Her thick ponytail floated, the yacht being pulled in slowly enough that it didn’t have any semblance of gravity. Only their galaxy suits’ magnetic soles kept them attached to the deck. Tristan didn’t look forward to another fight in zero-g, but he would do whatever it took to keep the crew of that ship—human or robot—from getting Nalini.
He already felt like a failure. Two days on the job, and he’d allowed her yacht to be taken over and her to be captured.
“Switching the camera view so we can see where we’re going,” Jenna said, toggling a control.
The rear display shifted to give them a perfect view of a yawning opening in the gray hull of the ship. They were close enough that they couldn’t see its massive cylindrical shape anymore, just their inevitable destination.
“I’m still not getting readings for a crew,” Jenna said.
“If they’re wearing combat armor, that could hide their heat signatures.” Tristan shifted his grip, wishing he had his liquid combat armor. But he’d taken a risk even bringing the pertundo, since it was such a trademark weapon of the Kingdom knights.
“You think the whole crew would be wearing it?” Jenna asked.
“Maybe. They—this prince—might have sent a combat team to deal specifically with us, and the rest of the ship is all automated.” Tristan hoped it wasn’t a large combat team, since he was the only one here to protect the women. He felt daunted as the yacht was pulled through the opening, a weird tingle going over him as they passed through some kind of energy field and into the cavernous dim interior.
Only indicator lights and a few computer displays lit the huge space, just enough to see automated ore carts zipping along the deck and flying through the air dozens of feet up. Bins and piles of dirt and ore were mounded against distant walls, with stacks of ingots glinting through transparent sheaths that kept them secured to the deck. At the far end of the huge chamber they were being pulled into, rivers of molten metal curved into molds, the red glow highlighting millions of crowns’ worth of smelting equipment.
A clunk emanated through the deck as they landed, set down among piles of ore. Nearby, a chunk of an asteroid larger than the yacht towered over them, waiting to be tended by mechanical drills and jackhammers on long articulating arms. Nalini’s ponytail flopped down to her back as the mining ship’s spin gravity took effect.
“Well,” Nalini said. “Here we are.”
“Now would be a good time for you to hide,” Tristan said. “It was a good time fifteen minutes ago when I first suggested it, but now would also be acceptable.”
“Is your bodyguard being snarky with you?” Jenna asked.
“I believe so.” Nalini headed down the aisle toward Tristan.
“Did you have to pay extra for that kind of personality?”
“No, he came with it.”
“Lucky you.”
Tristan thought about making a truly snarky comment, but he was too relieved that they had recovered enough from their ordeal to make jokes. Nalini’s face had been ashen when she’d seen her sergeant’s throat slit, his eyes glazed in death.
The memory of it reminded Tristan that he’d failed. He didn’t think he could have gotten that fob out and worked it around his back to the cuffs any more quickly, but he shouldn’t have been caught unaware in the beginning. He should have realized right away that her sergeant was behind the scheme.
Nalini stopped in the rear of the main cabin and pressed a hand to a wall reader. A panel slid aside, revealing four pink and pale-blue stunners in a rack. If they hadn’t had the telltale handgun shape of a stunner, Tristan wouldn’t have recognized them. He’d never seen pink weapons before.
“Jenna.” Nalini tossed one of the stunners to her pilot. “Stay up there and get ready to fire from behind your pod.”
“You got it, Your Highness.”
Nalini walked to Tristan’s side and faced the hatch. “I’m going to hide here.”
“Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the word, but hiding usually refers to being someplace out of sight.”
“I can shift over behind you when they come in. You’re big. You’ll block their view of me.”
Tristan regarded the pink stunner, its pale-blue highlights, and—dear God—were those tassels? “They’ll see that from anywhere in the yacht.”
“Only if we dim the lights and I flip the glow-in-the-dark toggle.” The smile that tugged at her lips seemed flirtatious.
No, he decided. It was just a smile. A princess wouldn’t flirt with him.
“It doesn’t seriously do that, right?” Tristan waved at the weapon.
“You’ll only find out if we end up in the dark together with my stunner. Maybe I should grab two more. I’m not bad at juggling, you know. I took a circus theatrics class when I was ten.”
“The idea of witnessing that makes me want to arrange for us to be in the dark together.” Tristan was sure he shouldn’t find the idea of her performing circus moves intriguing. “I doubt Prince Jorg would approve.”
Her smile faltered, but she plastered it back on. It seemed sadder than it had before, but she kept her flippant tone when she asked, “You don’t think he’d want you to vet me for the things I’m capable of in the dark?”
“I’m thinking of locking myself in the lavatory,” Jenna said.
“At least someone is willing to follow my suggestion about hiding,” Tristan said.
“Not really. I just don’t want to listen to you two flirting.”
“We’re not flirting.” Tristan faced the hatch resolutely. “We’re preparing for battle.”
“Yeah? The legends I’ve heard of Kingdom knights didn’t mention circus juggling in the dark.”
Tristan clamped his mouth shut and focused on the task at hand, though he caught Nalini’s smile out of the corner of his eye and decided he liked it. He hoped Jorg wouldn’t be an ass to her.
Minutes passed with Tristan in his warrior tableau and Nalini shifting her weight and tapping her finger on the stunner.
Jenna opened the lavatory door to peer out. “At what point are we going to accept that nobody’s coming in to get us?”
“They may be trying to lull us into thinking exactly that,” Tristan said.
“There’s nobody moving around out there.” Jenna returned to the control console and tapped a button, and the display cycled through the various exterior cameras on the yacht. “Just robot arms and machines. None of them seem to have registered our presence.”
Tristan lowered his pertundo. Was it possible there wasn’t a combat team? It was a little humiliating to imagine they’d been outmaneuvered and captured by a completely automated ship, but it was possible. If Sergeant Habib had taken them to a rendezvous spot and transmitted their location while Tristan and Nalini had been unconscious, someone could have remotely ordered the mining ship to pick them up.
“I imagined this ship taking us to Prince Dubashi’s floating palace,” Nalini said, “where I would be locked in a cell until Prince Jorg married someone else, but it’s occurring to me that they could simply leave us here, stuck on an automated ship running a years-long mining circuit while we molder and rot.”
“If they didn’t leave any food, we’ll starve first,” Jenna said. “We’ve got about four weeks of water and rations on the yacht.”
“Someone will come looking for us before then.” But Nalini drummed her fingers on her thigh, as if she was already impatient.
Tristan tried to access the network with his chip but got a blinking no-signal report on his contact display. As she’d said before, the service in the asteroid belt was flaky.
“I hope,” Nalini added quietly. “These mining ships are built in space and spend their whole lives here. The big fusion reactors can go a long time without refueling. The ships crawl from asteroid to asteroid, slowly breaking down the valuable ones before moving on to the next.” She groaned and rubbed her face. “I can’t tell you how boring of a future that sounds like if we can’t get off.”
“We’ll get off,” Tristan said firmly. “I’ll go out and look for a control panel in the bay or on the bridge.”
Wherever that was. Tristan had never been on a mining vessel and had limited experience with spaceships in general. What if he found the controls but couldn’t figure out how to manipulate them? Or what if they were locked down so that only someone from Dubashi’s regime could access them?
“I’ll go with you.” Nalini waved her pink stunner. “Jenna, I want you to stay here. If another ship comes in, take advantage of the forcefield being down and fly out of here at top speed. Get back to the palace and get help.”
“I can’t leave you on some enemy ship,” Jenna said.
“Ideally, we’ll figure out how to drop the forcefield and have time to get back here so we can all fly away together.”
Tristan doubted it would be that easy—if the ship truly was automated, there would be equally automated defenses to keep its new prisoners from escaping—but that wasn’t his main objection. “I’ll go, Your Highness. You and Jenna should both stay here. Then if an opportunity to escape comes, you can both take it and get away. If you’re so inclined, you can send someone back for me later.”
He didn’t like the idea of being stranded on some mining ship for decades, but at least if she got away, he wouldn’t have failed.
“I think your snarky bodyguard is trying to take command, Your Highness,” Jenna observed.
“I’m not sure why. I didn’t follow his order to hide.” Nalini walked past Tristan and opened another larger panel, this one next to the hatch. Oxygen tanks were nestled inside, as well as emergency packs that contained food, water, and first-aid kits.
“I was hoping you’d realize that staying here and letting me head off into danger alone would be most logical.” Tristan accepted the oxygen tank she thrust at him, but he wasn’t done arguing yet. “There’s no reason for you to risk yourself out there. There may be booby traps and other defenses. My job is getting into danger. Yours is… something to do with rent-to-value ratios.”
“Real-estate development and investing, and I’m pleased you remembered the term.” Nalini handed him a second tank. “Fasten this to my suit, Sir Knight.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of real estate in need of developing on this ship.” Tristan tucked his tank between his legs so he could attach hers to the back of her galaxy suit. He had to move her ponytail aside—she would need to put it in a bun anyway so she could don her helmet—and had the urge to stroke the soft hair. Or maybe brush the curve of her neck with his fingers…
“I’m pretty good with computers too. I programmed Devi, remember.”
Ah, she had mentioned that. At age eleven, hadn’t it been? She might have a lot better chance of figuring out how to convince the ship to release the yacht.
She glanced back, and he realized he was holding her hair and gazing at her neck. Blushing, he almost flung the ponytail over her shoulder. He resisted and carefully snapped the oxygen tank into place.
“All right,” Tristan said gruffly. “You can come.”
“Thank you. Because I was waiting for the permission of a man before I decided what to do.”
Jenna snorted.
Tristan frowned at Nalini. “Prince Jorg is going to love you.”
“He better not be expecting some girl who rubs his shoulders and fetches his meals,” Nalini said.
“It’s probably not his shoulders he wants rubbed,” Jenna commented.
Tristan sighed, feeling more outnumbered now than he had when he’d faced three hulking men trying to kill him. The female-to-male ratio on the yacht was definitely off.
“Turn around.” Nalini swirled her finger in the air. “I’ll put your tank on. Unless you’re enjoying having it between your legs.”
“Not particularly.” Tristan almost said that he could handle it himself—it wasn’t as if he had hair that would get in the way—but he decided it might come out sounding petulant. He already felt off-kilter with this woman.
Nalini stepped close and snapped his tank into place, her fingers brushing his back. He hadn’t felt much—certainly nothing sensual—through the rubbery SmartWeave of his galaxy suit, but for some reason, a little tingle went through him.
Nalini surprised him by resting a hand on his shoulder, her thumb grazing the side of his neck. “I appreciate you wanting to protect me,” she said softly, so Jenna wouldn’t hear, “but I’m stubborn and used to being in charge.”
He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to reply. He was too busy noticing the soft brush of her thumb on his skin to figure it out.
“I’m also smart enough and arrogant enough to believe I could be helpful out there. But if I do get myself into trouble, you’re welcome to say I told you so.” She patted the side of his neck, then tweaked his earlobe and stepped back.
The gesture startled him—maybe she was flirting with him—and it took him a moment to find a response. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Would you silently not say it, the same as with comments you have about my shoe choices?”
“Possibly.” Tristan lifted his eyebrows and looked down, intending to not say something about her vibrant nebula galaxy suit, but they were standing close enough that he had a good view of the swell of her breasts and the curve of her hips. He promptly forgot his intent.
“It’s a Vendi Swarmi original,” she said dryly. “He came to the palace himself to take my measurements and craft me a galaxy suit that’s truly worthy of the name.”
“It’s very purple,” Tristan managed to say, though the suit was not what was on his mind now. Getting her out of the suit, perhaps. He swallowed, reminded himself that he was a professional, and grabbed one of the emergency packs and faced the hatch. “Are you ready?”
He activated his helmet and used the heads-up display to link it to the air tank.
“Yes.” Nalini also grabbed one of the packs and slung it over her shoulder. “Jenna, is there any atmosphere in the ship?”
Jenna checked the control console. “Surprisingly, yes. A breathable oxygen/nitrogen mix. At least in the bay directly outside.”
“Almost as if we’re being invited to venture out.” Nalini arched her eyebrows as her own helmet unfurled from the pouch in the back and snapped down. She also removed her gloves from their pockets and zipped them on, making the suit airtight.
Tristan wondered if she was now thinking that they might be walking into a trap. What if Prince Dubashi had a reason to prefer that Nalini be killed and not just kidnapped?
“We should still wear our suits out there.” Tristan waved to his helmet and tank.
“I agree,” Nalini said.
“That’s a first.”
She grinned at him and hit the controls to open the airlock hatch. He told himself that he wasn’t disappointed that he now wore a helmet, so she couldn’t tweak his ear again.
9
As Nalini walked behind Tristan away from the yacht and between bins of ore and piles of rock, she told herself that Jenna had been wrong and she hadn’t been flirting with him. She’d simply been feeling chatty and a touch ebullient after surviving Habib’s betrayal, especially when that hadn’t seemed certain for a while.
Yes, she appreciated that Tristan kept fighting ferociously on her behalf, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who flirted with servants or pulled them aside for quickies. She wasn’t like her sisters. She was different—unique. She’d spent her whole life proving that to herself and to her father and to anyone else who would pay attention.
That didn’t keep her from stealing glances at his backside as they walked. It was just like fate to deliver her a man she was interested in at the same time that she was supposed to accept a betrothal to another man.
“I wish we had network access so I could download a map of this model of ship.” Tristan stopped in an open spot, small chunks of ore scattered across the deck where they’d tumbled from piles; they couldn’t see far with all the machinery
and rock in the way. “Let me get a better view.”
Tristan scrambled up one of the piles. Agilely, Nalini decided, watching him climb. This was not a man who did anything clumsily.
“I think I see a door way in the back.” Tristan gazed toward the area where molten ore had been pouring earlier, then turned a full circle. “I don’t see any control panels on the bulkheads or anything that looks like it operates the forcefield we were pulled through.”
“Let’s hope there’s a directory somewhere,” Nalini said, “or we could be exploring this ship for a long, long time.”
Even though it was probably inevitable at this point, she grimaced at the thought of not making it to Oceanus before her asteroid. She had set everything into motion and had a trusted assistant who lived on the planet and would be there to oversee the drop-off, but the thought of missing it—a key moment in her most ambitious real-estate development plan to date—was depressing.
Tristan leaped down, landing lightly beside Nalini, and headed off toward the door he’d seen.
She let him lead, admitting he would be more capable of handling any danger that might fling itself at them. Long minutes passed as the various obstacles forced them into an indirect route toward the back of the cavernous chamber. Machinery ground and whirred, and clanks and clunks came from the side as equipment sorted rocks.
A muted bong sounded from somewhere above them. Some bit of debris clanging off the exterior of the ship? Even though Middle Belt was denser than most asteroid fields, the big asteroids were still far enough apart that a huge vessel like this could navigate past them without trouble. But there were a lot of smaller pieces of rock floating around out there that such a ship might not bother flying around.
They reached the big metal door in the back—it was large enough that a massive ground vehicle could have driven through it. Nalini expected Tristan to have to use his halberd to force it open, but the door slid upward, revealing a wide, dark corridor. The night vision in her helmet was already activated, so she could tell there wasn’t anyone or anything waiting for them inside.
Knight Protector: a Star Kingdom novel Page 9