“Except, why don’t I believe that?” Alisa muttered.
“Captain?” Yumi asked.
“Just talking to myself. Ignore me.”
“Transmitting my helmet feed now,” Leonidas said.
Alisa leaned toward Yumi to access the controls on the far half of the console. She sent the feed to her netdisc, so they could see it on the holodisplay. The view of an unfamiliar corridor came up, the panels along the side seeming to move as Leonidas strode forward.
Alejandro walked into NavCom, took Alisa’s wrist, and clipped a dosimeter onto her finger. She pointedly did not look at the readout, instead focusing on Leonidas’s camera feed.
“I’m heading to engineering,” Leonidas said.
“Right, make sure you really test your armor by going where the radiation will be the worst,” Alisa said.
He did not answer.
“I’m sorry,” Alisa said. “That was inappropriate humor, if you weren’t sure.”
“Yes, I’ve learned to identify it.”
Alejandro moved the finger clip to Mica and then to Yumi as Leonidas passed several doors, moving toward the back of the pilgrim ship. His head turning to look at plaques. The long, narrow vessel only seemed to have one corridor.
“Ouch, Doctor,” Mica blurted, spinning in her seat. “What are you stabbing people with?”
Alisa glanced back in time to see Alejandro retracting an injector.
“A bit of a cocktail. Some potassium iodide for your thyroid, and a drug that will bind with radioactive plutonium, americium, and curium in your body and help you piss it out.”
“Is it just me or do all of your cocktails make people piss?” Alisa asked, though her blood had gone cold. Even though she’d seen the warning alarm flashing on the console, she hadn’t realized there had been that much exposure for those on the Nomad.
“It’s one of the ways the body clears toxins. I can make you sweat, too, but I know you have an aversion to butt prints.” He leaned forward and touched the injector to her neck.
By all that was blessed and holy, he was going straight for the veins, wasn’t he? Alisa almost batted the injector away, but fear of what might happen if she wasn’t treated stilled her hand. She swallowed, staring into his eyes and remembering that he had been willing to have her killed not that many weeks earlier. The injector hissed, and a soft, quick jab delivered the substance.
“Take some vitamins later,” Alejandro said as he withdrew the injector. “Our levels are borderline, and I’ve given you a minimum dose, but you’ll lose your zinc, magnesium, and manganese too.”
“Damn, those are my favorite minerals.”
“Will there be any side effects?” Mica asked.
“You’ll probably throw up. But that was going to happen regardless.” Alejandro withdrew the injector from Alisa’s neck, thumbed a new dosage into the slot, and leaned toward Yumi.
Alisa almost commented on the lack of sterilization going on between patients, but she was too relieved that Mica and Yumi were getting the exact same thing. He had no reason to kill them.
“Did we take on that much radiation?” Mica asked.
“Beck showed me his helmet sensor stats.”
Alisa took that for a yes. “Is he all right?”
“He received minimal exposure. His armor protected him.”
Alisa should have listened to Abelardus.
“Their reactor must be leaking like a waterfall,” Mica said.
With that thought, Alisa turned back to the console. They had traveled far enough for the Peace and Prayer to disappear from her cameras, so she slowed the Nomad to a stop. She did not want to be too far away if Leonidas needed help.
His camera feed showed him entering the double doors to engineering. Alisa expected to see a ruptured reactor front and center, but nothing appeared out of place initially, not from what she could see. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. The illumination was dim, emergency lighting only. Leonidas did not have a flashlight on, and she remembered that his night vision was better than normal. She made out a few flashing buttons and the outline of equipment, but not much more.
Leonidas stepped over a body on the floor and stopped before a control panel.
Mica stood up and leaned closer to peer at the display. “The engine doesn’t look like it’s turned on.”
“No,” Leonidas said, the view shifting as he moved his head from left to right. “It’s not.” He turned back toward the housing for the engine itself. “My sensors are telling me this isn’t the source of the radiation. It was stronger back in the middle of the ship.”
A screech sounded somewhere near Leonidas, and Alisa nearly jumped out of her seat.
He spun, and blazer fire brightened the dim engineering room. His bolts slammed into the chest of a wild-eyed man with missing clumps of hair, a man leaping toward him from atop something. A knife was clenched in his hand. The video lurched as Leonidas leaped away to avoid him. The man tumbled to the deck, clutching at his chest.
“The eye of the gods,” the man screeched, his eyes gleaming with insanity. “The eye of a god opens.”
He groaned and looked down. There was no blood, the blazer blasts cauterizing as they struck, but Alisa doubted he would survive the attack. He wore simple clothing, no armor.
“We went to see,” the man moaned, pain leaking into his voice now. “The true ones. We were called. The eye opens. To see the eye open. You are not believers. You aren’t welcome. Intruders. We went to see… to see… dark, finally it’s dark.” The man slumped onto his side, his head clunking against the deck. Those insane eyes remained open even in death.
Leonidas sighed. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“It was a mercy that you did,” Alejandro said. “I couldn’t have done anything for him, not at that stage.”
“That was more than radiation poisoning, wasn’t it?” Leonidas asked, the video shifting as he returned to scanning engineering, the tip of his rifle just visible in front of him.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t recall insanity being on the list of symptoms from radiation exposure.”
Alejandro hesitated. “Delirium is. Plus, he’s seen all of his crewmates die, and he knew his own death was coming. That’s enough to drive a man crazy.”
“Perhaps.” Leonidas looked at the body crumpled on the deck.
Alisa shuddered at those haunted, frozen eyes.
Leonidas knelt down, and a soft twang sounded. He looked at his arm, revealing one of the razor knives that could be extended from his armor.
“What are you doing?” Alisa asked as he poked the dead man’s wrist with his blade, then dabbed his gauntleted finger in it. Her lips curled in disbelief as Leonidas wiped a dab of blood onto his armored forearm.
“Taking a blood sample.”
“That’s a weird way to do it.”
“I don’t have needles and slides.” Leonidas rose to his feet. “This man lived significantly longer than the rest of the crew. I want to know why.”
“Maybe his craziness saved him,” Alisa said.
Yumi and Alejandro frowned at her. She lifted an apologetic hand.
Yumi opened her mouth, but paused, looking past Alisa’s shoulder. A retching sound came from behind the pilot’s seat. Mica’s face was pale.
“Mica?” Alejandro asked, reaching for her shoulder.
She bent between her knees and threw up. Alejandro grimaced and withdrew his hand.
“To think, I was worried about sweat,” Alisa muttered. “Alejandro, I think your side effects have started.”
“Yes, or the effects of the exposure itself. I admit to feeling queasy myself.”
“Why don’t you and your new patients go to sickbay and relax?” Alisa turned back toward Leonidas’s feed and drummed her fingers on her thighs, wishing she could do something besides sit and watch. “There’s nothing to be done here.”
“I feel fine,” Yumi said, “but I’ll help.”
She stood
and offered Mica a hand. Alejandro led the women away.
Alisa thought about cleaning up the mess, but figured she would be adding to it before long. So far, she did not feel nauseated, but she had no doubt it would catch up with her.
On the display, Leonidas had left engineering and was opening the doors leading to the crew cabins. More than one person had died lying on his or her bunk, some in pairs, some alone with nobody to tend to them. Alisa blinked away tears, distressed by the idea of people dying alone, distressed by this entire situation. Maybe it wasn’t humane, but she wished the Nomad hadn’t been close enough to pick up that comm message and had flown past. Then she would have nothing worse than cyborg-Starseer relations to worry about.
As if summoned by her thoughts, Abelardus walked into NavCom. He stepped over the mess and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.
“You come to throw up at my feet too?” Alisa asked.
“Doubtful.” He dropped his chin onto his fist and watched the video play as Leonidas continued to check cabins. He did not appear sick, nor was there any vomit clinging to his black robe.
“Because you’re a Starseer and therefore special?”
“Quite special.”
“And so modest,” Alisa said. “I suppose you’d be too special to clean up the mess on the floor if I asked you to.”
“Infinitely so, yes.”
“I hear something,” Leonidas said over the comm. The camera paused as he listened at a doorway.
“The last survivor?” Alisa guessed.
“Perhaps so.” Leonidas shouldered his rifle. “I’ll try to subdue this one.”
Alisa remembered Alejandro’s words, that it would be too late to help those people and that shooting was a greater mercy than keeping them alive. Still, if there was someone there who could explain what had happened, surely Leonidas had to try questioning the last person.
“The door is locked,” Leonidas said. “The others weren’t.”
“Maybe you should knock,” Alisa said.
Abelardus and Leonidas snorted at the same time.
Leonidas did, however, raise his gauntleted fist to knock.
Something like a muffled yowl came through the comm. Alisa could not tell if it was a cry of pain or of madness.
“Her mind is not right,” Abelardus said, his eyes closed.
“Whose?” Alisa asked. “The person on the other side of the door?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she’s had a bad week,” Alisa said.
Abelardus frowned at her.
“Sorry,” she said.
She seemed to be saying that a lot. She didn’t feel like explaining that she was deeply disturbed by all of this, and that if she actually admitted it out loud, she would end up breaking down in tears. She couldn’t do that. She was the captain, and this was her ship. Captains didn’t break down.
The camera view shifted to a close-up of the door. It took Alisa a moment to realize Leonidas was trying to force it open. A faint beeping sound came over the comm.
“That ship’s not trying to self-destruct on you, is it?” Alisa asked. She was still worried about Leonidas being over there, suit or not, especially since people here were throwing up after what had to be a minuscule exposure in comparison to over there.
“No, that’s my suit,” Leonidas said, then grunted as he put effort into opening the door.
“It’s not self-destructing, I hope.”
“It’s informing me that I’m close to dangerously high levels of radiation.”
The door slid open before Alisa could respond. Unlike all of the other rooms on the ship, this one was brightly lit with a yellowish glow that reminded her uneasily of Alejandro’s orb. Leonidas stepped into the doorway and scanned the room, a simple sleeping cabin with a bed and desk. Clothes and blankets were strewn about, along with cups, silverware, and old-looking pieces of equipment—she spotted something that looked like a spacesuit helmet from another era. Leonidas did not focus on it long enough for her to get a better look. The camera turned toward someone squatting in the corner, a bald woman. She was hugging something to her chest.
“You can’t have it,” the woman cried. “She’s ours. She’s ours.”
Alisa did not see the attack, only the way the camera blurred as Leonidas dodged to the side. A gun fired, a bullet clanging off a wall.
The focus returned to the woman. She gripped a weapon that looked like an even older version of Alisa’s Etcher. Was that a revolver? With a handful of bullets instead of a clip? It looked like something out of the Old West back on Earth.
The woman fired again. This time, Leonidas did not dodge. The bullet pinged off his chest plate. He simply stood there, taking it.
“Zoom,” he murmured, and the camera closed onto the item that the woman held to her chest. It was responsible for the bright light, which made it hard to pick out features, but it appeared to be a plaque. “This room is the source of the radiation,” Leonidas said.
“How can that be?” Yumi asked.
Alisa hadn’t noticed her return, but she stood in the hatchway.
“Last one,” the woman cried. “The last one shall not be for a heathen. The saint, she awaits me.”
She turned the muzzle of the gun toward herself and thrust the tip right into her mouth. Leonidas surged forward, but then halted. Maybe he could have made it in time, but he decided to let the woman end her own pain. The old gun fired, the last bullet blowing out her brains.
Alisa winced and looked away, wishing Leonidas and his camera had too.
Abelardus dropped his face into his hand.
“Dearest gods and suns,” Yumi whispered.
Leonidas walked forward and looked down. The view shifted from the woman’s face to what she cradled in her arms. The gun had fallen from her lifeless grip, but the plaque remained hugged to her bosom. He bent and tugged it free. Words seemed to be etched in it, but the light hurt Alisa’s eyes and made it impossible to read.
“Light filter, on,” Leonidas said. “Reduce intensity by fifty percent.”
The fierceness of the glow dimmed, and Alisa could read the plaque.
“Alcyone Station?” Abelardus read, sounding stunned. Or maybe awed.
“That’s a place?” Alisa had never heard of it.
“It’s supposed to be her final resting place.”
“And the location of that staff?”
“I… actually don’t know. That’s not mentioned in any of the histories. According to official records, all of the Staffs of Lore were destroyed, deemed too strong, too galaxy-changing. All except one.” Abelardus’s eyes were locked to the plaque as he spoke. Leonidas was turning it over now, one of his gloved fingers brushing a charred corner that appeared to have been damaged by a blazer or similar weapon. Or perhaps an explosion had ripped it from whatever wall or bulkhead to which it had been mounted. “But the Toriphant, the orb, as you call it, and other clues promise to lead to Alcyone’s staff, the last remaining Staff of Lore.”
“Guess it would be handy if it were on her station,” Alisa said.
Abelardus frowned at her. “You do not regard those who lived and died and shaped the past with enough reverence.”
“Yeah, I’m told I don’t regard much with enough reverence. Leonidas, what do you want to do now? Are you done exploring?”
“My suit is warning me of the intense radiation in here and that I should back away for my own health,” he said.
“It’s good to get health tips from your equipment.”
“Can you bring any of those items with you?” Abelardus asked. “They look old. Perhaps they’re artifacts from the station.”
“They’re the source of the radiation,” Leonidas said, setting down the plaque. “Unless you want what happened here to happen on the Star Nomad, I plan to leave them.”
“How can a plaque be radioactive?” Alisa asked, looking at the rest of the items on the floor as Leonidas walked out, the silverware and cups, the helmet. Were all of those things
radioactive?
“Induced radioactivity,” Yumi said. “When lighter elements such as aluminum are bombarded with alpha particles, there will be a continuous emission of radioactive radiations, even after the alpha source is removed.”
“All right,” Alisa said, “I guess I’ve heard of that happening in nuclear reactors, but to this degree? That the radiation could kill everyone in that ship within days?”
“Apparently.”
“And why would they have picked up radioactive souvenirs? That doesn’t seem bright.”
“That I couldn’t tell you,” Yumi said, “except that it’s possible they had no idea that what they were picking up was radioactive. That ship did not appear to be equipped for scientific testing.”
“Yumi, that plaque was glowing. Who needs a test to see that?” Alisa thrust her hand toward the video, even though Leonidas had now moved out of the woman’s cabin and was back in the ship’s navigation cabin.
“Yes, that’s interesting. Radioactive elements don’t glow, at least not in a way that creates light that’s visible to the human eye. Some substances, however, will emit visible light if they’re suitably stimulated by the ionizing radiation from a radioactive material.”
Abelardus’s forehead wrinkled. Alisa wished she could pretend she had a better understanding, but she was just a pilot. If Mica weren’t busy throwing up in sickbay, she would fetch her for this conversation.
“Who would do that?” Alisa asked. “Or do you think that it could have happened naturally?”
Naturally. As if glowing plaques were natural.
“They may have been running some tests on the items they picked up, trying to figure out why everyone was getting sick,” Yumi suggested.
“I would have just punted everything out the nearest airlock,” Alisa said.
Abelardus made a choking noise. “Those could be invaluable Starseer artifacts.”
“Artifacts glowing with radiation. Besides, what do you care? I thought Alcyone betrayed your people and you were holding a grudge.”
“She did, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be interested in recovering artifacts from that time period.”
Alisa waved her hand in dismissal. They could talk more about this later, when they had recovered Leonidas and gotten far, far away from that ship.