Part 19 (1/2)
”Then you can come up with a better one.”
The flight stick moved of its own accord. Alisa started, grabbing it harder.
Let go, the voice in her mind instructed.
Though that was the last thing Alisa wanted to do, she forced herself to lean back, lifting her hands from the stick.
”Should I be alarmed?” Leonidas asked quietly, watching over her shoulder as the Striker surged forward, following the dart as it continued downward, as if it would fly straight into the ice.
”I am,” she said.
”Dr. Dominguez wants a word with you, Captain,” Mica said over the comm.
”Is he jealous that you didn't include him in the arm wrestling match?”
”No, he knew he would lose.”
”Captain,” Alejandro said, ”I finished a.n.a.lyzing the blood.”
”Oh? I thought you had already finished a.n.a.lyzing it before.” Alisa resisted the urge to grab the flight stick as the Striker picked up speed, and the sea of ice filled her vision.
”I had another idea when I saw Beck chewing on his leftover duck.”
”I'm glad he's treating our imminent death as a snack time,” Mica muttered from somewhere off to the side.
”We're not going to die,” Alisa said firmly. ”I'm coming up with a better plan as we speak.” She wished that were true. She kept hoping inspiration would strike her. Right now, the ice was the only thing that looked like it might strike her.
”Well, it couldn't get much worse,” Mica said.
”Just work on those explosives in case there's an opportunity to escape,” Alisa said. ”What did you find, Doctor?”
”A DNA match.”
”You figured out which Sta.r.s.eer that blood belonged to?”
Her Striker veered to one side and then the other. As they neared the frozen sea, the craft finally veered, s.h.i.+fting to a horizontal path and skimming along a few feet above the ice.
”Not precisely, but I do know that it was one of the people who came to eat Beck's food. I found his trash bin full of skewers and used the saliva dried on them to run scans. I found a match on the third one.”
”How many people did Beck feed?”
”He says a couple dozen at least.”
Alisa frowned. ”That doesn't narrow it down much.”
”No, but he says he did not feed Abelardus. Whoever died, if anyone, it wasn't him. He never returned to the Nomad after escorting your team into the temple.”
”Ah,” Alisa said, her frown disappearing. ”That's something, then.”
”You're welcome,” Alejandro said, sounding like he wanted some grat.i.tude.
”Thank you,” Alisa managed. She hadn't forgotten that he had asked Leonidas about getting rid of her once, but she supposed sc.r.a.ping spit off used skewers was a demeaning job for someone who had once been a chief ER surgeon.
”I could have told you Abelardus is still alive,” Leonidas said.
Control is yours again, the Sta.r.s.eer spoke into her mind as his dart surged ahead, leaving the shadow of the temple and shooting up to join other darts swooping in between Strikers and Cobras. You may join our squadron, but you may also be able to get in close and do damage with your torpedoes since you're in an Alliance s.h.i.+p.
I don't think they're going to mistake this rusty museum piece for one of their own, Alisa thought as she zipped along the ice. She didn't want to stay low for long, since she would be an easy target for anyone flying above, but she needed to get far enough away from the temple to better gauge everything that was going on, especially since the craft lacked a surround-flow display.
”They had better tech than this back on Old Earth,” she grumbled, alternating between watching the sensor display and the view out her canopy.
They may at least hesitate to fire upon you, the other pilot said. You haven't trained with our people, so you would be in the way as a part of our formations.
”Great.”
”Problem?” Leonidas asked as Alisa took them to the edge of the mist field, then flew upward, trying to stay on the periphery of the battle, avoiding the dozens of explosives and bolts of energy filling the sky.
”They want our help, but they don't want us anywhere near them while we do it.”
”Just point me toward something I can shoot.”
From the sound of his voice, he wasn't particular about what that might be. She knew he wouldn't mind shooting Alliance s.h.i.+ps down under any circ.u.mstances, but after the last day and night, he might happily blow some Sta.r.s.eer s.h.i.+ps out of the sky too.
She, on the other hand, did not want to fire at any of the targets. It crossed her mind to disappear into the mist, but that would not help the Nomad escape.
Sighing, once she had flown high enough to see the s.h.i.+ps below, she turned toward a squadron of Alliance s.h.i.+ps that were peppering the temple s.h.i.+eld. Before she made it halfway to them, two of the Strikers abruptly veered downward. She had not seen either get hit, and there was not any smoke coming from their engines, but they spiraled toward the ice below as if they had been hit dead on.
”That's chilling,” she muttered.
One of the Strikers managed to recover, the nose turning up out of the dive at the last second. The belly almost sc.r.a.ped the ice as the craft swooped back upward. The second s.h.i.+p did not recover. It smashed into the ice so hard that it broke through. Pieces of the s.h.i.+p flew free as the smashed fuselage plunged into the black water below.
Alisa flicked on the comm in her Striker, a.s.suming it was tied in with the rest of the Sta.r.s.eer squadron and that she could hear their chatter. If they chattered. Maybe they were all communicating with their minds up here.
”That one's out of it,” someone was saying.
”Good, but focus on what's going on around you too. You've got a cat on your tail.”
”I see it.”
”Focus on the wars.h.i.+ps,” another voice said. ”If we can crash them, it'll matter a lot more than dropping the one-man s.h.i.+ps. Those are just flies pestering us.”
”We've been trying, but they're rotating through pilots up there. As soon as we affect one, another pushes him aside and takes the helm. I did manage to find a weak-willed mind and start a fight up there.” The speaker sounded smug. ”He tried to punch his C.O.”
”Just fly,” someone with a hard voice said. ”Let Naidoo and those in the temple worry about mind links.”
”Look out, Nile!”