Fallen Empire Books 1-3

  Leonidas removed his hand and sat in the co-pilot’s seat. She was just thinking that it would be nice to have some company for a while when the proximity alarm went off again.

  “Now what?” she groaned. “I do not have enough chocolate on board to deal with all of these hassles.”

  The tug was still following them, but it had fallen behind, so that wasn’t the source of the alarm.

  “If you had a crate of chocolate, would that be enough?”

  She snorted, wondering if he would be willing to bribe her with chocolate if she avoided the Alliance ships that were after him all the way to Arkadius.

  Not one but three large blips appeared on the radar. They flew out from behind the moon, as the salvage ship had done earlier. These weren’t slow, bulky vessels, and Alisa groaned again as she recognized them. Alliance warships.

  “No,” she whispered. “Not even a crate would be enough.”

  Chapter 15

  Leonidas saw the warships and immediately headed for the hatchway.

  “Any chance you’re going to get me chocolate?” Alisa asked, scanning the space around them, wishing a comet or a rogue band of meteors would stray into range so she would have something to hide behind, someplace to run from those ships. But the green moon was the only body nearby, and the Alliance warships, coming from that direction, would easily intercept her. The featureless sphere held few hiding spots, anyway, and she doubted the domed moon stations would invite her to dock.

  “I’m getting my combat armor,” Leonidas said, his voice grim.

  “Leonidas.” Alisa turned toward him. “Even if I had weapons, I couldn’t… I can’t get in a fight with Alliance warships.”

  It was cheeky of them to all show up this close to Perun and that orbit full of imperial warships, but there they were, nevertheless.

  “I’m not asking you to. They want me alive. They’ll have to come get me.” A fiercely defiant expression crossed his face before he ducked out of view, jogging to his cabin.

  The comm flashed, and Alisa sighed. Was there any point in answering? It was probably Commander Bennington again, prepared to be smug now that her backup had arrived.

  It flashed relentlessly as the warships closed, no question as to their destination. Like the tug, they were on an intercept course with the Star Nomad.

  Feeling cranky, Alisa swatted the button. “What?”

  “What?” an amused male voice on the other line asked. “Is that really how you answer the comm now that you’re a civilian, Marchenko?”

  Alisa gaped at the console. The man’s voice was familiar, as was the way he had said her name, but it took her a few seconds to place it. “Captain Tomich?”

  “It’s Commander Tomich now. There were lots of promotions after the war ended and the temporaries mustered out. Look at what I got.”

  Alisa linked the comm signal with the ship it had come from, the Viper-class warship in the lead. She was a beauty, newer and bigger than the two trailing it, though any one of those ships could have pulverized the Nomad in seconds.

  “Not that you’re smug about it,” Alisa said.

  “Not at all,” Tomich said, a familiar grin in his voice. It had been two years since they had served together—he had been her squadron leader when she’d been assigned to the Merciless. He was practically the one who had taught her that snark was expected from military pilots, not that she hadn’t already had a knack for it.

  “I can’t believe they gave you a ship that big. You could barely land your cobra without scraping the paint off on the hangar bay doors.”

  “This ship has bumpers.”

  Alisa snorted.

  “So, are you truly a greedy little smuggler these days,” Tomich asked, quoting Bennington, “or are you in an awkward situation?”

  “Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe my week,” Alisa replied before she had fully parsed the nuances of the question. She realized he might be asking if she was a prisoner on her own ship, with Leonidas being the one in charge.

  “I see,” he said, annoyance replacing the smile in his voice.

  He was not, she sensed, annoyed at her. It pleased her that Tomich thought well enough of her to assume she was not a traitor, but it didn’t necessarily change anything for her. Well, it might if she was willing to sit back and let them board and take Leonidas. If she did, they might let her go on her way after that. But it would be intolerable to hand him over to the army, even if it was her army, to be interrogated for who knew what reasons. What did he know that they wanted to know? It had to be information that they sought or they wouldn’t care if he was turned in alive or dead. That warrant specifically said he had to be brought in alive for the reward.

  “Is he there with you now?” Tomich asked quietly.

  Alisa leaned out of her seat so she could see through the hatchway. The short corridor was empty.

  “He’s… around,” she said. She would not say that Leonidas was putting on his combat armor, though it probably didn’t matter. Surely Tomich would expect that.

  “Is the boy with you?”

  “Boy?” She was sure the puzzlement came through in her tone. All she could think of was Alejandro, but the retired surgeon was surely not a boy.

  “I’ll take that for a no.” Tomich sighed. “Unfortunate.”

  “I’ll pretend I know what you’re talking about, so we can move on to the more personally pertinent part of this conversation. Is there any chance I’m going to get out of this alive?”

  “The Alliance has no quarrel with you or your… I’ll be generous and call that a freighter. Is it hard to fly that after a Striker?”

  “Is this really the time for you to be mocking my ship?”

  “No, perhaps not.” Tomich lowered his voice to a whisper. “Lay low, Alisa. Stay out of the way, and don’t let yourself get turned into a meat shield. We have to get him.”

  She dropped her face into her hand, feeling utterly helpless. She highly doubted Leonidas would use her as a shield, so that wasn’t her concern. Sitting here and doing nothing and letting them take him was. But what choice did she have? Even now, with the Nomad cruising away from the moon at top speed, the other ships were closing on her, moving to flank her. There was nowhere to run.

  And as much as she had come to like Leonidas, a selfish part of her admitted that her life would become much, much simpler if the Alliance simply took Leonidas and Alejandro and the orb off her hands. It wasn’t as if they had paid her to protect them. All they had paid for was fare. Granted, she would feel a little bad if she kept their money after they’d been hauled off by the army less than two hours after taking off, but again, what choice did she have?

  “None,” she muttered.

  “Pardon?” Tomich asked.

  “I’ll do my best to cooperate,” she told him.

  “Just keep yourself from getting hurt. I have a lot of young twitchy infantry boys with big guns that I’m sending over there.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t do more.” He sounded like he meant it. “The tug is coming to lock onto you and keep you in place, so you don’t fly off. I remember your skills well.”

  “You needn’t worry about them. There’s no place to hide, and this freighter doesn’t have any weapons.”

  “Doesn’t it? You should have retrofitted it. I don’t think the Alliance is going to be as anal when it comes to civilians with weapons, especially when we don’t yet have the people and resources to patrol the entire system.”

  “I wasn’t planning to have such controversial passengers. I’m a freighter, Tomich. A freighter. There are chickens in the cargo hold.”

  “We’ll try not to disturb them.”

  Sure, they would sleep right through the blazer bolts zipping over their feathered heads.

  Disgusted with the entire situation, Alisa closed the comm. She turned in her seat and found Leonidas standing in the hatchway, his crimson armor gleaming, everything except his helmet
on.

  “Meat shield?” He sniffed. “Cyborgs do not hide behind civilians.”

  “What about behind other cyborgs?”

  “That’s slightly more acceptable. I don’t suppose you have any on board?” He smiled at her. Out of all of the emotions she would have expected from him in his present situation, amusement was not one of them.

  “No, and I think my tendency toward inappropriate humor is rubbing off on you.”

  “You may be right. That’s disconcerting.” He smiled again.

  Three suns, he wasn’t looking forward to going into battle against those young twitchy infantry boys, was he? Alisa didn’t think she had ever seen him in such a good mood.

  But why not? Those Alliance soldiers were enemies to him. He probably enjoyed the idea of taking out as many of them as he could. After all, they had destroyed his empire.

  They were not enemies for her, though. The thought of this confrontation horrified her. She could not expect him to let them take him without a fight, but with the way he fought, he would likely take out twenty of their people before they managed to subdue him, especially since they wanted him alive. If she had a doctor who was on her side, she could have asked him to come up with a concoction to knock Leonidas out, as the tug commander had implied they had. But her gut twisted at the idea of doing that to Leonidas, even if she could. She didn’t want to hand him over. She wanted to go on her way, find Jelena, hire Leonidas to work for her, and proceed to live a normal life.

  White flashed on the view screen, and the Nomad shuddered. The tug’s grab beam wrapped around them. The warships had caught up, too, and fenced them in, one in front, one behind, and one to the side. With the tug on the other side, she felt like a lion in a cage in a zoo.

  “I’ll wait at the airlock and charge onto their ship if I can,” Leonidas said. “I suggest you call the rest of your people up here and lock the hatch. The soldiers shouldn’t have a reason to harass the rest of you. Most of you.” He looked down, checking the battery pack on the blazer rifle slung over his chest. “I know you must have thought about handing Dr. Dominguez over, too, but since they haven’t inquired about him and the artifact, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t volunteer anything about him. Of course, I can’t stop you if you do.” He inclined his head and turned toward the hatchway.

  “No, damn it.”

  Leonidas looked back, his eyebrows raised.

  “Stay right there. Let me think a second. This is ludicrous. There has to be an alternative.”

  “We’re clearly trapped.” He waved toward the view screen full of ships. “But once they have me, they should leave your ship alone.”

  “I’m not worried about my ship. Those are my people you’re about to blast into. I don’t want them killed. And you’re my passenger. You paid your fare. I don’t want you killed, either.”

  “There’s no alternative,” he said softly, holding her gaze with his.

  Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought she read regret in that gaze. Despite his eagerness to leap into battle, maybe he regretted that he had to go out this way. Maybe he even wished he could stay on the Nomad and accept her offer of employment.

  “Sure, that’s it,” she muttered with a snort.

  “What?” Leonidas asked, even though he had probably heard her.

  “We’re making an alternative.” Alisa hit the internal comm button. “Stay,” she told Leonidas, pointing at the deck as if commanding a dog.

  His eyebrows twitched.

  “Mica, you keeping abreast of the situation?” Alisa asked.

  “I have a porthole down here.”

  “I’ll take that for a yes. How familiar are you with that tug over there?”

  “It’s an IM-7 Digger-class salvage tug with the imperial numbers filed off and Alliance paint covering the hull. It has improved power systems over the IM-6, with twin Z-drive 3619C engines that have a towing capacity of over 100,000 tons.”

  “So, you’re vaguely familiar with it.”

  Maybe she, like the gangly young boy Alisa had met on Perun, had a model of it.

  “Vaguely,” Mica agreed.

  “If you got aboard it, would you know how to break the grab beam?”

  “I can break anything on any ship.”

  “How is it that employers weren’t storming our hatch, trying to get you on their team? All right, good. Get whatever tools you need and meet us at the airlock.”

  “The airlock that’s already getting a tube and clamps extended toward it?” Mica asked.

  Alisa winced. “Yes, hurry. Leonidas?”

  “Yes?” he asked warily.

  “I need you to talk pretty to Alejandro. Tell him to get on the horn and call those imperial ships we passed on the way out of orbit. Tell him to let them know that his orb is about to fall into Alliance hands, so they might want to come out here and make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I don’t care. Do it anyway. Go. Shoo, shoo.” She waved her hands at him, then turned back to her console. She doubted Tomich would tell his people to bother her ship, but she would lock down the controls so nobody but she could access them.

  “You really want those imperial ships to come over here?” came Mica’s voice from the corridor. She stepped past Leonidas as he was going the other way. “You’re not trying to start another war, are you?”

  “No, but we need some chaos if we’re going to have any chance of escaping. There are three other ships out there with grab beams. Didn’t I tell you to meet me at the airlock?” Alisa added, her hands flying over the controls.

  “I got ready more quickly than you.” Mica patted her satchel, but looked over her shoulder. “You sure this is worth it? Does the Alliance care about us, or do they just want the doctor?”

  “Leonidas.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They want Leonidas. Remember that warrant?”

  “I remember him being a colonel in the army that spent four years trying to blast us out of the sky and, oh, a lifetime oppressing us so that we lived in fear of spitting.”

  “You’re not going to get pessimistic on me, are you?”

  “Of course not. What’s there to be pessimistic about?” Mica waved at the various camera displays, all of them full of warships. “I’m just saying that maybe we should give him—both of them—to our people.”

  A clank sounded against the hull. The ship shivered, and Alisa imagined giant talons wrapping about the hull, grasping it tightly to the tug’s side.

  She finished and pushed away from the controls. “They paid their fare. We’re not giving anybody to anyone.”

  Mica grabbed her before she could head through the hatchway. “Alisa, don’t be ridiculous. If we openly side with them, the Alliance won’t forgive us. I don’t want my family suffering for the choices I make here. I already spent four years worrying about that during the war.”

  “We’re not openly siding with them,” Alisa said. “We’ll be…”

  “My prisoners,” Leonidas said, returning to NavCom.

  They turned together to look at him. He had donned his helmet, and one of his hands rested on the blazer rifle strapped to his torso. As it always did, seeing him in full combat armor—the armor of the enemy—made Alisa uneasy.

  “If you insist on coming along, that is,” he added, his frown making it clear that he didn’t think that was a good idea.

  “We do,” Alisa said, as Mica shook her head. Alisa nudged her with an elbow. “Some intellicuffs for our wrists would be good, though. Then if we’re spotted, it would be obvious we’re prisoners.”

  She did not like the idea of making Leonidas seem like a villain—more of a villain—in the Alliance’s eyes, but Mica was right. It would be foolish of them to make themselves enemies of the Alliance on his behalf. She had no trouble snubbing the remnants of the empire, but this was different. As she had said, these were her people.

  Mica sighed. “I have some old-fashioned metal handcuf
fs in my cabin. I’ll get them.”

  “That’ll have to do,” Alisa said, stepping past Leonidas to follow her to the crew quarters. He came right behind her.

  “I’ve put together something special too.” Mica dug a small device out of her pocket—a remote control?

  Before Alisa could ask what it controlled, Beck ran out of his cabin, his combat armor on. “We’re getting boarded, right?” he asked as Yumi poked her head out of her own cabin across the way. “I assume you want me to wait somewhere, fully armed and ready to spring into action when they come in?”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could give yourself a black eye, then tie yourselves up.” She nodded toward Yumi and also waved toward Alejandro’s hatch, which had just opened.

  “These aren’t the usual requests made to a security officer.”

  “I’m an unusual employer.”

  “Not arguing, Captain. Not arguing.” Beck did look like he wanted to argue about staying out of the fighting, but Yumi stepped forward and took his arm.

  She started to guide him back toward the cabins, but Mica called out from her own room, “Have anyone who’s not involved in this scheme stay in NavCom with the hatch locked. I’ve got a surprise rigged.”

  “A surprise we’ll like?” Alisa asked.

  “A surprise those boarding us won’t like.”

  “You heard her.” Alisa waved Beck toward NavCom.

  “There’s no place in this freighter we could hide?” Alejandro asked from farther down the corridor, his satchel clutched to his side. “That cubby in the cargo hold, perhaps? I’m sure navigation will be the first place they look.”

  “They’ll be busy looking at me,” Leonidas said.

  “Because you’ll be shooting at them?” Alisa asked. “Or because of your blinding handsomeness?”

  He frowned at her, no hint of a smile on his face.

  “If it’s the first thing, I’d prefer we do this without killing any Alliance soldiers,” she said, holding his gaze.

  “What are we doing exactly?” he asked.