The air seemed to shimmer, and a wave of power slammed into the men. They scattered like poker chips struck by an angry gambler. Darkness descended as flashlights flew from men’s hands and hit the floor.
Alisa was on the edge of the wave, and she caught some of it, too, enough that it knocked her backward, her legs flying over her head. One of the treasure piles stopped her flight as her back struck it, blasting her breath from her lungs.
Though dazed, she rose to her knees and patted herself down, making sure none of her fasteners had been torn free. Her Starseer genes would not save her from the radiation in
here
if that happened.
Another grenade flew through the air as Alisa, assured that none of her body was exposed, climbed back to her feet. Where had Leonidas gone? The construct was still flying around, alternating between diving and flinging mental attacks. The men were scattered all about, a couple of them no longer moving as they lay among the dusty burial offerings.
The creature swooped down to attack someone blocked from Alisa’s sight by another mountain. Leonidas?
“Mica?” Alisa called, looking for her friend. “Where are you? You didn’t bring any rust bangs, did you?”
She had no idea if the corrosive acid would do anything against whatever shielding Abelardus said this creature possessed, but anything would be better than firing useless blazer bolts.
“Of course I brought rust bangs,” Mica said from surprisingly nearby.
She crouched behind Alisa, waving a canister. “I’ve thrown two and completely missed both times. I
have
melted good-sized holes in piles of gold.”
Alisa took the offered canister. “Let’s hope Alcyone won’t mind.”
The creature came back into view, powerful wings stirring the air as they flapped. Alisa hefted her new weapon, but did not throw. Leonidas had found his way astride the great bird again. He gripped the back of its head and tore off a piece of plating, flinging it to the side.
The construct shrieked like a wounded bat, and Alisa expected Leonidas to go flying again, but he flattened himself to its back and wrapped his arms around its neck. His body jerked, as if he’d been struck by a giant hammer, but he did not let go.
The construct started to bank, turning away from a wall coming up in front of it. Leonidas’s armored shoulders flexed and heaved. The long neck jerked to the side, and the head whipped along with it. The creature’s flight faltered, and it did not bank in time. It struck the wall hard and went down. Leonidas kept his grip, going down with it. Both cyborg and creature disappeared from view.
Alisa scrambled to the top of the nearest pile, hoping to get a chance to use the rust bang—and hoping Leonidas was all right. She had seen before what those Starseer powers could do to him, harming him even inside his armor.
Several of the soldiers also ran over a ridge of offerings. They shot blazers, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were ineffective, and the man with the damned grenade launcher looked to be ready to fire his weapon before seeing if Leonidas was next to the creature or not.
Abelardus passed Alisa as she ran, topping the same pile that she was on.
“It’s down, but it’s getting up,” he called, and pointed his staff at it.
Alisa made it to the top and found Leonidas punching the creature in the side of the head, as if his fists were the best weapons he had. In this case, maybe they were. His power could bring down walls, after all.
“Get out of the way,” Abelardus yelled down to him.
Leonidas glanced up, and Alisa waved her rust bang. He punched the construct a final time, leaving a dent she could see from her perch, and sprang away, leaping twenty feet before landing.
The creature struggled to rise, inching off the scattered offerings where it had come down. Abelardus growled, his staff quivering as he concentrated. The creature bowed its head, its legs also quivering. Was he holding it down?
Alisa threw the rust bang a second before Abelardus yelled, “Everything you’ve got. Use it now.”
The soldiers needed no urging. Weapons fired, and another grenade spun through the air. It exploded next to the construct’s head, flames and smoke bursting into the air. The rust bang also exploded, less spectacularly, but perhaps more effectively. Acid flew everywhere, spattering the metallic creature.
Leonidas ran up the mountain to join Alisa and Abelardus. He turned toward the creature, as if he might use this elevated perch to spring atop it again. But the smoke cleared, revealing that their foe was not moving. Its head had been torn off, wires and the remains of metal vertebrae spilling from the stump.
“It seemed to like you,” Alisa said, swatting him on the chest playfully, though she was eyeing him up and down with her headlamp, hoping there were not any breaks in his armor. Dust dulled the usually shiny crimson, and it definitely had new dents.
“It saw me as the biggest threat,” he said.
Abelardus snorted. “More likely, it shared the Starseer hatred for cyborgs.”
“Alcyone worked alongside the fledgling imperial army and its newly minted cyborgs.”
“Just because she fought with them doesn’t mean she liked them. I’m fighting with you, and I don’t like you.”
Leonidas looked at him. “I have more reason to loathe and distrust you, Abelardus, than you have to feel that way toward me.”
“But you don’t?” Alisa asked.
“No, I do.” Leonidas put his arm around her back and pointed down the treasure pile to where the soldiers were gathering around Tomich.
She let him help her descend. “Is your arm around me because you’re a gentleman and you’re assisting me, or because you’re possessively removing me from Abelardus’s company?” she asked quietly.
“I
am
a gentleman, and a gentleman removes ladies from the company of unsavory influences.”
“Who told you that you were a gentleman, Colonel Adler?” Tomich asked over the comm.
A few snickers came in response.
Alisa flushed. She had forgotten that everyone was on the same channel, and their comms were open.
“Did someone tell you I wasn’t?” Leonidas asked, deadpan.
He and Alisa joined the soldiers, a sour-faced Abelardus right behind them. Apparently, he did not care for being called unsavory.
“It’s not the usual adjective we in the Alliance apply to cyborgs,” Tomich said.
“I’ve heard Alliance officers have a limited vocabulary.”
“Well, we all know
I
do.” Tomich grinned and thumped Leonidas on the arm. “Nice riding up there.”
Leonidas grunted indifferently, though he looked faintly pleased at this acknowledgment.
“Now who has a limited vocabulary?” Alisa teased him.
“Sir?” a worried voice asked, hurrying up to Tomich.
A couple of flashlight beams targeted the young soldier as he lifted an arm. Three parallel slashes in his suit revealed bloody cuts in the flesh beneath.
The soldiers fell silent.
“Get back to the shuttle and hit decon,” Tomich said, all of the humor gone from his face. “Max, go with him.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two men hustled back the way the group had come. Alejandro watched, his expression also grim. Alisa almost asked if the soldier would be all right, but she was afraid to do so.
“This better be worth it,” Tomich said, turning up the path they had been following. “Abelardus, you sense any other threats out there?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.” Tomich waved for Alisa to take the lead again.
Wonderful, indeed.
Not feeling brave, she made sure Leonidas and Abelardus were with her before heading down the path.
They had been at the halfway point through the chamber when the construct attacked, and it did not take long for another set of double doors to come into view, these also standing open. Alisa spotted a dusty staff sticking out of the bottom of one of the last piles of offerings. She paused, eyeing it sidelong, and an idea popped into her head.
Careful not to draw attention to it, she tapped her faceplate and turned toward the people behind her. Beck, Alejandro, and Mica. Yumi was lagging behind, wiping dust off things and examining them. She would be the ideal one to make an accomplice in this, if Alisa could get her attention.
“Anyone have any idea how to scratch your eye when it’s behind a faceplate?” Alisa asked, when a dozen faces turned curiously toward her, people wondering why she had stopped.
“Let me know if you figure it out,” one of the soldiers said. “I’m sweating like warts on a frog.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” another man said.
“Unless they’re sweaty warts.”
Tomich sighed. “There may be a reason imperial cyborgs think we have a limited vocabulary.”
“What, are we supposed to say perspiration instead of sweat?”
“Yumi, what’s that you’re looking at?” Alisa asked, hoping the conversation would distract the men for a minute—or at least keep them from growling at her to keep going.
She caught Abelardus’s eye as she headed back toward Yumi and tried to give him a significant look. Since he liked to jump into her thoughts, he shouldn’t have any trouble reading that as an invitation to do so.
Got it
, he said into her mind.
I’ll try to ensure they find this conversation ridiculously fascinating.
It might take more than a Starseer to do that.
We’ll see.
“It’s some old medical equipment,” Yumi said, as Alisa approached.
“Do you think Alejandro would like to add it to his collection?” Alisa turned off her comm and touched Yumi, pointing toward the staff. “Can you linger behind, dust that off, and see if there’s a way to fancy it up? Leave it leaning against the wall by the door there, so we can grab it on the way out.”
Yumi opened her mouth, but Alisa held a finger in front of her lips. She doubted Yumi had turned off her comm.
After a glance at the staff, Yumi nodded.
Alisa returned to the front of the group as the wart-sweat conversation concluded. She turned her comm back on. Leonidas was watching her suspiciously. That was fine. So long as the soldiers were not suspicious.
She shook her head as she resumed walking, scarcely believing that she was trying to arrange things so that her people got the staff. If they actually
found
the staff.
When she and Leonidas reached the double doors, he leaned his head through first, shining his built-in flashlight around the next chamber. The next and the
last
chamber, it seemed. There were not any visible doors on the other walls. Instead, a dais rested off to one side with a sarcophagus atop it. Several rows of black humanoid statues stood facing it, staffs held at their sides, as if they were Starseers eternally worshipping the one entombed there.
A mural was painted on the opposite end of the chamber, as dusty as everything else, but the details still visible. A woman with flowing black hair stood in the sky on an asteroid, pointing a staff toward a planet. A painted yellow beam showed energy shooting forth from the staff, slamming into the surface of the planet, which was already partially crumbled, pieces streaking out into space.
“The saint,” Alejandro breathed as he leaned through the doorway. “We are in the presence of a divine hero.” He touched his chest, his religious pendant probably dangling there underneath his suit. “May we prove worthy of her blessing and of being in her presence.”
“She’s a traitor, not a saint,” Abelardus said from behind Alisa, his gaze also toward the mural.
Something stirred near the dais, one of the statues. Leonidas pointed his rifle at it. It turned to face them, revealing that it was not a statue at all, but some human-shaped robot. Layers of dust topped its shoulders and head and dulled the rest of its black body, but the centuries did not keep the eyes from opening in its expressionless face. They glowed a disturbing red, and the head turned toward the doorway, its gaze locking onto them.
The rest of the statues—robots—came to life, at least twenty of them, all turning toward Alisa and the others. They raised their staffs, their intent clear.
Chapter 19
Leonidas pulled Alisa out of the doorway, pushing her behind him. “Wait out here where it’s safe,” he said as he strode forward to meet the threat.
“Where it’s
safe
?” Alisa asked, getting bumped as the soldiers pushed past her. “You mean in the room where we just got attacked by a giant metal pterodactyl that hurled you into the ceiling?”
He did not answer. The soldiers took over the comm channel, barking orders to fan out and find cover. The noise of unfamiliar weapons firing drowned out their words, something that sounded like a cross between her Etcher and a blazer. Were those staffs
shooting
?
Alisa glimpsed bolts of energy streaking through the air in front of the soldiers, but she obeyed Leonidas’s wishes and moved back into the treasure room. Mica, Alejandro, and Yumi were there, and so was Tomich, who stood in the doorway, using the wall for cover. He fired into the fray, even though he wore only a spacesuit instead of combat armor. Beck and Abelardus had gone into the chamber with Leonidas and the soldiers.
Yumi held up the staff Alisa had pointed out a few minutes earlier.
“Guess I could have gotten that myself,” she muttered, since none of the Alliance people was paying her any attention.
She took it and leaned it against the wall by the doorway. It felt like metal rather than wood and had runes engraved in the sides at either end. They did not glow or do anything interesting. In fact, it looked like a walking stick one might buy at some camping store. Would the soldiers believe it was Alcyone’s legendary staff? Alisa blocked it with her body in case Tomich took his gaze from the battle.
“Any rust bangs left, Mica?” she asked, thinking of leaning through the doorway and trying to help.
“No.”
“None at all?”
“Maybe you should bring your own weapons when you’re heading into battle,” Mica said.
Alisa barely heard her over someone giving orders and someone else shouting an earnest, “Look out!” She muted her comm so she would not distract them.