Mica shared a nod and a knowing look with her. There was no need to mention how freedom had been an illusion in the empire and how that had chafed them both. They knew why they had signed up to fight.
"Me too," Mica said.
"I don"t think we"re going to have to leave immediately," Alisa said, thinking of Yumi"s breakfast date with her mother and Alejandro"s research, "but in the morning, why don"t you spend some more time contemplating those clamps and how to release them in case we need to leave in a hurry later on?"
"I"ve already contemplated them with a screwdriver and a laser knife. Further contemplation would likely involve explosives."
"I"m not opposed to explosive contemplation, so long as it doesn"t harm the Nomad."
"That would be the challenging part."
"It"s a good thing my engineer enjoys challenges."
Mica only scowled at her.
"I better head back out before that guard comes looking for me," Alisa said. "Have there been any other problems?"
Mica glanced toward the corridor outside of NavCom. It was empty.
"Not big problems, but I went out to get some of Beck"s food earlier. He"s been chatting with the Sta.r.s.eers, making friends over chargrilled duck."
"That"s a problem? I"m actually impressed if he"s making friends with those people. I"ve been looking for someone on the crew that has a diplomatic streak, since neither friends nor enemies appreciate my bluntness or my jokes."
"I"m not sure he was being diplomatic when he was discussing your cyborg with them."
Another chill went through Alisa as new concerns instantly popped into her mind.
"What do you mean?" she asked, though she could already make some guesses.
"I only heard a small portion of the conversation before they noticed me walking down the ramp. The Sta.r.s.eer man immediately stopped talking, and Beck looked guilty too. Beck had been explaining in detail the warrant out for Leonidas"s arrest."
"I see."
It was possible the Sta.r.s.eer had come to extract information on Leonidas from the crew, perhaps using mind manipulation talents on Beck to do so, but it was also possible Beck had instigated the conversation. Back on Perun, he had tried to entice Alisa into helping him turn in Leonidas to collect the two-hundred-thousand-tindark reward. All she had done was point out the reasons why subduing a cyborg for a trip to the government seat on Arkadius, the place where the bounty originated, would be next to impossible for the two of them. Maybe Beck had realized that things would be easier now that they were actually on Arkadius. A Sta.r.s.eer ally could make it even more feasible.
"Turning Leonidas in for a bounty would be a poor way to reward him after he helped improve Beck"s recipe," Alisa murmured.
Mica"s eyebrows rose.
"Freighter captain," the guard called from the cargo hold. "Your chickens have been fed. It"s time to return to your quarters." His words were not hostile, but his voice was cool. Maybe he had an inkling that he had been fooled.
"Comm me if Beck and his new buddies go off for a chat, will you, Mica?"
"Yes, but I might be distracted by my explosive contemplations."
"Do your best." Alisa patted her on the arm, then hurried to the cargo hold, not wanting to give the guard reason for further suspicion.
Yumi was already waiting, nothing but her purse draped over her shoulder, the same one she had worn on the way into the ship. Good. The guard surely would have questioned her if she had dragged her entire trunk"s worth of supplies into the temple. Yumi gave the slightest of nods when Alisa approached.
"I"m ready any time," Alisa told the guard. "I was just checking with my engineer. It seems our ship acquired some unexpected attachments."
The guard grunted and headed for the ramp.
"He"s a chatty fellow," Alisa muttered to Yumi.
Yumi followed him, not responding. She fidgeted with a flap on her purse as she walked. Nervous about the idea of drugging her mother? That was understandable, and Alisa felt guilty for making the request, but she would not retract it. She wasn"t going to leave here without finding out where those men had taken her daughter.
Beck whistled cheerfully as they walked past him. Because people were enjoying his food, or because he was contemplating his two hundred thousand tindarks?
Alisa wanted to warn him not to do anything foolish-or greedy-but in addition to the guard, there were three Sta.r.s.eers in front of his grill now, enjoying skewers of meat. This wasn"t the place to bring up Leonidas. She shouldn"t even be thinking about him when these people could read minds. But she couldn"t resist saying something, making a quick attempt to persuade Beck not to do anything that he would regret-or that she would regret.
"I really like the new spice recipe," Alisa said, meeting his eyes. "You"re a good cook, and I think that with someone"s help, you could become even more successful. I"m sure you"ll make it eventually and earn far more than two hundred thousand tindarks in the years to come."
One of the diner"s eyes closed to slits at the specific mention of the money. That disturbed Alisa for more reasons than one. First, because that amount meant something to him-Beck likely had been out here discussing specifics. And second, because the man knew she was trying to dissuade Beck... and it seemed he did not like it.
Beck only scratched his head. "I"ll keep that in mind, Captain. Glad you like the food."
As the guard led Alisa and Yumi away, Alisa vowed to comm Leonidas and warn him about this development as soon as she had some privacy. She knew he was already on guard, but he should know that Beck might have given the Sta.r.s.eers more information on him. She hated to put a further rift between Leonidas and Beck, but if Beck had volunteered that information without coercion, he was bringing this on himself.
"I always thought that my life would be simple after the war ended," Alisa muttered to herself. "Apparently, pilots are delusional."
Chapter 9.
Four hours and a nap later, a different guard came to the guest quarters to collect Yumi. Yumi informed the man that she had invited Alisa along for the breakfast date. Alisa filled her mind with images of Leonidas"s naked chest again, hoping to dissuade the male guard from surfing in her thoughts. Instead of curling a lip in disgust, his eyes widened, and he smiled slightly. Maybe he found the idea of ma.s.saging muscular men attractive instead of repulsive. Either way, he did not object to Alisa"s presence, nor did he demand to search the purse that Yumi was once again fidgeting with.
Alisa shut the door to the guest quarters on the way out. Neither Leonidas nor Alejandro had been back since Abelardus had taken them to the library, but that was not surprising. Given his obsession with the orb, Alejandro might spend days researching without eating or sleeping. And since he had often been a soldier out in the field, Leonidas was probably experienced at spending days without eating and sleeping, too, with the added discomfort of drone bombers sh.e.l.ls and artillery rounds sailing overhead.
"I don"t know if I can do this," Yumi whispered as they turned into a corridor they hadn"t been down before and the guard stopped to talk to another robed Sta.r.s.eer.
Everyone here seemed to be a Sta.r.s.eer, at least going by the robes. Alisa wondered what happened if children were born here and did not display talents. From her brief chat with Sylvia, she had received the impression that was more the norm than not.
"Just hope for scrambled eggs or porridge," Alisa whispered back. "It ought to be easy to mix something into that. Or juice. Can your stuff dissolve in juice?"
Yumi nodded and wiped sweat from her brow.
"If you want, give it to me, and I"ll do it." Alisa had no idea what the penalty was for trying to get a Sta.r.s.eer high, but since she had no relationship to Ji-yoon, she doubted she would be as nervous about it as Yumi.
Relief blossomed on Yumi"s face, and she dipped into her purse.
"Did you get any of that other concoction you mentioned?" Alisa murmured, standing in front of Yumi so the guard would not see what they were doing if he turned. Right now, he was busy talking to his buddy about the earthquake she"d heard about on the news the night before. She hoped they couldn"t talk to each other and mentally probe prisoners" minds at the same time.
"Yes, but I don"t think we should use it," Yumi whispered as she pressed a small sealed bag into Alisa"s palm. A couple tablespoons of a fine brownish gray powder were tucked inside. The color made it look about as appealing as takka, maybe less so.
"Why not?"
"If she"s not able to read us the way she usually would, she"ll know something is blocking her, and then she"ll wonder why we"re blocking her. She"ll think we have something to hide."
"And that"s worse than thinking the wrong thing at the wrong moment and letting her know that we have something to hide?"
"Probably. I don"t think my mother is a strong telepath, so she may only read us briefly at the beginning. Unless we say something suspicious and she has reason to believe we"re lying, I doubt she"ll poke around in our thoughts."
The guard swatted his friend on the back-actually, that was the b.u.t.t-and turned back to his charges. Maybe he did prefer male ma.s.sage partners.
"Let"s go, you two," he said, with a yawn. Bored with his duty, was he?
A bored guard was preferable to an alert one. Alisa smiled agreeably, slid the packet of powder into her pocket, and followed him.
Soon, he led her and Yumi up a set of stairs and out onto a patio atop a tower. The crenellated half wall let them see in all directions, into the interior of the temple, to the docking area that held the Nomad and the other ships, and out toward the sea of ice a hundred feet below. The air was clear for a radius of a few hundred meters around the temple, but then the omnipresent gray mists started up on all sides, including overhead. Alisa thought she remembered glimpsing stars on their way in, but maybe they had been part of an illusion. The dense hazy gray mists blocked out the sky. If a ship flew over the area, it would not be able to see down to the temple, nor, she wagered, would a satellite be able to get imagery of the temple.
"Uhh," Yumi whispered, halting as soon as she stepped out the door.
A few tables with chairs were set up on the ice-block patio atop a rug, and a couple of hovering patio heaters hummed softly as they shed warmth on the area, but Alisa doubted it was the decor that made Yumi pause. She was staring at the only occupied table. Three people sat at it instead of the expected one: Ji-yoon, her gray-threaded black hair pulled back in a braid, and two younger women in their late teens or early twenties. They shared Ji-yoon"s almond-shaped eyes and black hair. In fact, as Alisa looked back and forth between them and Yumi, she decided they all shared a lot of features. Small noses and round faces, along with average to slender builds.
"Do you want me to stay or give you some privacy, Lady Ji-yoon?" the guard asked.
"We"ll be fine," Ji-yoon said, though she did frown slightly at Alisa before waving to her daughter. "Please come join us, Yumi. And, ah, this is your captain, isn"t it?"
"Alisa Marchenko, ma"am," Alisa said while doing her best not to think about the drugs in her pocket.
It seemed like a silly time to think of shirtless cyborgs, so she thought of the Nomad instead and of flying the craft away from the Sta.r.s.eer temple, of the freedom of soaring through s.p.a.ce and perhaps testing her skills by sailing through an asteroid field or through the tricky interstellar gravity wells that made navigating at the center of the trinary system a challenge. Perhaps Ji-yoon would have similar memories that she found appealing.
"Yumi said that you"re a pilot too," Alisa said, "and that you worked with the Alliance during the war. I was just twiddling my thumbs in my room, so I invited myself along to your breakfast. Hope you don"t mind."
"Ah, I see. Come join us then." Ji-yoon pointed to extra chairs at the nearest table.
Before Alisa could head over to grab one, the older of the two girls tilted her head, and the chair scooted across the carpet on its own.
"Handy," Alisa remarked.
"Allow me to introduce Young-hee," Ji-yoon said, waving at the girl responsible, "and my other daughter, Soon-hee."
"Daughters?" Yumi mouthed.
"Yes," Ji-yoon said. "Even though your appearance here was unexpected, I"m glad you can all finally meet."
The younger women regarded Yumi curiously. The older of the two wrinkled her nose slightly. In disdain? Maybe she just had an itch.
"I didn"t realize..." Yumi looked to Alisa, as if she might have some light to shed on the situation.
While she could sympathize with Yumi"s discomfort, all Alisa was thinking was that she was either going to have to find a way to get rid of the girls for a while or that she now had three meals that she had to drug. There were not any beverages or plates on the table yet, so she could not gauge how feasible that would be.
"You know your father and I never married," Ji-yoon told Yumi while one of the girls waved her hand over a sensor on the table. A holodisplay popped up, presenting a menu with pictures of food. "He was a good man and a soldier. n.o.ble, appealing." Ji-yoon smiled, and the older girl rolled her eyes.
Alisa leaned in to look at the menu, hoping to find it full of porridge, mashmeal, scrambled eggs, and other items in which it would be easy to mix powdered drugs.
"I knew Dad was a soldier, yes," Yumi said.
That likely meant Yumi"s father had been in the imperial fleet. Thirty years ago, or whenever she had been conceived, that would have been the only military service out there, aside from private guards and mercenary units. Thus far, Yumi had seemed indifferent to news of the Alliance and the empire, not speaking of allegiance to either side. Had she grown up with tendencies one way or another?
"And quite the romantic," Ji-yoon said. "He definitely caught my attention."
"I"m telling Father about this, Mother," the younger girl said with a somewhat nervous giggle.
Ji-yoon waved her hand in dismissal. "He knows my past." She turned back to Yumi. "Despite an attraction, we were never a good match. Not enough common interests." She waved toward the temple all around them, and Alisa wondered if that was a polite way of saying he hadn"t been a Sta.r.s.eer and thus was not good enough to marry her. "It was never my intention to have a child with him, but we were off on... I guess you could call it an adventure." Ji-yoon smiled at some memory. "You were the result. But we separated soon after you were born, and I returned to my home. I made sure he had the means to care for you-he was quite insistent that you stay with him, and I..."
"Didn"t care since I never displayed Sta.r.s.eer talents?" Yumi asked. She didn"t sound that bitter, but she looked out toward the frozen sea as she spoke, her eyes bleak.
"I cared," Ji-yoon said quietly. "But he wanted a reminder of our time together."
Gee, way to make Yumi feel like a souvenir tchotchke picked up on a shared vacation. Alisa kept her mouth shut since this conversation had nothing to do with her. Besides, she was busy perusing the menu and groaning inside because every entry involved fish. Where were the eggs? The porridge? Couldn"t these people import any staples? Eight different kinds of fish steaks. How was she supposed to mix brown powder into a fish steak?
"I noticed you stopped visiting once I was ten," Yumi said, "the latest age when Sta.r.s.eer children manifest their talents, I"ve read."
"That wasn"t why I stopped visiting," Ji-yoon said firmly.
"No? It"s not as if Dad was dating anyone else. He never married, never seemed to fall in love again."
"I"m sorry he never found anyone, but I was back here, and I did marry. And I had more children. When they were small, they were a handful, and it was hard to get away for weeks for cross-system visits."
"A handful," the younger one said with a sniff. "Really, Mother."
"They"re still a handful," Ji-yoon said.
The older one rolled her eyes again. Alisa would have taken Yumi over either of these twits for daughters.
Ji-yoon looked in her direction, frowning slightly. h.e.l.ls, was she mind surfing?
Alisa pointed at the last item on the menu and the only one without "steak" or "fillet" in the description. "Is the fish stew good? I"m going to try it."
She prodded the picture of it in the display. The selection flashed. The girls picked two items of their own, a fillet and a steak. Ji-yoon looked toward Alisa for another long moment before shifting her gaze to the menu. She selected a dragonfish steak. Great.
Alisa turned a grim expression toward Yumi, wondering how she was going to make this work, but Yumi did not look at her. She was frowning down at the table where her hands were clasped tightly.
"Yumi?" Ji-yoon asked softly. "Are you going to eat? You don"t have to worry about paying here. You"re my guest."
Yumi"s lips thinned. "Thank you, but I a.s.sure you I can afford my way. I"ve held several prestigious teaching positions, and I"ve worked as a private tutor for wealthy families. I"m smart with my money. Just because I"m choosing to travel now-"
Ji-yoon held up a hand. "I didn"t mean to offend you. It"s just that we don"t use money here. Those who have jobs outside of the temple often get paid, but here, as long as you contribute in a way, your room and board and other needs are provided. Those of your guests, too, though given the strict policies about outsiders, few of us entertain." Her smile actually looked a touch sad.
"Oh." Yumi"s cheeks flushed pink, and she poked at the fish stew option.