Relic of Sorrows: Fallen Empire, Book 4 (3 page)

“If they are true pilgrims, I am very open to helping them,” Alejandro said.

Alisa located a ship at the far edge of the
Nomad’s
sensor range. It
did
appear to be a passenger transport, one capable of carrying twenty or thirty people. It was a civilian model, nothing she recognized from the war.

“That part of their story checks out,” she said, turning back toward the comm.

The woman’s message was playing on a loop, being broadcast out to the maximum range. Alisa wondered if anyone would be at the comm station in that ship.

“
Peace and Prayer
,” she said, managing to say the name without making a face, “this is the
Star Nomad
. We’ve received your message. Are you still in need of assistance?”

Leonidas pulled down the foldout chair behind the pilot’s seat and sat at the sensor station, tapping a couple of buttons.

“You’re not getting cyborg sweat on my seat, are you?” Alisa asked quietly while waiting for a response to her call.

“I’m trying to see if I can detect the engine failure they reported.” He arched his eyebrows at her. “And are you sure it’s logical for
you
to mock
my
ability to make friends?”

“You don’t think my propensity for cracking jokes and teasing people can win over friends?” She smiled, pleased when he teased her back instead of merely frowning at the inappropriateness of her humor.

“So far, I’ve mostly seen it get you into trouble.”

“Maybe we’re a good match then, Leonidas.”

Alejandro, who remained standing near the hatchway, frowned at this exchange.

Leonidas looked to the sensor display. “We need to get closer to get a better read on them.”

“I know.” Alisa disengaged the autopilot and adjusted their course to head in the direction of the passenger ship. Nobody had responded to her hail so she tried again on another channel. “Let me know when you can tell if their engines—and their life support—are working.”

She grimaced at the idea of coming upon a ship full of corpses. Even though she hadn’t been the one to originally find the
Star Nomad
adrift, with her mother’s body inside, she couldn’t help but think of that moment and what it must have been like for the freighter captain who had discovered her. Almost seven years had passed, but Alisa distinctly remembered what it had been like when she had been brought in to make arrangements for the body.

Alisa tapped the internal comm. “Mica, are you in engineering?”

“Where else would I be?” came the prompt answer.

“I thought you might have gone with Beck to help pick out lunch.”

“We got a comm message. I assumed that meant trouble.”

“It
is
possible for two ships to simply pass each other, chat in a friendly manner for a few minutes, and then head on their separate ways without trouble ever coming into the equation.”

“Uh huh. And is that what’s happening?”

“No.”

A chicken squawked in the corridor outside of NavCom. Alisa turned, intending to tell Alejandro to shut the hatch, but Yumi had come to poke her head inside.

“I was wondering what was happening,” she said. “And if you needed a science teacher at the sensor station.” She considered the back of Leonidas’s head.

“I’ve got a cyborg there now. And he’s leaving a sweaty butt print, so you may not want to sit there after him.”

Leonidas ignored her—maybe he was reading something interesting on the sensors—and Alejandro was the one to sigh at her. “We
are
paying passengers, you know.”

“I know.” It was the only reason Alisa had been able to afford supplies for this next leg of their trip. “Does that mean I’m not supposed to comment on your sweat?”

“One expects a certain amount of decorum from those in customer service positions.”

Alisa resisted the urge to make a rude gesture at him. She was the captain, not his servant, and if he didn’t like the way she ran her ship, he could get off at the next stop. In fact, she would be thrilled if he did so. It was easier for a dog to shake a tick than it was for her to get rid of him.

“That must be an imperial custom,” she said. “In the Alliance, we didn’t have a lot of time to spend on decorum.”

“Obviously.”

“I’m not reading any engine activity,” Leonidas said. “It could have been powered down manually.”

“Or it could have failed, as she said,” Alisa said.

She turned her back to Alejandro, feeling bad for sniping with him when there were people out there who needed help. The
Nomad
had flown close enough to bring the pilgrim ship up on the cameras, so she did so, putting the image on the big view screen.

The transport vessel had an unimaginative oblong body with portholes lining the side and three thrusters bunched at the rear. It was an older ship with scuffs and peeling paint, but there were no signs of battle damage. It had not been attacked. And it still cruised along at a decent speed, its nose pointed forward, so nothing had struck it or derailed it from its path, at least at first glance.

“Science teacher, do you want to plot their course for me?” Alisa waved Yumi to the co-pilot’s seat. “See if their current route would take them somewhere interesting.”

“Certainly, Captain.” Yumi squeezed past Alejandro and Leonidas, but paused to look at the co-pilot’s seat before sitting down.

“It should be butt-print free, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Alisa said.

Alejandro sighed again.

Yumi offered a sheepish smile. “I was contemplating if I should find a towel.”

“It would be a small miracle if you could,” Alejandro said. “The lav is perpetually out.”

“The water removers in the sanibox work fine,” Alisa said, still studying the other ship. She didn’t see any running lights, and again had the concern that they might be too late.

“They pucker my skin,” Alejandro said.

“Was it hard being an ER doctor when you’re such a delicate doily?”

“No. At the hospital, we had normal water removers, not noisy behemoths from the turn of the century that suck half your skin off as they dry it.”

Alisa punched the button to comm the
Peace and Prayer
again, silently pleading for them to answer, not only because she wanted the pilgrims to be alive, but because she wanted a reason to end the chitchat in NavCom.

“They
are
noisy,” Yumi said.

Alisa scowled at her. “You got that course plotted yet?”

Yumi slid into the seat and tapped the controls. “Almost.”

Leonidas cleared his throat. “The engines are off, as I said, but I am reading life support and minimal power. It looks like they’re on the battery backup.”

Alisa sat straighter. “Oh, good. But then why isn’t anyone answering?”

“Perhaps they find your lack of decorum off-putting,” Alejandro muttered.

“Doctor, I think Mica needs your help in engineering.”

“I find that unlikely.”

“Get out of my navigation cabin, anyway,” Alisa said, using her best don’t-screw-with-me command tone.

Alejandro looked at Leonidas, as if he expected him to rough Alisa up for being mouthy. Leonidas was looking at the sensors and ignored him.

“I can’t tell where they came from,” Yumi said, tapping a star map on a computer display. “There’s nothing behind them, not in a direct line. They must have changed course since they originally took off.”

Alisa nodded. It happened. Sometimes, one ran into unexpected debris—or even the expected debris of an asteroid field—and had to alter course. And navigating the gravitational tangle in the space between the three suns thwarted even experienced pilots’ attempts to lay predictable courses.

“They are, however, on a direct heading toward Primus 7,” Yumi said.

“A space station full of casinos?” Alisa asked. “Seems an unlikely place to find holy landmarks.” She looked at Alejandro, who had retreated into the corridor but had not gone away fully.

“There are medical facilities on Primus 7,” Leonidas said. “Perhaps the closest ones to where we are.”

“They didn’t mention needing a doctor in their message,” Alisa said.

“Would you announce your weaknesses when sending out a general distress signal? In a system that’s much fuller of pirates and scavengers than it was a year ago?”

Alisa frowned back at him, not wanting to get into another argument about how degenerate the system was now that the empire wasn’t in charge. Instead, she asked, “Do you see anything on the sensors that would indicate a medical emergency?”

“Perhaps.”

While she waited for him to explain further, Alisa guided the
Nomad
alongside the
Peace and Prayer,
matching their course and speed. She also lined up her airlock port to theirs in case they decided to go over. If the crew was unable to respond because of a medical problem, then she should take people over to help, assuming it wasn’t a situation where a quarantine would make sense. She didn’t have the facilities or tech for dealing with that, and somehow, she doubted Alejandro would risk himself to go check on people carrying a deadly disease. For a doctor, he definitely had a selfish streak.

“There’s nobody chasing them, by chance, is there?” Alisa asked.

“No other ships are in range,” Leonidas said.

“There aren’t any nearby stations or known pirate hangouts,” Yumi said. “As I said, plotting their back-route just shows a bunch of nothingness.”

“Nothingness?” Alisa frowned over at her, then back at Alejandro and Leonidas. Leonidas was tapping the sensors, probably trying to figure out if anyone was left alive over there.

Alisa dipped into her pocket for her netdisc. She had the coordinates that Leonidas had provided at the beginning of their journey, coordinates he’d used some Starseer nursery rhyme to come up with, coordinates she had pointed out were in the middle of nowhere. She doubted there would be a link between them and the pilgrim ship’s course, but she pulled up the local map, nevertheless.

The gas giant Aldrin and some of its inhabited moons, including Cleon, popped up at the far edge, and distant stars were visible in the background. The three-dimensional holodisplay was easier for looking at objects in space than the flat built-in monitor that Yumi was using.

“Humor me and see if their route went anywhere near that dot there,” Alisa told Yumi, swiping her finger to zoom in.

“Why would this ship have visited the coordinates that Leonidas gave you?” Alejandro asked, suspicion in his voice.

What, did he think that Alisa had commed ahead and told some pilgrims to check out his secret spot first?

“It probably hasn’t,” Alisa said, “but there’s nothing else out here, so I’m checking. Maybe someone else likes Starseer nursery rhymes.”

It was also possible that Abelardus, even though he hadn’t been invited to any of the meetings, had plucked the coordinates out of Alejandro’s or Leonidas’s thoughts. He could have been the one to comm ahead to someone. Admittedly, Alisa could not imagine him choosing to communicate with pilgrims. Unless there happened to be a Starseer on that ship.

Alisa shook her head. Her mind was dancing without a partner. The odds of there being a relation were—

“That’s interesting,” Yumi said.

“What is?”

Yumi tapped a few buttons on the console screen, sending information to the netdisc. A dotted line bisected the star map. It went directly through the blue dot that represented the coordinates Leonidas had shared.

“That was their route?” Alejandro asked, stepping back into NavCom.

“If they haven’t changed it.” Yumi shrugged.

“Shit.” Alejandro glared at Leonidas and then glared even harder at Alisa. “Someone leaked the information, and someone else got there first.”

“Nobody in here leaked anything,” Alisa said. “You’re the only one who even
wants
that Staff of Whatzit.”

“I assure you, everyone would want it if they knew it still existed.”

“Not everybody. The only use I’d have for a big stick is clubbing irritating passengers.”

Alejandro looked like he wanted to club
her
. Well, he was welcome to try.

“Abelardus could have gotten the information from us,” Leonidas said quietly.

“Why would a passenger ship on a pilgrimage be sent to investigate a Starseer artifact?” Yumi asked, scratching her head.

“Maybe there’s a Starseer onboard,” Alejandro said, echoing Alisa’s thoughts. “The pilgrimage could simply be a ruse.” He curled his lip in distaste.

Alisa almost looked at his robe and said he would know all about that, but Leonidas spoke first.

“I only read two people alive on there,” he said.

“Two people would be enough to fly a ship like that,” Alisa said, “but that message made it sound like there would be more. A bunch of pilgrims.”

“If they were there before, they’re not there now.”

“We should take a look,” Alejandro said.

“Because you’re worried people are wounded or because you’re worried someone over there got your staff?” Alisa asked.

“I hardly think
you
have the right to take the moral high ground with me, Captain.”

“I need to keep the hatch to NavCom locked more often,” Alisa muttered to Yumi. “Leonidas, is there anything else over there that we need to be concerned about? Engine leaks? Gas leaks?”

He looked over at her. “You do realize I’m using
your
sensor system, right?”

“You’re not picking on my ship, are you?” Alisa asked.

“Just pointing out that its scanners are limited.”

“Because freighters aren’t supposed to scan things. They’re supposed to deliver things.”

Leonidas stood up, forcing Alejandro to back into the corridor again. “Then you can deliver me to that ship, and I’ll go take a look. The sensors in my armor will tell you what you want to know as soon as we open up the hatch to their ship.”

“I was hoping to learn that information
before
we opened the hatch and sent people over,” Alisa grumbled, as he headed to his cabin to change.

She turned in her chair to see what readings she could get from the old sensor equipment. Unfortunately, Leonidas was right, and there wasn’t much. She was surprised he had finessed it into reading life signs.