Free Fallen Empire 2: Honor's Flight by Lindsay Buroker Page B

said, frowning at all of them and especially Beck, as he tapped a perky teal earstar hooked over his ear. Opening a comm? Or starting a video recording? “Or on campus at all .”
    “We’re here to assist a colleague who’s in trouble inside,” Leonidas said.
    “What kind of trouble could someone be in in the library?” the security guard asked. “They don’t shoot you if you don’t pay your late fees.”
    “Unknown, but he was adamant.” Leonidas walked toward the door, making it clear he would go around the guard.
    Beck followed, but the guard pulled out a stun gun and leveled it at his chest. “Stop or I will call for police robots.”
    The stunner probably wouldn’t have affected Beck through his armor, especially since he still wore his helmet, but he did stop, looking to Alisa for orders.
    “You are an alarming figure in all that armor,” she told him. “Why don’t you wait out here and chat up the security officer until we’re done?”
    Beck scowled fiercely.
    Leonidas, perhaps noticing that the guard was more focused on Beck, continued toward the open doors.
    “Wait,” the man blurted. “Are you armed?”
    He glanced toward the hip where Leonidas kept his destroyer and toward a similar spot on Alisa. She was about to ask if she could turn her weapon in to the front desk person to hold, but Leonidas glared at the guard and said, “Yes.”
    “Then you can’t—”
    Leonidas turned his back on him and strode inside. The guard’s stunner twitched, but he opted to keep it aimed at Beck’s chest. An alarm at the door beeped with indignation as Leonidas passed through. Whether it was reading his gun or all of his cybernetic parts, Alisa didn’t know.
    “I’m with him,” she said and walked after Leonidas, giving Beck a wait-here signal, and hoped the guard would not stun her, either.
    “I’m calling headquarters,” the guard growled and turned toward Alisa, his stunner leaving Beck’s chest.
    She was watching over her shoulder and tensed, expecting to have to dive to the side if she didn’t want to be hit. But Beck’s hand darted out, and he caught the man’s wrist. With the servo-enhanced strength of the armor, the guard did not have a chance of escaping that grip.
    “That’s not necessary,” Beck said, nodding after Alisa. “Why don’t we chat about it?”
    Alisa worried that the campus police truck would be waiting for them when she and Leonidas came out of the library, but she hustled to catch up with him, hoping they would have time to find Alejandro and also hoping that she could do her research. Maybe security would be more likely to remember and hunt down the men, and she could slip unnoticed into the stacks.
    Leonidas paused on the sprawling marble tile floor of the grand foyer and tapped his earstar, murmuring something. A few students using the physical materials check-out stations glanced at him, but unless one noticed his military jacket and Corps patch, he was not as strange of a sight as Beck in his armor.
    “Which floor?” Leonidas was asking as Alisa joined him.
    She glanced back toward the entrance. She had set off the door alarm, too, and doubted it was a good idea to linger so close.
    “Basement Three,” came a hushed whisper that she could barely hear. “Two of them are blocking the door, so I can’t get back to the elevator. There are at least two more looking for me in here.”
    “On my way.”
    Leonidas did not immediately start walking, so Alisa assumed he had not been here before and needed to call up a map.
    Glad to be semi-useful, she said, “This way,” and headed around the corner to where the closest elevators waited.
    Several students were already waiting. When the chime dinged and the doors opened, Leonidas glared at them and strode inside. A couple of boys started after him, but he hardened his glare and flexed his muscles to make his looming stance even more intimidating than usual.
    “We’ll get the next one,” one of the boys said,