"I didn"t mention them on the last list, no," Mica said. "I wanted to make sure I got my new tank."
"I guess a tank is more exciting to cuddle with than a valve."
"Infinitely more so, yes." Mica pushed herself to her feet, looked around, and frowned. "Where did all this fog come from?"
"I opened the cargo hatch a few minutes ago. Beck and Leonidas went out to look around, possibly to shoot people."
"Well, tell them to shoot the fog out of my engine room when they get back." Mica swatted at the air. "What is this stuff? Is it corrosive?"
"I hope not." Alisa tried to decide if the mist was denser than it had been in the cargo hold, or if she could simply see it better since there was more light in here. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"That depends." Mica grabbed a flashlight and pointed it into an open panel. "On a quiz, how many things in engineering would you label as thingies?"
"No more than fifty percent, I should think."
"I don"t need your help."
"You"re a charming woman, Mica. We need to find you a soul mate."
Mica stuck a wrench in the panel and grunted as she pried at something and the tool slid off, clanking on the side. "I"d settle for a good job."
"I thought you wanted a challenging job, not a good one. What could be more rewarding than a mystery to troubleshoot?"
Mica sneered and waved at the fog.
"No need to answer that," Alisa said. "I"ll go check on Alejandro and be back to pat you on your back when you get my lights back on."
Mica responded, but her head was stuffed into the access panel again, and Alisa could not make out the words. Perhaps that was good. She doubted they were flattering.
Another eerie cracking of ice sounded as Alisa headed back through the cargo hold and toward the walkway. She winced and found herself stepping more lightly.
"Any idea how thick the ice is up here, Yumi?" she asked as she pa.s.sed the chicken pen.
"If memory serves, the ice at Arkadius"s north pole averages from three to five meters in thickness, with ridges up to twenty meters thick."
"Three meters?" Alisa paused with her hand on the stair railing. "That"s, uh, not as thick as I would like for it to be, considering my entire freighter is parked on it."
She waited, hoping Yumi would tell her that the ice was plenty thick to support them, but another snap sounded outside, and Yumi gave her a bleak look. "Due to the size of the cargo hold, there"s a lot of air inside your ship. It"s highly likely that we would float once in the water."
"Float?" Alisa stared at her. "While that"s slightly more encouraging than news that we would plummet to the bottom of the ocean, how in the h.e.l.ls would we take off if the thrusters are half underwater? And for that matter, what happens if the ice refreezes around us? It"s cold enough to kick spit out there."
Yumi shrugged helplessly. "I suggest we pray that the ice remains stable."
"Who are we praying to? The sun G.o.ds or the Sta.r.s.eers who may have arranged that crash as a way of implying we"re not welcome here?"
Alisa expected Yumi to defend the Sta.r.s.eers and say the crash didn"t have anything to do with them and could only be blamed on the strange weather phenomenon. Instead, she shrugged again, offering another bleak look.
Alisa walked up the stairs very carefully. The mist seemed to follow her, as if whatever had come in during the short time the hatch had been open was being fruitful and multiplying. She reached for her comm unit, thinking to check in on Beck and Leonidas as she headed for Alejandro"s cabin, but her hand did not make it to her belt. A creepy sensation came over her, and the hairs on her arms stood up.
"I"m really starting to dislike this place," she whispered and continued on, turning up the corridor to the pa.s.senger cabins.
The feeling of discomfort increased as she walked closer to Alejandro"s cabin. Maybe it wasn"t the mist bothering her, after all. Maybe he was playing with his...o...b..
"Odd timing for it, if so." She knocked on his hatch.
He did not answer. She tried the latch and was glad it was not locked, since the electronic override would not have worked. When she tugged the hatch open, she found bright golden light flaring from the floor in the center of the cabin. She squinted, almost blinded after the dimness of the corridor.
Alejandro sat cross-legged next to the orb, staring down at the rainbow lights swirling within its depths, unaware that his hairy legs were on display above his shoes. He seemed mesmerized by the orb, which lay nestled on its velvet cushion inside the box, its luminescence pouring out, reflecting against all of the metal surfaces in the cabin.
"Doctor, you"re supposed to invite the captain in when she knocks at your door," Alisa said. "It"s polite."
He did not answer, nor did he tear his gaze from the orb. After that first cursory inspection, Alisa avoided looking at it. That was harder than it should have been. The glowing surface called to her, inviting her to look, even as gooseflesh arose all over her body, and her instincts said to get out of the cabin. She remembered the cyborg pirate Malik"s words about weak minds being affected by the artifact.
"Doctor," Alisa repeated, forcing herself to step into the cabin to nudge his shoulder.
He still did not move. His eyes were open, but they were not blinking.
Alisa kicked the lid shut. Alejandro flinched. The light lessened considerably, but to Alisa"s surprise, some continued to leak out through the seam in the wooden box. It hadn"t been doing that before. Previously, when the lid had been down, the strange energy it emitted had not been nearly as noticeable, and since she had been in a dark room to steal it before, she knew that light had not escaped the box.
"What?" Alejandro asked, finally looking at her, squinting up with confusion in his eyes.
"We"re in a jam right now," Alisa said. "This isn"t the time for communing with eerie spheres."
"I just checked on it..." He touched the deck on either side, further confusion wrinkling his brow, as if he was not sure how he had gotten down there.
"It"s fine, other than being extra uppity right now. Why don"t you leave it under your pillow and come help us in engineering. We need to get the power back on so we can take off before we break through the ice and become a boat." She doubted Mica wanted to see Alejandro in engineering any more than she wanted Alisa and her thingie-lexicon there, but it might be good to get him away from that box for a while.
"Ice?"
"We"re in The h.e.l.ls" Leftovers. You"ve heard of it?"
"I-yes." Alejandro blinked around the room, which was still partially illuminated by the box. "Where did this fog come from?"
"The h.e.l.ls, apparently. Maybe all three of them combined to muck up this corner of the planet."
Alejandro picked up the box and climbed to his feet. "Yes, I remember now. The Sta.r.s.eer temple. It must be nearby. Maybe that"s why the artifact is responding."
"Responding?"
"Getting uppity, as you said," he said dryly, his usual demeanor returning.
"You think just being in the presence of Sta.r.s.eers could cause it to intensify its strangeness?"
"From my research, I believe-" He broke off with a frown for her. "You"ll get no further information out of me, Captain. Please do not pry."
"I didn"t know it was prying to walk into someone"s room and keep a creepy artifact from taking over his mind." Alisa waved and strode back into the corridor. "Come make yourself useful, Doctor. We need all hands."
The ice cracked again, the snap sounding as if it came from directly below the Nomad.
Alisa scowled, wishing she knew a way that she could be useful.
"It"s colder than death in here," came Mica"s voice over the intercom. "Who opened the hatch?"
"What?" Alisa ran to the walkway. The wide cargo hold hatch was open, the ramp once again unfurled, almost obscured by the thick mist rolling into the ship. "Yumi?"
Alisa peered toward the corner. The chickens were still in their pen, still being oddly quiet.
"Yumi"s in here," Mica said, leaning out of the hatchway to engineering. "Making herself useful by holding flashlights and not calling pieces of sophisticated equipment thingies."
"She didn"t open the hatch?" Alisa walked slowly down the stairs. Her arm hair was not standing on end now that she had shut the orb box and moved away from it, but another feeling of unease crept over her as she stared at the open hatch, the mist and cold air rolling in.
Yumi stepped out of the engine room. "It wasn"t me."
"Then who opened it?"
Chapter 4.
Alisa commed Leonidas as she walked across the cargo hold to close the hatch. She kept her other hand close to her Etcher as she went.
"Leonidas here," he responded softly.
The sound of his voice sent relief through her. The way things were going, she had almost expected him not to answer, for him and Beck to have walked off into the mist, never to return.
"Did you and Beck come back to the ship?" Alisa opened the panel and looked at the lever for manually opening the hatch. When she had closed it, she had tugged it downward. It was now back in the up position. There was no way it could have fallen upward.
"No," Leonidas said, a worried note in his voice. "I just took down the two perimeter guards watching the White Dragon ship. It"s down at the base of a cliff here, and they were expecting trouble."
"Beck is still with you, right?" she asked, looking around the foggy cargo hold.
"Yes. He took out one guard"s rear left haunch."
She snorted, remembering Beck"s claim to having helped with the Octavian bear on that asteroid laboratory.
"I heard that, mech," Beck growled over the comm. "I was drawing fire. That"s why you got those two so easily."
"Is that what you were doing?" Leonidas murmured. He raised his voice. "Is everything all right back there?"
Alisa hesitated. She wanted to tell him to come back, that unsettling things were happening and that she would prefer big burly men in combat armor next to her, but she did not. "Just a lot of mist and some oddness. We can handle it. What are you going to do next?"
"Deal with the rest of the people who were trying to crash your ship," Leonidas said, his tone steely now.
It made her shiver. She was tempted to ask for leniency on the behalf of the mafia men, but those were not Alliance soldiers. They were bullies and criminals, criminals who had been trying to kill her and everyone on her ship because of one man"s actions. No, not even that. a.s.suming Beck had told her the truth when they had met, he had been wrongly convicted by the mafia men. Someone else had killed that White Dragon leader, and Beck had been blamed because it happened in his restaurant. Maybe what he ought to be doing instead of making money to pay them off was finding out who was responsible for the crime for which he had been framed.
"Beck, I"ve got an insight for you later," Alisa said and threw the lever to raise the ramp and close the hatch again. Maybe she ought to get some of Mica"s gum to stick to it to make sure it did not accidentally fall upward against gravity again.
The sound of weapons fire came over the comm, and then it was shut off.
"Great," Alisa muttered and headed for engineering to check on Yumi and Mica. If nothing else, she could also hold a flashlight.
A faint tink drifted across the empty cargo hold. She paused, looking toward the chickens, but the noise had come from the direction of the stairs, not their pen.
"Doctor?" she asked, though she was certain she would have noticed him walking down the stairs if he had entered the cargo hold.
Silence was the only response. Yumi had taken her candle with her when she left, so the hold was dark except for the weak illumination of the emergency lights in the deck. They brightened the hatchways and a few panels on the walls but did nothing to drive away the shadows in the corners. Or under the stairs and the elevated walkway. The mist made visibility worse, fuzzing the air like fog hugging a pond on a damp morning.
Her hand on her Etcher, Alisa continued toward engineering, but she kept her eyes toward the stairs.
Despite her focus, it was the alarmed squawk of a chicken that warned her of trouble. Someone cursed, and the shadows stirred under the stairs.
Alisa fired more on instinct than conscious thought. Her bullet clanged off metal. She ran several steps and dove, antic.i.p.ating return fire. If it did not come, she would feel foolish, but she was certain someone was over there.
As her shoulder hit the deck and she rolled in a somersault, the squeal of a blazer sounded. She glimpsed a bright orange bolt slicing through the dark air just behind her as she jumped to her feet. She fired again, not aiming and not caring, just hoping to make her attacker duck for cover as she raced toward the engine room. She dove again, this time aiming for the hatchway, the lanterns inside calling like a beacon.
Mica stepped into the opening as Alisa rolled across the threshold. Mica yelped, jumping back in surprise.
"Intruder," Alisa blurted, scrambling to her feet.
"So we deduced," Mica said as she tossed something into the cargo hold.
Blazer fire shot out of the darkness under the stairs and also from the opposite side of the hold, from the alcove of the airlock. Alisa cursed, realizing she had been standing by the hatch and chatting openly with spies watching on. Spies who wanted her dead.
Alisa snugged up to the wall just inside of the hatchway. "Put out the lanterns, Yumi."
"Thought you wanted the lights on, not off," Mica growled, jumping back to stand opposite of Alisa on the other side of the hatchway.
"Not when they"re highlighting us for the enemy," Alisa said, waiting for Yumi to scramble around the room, shutting off lanterns and flashlights while staying out of sight of those in the cargo hold. If she leaned out too soon, she would be an easy target with her body limned by the light.
Deadly orange beams lanced through the opening between Alisa and Mica, splashing against the far wall. One almost took out a bundle of conduits. Another burned a scorch mark in the bulkhead.
"If you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. .h.i.t my new deuterium tank, I"m going to scrag you good," Mica hollered, leaning out and shooting.
"Aren"t we all scragged if they hit that?" Alisa asked.
A cough came from out in the hold. An acrid smell tickled Alisa"s nostrils, so she a.s.sumed Mica had thrown a smoke grenade.
"Nah, it"s triple-shielded, but I don"t want it scuffed." Mica leaned out and fired. "You hear that, you ugly comet humpers?"
Unlike Alisa, Mica had a blazer pistol, and her streaks of crimson flashed through the hold, brightening it as if lightning were flashing. For an instant, Alisa had a good look at the person crouching under the stairs, someone wearing a big, s.h.a.ggy fur coat. She couldn"t target the man in the airlock alcove from her position, but she could shoot at this one. She leaned out just enough to line up her shot, but the hold had gone dark again, smoke and mist further obscuring her target.
"Shoot again," Alisa whispered to Mica.