“They must know we’re here.”
“Might be planning some other trouble for us,” Mica said.
“How about some optimism here?” Alisa asked as she poked through cabinets. “Maybe they’re confused as to what’s going on. Maybe they think we’re still on the Nomad, and they haven’t figured out that we’re here molesting their engine room.”
A click sounded, followed by a faint hiss.
Leonidas’s helmet spun toward the direction of the noise, his gaze locking onto a vent near the ceiling.
Mica scowled at Alisa. “I hate optimism. It has no place in space.”
Chapter 17
“Gas,” Leonidas barked. “It won’t affect me, but—”
“We’re dead takka?” Mica demanded, glaring toward the vent.
Alisa could not see anything coming out of it, but she trusted that Leonidas’s helmet sensors told him it was there. “Can you identify it?” she asked, rummaging through another cabinet as efficiently as possible with her hands cuffed. She was on the verge of asking Leonidas to break the chain, but she didn’t want to waste the time.
“No.”
“So it might be knockout gas, or it might be more deadly?”
Alisa tried to breathe lightly. The engineering room was big, so it should take a while to disseminate, but if it was something extremely potent, even a small amount could affect them. Affect them, or kill them.
She hoped that the commander wouldn’t choose such a drastic measure when two of her own people were in here. Of course, the commander might believe that her people had already been killed.
Leonidas strode to the lift doors and waved at the sensor to open them. Nothing happened. He roared and forced them open, metal screeching and warping.
“While we’re impressed with your strength, I doubt the lift is going to work now,” Mica said. “If anyone cares, I’ve disabled the grab beam.”
“You’re right,” Leonidas said with disgust, poking at buttons.
A computer voice informed him that the damage to the doors made the lift inoperable.
Mica coughed and wiped her eyes as she glowered at the vent. She was closer to it than Alisa and moved to the opposite side of the room.
Finding the cabinet empty, Alisa ran to a pair of doors between two workstations. One with giant warning labels on it led to the reactor. The second was unmarked. She tugged that one open, and the gleam of light reflecting on faceplates met her eyes.
“Mica, over here.” Alisa practically leaped into the closet space to paw at the uniforms, hoping to find ones that would fit women, though she would risk shambling around in something twice her size as long as she could make it airtight.
“I’m checking the door,” Leonidas said, running out of the lift and toward the other exit. Alisa wagered it, too, would be locked. Likely guarded as well. The soldiers out there might expect him to be able to force his way out.
Mica crowded the closet doorway behind her. “Shove one out here,” she rasped, coughing again. “I think that’s prienzene in the air.”
Alisa did not recognize the name of the drug. “Is it deadly?” She grabbed the two smallest suits and pushed them out of the closet.
“If the dose is high enough and unless the antidote is administered in a timely manner, yes.”
“Great. Leonidas—we need your strong hands.” Alisa thrust her cuffed wrists into the air. She would not be able to climb into the suit with her hands fastened together.
Leonidas stood with the side of his helmet pressed against the door—listening to troops in the corridor outside? He left his position and raced across the room to grab her chain. He snapped it easily, not hurting her at all, then turned to do the same for Mica.
“They have men lined up in the corridor outside the door,” Leonidas said. “They’re certain we’ll charge out to escape the gas.”
Alisa did not answer. She was trying not to breathe since she could feel indicators of the gas, a dry tickle in the back of her throat, a burning in her nostrils. She dove into the suit she had selected, fumbling with the fasteners, not sure whether her hands were shaking as a side effect of the gas or out of fear. Who knew if the commander would bother administering the antidote to the prisoners who had just broken her grab beam?
Leonidas stayed beside them, helping with the suits and helmets. Mica was dressed first—she was probably more experienced at donning spacesuits for exterior repairs—and she strode off to poke into one of the cabinets Alisa had searched earlier. She must have seen something useful inside, though Alisa couldn’t remember what. She’d had a singular purpose in mind.
As soon as her helmet was in place, she activated the internal life support system, hoping she hadn’t already breathed in too much of the tainted air. How long until one passed out after exposure? The rough tickle in the back of her throat worried her, reminding her of an allergic reaction to something. If her airway closed off, all the oxygen in the suit’s tank would not matter.
Alisa leaned on Leonidas to tug on the boots and tried not to worry about the rest.
“Stay behind me when we go out,” he said, plucking at the flimsy material of her sleeve. “This won’t stop weapons fire.”
“Is going out a good idea?” Alisa asked. “When there’s a squadron of soldiers waiting out there? You can’t play cat and mouse with them when they’re expecting you.” She eyed the burn marks on his suit. How much more damage could it take? “Unless Mica can find the lights and gravity controls for this ship too.”
“I found something better,” Mica said, backing away from a cabinet full of tools.
She grinned wolfishly at them through the faceplate of her helmet. In both hands, she gripped a big tool with a tank and fuel hose and nozzle.
“Is that a flame thrower?” Alisa asked.
“A blowtorch for welding breaches in the hull.” Mica strode toward the workstation she had been at before. An orange flame flared from the muzzle of the tool. Without any apparent discretion, she torched the controls.
“I see that retina scan was crucial,” Leonidas said, eyeing the tied men on the floor beside the workstation. One watched Mica’s blowtorch with woozy concern.
“It was,” Mica said. “That was to make the tug let go of our ship. This is to ensure it won’t be able to reacquire our ship.”
A clank came from the door, and Leonidas turned his rifle in that direction.
“They’ll soon grow impatient with waiting and simply walk in,” he warned.
After she finished destroying the station, Mica jogged to a wall opposite the door and the lift. “There should be a corridor back here.” She glanced at Leonidas, as if for verification.
He nodded. “Yes, and there’s another lift that way, too, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to burn through—those walls are full of conduits and wires.”
“I can do it.” Mica laid into the bulkhead. “And they can bill my captain for the damages.”
“Lucky me,” Alisa murmured.
The door to engineering slid to the side. Leonidas fired instantly, reacting before it fully opened. He stepped in front of Alisa, blocking her view—and blocking her from harm. She peered around his shoulder in time to see armored men jump out of the way out in the corridor. The door slid back shut again.
“That won’t stop them for long,” Leonidas said. “They’ll realize I just have a blazer rifle and that they can charge it with their armor on.”
“It might not be your gun that they’re afraid of,” Alisa said.
He gave her a wolfish smile, his eyes gleaming.
“Working as quickly as I can,” Mica announced.
Leonidas took Alisa’s arm and led her to the bulkhead where Mica was working, wielding the blowtorch like a professional. That did not mean the process was quick. The bulkhead was thick, and as Leonidas had said, she was cutting through insulation and conduits too.
The lights flickered, then went out.
“Was that you?” Alisa asked. “Or are
they trying to confuse us?”
Something snapped inside the wall, and flames leaped from the bulkhead. Alisa stumbled back, her movements awkward in the spacesuit. It lacked the balance servos of combat armor.
“It might have been me,” Mica admitted, waving away smoke.
Alisa could see it by the light of the blowtorch, but she couldn’t smell it. That was good, reassuring her that the gas should not be getting inside of her suit, either.
Mica ignored the dancing flames and went back to melting a hole in the bulkhead. A thump came from the door. Were the soldiers preparing to charge in?
“That’s enough,” Leonidas said, when Mica had cut a semi-circle into the bulkhead. He planted a hand on her shoulder and pushed her to the side.
“Really,” she said, eyeing him like she was considering applying the torch to his armor.
He ignored her, slipping his gauntleted fingers into the gap she had made. He found a grip he liked and pulled. Metal squealed and ripped as he tore open a piece of the bulkhead. Wires and broken conduits spilled out, along with a flame retardant insulation. He tore it away, shreds of metallic fluff flying into the dim light.
“I’ll have to burn a hole in the other side too,” Mica said, waving the blowtorch.
“No time.”
Leonidas turned sideways and slammed a side kick into the bulkhead. His boot went through the wall, the noise making Alisa jump. His foot got caught, but he maintained his balance, extracted it, and kicked three more times, battering a bigger opening. Then he grabbed it and tore the metal away further, making the hole large enough so he could wedge his armor through. Light streamed in from the corridor on the other side.
“You’re a beast, Leonidas,” Alisa murmured.
He looked back at her for a second, giving her that expression she had seen before, the wistful one he got sometimes when he told her he was as human as she was.
She groped for a way to say she had meant the words as a compliment, but he was already climbing through the hole. He fired at something—or someone—in the corridor, so Alisa hesitated to follow him.
“Clear,” he said a couple of seconds later.
Alisa pulled herself through the hole, her oxygen tank catching on the ragged rim. She managed to wriggle through and fell out on the other side without any grace. She almost landed on someone in a uniform who was rolling around on the deck, grabbing his knee. Leonidas picked up the rifle that the soldier must have dropped.
Alisa climbed to her feet, wincing in sympathy at the man’s gasps of pain. Mica clawed her way out, still carrying the blowtorch.
“This way to the lift,” Leonidas said, pointing for them to lead the way, as he walked sideways beside them, watching both ways, a rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Alisa and Mica jogged through the corridor, likely sharing similar thoughts, that they weren’t cuffed anymore, that Leonidas was clearly protecting them, and that the odds of anyone thinking they were prisoners were slim. It couldn’t be helped now. They would just have to get out of here and back to their ship as quickly as possible. Alisa wished she had figured out how they would do that.
They made it to a lift without encountering anyone else, but shouts from behind them suggested the soldiers had burst into engineering and found them missing. It would not take long for them to figure out which way their intruders had gone.
“We’re heading back to the airlock, right?” Mica asked, reaching for the lift controls. “To see if we can reattach to the Nomad?”
“Wait,” Alisa said.
“I don’t think this is the time for that.”
“All those soldiers will still be on the Nomad, probably back in our cargo hold, ready to shoot at whoever presses a nose to the window of the hatch,” Alisa said. Further, she had no idea if the imperial ships were on the way. For all she knew, one of the Alliance warships might already have noticed the Star Nomad adrift and latched onto it. She doubted Beck, Alejandro, or Yumi had tried to pilot it anywhere.
“I don’t see what we can do about that from here,” Mica said.
Alisa faced Leonidas. “I was never in the infantry, but I seem to remember there being master controls for the Alliance and imperial combat armor, so that someone on their ship could walk the suit back to safety if a soldier was knocked out.”
“Many ships’ armor sets have such controls,” Leonidas said.
“Is there any way we could do something to disable all of the soldiers’ suits at once? Even if it wouldn’t do anything to the men inside, they would be forced to get out of their armor if it didn’t work, right? And then they would be easier targets for you if you charged into the cargo hold.”
He was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “The operators can override those auxiliary commands. No man would want to potentially be a puppet for a puppeteer.”
Alisa resisted the urge to point out that all imperial soldiers had been puppets for their emperor, deciding he might not appreciate that. “Is there any way to break something before they have a chance to recover and take control?”
“What if you demagnetized their boots?” Mica suggested. “Assuming the gravity is still out over there, they’d float away from the deck, and even if they got control back quickly, it would take them some time to get reoriented again and back to a surface they could grip.”
“Not that much time,” Leonidas said. The lift buzzed. He had his thumb on the button keeping the doors shut, and he frowned down at it. “It wouldn’t be a bad tactic if I was at the hatch, about to charge in, but if even a minute passed, they would be able to recover. They’d also be able to fire from free fall. That wouldn’t affect their ability to shoot.”
“But it would discombobulate them,” Alisa said, “give you an advantage.”
“Yes. Briefly.”
“So someone has to stay at the suit controls while you run back down to the airlock.”
“Splitting up would not be wise,” Leonidas said firmly.
“No, but I can’t think of anything wiser.”
Mica muttered something under her breath. It sounded pessimistic.
Alisa clung to the hope that they would be able to think up something creative to do to the soldiers’ combat armor that would buy her team more of an advantage. “Any idea where that master control panel would be?”
“The bridge,” Mica and Leonidas said at the same time.
“Oh,” Alisa said. “Any chance the way there won’t be well guarded?”
“No.” Leonidas sighed and hit the button for the bridge.
Chapter 18
The route to the bridge wasn’t as heavily guarded as Leonidas had suggested, perhaps because half of the ship’s complement of troops were on the Nomad and the other half were still on the engineering level, trying to figure out where their intruders had gone. Alisa doubted that would take long. The tug wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art, but it would have better internal sensors than the Nomad. She wagered the crew would be able to pick out the lone cyborg running around the ship.
Leonidas took out two more soldiers’ kneecaps on the way to the bridge, but that was the only resistance they faced as they ran through the long corridors. Double doors at the end of one of those corridors came into sight, and Alisa’s comm beeped.
“Now isn’t a good time, Beck,” she said as a greeting.
“Just thought you should know that the doc’s imperial buddies are on their way.”
“How many ships?”
“Three. Big ones too. They look like an even match for the Alliance warships.”
“All right, thanks. We’re trying to figure out a way to get back over there to join you so I can fly us away.”
“We’d appreciate that, Captain,” Beck said. “The doctor, especially. He’s fiddling with his pendant and praying. Or that might be cursing. Not quite sure. He likes to mix the two.”
“He’s not the paragon of religiosity that we first thought,” Alisa said, slowing down as they approached the br
idge doors and Leonidas strode into the lead. “I’ll talk to you later.”
Leonidas paused before the double doors, a firearm still in each hand, but he had traded the pistol for a rifle he had taken from a soldier. Between the two weapons and his armor, he looked like the scourge of death. Alisa was glad she was behind him and not in his way. It was not a good day to be an Alliance soldier. She wished he were mowing down imperials instead.
“Stay here,” he said, nodding to the wall beside the doors.
They had not opened at his approach. He lowered the rifle attached to him with a strap and leaned the second against the wall next to Alisa and Mica. He didn’t hand it to them, perhaps still trying to help them by pursuing the prisoner ruse, but he put it within their reach. Now that they were in spacesuits instead of cuffs, Alisa doubted anyone would mistake them for prisoners. Unfortunately.
Leonidas stood so he could flatten his hands against the door and pull. He ripped it open as if it were made from rice paper. He charged inside, his rifle back in his hands. Shouts and blasts from blazers went off inside.
Alisa pressed her back to the wall and eyed the rifle propped next to her. Even though she didn’t want to fight against Alliance people, she felt cowardly for hanging back while Leonidas risked himself over and over again.
“Don’t even think about it,” Mica said, her voice punctuated by weapons fire from beyond the doors.
A streak of orange shot past, escaping into the corridor, and making Alisa glad she had her back to the wall. “I’m not,” she said.
The sounds of weapons discharging ceased, replaced by gasps and sobs of pain. Alisa winced. If she got out of this, she was going to find the money to outfit the Nomad with an armory full of stun guns. If they’d had any, Leonidas would not need to be blasting the kneecaps of everyone on board the tug.
“Captain Bennington,” his voice came from within the bridge, an unexpected iciness to his tone.
Alisa did not know if it was safe, but she crept through the doors. Several men and women were down around the room, many whimpering and clutching at injuries. Others were unconscious. She hoped they were only unconscious.