, realizing she might not have been clear. “The raping part.”

  He flinched at the word. Good. She thought of Alejandro’s claim that Leonidas was an honorable man. Honorable men shouldn’t work with creeps.

  “I’m sure it’s not any consolation, but I doubt he cares one way or another about that.”

  “Oh, he cares. He likes seeing people hurt. You can see it in his eyes. He enjoys the hells out of being better than human.” Alisa couldn’t keep herself from scowling at him. She did not want to alienate her only ally on this station, but she could not help it. She had to make sure he knew. Maybe Malik and Leonidas hadn’t worked together that much in the past, and he truly didn’t know. Or maybe he had just never seen it because he had been the commander and not the victim.

  “You may be right,” Leonidas said slowly, his gaze still toward Bruiser’s corpse. “But we have a common purpose at the moment. Besides—” his eyes shifted back toward her, “—I’m not welcome on your ship. There’s nowhere else for me to go.”

  Was that why he had agreed to work with Malik? He didn’t think she would willingly take him with her to Perun? Yes, she might have been thinking of leaving him on that station, but that had been before he’d saved her life from an overgrown bear with bad breath, and before she had come to realize the same thing that Alejandro had said, that even if he had been the enemy, he was an honorable man.

  “Shit, Leo, I’ll gladly welcome you back onto my ship if it means you’re not going to combine forces with Malik and set yourself up as some pirate overlord. I’ll even grab Beck and go help you kill the bears on that station so you can root around for whatever you want to find. You know he wants a chance at taking down another left rear haunch.”

  He snorted.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Remark on the inappropriateness of my humor.”

  “Actually, I was thinking that it’s impressive that you’ve managed to retain it after all this.” He glanced at her torn shirt, then sighed and stood up. “You have my word that I will not become a pirate overlord. But he wants me to be his guide down there—he doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Besides, if I take him down there, he won’t be here.” He spread his hand toward her.

  “Meaning we’ll only have to deal with normal human pirate obstacles during our escape?”

  Leonidas inclined his head once. For some reason, she had the sense that he was sacrificing himself for her crew—and to get those people out of here. Maybe sacrifice was an overstatement. It wasn’t as if he was helpless. Still, if all of the future slaves escaped imprisonment while Malik was down on the station, and if Malik found out that Leonidas had been responsible…

  Alisa frowned deeply. Maybe he was sacrificing himself for them.

  Someone banged on the door, and she leaped from her seat. She cursed under
her breath. Bruiser’s body was off to the side, but it definitely was not hidden.

  “Bruiser?” a man called from the other side of the door. “You done yet? Commander said to take the prisoner back to her cell.”

  “Stand there,” Leonidas whispered, pointing to a spot that might block the view of the body from the doorway, then he headed over to answer the call.

  “Leonidas?” Alisa asked.

  He paused in front of the door and looked at her. She wanted to thank him or to apologize for calling him a mech. Or both. There didn’t seem to be time to express what she wanted to say, though, especially since she would no doubt trip over her tongue doing it.

  “Malik was wrong about what he said in my cargo hold. You could get a human woman to care about you. If you wanted to.”

  He inclined his head once more, then opened the door.

  The pirate outside saw him and jerked back in surprise.

  “It’s Sublime Commander,” Leonidas corrected, his voice cold, so different from what Alisa had just heard from him.

  “Ye—yes, sir. Is the, uhh, prisoner here?” The pirate glanced past his shoulder and toward Alisa.

  She hoped he would not think to ask where Bruiser had gone.

  “Take her.” Leonidas waved Alisa forward as he shifted his position to take over blocking the view of the body.

  “This way, woman,” the pirate said, making his voice gruff. As if he hadn’t just been knocking his knees together at Leonidas’s unexpected appearance.

  Alisa walked into the corridor without making trouble. She looked back at Leonidas, noting the grimness of his face and wishing she had found a way to apologize and thank him, after all. Then the door slid shut, and she lost her opportunity.

  Wondering if she would ever see him again, Alisa let the pirate push her through the corridors. There were other men about, perhaps getting ready for the trip down to the station, or she might have tried to get away from her guard. But she was injured, and he kept his rifle pointed squarely between her shoulder blades, not giving her any opportunities to take advantage. He was far more professional than Bruiser and did not leer at her, nor did he look like a leer from her would do anything for him.

  Soon, she was pushed back into the short corridor that held the jail cells. She counted all of the faces she passed—their numbers mattered more now that she had agreed to take them all with her.

  She was still counting when her cell came into sight, and she frowned when the count came up short. Beck lay on the floor in the back, sleeping or unconscious, and Alejandro sat near him, a hand on his chest. Mica and Yumi were gone.