Star Nomad (Fallen Empire Book 1) Read online

  Chapter 5

  The Star Nomad’s compact NavCom cabin would have been deemed small in comparison to the bridge of a dreadnought or other warship, but it felt large after the cockpits of the one-man Strikers that Alisa had flown in the Alliance army. There were seats for the pilot and the co-pilot, and a fold-down seat behind them at the sensor station. The monitoring station for the cargo hold, life support, and fuel management was also back there. Displays and controls were hardwired into the consoles—no fancy holo-nav systems on this old ship.

  Memories of her childhood and learning to fly washed over Alisa as she sat in the pilot’s seat, guiding the Nomad toward the clouds. It was comforting that the navigation and thruster controls were so familiar.

  As they gained altitude, her thoughts shifted from her memories and into the present. She worried that she had dug her own grave by not tossing Tommy Beck into his armor case and dumping him out on the promenade before taking off. On the way up to NavCom, she had stopped outside of his cabin for a long moment and considered telling him to get out. But who else would stand up to the cyborg if she needed it? A fifty-year-old doctor turned monk? A chicken wrangler? The engineer who’d told her she was spaced if she took the cyborg on to start with?

  Besides, Alisa couldn’t get past the fact that Beck had defended her against Draper and his intrusive paws. Handing him over to the mafia would be a poor way to thank him for that. She would take him to Perun and drop him off there. There were billions of people on that planet. He could get lost, disappear. And if the White Dragon mafia caught up with her later and had revenge in mind, she would tell them that he had stowed away. Any camera footage those thugs got ahold of would only show the promenade and possibly her ramp. Even if they’d had spy boxes or other aerial cameras, she doubted they would have been able to record much of what went on inside her ship.

  As the Nomad gained altitude, Alisa waited for a communication from the dock master that would clear her to leave the planet. Maybe she wouldn’t get one. Dustor wasn’t that populous, with few ships coming and going, so the likelihood of a crash was small. Still, she spun in her seat enough to check the sensor display, to make sure there wasn’t anyone else intruding upon her flight path. Igniting the thrusters to break out of the atmosphere used a lot of fuel, and she didn’t want to have to abort in the middle of the burn.

  Her heart lurched when her eyes locked onto the sensor display. There weren’t any ships ahead of her, but there was one behind her. Directly behind her.

  She bit her lip, thinking of the White Dragon thugs. They couldn’t have already checked those cameras, could they have? It had been less than a half hour since they had walked away from her ramp.

  Alisa flicked on the ship’s intercom. “Beck, come join me in NavCom, please. Mica, you’ll want to camp out in engineering if you aren’t already there.”

  “Where else would I be?” came her immediate response. “Petting the chickens?”

  “They are kind of cute,” Alisa said, glad Mica was already at her station.

  The ship following them might be nothing, just someone else using her same flight path, intending to head out. But she remembered what the mafia thugs had said, that only three ships were taking off in the next twenty-four hours, and that she was one of them. What were the odds that one of the other two had left minutes after she had? Would the dock master have approved that? Usually they kept a window, to avoid accidents.

  “If I find feathers or fertilizer in my engine room,” Mica said, “they’re going in a stew pot.”

  Alisa did not respond. The intercom system broadcast ship-wide, and their chicken-loving passenger might not care for the conversation. She glanced at the sensor display again. The other ship had picked up speed and was closing the gap. If it had weapons, it would be within range to use them soon.

  She drummed her fingers on the console. If she kept going up, there was nothing but a whole lot of empty space out there. Nowhere to hide.

  She shut off all of the autopilot assists and took the flight stick.

  “We’re going to take the scenic route,” she mumbled to herself, or maybe to the plush stuffed spider that dangled from a wire above the co-pilot’s seat. It had been her mother’s good luck charm. Alisa had almost torn it down when she had been recovering the body and deciding what to do with the Nomad. Ultimately, she had left it there, taking it to the junkyard along with the ship. It was a testament to the thing’s hideousness that Finnegan had not removed it when he had been selling the spacesuits and other valuables.

  “You called for me, Captain?” Beck asked from the hatch.

  “Come in. Have a seat.” Alisa did not look at him. She had steered the ship almost straight down, heading for a network of canyons that scoured the beige, sandy landscape south of the city, and she would need her concentration. “Know anything about the White Dragon mafia?”

  “Shit.”

  “I’ll take that for a yes.”

  Alisa checked the sensor display again. The white dot that represented the other ship had changed course. It was following them. No mistake.

  She raised the shields and banked, diving for one of the larger canyons. The freighter handled sluggishly compared to her military Striker-18. She reminded herself she was flying a big box, not a small, sleek combat vessel. She also did not have weapons, so there would be no dogfights between the walls of the canyon. The best she could hope for was to find a hiding spot—if they found a ledge they could slip under and turned off all of their power, they might disappear from the enemy’s sensors. Maybe. It depended on how good those sensors were. Some of the high-tech imperial stuff could find a tindark coin dropped on the opposite side of a moon.

  “Care to explain?” Alisa asked as they dipped below the rim of the canyon, the pale sandstone walls to either side jagged and dangerous. Whatever river had carved out the terrain feature was dried up now. Unlike on the featureless sandy surface of the planet, an area scoured by wind too often to support plant life, all manner of cactuses rose from the bottom of the canyon. Too bad a fifty-meter long freighter couldn’t hide behind a cactus.

  “You want to hear about it now?” Beck asked as he strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat. He gripped the armrests as he frowned at the striated walls streaking past on the view screen. Here and there, arches and pillars created obstacles for Alisa to weave through.

  “Better now than after we crash and die,” she said.

  Beck shot her an alarmed look.

  She thought about pointing out that she wasn’t doing much yet, just following the contours of the canyon and checking the sensors. Not surprisingly, their pursuer was tracking them from above, flying over the arches instead of dipping under them. Alisa tapped a button and tied into the planet’s satellites to get an idea of the terrain ahead, hoping to find a cave or ledge large enough to hide her ship. She also hoped that the White Dragon pilot wasn’t a native of the planet who knew every nook and cranny by heart.

  An alarm flashed on the co-pilot’s station. Weapons locking onto them.

  Alisa dipped the craft lower as a sizzling bolt of energy streaked over them. It slammed into a canyon wall, and rock exploded, pelting their shields. Pulverized dust clouded the air until they passed the area.

  “I’m sorry,” Beck said. “I didn’t think they’d catch up with me so quickly. I didn’t mean to endanger you.”

  “Story,” Alisa said, zigzagging them over the dried riverbed below, trying to make a difficult target.

  “The war ended and didn’t leave me bursting with cash,” Beck said. “You know how it was. Fighting for freedom, not coin.”

  Alisa knew all too well. She nodded for him to continue. Up ahead, a small canyon converged with their bigger one.

  “Well, I’ve been a fighter for a long time,” Beck went on, “but it’s not my passion, not like food.”

  “Food?”

  “Cooking—grilling especially. I told you I make some fine flavors. It had long been
a dream of mine to go commercial with some of my sauces, get them in the groceries on all the main planets, sell enough to retire from fighting.”

  Another bolt of energy sizzled after them. Alisa turned abruptly, banking hard to take them around the sharp angle and up into the smaller canyon. She clipped the top of a tall pole cactus, leaving it on its side. Three suns, she’d forgotten what a behemoth the Nomad was. Out in space, where everything was on a galactic scale, it did not matter as much, but she would feel like an idiot if she wrecked her own ship without having suffered a single blow from the enemy.

  Beck’s fingers tightened on the armrests, and he paused in his story.

  Alisa spotted what might be a ledge on the satellite map. She increased her speed.

  “When I got out, nobody was hiring fighters,” Beck said. “I figured that was a sign from the stars, time to take a shot at making my dream happen. I wanted to open a restaurant, to prove that my sauces were brilliant. I’d get people talking about them, figure out which they liked most, which ones would be the most likely candidates to sell on the interplanetary market.”

  Alisa tipped the freighter on the side, flying along the wall to avoid fire from above. Another crackling bolt slammed into the middle of the dried river.

  The canyon was growing narrower. Piloting would get tougher, but their enemy should have a tougher time shooting down between the walls too. She hoped.

  “I didn’t have the funds to open the restaurant on my own,” Beck continued. “I thought about selling my combat armor, but it’s more than ten years old and has some dents and scrapes that won’t buff out. The secondhand place didn’t want to give me anything close to a fair price. A man was there when I was trying to make the sale and asked what I needed the money for, then said he knew someone who might give me a loan if I didn’t mind a hefty interest rate.” Beck flexed his fingers on the armrests as the Nomad dipped below an arch, the shields bumping the bottom edge on the way through. “I was enamored with my idea and figured I could handle the interest. In truth, I could. I took on a partner with experience in restaurants, and we weren’t open a month before we had more business than we could handle. Considering how screwed the economy is on Dustor, I figured that was damned impressive, and it would only be a matter of time before I could start my sauce line.”

  If Alisa had not been busy avoiding fire, she would have given him some incredulous looks. It wasn’t that she blamed a man for having dreams, but what kind of combat specialist fancied himself a chef?

  “One night, we had a special guest come by, the man who had indirectly financed my business. Weeks had passed, and I never had any idea the mafia was behind it. I thought I’d been taken on by some benevolent angel investor, albeit a greedy one.” Beck snorted noisily. “Turns out, this was one of the six brothers that founded the White Dragon Clan. He loved good food, and I figured things might turn out all right. I’d feed him an excellent dinner, and he would know that he had made a wise decision by investing in my enterprise. That was before some enemy of his decided to poison him that night, using my food to hide the drugs. He—”

  “Hold on.” Alisa raised her hand to pause his story and hit the intercom. “Mica? I know we packed light, but is there anything down there you can use to make some explosives? I have an idea that may or may not work.”

  She eyed the satellite imagery again, considering a ledge ahead of them. There was no way to tell how thick it was or how much space was underneath it. She might very well reach it and find out it was only a plateau, but the way it thrust out into the canyon and halfway over the riverbed gave her hope.

  The “Uh” that Mica responded with did not sound promising.

  “I have DZ-4 bombs,” an unexpected voice said over the intercom. The cyborg.

  “Get them. I need you to meet Beck at the hatch.” Alisa doubted the cyborg would appreciate taking orders from her, but their pursuer chose that moment to fire again. The energy bolt blasted past without going anywhere near them, but it slammed into the top of a cliff up ahead, and rubble rained down as the Nomad passed. The thumps of the pieces bouncing off the shields resounded throughout the ship.

  “I’ll be there in less than a minute,” the cyborg said. He sounded unperturbed, as if he had been fired on a thousand times in his life. He probably had.

  “You have any explosives, Beck?” Alisa asked.

  “No, but I can blow the hells out of a man with the blazers built into my armor. Might be able to put a dent in some ship’s shields if I have long enough.” He unfastened his harness and stood.

  “Go with the cyborg. Help him plant explosives. If my plan works, we won’t need you to go toe to toe with a ship.”

  “The mech?” Beck scowled.

  “We’re all on the same side. Your side.” Alisa turned a frosty look on him, hoping to remind him that he had brought this upon them. She didn’t want anything except cooperation from him.

  “Right. We’ll get it done.” He ran out the hatchway.

  Alisa tapped the intercom. The ledge was coming up. She would have to work quickly and hope the shields could take a couple of hits from the mafia ship. The canyon narrowed further up ahead. Good. That should make her actions more believable.

  “Brace yourselves, everyone,” Alisa said. “We’re about to get hit.”

  “Pardon?” Mica asked.

  “Trust me.” Alisa nudged the flight stick and took them upward, hoping it would look like they were giving up on the canyon and fleeing back to the city.

  The White Dragon ship reacted even more quickly than she expected, the pilot firing at her with glee. Her fingers twitched, wanting so badly to take evasive maneuvers, but she forced herself to stay on a straight and predictable course.

  An energy bolt slammed into their starboard side. An alarm flashed on the console, warning her that the shields had dipped below fifty percent power.

  Alisa was too busy with other controls to do more than glance at it. She hit a button to vent exhaust at the same time as she spun artfully, corkscrewing back down into the canyon. She leveled them out just enough to pilot them toward the ledge at the same time as they lost elevation.

  Footsteps clanged on the deck behind her, and she glimpsed Alejandro racing to NavCom, gripping the hatchway with both hands as he stared at her. The artificial gravity compensated for the spinning, but the ship still jostled back and forth.

  Busy concentrating, Alisa did not acknowledge him. She leveled further just before they slid under the ledge, the thrusters skipping off the ground. Alejandro cursed, nearly tumbling to the deck.

  The ledge was barely high enough for the Nomad to slide under. Alisa reversed the thrusters, halting them far more abruptly than the ship was designed to do. This time, Alejandro almost ended up in her lap. Alisa vented more exhaust, hoping it looked like smoke from above.

  “Cyborg, Beck, you’re on,” she said, hitting the control to open the hatch even as she settled them onto the ground under the far end of the ledge. Their nose peeked out, but not so much that the White Dragon ship should be able to tell that the Nomad had landed with control instead of in the crash she’d done her best to simulate. “Plant some explosives on the ceiling of the ledge, right behind us, right where you would land if you were an enemy ship coming down to check us out. Set a delay if your bombs don’t have a remote detonation capability.”

  The men did not respond, but she flicked on the exterior cameras and saw them running down the ramp in the direction she had indicated.

  “You pretended to crash,” Alejandro said slowly, also watching the camera.

  “Yeah. Did you come up here to pray for us in case we were really going to crash?”

  “Actually, I was going to call you a maniac and try to wrest control of the ship from you.”

  “Are you a pilot?”

  “No, but I felt desperate.” He shrugged, his hand wrapped around his pendant. “I haven’t been in many battles.”

  Alisa thought about pointin
g out that this was tame as far as battles went, but it wasn’t over yet. They could still end up in pieces littered up and down this canyon for miles.

  “They’re hovering over us now,” she said, watching the sensor display. She flicked several switches. “I’m killing all non-essential power so we look dead, but not everything. If they decide to blow this ledge to Old Earth and back, we’ll need to take off. I’m hoping they have orders to bring Beck back alive for his punishment.”

  Alejandro scratched his head. “I… feel like a planet that got left off the map.”

  “He failed to explain that the mafia is after him before he accepted his new job.”

  Alisa watched the camera as they spoke, wincing when she realized how high above them the underside of the ledge was. The Nomad fit with ten feet to spare, and the ship itself was over thirty feet high.

  As she was trying to remember if there was collapsible grav scaffolding somewhere in the ship, the cyborg ran to the rock wall. It was vertical with few obvious handholds, but he climbed up it as if there was a rope ladder hanging there for him. Beck could only stand and watch, pointing his rifle vaguely down the canyon at the cactuses poking up on either side of the riverbed.

  Alisa glanced at Alejandro. He was watching the camera too and did not appear surprised. She remembered that hint of recognition she’d glimpsed on his face when he had first seen the cyborg. She wasn’t sure if it had been because he recognized him specifically or just that he was familiar with cyborgs.

  “You haven’t met him before, have you?” Alisa drummed her fingers as she watched him switch from vertical to horizontal, still finding hand and footholds as he maneuvered far enough out along the ceiling of the ledge that he could plant the bombs where she had requested.

  Alejandro hesitated, then shook his head.

  She almost pressed him further, but the blip that represented the other ship moved. “They’re coming in to check us out more closely,” she announced. “Or, with luck, to land and try to board us.”

  “That’s what you consider lucky, is it?”

  “Hurry up, boys,” she muttered, her hand hovering over the external comm. She was about to warn them that they didn’t have much time, but the cyborg let go of the ledge then. He dropped forty feet, twisting in the air to land on his feet. He crouched deeply to absorb the impact of the landing, but anyone else would have broken both legs trying that move. “Must be nice to be able to do things like that,” she mumbled.

  “They give up much in exchange for their abilities,” Alejandro said dryly.

  The words made her think he might know a lot more about it than she did, but even if there had been more time, she wasn’t sure she would have asked for details. Cyborgs were the enemy. They had been long before the war had started, acting as tools of death for the empire, assassinating those who didn’t precisely obey imperial law. She had no wish to humanize them and think of them as anything except monsters to be avoided.

  A shadow fell across the canyon. The other ship coming in. To land, Alisa hoped. They could have fired from up above without dropping into the canyon.

  Beck and the cyborg raced up the ramp and showed up on the interior cameras in the cargo hold. Alisa flicked the switch to close the hatch, then moved her hand toward the buttons that would turn main power back on and raise the shields. She was tempted to hit them now, as the enemy ship lowered itself toward the ground, but that would register on their sensors. The Nomad couldn’t play dead in the water and have the shields up at the same time.

  Sweat dampened her palms. They could have withstood a few more blows with the shields up, but without them, that energy weapon would blast a hole in the hull and possibly kill them all.

  “He better be one damned amazing grill master,” Alisa said. She expected a feast if they got Beck out of this.

  “Pardon?” Alejandro asked.

  She shook her head. Beck could explain his story to the others later, assuming they survived this.

  The enemy ship came into view, a sleek black vessel with dozens of weapons protruding from the hull and a gun turret on the top. It hovered briefly, eyeing them.

  Alisa grimaced, wishing she had shoved the Nomad’s nose into the wall and brought down some rocks around them. They probably looked like they had landed instead of crashing. At the least, she should have had the cyborg kick some dirt onto the hull while he had been out there.

  “The explosives can be remotely detonated,” the cyborg said over the intercom. “Tell me when.”

  “I will,” Alisa said. Reminding herself that he hadn’t agreed to accept her as his captain and follow her orders, she made herself add a “Thank you.”

  She wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get a “You’re welcome” in return.

  The other ship landed. Ten feet away from the ledge.

  “Damn.” Alisa thumped her fist on the console. She had hoped they would creep under the ledge, and that she could bring it down on the ship as the Nomad flew away.

  “Now what?” Alejandro asked.

  She held up a hand, hoping…

  There. A hatch opened in the belly of the black ship, and a ramp lowered to the ground. Six men in combat armor followed by six more men in regular clothing came out. Judging by all the weapons they carried, both sets of men had raided their armory on the way out.

  “They really want you, Beck,” Alisa said.

  “But they’re not getting me. Right, Captain?” Beck responded from the cargo hold.

  “Let’s hope not. Got your rifle ready?”

  “Always.”

  The squad of men marched toward the Nomad’s hatch.

  “This is as good as it’s going to get,” Alisa said. “I hope it’s enough.”

  “Captain?” Beck asked.

  Alisa waited until all of the men had walked under the ledge and were passing beneath the bombs. “Now, Cyborg.”

  The explosives blew before she finished the words, the boom thunderous in the confined canyon. It was a good thing she had already been pounding the button to raise the shields. Power surged through the ship, the thrusters activating as she took them out as fast as she could. Huge boulders tumbled down from above, slamming to the ground around and on top of the White Dragon men. They slammed into the top of the Nomad, as well, a cacophony of bangs sounding as the shields deflected them.

  “Fly back over the other ship,” the cyborg ordered over the intercom, “and open the hatch.”

  “What?” Alisa balked more at the idea of opening the hatch while they were in the air than in doing whatever it was he had in mind.

  “Do it,” he ordered, his voice resonating with the authority of command.

  Alisa found herself obeying before she had time to debate whether she should obey or not. He must have a plan to take out the ship. It would keep them from being followed, but…

  She swallowed as she flew straight up, did a loop, and twisted to head back in the direction they had come from—it was the only way to turn around in the narrow canyon. She piloted toward the ship parked next to the destroyed ledge, the rocks crumbled atop the men down there. Those in combat armor might have survived. The rest would have been pulverized.

  An alarm sounded. The hatch opening. The cyborg had hit the button himself from down there. She could override it, but should she?

  The enemy ship hadn’t moved yet. Its pilot was probably staring in horror at the collapsed ledge, but any second, he would realize how vulnerable they were. He would pull their ramp in, shut their hatch, and power up the shields. That could be done in seconds.

  Realizing they would only get one chance, Alisa swooped down over the mafia ship. Her momentum took her past it quickly, and at first, she didn’t think that anything had happened. Maybe the cyborg had missed his opportunity.

  Then another alarm blared on her sensor panel, warning of an explosion right behind them. Her rear camera caught the inferno that lit up when the bomb blew right on top of the ship, its shields not up to deflect
the power. Black smoke billowed, and chunks of the hull flew up and down the canyon, ricocheting off the rock walls.

  The ship was likely salvageable, but Alisa doubted it would be flying after them today.

  The alarm warning about the lowered ramp stopped going off. The cyborg had pulled it back in and secured the hatch. Alisa set a course into the nav system, more than ready to hand the piloting over to the computer. They shouldn’t need any fancy flying to escape the atmosphere.

  She slumped back in her seat, realization setting in. Enough of those people would survive to report back to their mafia bosses, to identify the ship that had attacked them—that had killed some of their people.

  They were criminals, and she didn’t believe that what she had done was morally wrong, but she did believe there would be repercussions for this choice.

  “We won the war,” she mumbled. “There were supposed to be parades. Instead, I got stuck on this dustball, and now the mafia is going to be after me.” She groaned and scrubbed her hands over her face. Taking on Beck had been a mistake. Not shoving him back out after she’d known about his troubles had been a bigger mistake.

  “Parades are for heroes,” Alejandro said. “There are no heroes in war. Just tools being used by one organization or another.”

  Alisa had forgotten he was there and regretted speaking aloud, but his words rankled. She turned toward him. “I dare you to say that in front of your cyborg buddy.”

  “I doubt he would disagree.”

  “Well, I do. I’m not a tool. I wasn’t brainwashed into joining the Alliance and fighting against the tyranny of the empire. I saw that tyranny firsthand. Security everywhere you looked. Supposedly to keep down the bad people, but just as surely oppressing and terrifying good imperial subjects. Subjects afraid to say the wrong thing, afraid they’d be made to disappear. I watched friends disappear when I was in college. Others spoke up and came back with half of their memories gone and a new personality. If you think we were tools to fight that, you’re the delusional one, Doctor, not me. The only semblance of freedom was for those who could take to the skies.” Alisa touched the console of the ship, of her mother’s ship. Mom had known that truth long before she had.

  “I simply meant that heroes find a way to change the world for the better without killing.” Alejandro walked out, leaving her alone in the cabin.

  Alisa preferred that because tears of frustration, or maybe tears of sorrow, were pricking her eyes. She had lost her husband, she was billions of miles from her daughter, and in the span of a week, her life had gone from confusing and frustrating to terrifying and ominous. She’d assumed that once she reached Perun, she could walk into her sister-in-law’s apartment and retrieve her daughter, but would that just be putting Jelena in danger? After this, the mafia would put a bounty out for the destruction of the Nomad—maybe for her death. She could be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.

  She dropped her face into her hands. All she wanted was to go home. Why couldn’t home be there, where she had left it?