Relic of Sorrows: Fallen Empire, Book 4 (11 page)

“I don’t think anyone else would have fit in NavCom.”

“If you don’t want to go on this diversion, just let me know.” He waved his knife, then sighted down it, as if it were a gun. “We’ll lock you in NavCom, and I’ll stand outside the hatch and deal with anyone who tries to come force you to go where you don’t want to go.”

“You’ll deal with Leonidas and Abelardus?”

“Absolutely. They both eat my food, you know. I can do dire things to them, if not with poison, then with some undercooked meat. How’re they going to make you change course when they’re doubled over in the lav for hours with crippling—”

“Thank you,” Alisa said, flinging up a hand to stop the imagery. “I’ll keep your offer in mind. Though I do think Leonidas’s enhanced taste buds might warn him when he’s in danger of… being crippled.”

“What about the Starseer?”

“I’m not sure. I’d settle for being able to keep him out of my head. I wish I knew some Starseer tricks myself for that.”

Alisa remembered Yumi mentioning some drugs she had that supposedly made it hard for a Starseer to see a person’s thoughts. Should she ask for some of those? She could see a time coming when it would be useful to keep Abelardus from rummaging in her mind. Too bad she had some busted genes but not actual Starseer skills. It would have been helpful to have the mental powers to block him from intruding.

“Then you’d be one of those freaks,” Beck said with distaste, spreading miso on slices of bread.

Alisa winced. Of course, he had no idea that she had recently been put into the freak category. And he knew little of Jelena, certainly not that she had developed Starseer powers. Alisa could not blame him for talking that way. After all, he still called Leonidas a mech. Beck did not have the smoothest tongue.

“Would it matter if I was?” she asked, not sure why the words slipped out.

“Guess that would depend on if you were wearing one of those robes and hurling people around the room with your mind.”

“Right, I doubt I would do that.” She forced a smile, but this conversation had given her new matters to worry about.

Would other people’s perceptions of her change if they knew? Would
Leonidas’s
? He hated Starseers, and given the way Abelardus treated him, and the way the people in the temple had treated him, how could he not? Further, one had been responsible for unleashing those bears on the research station, thus killing the one man he’d hoped would help him. If he found out about her blood, would he think less of her? And what about Jelena? Since he had agreed to work on the freighter, once Alisa found her, he was sure to notice Jelena floating dishes around the mess hall with her mind.

She had imagined the two of them meeting before, even told Leonidas that Jelena would probably like him because she adored the cartoon character Andromeda Android, but she hadn’t considered his loathing for Starseers. And what did Jelena think of cyborgs? Was Durant even now indoctrinating her to think like a Starseer? To share their prejudices?

“You don’t look so good, Captain,” Beck said, pushing a sandwich on a plate toward her. “Probably that radiation. Why don’t you get some rest?”

“I believe I will.” She picked up the plate. “Thank you.”

“We’ll find your girl, Captain. Don’t you worry.”

She had started toward the crew cabins, but she paused to look back at him. “I… Did I tell you about that?” She couldn’t remember now who she had shared the details of her mission with, but she thought she had been keeping it private from most people.

He shrugged. “Things get around. I just wanted to let you know that I’m your man if you need help. And kids love me.”

“Because of your boyish personality?”

“Nah, because I can make yummy sweets.”

“On the grill?”

“Sure. Just need to get some fresh ingredients, and I can do amazing things. Maple-cinnamon bacon on a stick. Grilled peaches with a sweet bourbon glaze. Give me a pot, and I can even melt chocolate and grill up some bananas for dipping.”

“Chocolate?” Alisa was suddenly disappointed that all she had to take back to her cabin was a sandwich. “It won’t just be kids that love you, Beck. Hells, I might even marry you for some bananas dipped in chocolate.”

He saluted her with his knife.

Alisa grinned, turned toward the corridor, and almost crashed into a muscular chest. Her plate
did
bump into it, and her sandwich teetered, threatening to pitch to the deck. Leonidas caught it before it slid off and stepped back. He raised a single eyebrow. Alisa hoped he hadn’t heard the part where Beck had threatened to serve him undercooked meat. She also hoped he wasn’t angry that she had inadvertently heard some of his conversation with Alejandro.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t looking.”

“My fault,” he said, stepping aside. He did not appear to be angry. “I wasn’t ready for sleep,” he offered.

“I wasn’t, either. I was afraid I’d have bad dreams after everything.”

“Yes.” His eyes grew sad as he gazed down at her, and she wondered if he regretted that bit of manipulation he had plied on her. Or did he even realize he had done it? Men could be oblivious at times. Even Jonah, who’d had a poet’s soul, hadn’t always been cognizant of his social blunders.

Something in his expression tugged at her heart, though, and she almost asked him if he wanted to join her in her cabin to watch a vid. What did he enjoy for entertainment? War stories? That seemed too gruesome for bedtime relaxing. Maybe they could find something light and comedic.

“You want a sandwich, mech?” Beck asked. “Or to taste the chutney I’m working on? You and your enhanced tongue?”

“An enhanced tongue?” Mica asked, coming into the mess hall from the opposite side. She must have been working late in engineering. Alisa hoped there weren’t any problems brewing down there. “Sounds like a handy thing to have.” Though her visage remained as dour as it had been earlier, she did manage a bit of a leer in Alisa’s direction.

Alisa blushed, waved goodnight to them all, and headed toward the cabins. She regretted not asking Leonidas to come with her, but felt shy with so many witnesses. Besides, her earlier thoughts still percolated in her mind, her concern that Leonidas would find it distasteful when he found out about Jelena’s talents.

She headed toward her cabin, but paused before going in, her gaze drawn to the next one up the corridor and on the opposite side. The hatch lay in shadows, the night-dimmed lighting even dimmer at the end of the corridor. Her mother’s cabin. It had been locked when Alisa had recovered the
Nomad
from the junk cave, and she had left it that way. Besides, the junkyard owner had probably removed and sold all of her personal belongings. He’d left items such as the stuffed spider hanging in NavCom, but nothing of value remained.

Still, for the first time since retrieving the
Nomad
, Alisa found herself curious about the contents. More specifically, for the first time in more than twenty years, she found herself curious about her
father
. Would there be anything left in there that might identify him? Her mother had always implied that she’d barely known his name and that she hadn’t kept in touch over the years. Was that the truth? Or had there been a reason she hadn’t told her only daughter more details? Alisa had never found the circumstances of her birth that mysterious as a girl, but Abelardus’s words returned to her mind, the way he had pointed out that accidental pregnancies weren’t that common and that her mother might have tampered with her implant to make it happen. Had she? And if so, why? Wanting a child was understandable, but wanting some random stranger on a space station to be the father? That did seem odd.

Alisa grasped the latch, even though she knew it wouldn’t open and she would have to press her hand to the palm reader on the computer override. But the latch turned. She stopped and stared at it, shocked. The hatch was unlocked? Why?

She remembered checking that hatch when she first took over
Nomad
, before Mica had gotten it repaired enough to lift off from the junk cave. It had definitely been locked then. She was the only one programmed into the computer system to be able to override the locks on the passenger and crew cabins. And she knew she hadn’t opened it.

She finished turning the latch and pushed inward. It was dark inside, and the cabin smelled dusty and disused. As it should. She walked inside, and the integrated lights flickered a few times before coming on. The cabin, the
captain’s
cabin, was a little larger than hers, but there was still only one room, and it only took her a couple of steps to stand in the middle. She set her plate down on the bed and looked around slowly, trying to detect if someone had been in there recently.

The floor was bare—her mother had stripped out the orange carpet that had been in there during Alisa’s youth—and the fur rugs that had replaced it had been taken. Items of value, apparently. A fold-down desk identical to Alisa’s was tucked into the wall, making the space seem large. A couple of blankets lay on the mattress, and a pillow slumped at one end. A few tattered and yellowed books hunkered on shelves built into the wall, a glass protector in place to keep them from flying out during a rough landing—or an attack. Alisa remembered that a jewelry box and some keepsakes had also been on those shelves in her youth. They were gone now.

Though she did not expect to find a diary or anything that helpful, she walked over and lifted the glass protector. It did not fit well, and dust had made its way inside. Alisa froze, staring at it. The dust on the shelves had been disturbed. Recently. It looked like someone had reached in and patted around with their fingers.

“What the—?” she muttered, looking toward the corridor and then toward the old books.

She pulled them out and flipped through them. A bookmark fell out, but nothing more interesting. No notes to old lovers. Alisa lowered the glass and opened the rusted metal doors of a built-in armoire. Several dusty garments hung inside, including a baggy blue sweater with a large slouchy neckline. Unanticipated emotion thickened Alisa’s throat as she looked at it, remembering how often her mother had worn it, the way she’d often said, “We’re a long ways from anywhere, so we can’t waste energy on heat. Go put on a sweater if you’re cold.”

She touched the sleeve, running her hand down it, blinking away tears and an intense sense of loneliness that came over her. Her ship was full of people, but they were people she’d only known a short time. She missed her family, missed having people that she shared history and memories with, that she loved. Jonah, Jelena, Mom. Everyone. She regretted that her mother had barely gotten to know her granddaughter before the accident had taken her life.

Her chin dropped to her chest. Even with tears blurring her vision, she spotted dust on the bottom of the armoire, dust that had been disturbed. Alisa pushed aside her feelings, using the new mystery to avoid dealing with the disappointment that her life had become.

Had Leonidas searched this cabin, and perhaps all of them, when he had first come aboard the
Nomad
, intending to fix it up and claim it for his own mission?

She crouched to look more closely. As with the shelves, the disturbed dust was recent. There hadn’t been time for it to fill back in. It looked like someone had been in here within the last few days, not a month or two earlier.

Mica could have figured out a way to override the locks if she’d been determined, but why would she care about Alisa’s mother’s cabin? Leonidas could have forced his way into a locked hatch, but that would have left a broken mechanism behind. And again, why would he have snooped? No, there was only one person who came to mind, one person who hadn’t been on the ship for long but who was oddly interested in Alisa, at least in her blood.

Had Abelardus used his mental powers to unlock the hatch? She could imagine him being able to do it. She was not sure why he would want to, but she could come up with a couple of guesses. Maybe he wanted to find out more about her—and her mother—to give the information to his brother. Would Durant find it useful to know Jelena’s lineage for the training or whatever he had in mind for her? Or maybe Abelardus was simply curious for his own reasons. Because he liked feisty women.

Alisa shuddered inside, not wanting any of the Starseer’s interest turned her way. Even if she had liked him, she wouldn’t have found it flattering that his interest had only started up after he’d learned she had the right kind of genes.

“Genes that came from where?” she murmured, remembering her original reason for coming in here.

She resumed her search, patting down the pockets of the garments in the armoire. She found an old ticket stub to a gypsy show and a few hairpins, but nothing more substantial. The vault set into the wall behind the desk had been found, forced open, and—judging by the dust—cleaned out long ago. Alisa was on the verge of leaving when her gaze fell across the mattress again. The sheets were still on it, tucked around the corners, so she doubted anyone had disturbed it. She knelt and lifted it, peering into the shadows. Dust tickled her nose, and she sneezed. Another book lay near the head of the bed, and she tugged it out.

It had a yellow hardback cover with the title,
Planets and Moons
, embossed on the front in elegant script. Alisa recognized the book, remembering her mother reading it numerous times. It was supposed to be a modern retelling of
Romeo and Juliet
. Alisa had never read it, preferring adventures to romances, happy endings to tragedies.

She flipped it open to the title page and spotted a dedication.
To my exciting and wonderful Oksana. I wish our planets and moons could have aligned. Stanislav.

“I didn’t think to look under the bed,” Abelardus said from the hatchway.

Alisa whirled, almost dropping the book. Abelardus leaned casually against the jamb, watching her. How long had he been there?

“You
were
here,” she said, surprised he was openly admitting it. Didn’t he know that you weren’t supposed to confess to spying and eavesdropping on people?