Fallen Empire 1: Star Nomad (20 page)

“Uh, that’s a good question.” With everything else going on, Alisa had forgotten about that. She turned in her seat. “Leonidas? That scan that searched our ship—it let us in because you were on board, right? It was programmed to let cyborgs—or cyborg parts—through? It assumed that whatever imperial ship brought cyborgs in would be delivering them to the scientists to work on?”

He hesitated, as if ingrained instincts told him not to give any information to Alliance pilots, but eventually he nodded. “Delivering them to Dr. Bartosz for upgrades, repairs, or initial installs, yes.”

“But you had never been here before today?”

“No, Dr. Bartosz usually came to the Corps headquarters to do the work. But I’d heard of men being sent here if he was busy with research.”

“Is he the one who initially… made you?”

Leonidas’s lips twisted, and she thought he would object to the term. Instead, he said, “Like Victor Frankenstein himself.”

“Ah.” Alisa remembered him objecting to being called anything other than human, but here he was, making a connection to an Old Earth legend, Frankenstein’s monster. There was a dark expression in his eyes. It was not sorrow, not exactly, but it made her regret calling him a mech earlier when she had been angry. “Is he the one who was dead on the floor in the lab?”

“Yes. I saw the name tag on his lab coat.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

Surprise flickered across his face, but he sublimated the emotion quickly. “We weren’t close.”

“He was just someone you thought would have answers?”

Leonidas ticked his fingernail on the control panel in front of her seat. “Pay attention to your flying, Marchenko.”

“You’re not the captain here, Cyborg,” she said, crossing her second and third finger in the classic screw-you gesture. It didn’t matter that he was right—she
should
be watching the tunnel ahead. She didn’t take orders from him.

Surprisingly, he smiled slightly.

“Uhh, so,” Beck said—Alisa had forgotten that he and Yumi were hovering in the corridor, that she had invited them to help come up with a plan. “What did we decide after that little exchange?”

Leonidas’s expression grew grim. “That they might have a cyborg too. Or more than one.”

Just when she had been thinking that Leonidas would be her singular advantage…

“Cyborg pirates? Those exist?” Beck asked.

“With the empire gone, there’s nobody left to pay the salaries of career soldiers,” Leonidas said. “People do what they have to do to survive.”

Alisa thought about asking what had brought him to that junkyard on Dustor, but they had navigated more than halfway through the tunnel. Soon, the distant stars of the galaxy would come into view, and she would have a pirate ship to hunt down. She glanced at the sensor display, wondering if anything would show up yet. She did not see any blips, but the denseness of the ore packed into the asteroid around them might be dulling the sensors’ effectiveness. She would have to wait until they were out in open space.

The stars soon came into sight, along with the body of another asteroid tumbling slowly in the distance. Alisa accelerated toward the opening, eager to have room to maneuver again, the freedom to fly.

A bleep came from the sensor display. She glanced back as they soared out of the asteroid, then cursed. A ship was waiting for them, a
huge
ship.

She reversed the thrusters to brake, having some notion of flying back into the tunnel, but it was too late. Alarms clamored, and the control panel lit up with warnings as a grab beam clamped onto them.

This time, it wasn’t a trap placed by the security station. The hulking mass of the miles-long mining ship hovered right over the tunnel exit. And it had them in its clutches.

Chapter 14

Bangs and thumps sounded on the other side of the airlock hatch. Alisa stood by herself in the cargo hold, the weapons belt hanging at her waist the only sign that she might put up a fight. She would be foolish to do so, however. It had crossed her mind to station all of her people behind cover and open fire when the pirates charged in, but they would be in combat armor, and would far outnumber her forces.

Besides, a firefight wouldn’t do anything to free Mica and Alejandro. Better for her to stand here, as she was, and be the distraction. She had stuffed Beck, Yumi, and Leonidas into one of the hidden nooks in the cargo hold—the entrance looked like nothing more than a bulkhead to an observer. She hoped that the pirates would take her and not search too hard for others. She had considered climbing into that nook herself, leaving an empty ship for them to find, but the pirates would surely search until they found crew. They would know the ship hadn’t been flying itself.

She smiled, remembering Beck and Leonidas both arguing to have the honor of being the decoy, both saying that being captured might be even worse for a woman. She wouldn’t argue that, but they were the most likely to be able to sneak onto the ship after she was taken and free everyone. As much as she hated the idea of needing to be saved—and in putting her fate in someone else’s hands—this seemed most logical. She just hoped she wouldn’t regret it.

The hatch banged open.

Alisa could have locked it, but then they would have torched their way in, and the ship might not have been spaceworthy afterward. The odds were stacked against her, but she still had the vain hope that she might collect her people and fly away from this.

The boarding party appeared to be the same group of pirates that she had seen on the camera, men wearing a mishmash of combat armor and weapons. Her gut tightened when she spotted something she hadn’t noticed in the footage, tufts of hair adorning several of their belts. Human hair. Scalps.

The pirates charged onto the ship, surrounding her, six blazer rifles and pistols pointed at her.

Alisa stood with her arms spread, struggling to keep from panicking. Maybe she should have asked Yumi about that breathing thing she did. She reasoned that if the men started pummeling her—or worse—right here in the cargo hold that Leonidas and the others would come out to stop it. They couldn’t see what was happening from their hidden niche, but they would hear if she started screaming. She gulped, hoping she was not given a reason to start screaming.

Four more men in armor jogged into the cargo hold. They diverted immediately toward the stairs, charging up to search the rest of the ship. Even if their suits had sensor units, they shouldn’t be able to see the life forms hidden in the walls—that nook was shielded. Alisa’s mother had hidden her meager valuables inside of it. It was likely that some past owner of the
Nomad
had installed the space for smuggling cargo.

One of the pirates came forward and unclasped her weapons belt, taking her guns and multitool. Then he stepped back, lifting his rifle and aiming at her chest again, as the others were still doing.

Alisa waited for someone to talk, to ask her for the story she had rehearsed, the story that explained that yes, she
was
the only one left on this ship. No, of
course
she did not have any allies… The pirates had already taken her people.

Heavy boots clanged in the distance, someone walking across the landing bay that the
Nomad
had been sucked into by that grab beam. The even tread had an ominous ring to it. As did the way the pirates stood utterly still, waiting for the owner of the tread to arrive.

Alisa’s breath caught when a man in crimson combat armor strode through the hatchway, a rifle cradled in his arms. There weren’t any scalps dangling from the utility belt, but she doubted that meant she would be safe with him.

The owner of the armor wore his helmet, and was not close enough for her to see through the faceplate, but she could not help but think that it was Leonidas, that he had somehow gotten outside of the ship. But no, she had locked him into the cubby not five minutes ago. This was someone else. Someone else in Cyborg Corps armor. She hoped it was just some scruffy pirate who had managed to steal the suit, not someone that could equal—or best—Leonidas in a fight. But she recalled the discussion they’d had about the security trap on the station, about the possibility that the pirates, too, had a cyborg.

The red suit stopped in front of her, the pirates shifting to the side to make room.

“One girl?” a hollow voice rang out from inside the helmet. “I put on all of this for one girl?” The gauntleted hand flicked, gesturing toward the owner’s torso.

“The rest of the men are searching for more, Sublime Commander,” a nervous-sounding pirate said.

Sublime Commander?
Alisa almost choked on the ostentatious title. Only a pirate…

The figure lowered his rifle, letting it dangle on its shoulder harness, and lifted his hands, thumbing the buttons that released the helmet. The man—or the cyborg?—lifted it free. He gazed down at her. With short black hair, dark eyes, and bronze skin, nothing about his features reminded Alisa of Leonidas, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a cyborg. It wasn’t as if those people were genetically related. As far as she knew, they were just men who fit the physical criteria and volunteered for the procedure and the life in the military. This fellow
did
have a thickly muscled neck, and he would have been tall and brawny even without the armor adding mass.

He quirked a smile at her and stepped forward, lifting a hand. Alisa tried to skitter back, but the muzzle of a rifle poked her between the shoulders. Even if she’d had more room, it would not have mattered. That hand darted in with a viper’s speed—maybe
more
than a viper’s speed—and grabbed her by the front of her shirt and jacket. He lifted her from her feet, nearly ripping the material of her shirt and half-choking her in the process.

A cruel glint entered his eyes. Apparently, he enjoyed half-choking women.

“You don’t look like an imperial officer,” he observed.

“Nothing gets by those cyborg eyes, does it?” she gasped out, struggling to breathe. Being lippy with this thug was probably even more ill-advised than being lippy with Leonidas, but she had more in mind than annoying him. She wanted to see his reaction, to find out if he
was
a cyborg. The servos in the combat armor could have given a regular man the strength to lift her—she wasn’t exactly a behemoth.

“Nothing,” he breathed, leaning his face close to hers. “Where is he?”

“Who?”

“The imperial officer who had the command codes to lower the shields on my bombers.”

Oh, shit. If her feet hadn’t been dangling above the ground, Alisa would have kicked herself for her mistake. Why hadn’t she claimed to be an imperial officer? There had been hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the empire’s armies. It wasn’t as if he could have known if she had lied.

“You think other people haven’t gotten those codes?” Alisa tried for a laugh—it came out like more of a strangled cough. What were the odds that this brute would put her down someday soon?

“You couldn’t use them even if you had them, little girl.”

She sneered at him. “I can use a lot of things I’m not supposed to.”

Damn it, that had sounded more clever in her head. Obviously, there was a shortage of oxygen reaching her brain.

More boots clanged on the metal of her walkways.

“Haven’t found anything, Sublime Commander,” one of the pirates reported, the scalps on his belt swaying as he trotted down the steps. “Might be she’s the only one here. We got the engineer and the doctor. Could be her whole crew.”

“She’s not alone. The bears would have gotten her if she had been wandering around that station alone.”

The pirate who had reported touched a scar on his cheek. “That’s the truth. Glad you’re here to go in with us next time, sir. Lost three men last month when we tried. Don’t know how them bastards got on that asteroid, but they’re not looking to let the station go easy.” He looked at Alisa. “Reckon we can go in soon, seeing as this ship hasn’t blowed itself up yet.”

The cyborg—Alisa refused to think of him as the sublime commander—lowered her to the deck. Unfortunately, he did not let her go. Instead, he yanked her close, and her shoulder clunked hard against his torso protector. His hand wrapped around her throat before she could attempt to squirm away. Three suns, she hated feeling helpless, but it was as if his hands were ahridium vises clamped around her.

Elbowing him in the gut or the crotch was out of the question—aside from his head, every inch of him was covered in that armor. And she was too short to thunk her skull into his nose.

“Imperial officer,” the cyborg called, his voice echoing in the empty cargo hold. “If you want this woman to live, show yourself.”

Several of the pirates shifted, pointing their weapons toward the walls of the hold instead of at her. Alisa tried to swallow, but the hand wrapped around her neck prevented it. This wasn’t at all how she had imagined this exchange going. She was supposed to be a diversion that would allow her team to sneak in and strike, not a pawn to be used against them. Why couldn’t the pirates have just dragged her off and thrown her in a cell with the others?

“So slow to respond,” the cyborg said. “Hm, where shall we start?” He pushed Alisa out to arm’s length.

“We could take her, sir,” one of the men offered, leering at her chest. “That ought to flush anyone out. And if there’s nobody to flush, then we’d still have a good time.”

“Take her where?” the cyborg asked.

Alisa stared at him. He couldn’t possibly have missed the man’s meaning.

“You know, screw her, sir.”

“Oh.” The cyborg’s nose wrinkled, as if he was too good for such base actions. “I doubt you want your cock hanging out if a bunch of armed men jump out of hiding.”

“I’d risk it. She’s got a nice ass.”

Alisa gritted her teeth, more annoyed with her helplessness than the conversation—she’d heard worse in the army.

“What are you doing here, Cyborg?” she asked to buy time while she groped for inspiration. What could she do to get herself out of this situation? “It’s lowly working for pirates after being a soldier in the empire, isn’t it?”

Not that she considered the empire any better than a bunch of pirates, but he doubtlessly would.