by Logan Jacobs
“But I haven’t--”
“Orla Medalla,” I interrupted. “Daughter of one Julius Medalla, head of the Dominion.”
“How did you--”
“How long did you think you could go without me remembering where I’ve seen your face?” I lied, with a little nod of thanks to Honey Bee.
“Are you going to kill me?” she whispered.
“Sweetheart,” I sighed, “if I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead and floating through space right now.”
“Then what... what are you gonna do with me?”
I didn’t know the answer to that question. It didn’t help that every time I thought about it, my gaze just went down to the red gemstone between her full breasts. It quivered ever so slightly with each frantic beat of her heart.
“What do you think I should do with you?” I shrugged. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Leon was supposed to drop me off at one of the ULA bases,” she offered. “There’s a space station of theirs that’s not registered anywhere, and I’m going to join them.”
“That’s why we didn’t recognize the coordinates,” I realized. “Wait, join them? As like-- join them, join them? As what, a fighter?”
“I can do things,” the brunette defended. “I found out where this space station is, after all. Not just anybody could have done that.”
“Well, that’s very clever, I’ll give you that,” I admitted. “I don’t suppose you’re interested in telling me how?”
“I met a guy-- well, I met someone who knows about things like that, and I-- well, I just made him tell me.”
“Oh?” I snickered. I could guess exactly how she made him tell her.
“Not like that!” She blushed almost as red as the gemstone cradled between her breasts, shook her head, and the weight of her thick brunette braid thumped against the chair behind her. “I just… I know the right people to talk to. Okay? You don’t have to be foul. I’m not that kind of woman.”
“Sure…” I said as I grinned at her. “You’re just the kind of woman who decides to join up with rebel forces against your own father, for… for what, exactly?”
“For justice,” Orla said earnestly. “The Dominion is too powerful. They control everything in the whole galaxy, and it’s not right.”
“That’s what governments do,” I sighed.
“Not good ones,” she insisted. “Good governments shouldn’t rule with military might. All the Dominion does is scare people. That’s how they took over the galaxy in the first place.”
“By scaring people?” I repeated.
“Yes,” the brunette explained. “Like with the Vespidae. They just spread all these terrible stories about this terrible civilization who did things that were just…”
“Terrible?” I suggested.
“Yes, terrible,” she continued. “But the Dominion just made those stories up so people would be scared, and so they could overthrow all the smaller governments and take over in their places.”
“Oh, really?” I snickered. “So there’s no Vespidae? That’s just a scary bedtime story made up by people like your father?”
“Exactly,” Orla answered. “They supposedly fought them like a hundred years ago, right? But there’s no trace of the Vespidae now, or any sign that they ever even existed. It’s just propaganda, and it’s all fear-based.”
“So your father has just lied to you about them your whole life?” I asked.
“I know it’s crazy, but it’s true,” she told me, “and I know for a fact that my father has never seen the Vespidae, but he still tells stories about them. He just wants to make sure the Dominion keep their control of the galaxy, so they keep having to scare people about this made-up threat from the outside.”
“And you’re going to right all their wrongs by joining up with the rebels,” I guessed. “Because it is totally and absolutely ridiculous to think that the Vespidae are a real threat.”
“Exactly,” Orla agreed. “I’m sick of the Dominion’s lies, and I want to be with other people who know what liars they are. That’s why I’m joining the ULA.”
“Well, I wish you the very best of luck with that, sweetness,” I laughed.
“Look, just change the coordinates back, and we can pretend this whole unpleasant mess never happened,” the long-legged woman pleaded.
“Oh, I never changed the coordinates,” I finally told her. “I’m not saying that I’m not gonna, but they’re still in there.”
Orla jumped up out of the pilot’s chair to see the coordinates for herself, and then she gave a little clap.
“Oh, thank you,” she breathed. “You won’t regret it. I’ll pay you the same rate I was going to pay Leon, I promise.”
“Is it as much as the bounty that your father put on your head?”
“Well... no,” she admitted.
“So you mean to tell me that the almighty asshole Leon Cotranis took your job when he could have just handed you over to daddy dearest for a bigger payday?”
“An asshole and an idiot,” Honey Bee observed, and I laughed.
“He believes in the cause,” she said proudly.
I stood up and walked over to where she stood with her hips pressed against the controls. She was tall, but I was taller, so her eyes still only reached the level of my mouth. Up close, she smelled like crushed oranges, and I wondered if the smell was something she washed in, or if it was just her natural scent.
She held her ground even when I stood just inches in front of her. So I simply put my hands around her slender waist, lifted her in the air like she was nothing, and set her back in the copilot’s chair.
“Look, I get it,” I sighed. “Causes are noble and all that, but I just so happen to think that the noblest cause of all is money. So that means I’m gonna have to hand you over to the first Dominion ship we come across. I’m sure your father will be very glad to have you safely returned.”
“He won’t be,” the brunette said in a small voice. Her lower lip trembled, and I was surprised that I hadn’t already noticed how full her lips were.
“What’s he gonna do, kill his own daughter?” I said dryly. “I’m sure that’s why he put that big-ass bounty on your head with the specific condition that you be alive and unharmed.”
“He’ll be really mad,” Orla defended. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be the daughter of the Supreme Commander of all of the Dominion.”
“Clearly I don’t.” I rolled my eyes behind my glasses. “I’m sure it was really hard to grow up with so much money that you used it for napkins.”
“That’s not what I-- okay, so if all you care about is money, then what if I tell you a way to make more money than the bounty on me?”
“I’m listening, your ladyship.”
“Technically, it’s princess,” she corrected. “My title. If you want to call me something besides Orla, it’s princess, or your highness.”
If Princess Orla Medalla did ever make it to the ULA, she would be in for a rude awakening when it came to her title.
“When it comes to many things,” Honey Bee chimed softly.
“Well, go ahead, princess,” I exhaled. “What’s this big money scheme you have in mind?”
“Leon wasn’t just smuggling me,” the long-legged brunette confided. “He was also smuggling a whole cargo hold full of medical supplies. He was going to see if the ULA wanted to buy them, and if not, he was going to sell them somewhere else once he dropped me off.”
“A whole cargo hold just full of medical supplies,” I repeated. “I don’t suppose you know what kind, do you?”
“Mother’s Mercy,” she said triumphantly. “Murisia.”
I whistled. Now that was something I could work with. Murisia was technically a medicine, so it could be prescribed and sold legally just like any other doctor-approved medicine. But the truth was, it had way more illegal buyers than legal ones. It might be a galaxy-class painkiller, but it was also a powerful recreational narcotic.
/> “Let’s see them,” I challenged. “For all I know, you’re having me on, or Leon was having you on. So you just lead the way to the cargo hold, and we’ll see what it looks like.”
I stashed the shotgun in an overhead compartment with the key still in it. Nobody needed to shoot that size gun on board the Skyhawk again, or else, we might all end up floating in pieces in the blackness of space. Once the key was securely in my pocket, I gestured to the princess, and she led the way back down the stairs to the main hold.
“Have you even checked to see if the murisia is really there?” I asked as she walked down the hall to the cargo hold.
“Of course.” She gave a toss of her thick braid. “After all, that’s where I was hiding.”
“And you’d know if it was real or fake, would you?”
She didn’t answer that question.
The cargo hold had about as many crates in it as I would have guessed, and one of the metal plates in the floor was open to reveal even more hiding places. I figured that must have been where the brunette was hidden during the gunfight and our takeoff.
I gestured for Orla to sit on one of the crates, and then I pried open the next closest crate with my hunting knife. There were some weak attempts to conceal the real cargo with generic medicines scattered on top of packing straw, but I dug past them to the real cargo. Sure enough, there were whole bricks of murisia packed tightly underneath the straw.
“Could just be a fancy paint job,” I said as I studied the blocks of faint green glowing drugs. “Better test it, shall we?”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” the long-legged woman protested. “I don’t-- well, I just don’t do that kind of thing.”
“I’m not gonna make you actually take it, sweetheart,” I sighed. “I just need to smell it.”
“What does it-- how do you know what it’s supposed to smell like?” Orla uncrossed her long legs where she sat on the crate.
I cut into one of the bricks but didn’t answer. The trick with Mother’s Mercy was to get just close enough to smell the jasmine but not so close that the scent changed to something like a cleaning product. If you got that close, it meant you had taken too strong a whiff, and now that shit was in your bloodstream. Murisia was nothing if not potent.
I held the open brick a hand-length away from my nose. Immediately, the scent from the faintly glowing green powder washed over me like I was standing in a goddamn garden of jasmine flowers. I dropped it back in the crate.
“That’s some good stuff,” I told Orla. “So you think I should sell this shit, do you?”
“I tried to tell Leon, the ULA will definitely buy them,” the brunette answered. “So, you can just drop me off and sell the drugs all in one go. They need the money, and they can distribute the drugs for more money on all the planets they have bases on.”
“Or they could just distribute the money to all the people in need on all those planets,” I pointed out. “Instead of, you know, selling them drugs.”
“It’s for the cause,” the brunette tried to explain. “The commoners on the planets are going to buy the murisia regardless, so they might as well buy it from the people who are fighting for their freedom.”
“That’s some interesting logic you have there, princess,” I told her. “And some interesting morality your new friends seem to have.”
“What, like you’re so moral?” Orla accused.
“Nah.” I shrugged. “But unlike you and your precious ULA, I never claimed to be.”
Orla Medalla re-crossed, uncrossed, and then re-crossed her long legs again. A little wisp of hair had come loose from her thick braid, and it curled down over her collarbone.
“I tell you what,” I said, in spite of Honey Bee’s warning chime in my head. “I’ll sell the murisia, but not to the ULA. I’d just as soon not have them take their newest recruit off my hands, just to stab me in the back and take the drugs without paying for them.”
“Then where will you sell them?” the princess demanded.
I checked with Honey Bee for the closest planet we could get to on our current fuel load. There was a floating Dominion base a little ways off our current course, and the only other option was the small planet of Orpheus. Orpheus was an underbelly of a planet, from all accounts. Another casualty of the war between the Dominion and the ULA, and a planet that had equal parts under control by both forces.
“We’re headed to Orpheus, sweetness,” I said finally.
“You know that’s a war zone,” the Dominion princess said.
“That won’t be a problem.” I shrugged. “Besides, that just means they’ll pay more for the goods.”
“And what about me?” the brunette whispered.
“One thing at a time, princess,” I sighed. “I’ll deal with you after that.”
A massive tremor jolted through the Skyhawk, and the princess tumbled from her seat on the crate. I caught her before she fell, and I wrapped my arm around her waist to keep her upright as the ship quivered again.
A warning alarm sounded from the bridge, so I slipped my grip from Orla’s waist to her arm and hauled her after me as I raced up the stairs to the controls. My first thought was that something besides the landing gear was damaged. I still hadn’t had time to inspect it, and the worst thing I could think of was that we were suddenly dead in the air.
The warning alarm was coming from the radar. The landing gear wasn’t the only thing that had been damaged in Orla’s careless shotgun blast. It looked like the hyperdrive had been too, and that meant we had just been thrown out of hyperdrive, only I didn’t know where.
But none of that was the worst thing I saw in front of us. That distinguished honor went to the ship that just flew onto our radar when we fell out of hyperdrive. Its classification on the radar was a military ship, and as it flew into view through the window in front of us, its markings were red and darker red. That only meant one thing.
It was a ULA ship.
“Okay, no problem,” I exhaled. “We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.”
“Or you could just hand me over to them now,” Orla offered.
“But I haven’t decided if I’m giving you to the Dominion or the ULA yet,” I chided. “Besides, you may not know this, but I’m doing you a favor. Trust me, you don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of ULA fighters on a little military ship like that. You wouldn’t like it.”
“Why wouldn’t I—”
“Just trust me on this, princess. Not everything is green grass, rainbows, and sunshine on the other side of the fence. Dropping you off at a base is way better for you than a single ship.”
“Then I guess just go around them,” the brunette moaned.
“Working on it,” I growled.
The ULA ship showed no signs of hailing us at first, but when I changed the coordinates to take us to Orpheus, the ULA ship also shifted direction with us.
“Motherfuckers,” I muttered.
Static sounded on the Skyhawk’s speakers as the ULA vessel attempted to hail us.
“You know, I just really don’t feel like dealing with this,” I groaned.
“Can’t you tell them you’re just passing through?” the long-legged brunette breathed. “It’s not like they’re just going to shoot you for no reason.”
I didn’t know who laughed harder, me or Honey Bee.
“What?” Orla demanded.
“Your optimism is positively inspiring,” I laughed again. “It’s sweet that you think they need a reason to shoot me. Like they’re the good guys or something.”
“They are the good guys,” the princess scoffed. “If you knew my father, you’d know--”
I held up my hand as static came through the speakers again. Still no words came through, so I just kept the Skyhawk on her course for Orpheus. The planet wasn’t far, but we didn’t have the hyperdrive to make the final jump, so I switched the impulse engines on so they could warm up. As soon as they were ready, I’d just have to gun it and hoped we made it planet-side
before the rest of our fuel went the way of the landing gear and the hyperdrive.
A voice finally cut through the static.
“...identify your cargo,” it ordered.
“They only want to know so that they can disable us and steal it,” Honey Bee chimed.
“What a bunch of assholes,” I muttered. Into the speaker, I said, “Uh, we’re passing through. Just dropped off our last load, so no cargo to speak of.”
The impulse engines were almost fully powered.
“You look like you’re flying a little heavy to have an empty cargo hold,” the ULA ship answered. “Identify your cargo.”
A little heavy? We were in space. These guys were either bigger idiots than Leon, or they thought I was.
“Tell them that—”
“On what authority?” I said as I shook my head at Orla’s attempt at trying to speak.
The ULA vessel’s gun hatches opened along her side.
“Oh, that authority.”
I grinned and slammed into impulse drive. The Skyhawk shuddered almost as badly as she had when she fell out of hyperdrive, but she rallied, and we blasted away from the ULA vessel just as our radar indicated incoming missiles.
“Where are we--”
“Unless you want to die before you get the chance to join your precious ULA, who by the way are currently trying to kill us, I’m gonna need you to stop talking,” I cut off the princess.
The impulse engines carried us out of immediate danger from the missiles, but the radar continued to beep. The ULA ship had decided to chase us.
“For fuck’s sake, don’t they have better things to do?” I grumbled. “Like fight your Daddy Dearest?”
“Perhaps they are bored,” my chip suggested.
“Well perhaps they’re gonna be dead just as soon as I can turn this fucker around on them,” I answered.
I needed to gain enough distance between us to pull a U-turn and return fire, but I also wanted to be close enough to Orpheus to make a fast retreat if I had to. I was confident, but I also wasn’t stupid. Besides, I didn’t even know if the Skyhawk’s guns worked. That smug asshole might have just had them installed as decorations.
I kept a pretty straight course for Orpheus. It saved us from burning up too much fuel in the impulse engines, but it meant the ULA ship gained on us as we got closer to the planet. When we were close enough to see the green sphere up ahead, I breathed. Just a little longer.