You needn’t sound so happy about that
, Abelardus informed her, glancing back. He and the rest of the group had paused to survey the courtyard.
If you don’t try to trip me when I run up to a tower to throw it away, I’ll give you a kiss
, Alisa replied.
Make it in front of the mech, and I’ll consider it.
Yumi stopped at the bottom of the ramp beside Alisa.
“You’re going?” Alisa asked in surprise.
“My mother and sisters… I have to look for them.”
“You don’t think they fled with the others?”
“We don’t know that anyone fled,” Yumi said quietly, her face bleak as she gazed up at the towers.
There wasn’t any sign of a recent battle, but her words made Alisa think of the underground Starseer outpost on Cleon Moon, the way people had been killed as they ran, killed without a wound on their bodies. And that had been
before
the
chasadski
had gotten the staff.
“It may be in the audience chamber,” Abelardus said, pointing toward the largest building. “Where all the monitors are.”
Leonidas nodded and waved for Alisa to come forward.
“Problem?” she murmured, circling the men to join him.
“If you insist on coming along, stay close so I can protect you.”
“You’re sexy when you give orders.”
He frowned down at her.
“And when you find my jokes inappropriate.”
“Let’s go, Abelardus.” Leonidas nodded toward the building and started walking, Abelardus on his right and Alisa on his left.
The Alliance soldiers fanned out behind them, with Alejandro and Yumi trailing behind and Beck walking protectively at her side. Yumi had grabbed a couple of Mica’s grenades, and she fingered them nervously. Alisa hoped they weren’t unstable. Alejandro clutched his medical kit, an injector already in hand. A tranquilizer gun would have been better.
Behind the group, Mica remained in the hatchway of the
Nomad
, her arms folded over her chest, her expression proclaiming that she expected trouble. Her box of explosives rested beside her. Alisa hoped the Tiangs stayed in their cabin and did not get it in their heads that this would be a good place for an escape attempt.
The group reached the door and entered the building, as Alisa had first done just weeks earlier. All was quiet in the foyer, save for the trickle of water coming from numerous directions. The ice-block walls glistened with moisture, and the carpet runner squished under their feet as they walked.
“There’s something
under
all the ice, isn’t there?” Alisa asked, imagining the floor melting away and all of them falling into the lava lake. That wasn’t quite how she envisioned destroying the staff. “You said it flew through space, didn’t you, Abelardus?”
“Yes, but it’s very cold in space, so ice wouldn’t have melted there. I actually don’t know what the structure under the ice looks like.”
“Yumi?” Alisa asked.
Yumi shrugged. “Nobody showed me a blueprint. Your first visit was my first visit too.”
As they walked the corridors, Alisa caught the soldiers glancing at each other and could see their lips moving behind their faceplates. A private conversation on their private comm channel. She hoped Abelardus was keeping tabs on them.
A clank sounded in the distance, and Leonidas halted.
“There are people in that direction,” Abelardus said. “Most of the people I’ve been sensing are in the audience chamber. Fifteen or twenty.”
“Enemies?” Leonidas asked.
“Isn’t
every
Starseer your enemy?”
Leonidas sighed.
“Is the staff with them?” Alisa asked.
“It was,” Abelardus said. “Now I think it’s behind the audience chamber.”
“Is there a way to circle around and avoid the people?” Leonidas asked.
“Not without punching holes in walls.”
Leonidas flexed one gauntleted hand. “That can happen.”
A few murmurs of agreement came from the soldiers behind them.
“This is my
home
,” Abelardus protested, looking toward Alisa.
She shrugged. She wouldn’t be pleased at holes in the bulkheads of the
Nomad,
either, but they also weren’t made of ice. Ice that was already melting.
“One hole,” Leonidas said. “Show us the way around.”
Abelardus grumbled to himself but continued down the wide corridor, nearly to the base of the steps that led up to the audience chamber. Alisa wondered if it was still getting the video feeds from all over the system, the way it had been when she had visited last. Or was the temple also cut off from outside communication?
Abelardus turned down a side corridor, but not before casting a long troubled look toward the closed double doors at the top of the stairs. The soldiers gave those doors warier looks. If the people waiting inside were Starseers, they must be aware of this infiltration group. But nobody charged out, nor did Alisa hear any more noises from that direction. Could the people be tied up or unconscious for some reason? Dissent among the enemy ranks?
After a couple more turns and a walk up a long hallway, Abelardus stopped and faced a blank wall. He touched the melting ice.
“There’s a computer room back here that handles all the feeds that go into the audience chamber,” he said. “It’s windowless, but there’s a door that opens to the hallway behind the chamber. It’s where Lady Naidoo and other council members have their offices.”
“The staff is back there?” Leonidas flicked open a port on the inner forearm of his armor and aimed a laser tool at the wall. It bit quickly into the ice.
“I think so,” Abelardus said.
“You
think?
”
“It keeps moving around.”
Leonidas met Alisa’s eyes. Was he also considering how far they could trust Abelardus?
Hawk and several other soldiers with similar tools in their armor joined him in cutting into the wall.
“There are panels behind the ice,” Leonidas said.
Alisa wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t imagine a castle made solely of frozen water being flown through space.
As she pictured the structure floating between the stars, it made her wonder if the
chasadski
had targeted it less out of a desire to recruit Starseers and more because they wanted to claim it as a base. A flying temple in space might make an interesting platform from which to launch plans of system-wide domination. But if that was their plan, why park it over a lake of lava? She hadn’t flown under the temple, but she imagined any ice on the bottom would have melted right away.
“We can tear them down,” one of the soldiers said, shoving cut blocks of ice out of the way.
Leonidas cut a hole in the core panel. It was sturdy with wires and pipes running through it, but he peeled it open as if it were made of paper. He did the same thing with the one next to it, creating an opening large enough for people to step through.
A dark room lay inside, tiny power indicators glowing green and red. Leonidas leaned the broken panels against a wall. Alejandro, stepping out of the way, bumped them, and one slid down the ice and clattered on the floor.
“That wasn’t very stealthy,” Abelardus observed.
“I’m sure they already know we’re here,” Alisa said, though she had winced at the noise.
Leonidas led the way into the dark room, waving for Alisa to follow. He hadn’t been kidding about keeping her close enough to protect. She hoped that she wouldn’t inadvertently distract him during an important moment.
Paying no attention to the walls of computers—there were enough of them to control the entire complex, not just the monitors—Leonidas strode for the door inside. Alisa shone her light over the equipment as more soldiers filtered in, making the room claustrophobic. She spotted a strange bundle of wires sticking out of a black box attached to one of the mainframes. Was that some jerry-rigged device placed there to fix a problem?
“Mica?” Alisa whispered into her comm. The unit informed her that it was using the
Nomad’s
limited transmitter and receiver rather than the planet’s satellite network. “I’m going to send you a picture of something.”
“Naked pictures of you and your cyborg?” came Mica’s prompt response. She was probably tapping her foot and waiting to do something.
“Not this time. Take a look at it and let me know what you think, will you?”
“
This
time?” Leonidas asked, his helmet leaned against the door as he listened for noise on the other side.
“She might be more eager to look at my pictures if I mix in things like that. You’ll cooperate, won’t you? To tickle the fancy of my engineer?” Alisa took a picture of the black box and transmitted it.
“Which one of you would she be most interested in looking at?” Beck asked curiously.
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“I can hear the people in the audience chamber,” Leonidas said. “They’re not talking, but they’re shuffling around.”
“I think they’re walking in circles,” Abelardus said.
So much for Alisa’s thought of the Starseers being tied up.
“Why?” Leonidas asked.
“No idea.”
“You can’t get the gist of any of their thoughts?” Alisa remembered that he had said Starseers could protect their thoughts from others, but she was surprised he couldn’t get anything at all.
“Oddly, I’m not reading much from them. They’re almost… I don’t know how to explain it. Like androids right now.”
“Was something
done
to them?” Yumi whispered.
“We’ll find out,” Leonidas said, opening the door.
As soon as he went out, Alisa poked her head through the doorway. She glimpsed the back of a black robe as someone went around the corner of a T-shaped intersection in the direction opposite from the audience chamber. Leonidas took a step, as if to give chase, but the chamber door burst open.
Men and women carrying staffs and wearing Starseer robes flowed out from the audience chamber. They also wore thin headbands with metallic disks pressed against their foreheads. The lights were out behind the Starseers, as if they had been wandering in the dark.
“Get back,” Leonidas warned, springing forward to intercept the defenders.
There wasn’t a way
back
. The soldiers were crowding the door, wanting to join him. Alisa stepped into the hallway, pressing her back to the wall to stay out of the way.
Hawk and his men surged into the corridor. Alisa lost sight of the Starseers, except for glimpses between armored men. One of those glimpses made her gasp in surprise.
“Yumi,” she blurted, though Yumi was still inside the computer room. Alisa was positive she had seen her sister, Young-hee.
Before she could puzzle through what was happening, the first attack came. Even though Alisa was behind the men, an invisible force hit her just as it hit them. The wave of power swept her from her feet and hurtled her down the hallway. She smashed against the wet, icy wall, her back striking hard. Pain pummeled her entire body and her breath whooshed out. For a second, as she slid down the wall to the floor, her stunned lungs refused to work. She couldn’t inhale, and panic gripped her.
Men’s war cries mingled with the squeals of blazer fire, and the thumps of staffs striking armor convinced Alisa there wasn’t time to panic. She found her wobbly legs and finally managed to inhale, her back smarting as she did so. Somehow, Yumi had ended up in the hallway, and she had also fallen. From her knees, she stared at the battle. Had she seen Young-hee too?
The soldiers had all regained their feet, but they struggled to reach the Starseers. Leonidas stood at the forefront, firing with one hand and fiddling with something else in his other. Alejandro remained in the computer room, but Abelardus strode out. Ostberg leaped out behind him, waving his staff and yelling. If his and Abelardus’s presence surprised the resident Starseers, they did not show it. They didn’t show
anything
. Even as they attacked, their faces were masks, their eyes dull.
Alisa grabbed Yumi, pulling her to her feet as Leonidas threw the object he had been fiddling with—a fluidwrap. It arched high toward the ceiling. He must be trying to get around invisible Starseer barriers.
The fluidwrap reached the ceiling and unfurled, its energy net dropping onto the heads of two robed men who hadn’t thought to extend their shields above them. It hardly mattered. There were many more Starseers, and they were pushing the soldiers back, past the door to the computer room, perhaps past escape.
Alisa gripped her stun gun, but she couldn’t get a clear shot. Even if there had been a chance, would it prove more effective against their shields than blazer fire and brute force? She doubted it. But she hadn’t forgotten the Starseer who had run around the corner as she came out. Had that been the leader? Tymoteusz? If they could take him out, could they stop this?
“Young-hee,” Yumi yelled over the clamor of staffs ringing against armored chests and shoulders. “Tell everyone to stop fighting. We’re on your side.”
Alisa couldn’t see the faces of the Starseers, but they did not stop fighting at Yumi’s call, not a bit.
“Don’t kill them,” Abelardus shouted, glancing at Yumi. “Those are our
people
.”
“Killing
them
isn’t the problem,” someone—Hawk?—snarled. An instant later, he was thrown upward so hard that his helmet cracked the ice block ceiling when he hit.
One of the armored soldiers dropped to the deck, his legs writhing as he grasped at his throat. Leonidas threw something else, this time bouncing it off a wall, again trying to get around the Starseer shields. It didn’t work. It bounced back, and smoke flowed out of the end, the grayish-green haze filling the corridor. At least it was not something more inimical than a smoke grenade.
“Young-hee,” Yumi tried again. “It’s Yumi. We’re here to help!”
Beck, who had been pushed to the back of the fight and couldn’t reach any of the Starseers, was the only one to look at her.
“I think they’re being controlled by those headbands somehow,” Abelardus shouted. “I can’t get through to any of them. They’re not themselves at all. They’re—” Just like the soldiers, Abelardus was hurled away, tumbling over the helmets of two of Hawk’s soldiers.