by Logan Jacobs
I shook my head. The princess might not know any better, but I sure as hell did. The sooner she figured out that all people in power are the same, and you could only trust yourself, the better off she’d be. I just hoped she figured it out before it was too late.
The crowd of well-armed fighters shifted below us, and I knew it was time to get off the ship before their suspicions grew any more. My weapons were all still stashed in the hidden compartment in the boarding ramp, and I figured there was no harm in leaving them there. If the ULA on board the Napoleon wanted to be hostile, I had a feeling they wouldn’t make us wait around before they made that abundantly clear.
We exited the Skyhawk with our hands raised. Two marines immediately came over and patted us down, and then they let us drop our arms. An officer of the ULA strode over to us in a shiny red coat and with perfectly slicked back hair. My nose wrinkled as he reached us. Apparently, the Napoleon was doing well enough that its officers had access to cologne, and too much of it at that.
“Captain Arrin Lukas,” the cologned officer introduced himself.
“Princess Orla Medalla,” the brunette said.
She offered her hand, and he kissed it with a practiced bow.
I rolled my eyes behind my shielding glasses.
“I believe your associate told you I would be joining you all on the Napoleon,” the princess continued.
“We did have one of our agents report that he made contact with you, yes,” the captain confirmed. “You’ll have to forgive us, but with the bounty on your head, we were more than a little skeptical that you would be able to make it.”
“It’s good to have a little faith, captain,” Orla said grandly.
“Of course,” the redcoat officer answered. “And please, call me Arrin.”
I felt my eyes roll again before I was conscious of the movement.
“Forgive me for asking, your highness, but you weren’t followed here, were you?”
“No, we were not.” I cleared my throat. “Believe it or not, this is not amateur hour.”
“Apologies, of course,” Arrin said to me. “And you are?”
“My name’s not really important,” I answered. “The only name you need to worry about is the princess’s here.”
“I don’t wish to insult you,” the redcoat captain started, “but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to trust you if I do not know your name.”
“Oh, I’m not staying,” I explained. “If I could just trouble you for a little fuel and some water supplies, I’ll get out of your hair just as soon as I can.”
The ULA captain and the Dominion princess looked at me sharply.
“How can I know that you are not a Dominion spy who was sent to find our location and the strength of our numbers?” Arrin asked. “Or our weapons and fighter crafts?”
“Well, point of fact is, I guess you can’t,” I told him. “But I’m perfectly happy to just stand right here and not observe one single thing about your fine station here, so you can just send me on my merry way as soon as I get a refill.”
“That may be true,” the redcoat said, “but you still know our location.”
“Well, old pal, the thing is, I already knew your location even before I brought the princess here. So I’m pretty sure that means if I had any interest in handing you over to the Dominion, you’d all already be blown up in little tiny pieces all over this section of the galaxy.”
Arrin Lukas started toward me, but Orla intercepted him.
“I’ll vouch for him,” the princess said. “He fought a whole bunch of Dominion forces to get me here and killed a lot of them. He wouldn’t have done that if he was working for them.”
“If you say so,” the cologned captain said. “But all the same, you just stay put while we get you some fuel, and then you can just go on your way and leave us in peace.”
“In peace,” I echoed.
I had to stop myself from laughing. The redcoat officer took the princess by the arm and started to show her around the Napoleon, so I just kicked back on an empty crate on the docks. Two dock workers started to refill the Skyhawk, and I saw one other worker set several cases of water on the edge of my ship’s boarding ramp.
I glanced around the rest of the docks. It didn’t matter that I had told the captain I wouldn’t. I couldn’t help that I was curious, and besides, they were idiots if they had any valuable information within eyesight of the docks.
It turned out they didn’t, but I wondered if the princess had noticed the more shabbily dressed people on the edges of the docks. Sure, the officers were all well-maintained, but the dock workers didn’t exactly look like they got three square meals a day. And that didn’t even mention the clusters of other people I saw at the edge of the hangar. There weren’t many, but they had all been wounded or injured in some way, and so now it looked like they had to beg for work or food.
I shook my head. Dominion, Unified Liberation Army, it was all the same. The Dominion rose to power fighting the Vespidae, and then, when the Vespidae retreated to the far corners of the galaxy, the ULA rose to power by convincing everyone that the Vespidae were made up and the Dominion was taking too many liberties with their military power.
“You’re all fueled up,” a dock worker told me. “And we loaded some water on board for you too, so whenever you’re ready, you can head out.”
“Thanks very much,” I said.
“Is she really--” the worker started.
“Oh, she really is,” I sighed. “Princess Orla Medalla, in the flesh.”
The man looked like I had just told him I brought a goddess on board his space station, but I still eyed him skeptically.
“Why do you want to know?” I demanded.
“I never thought I’d see royalty in my day,” the worker said, “and I really never thought I’d see one sign on to the cause.”
“Yep,” I said shortly.
I didn’t want to stick around to hear more about the glorious cause of people who blew up schools, so I thanked him for the fuel and headed back toward the Skyhawk. I had just reached the boarding ramp when I heard her.
“And just where do you think you’re going?”
I grinned at the princess’ voice behind me and turned around with my hands raised. She moved toward me in a cloud of fury, and the redcoat captain stayed behind when she gestured for him not to follow.
“Were you just going to leave without saying goodbye?” the brunette demanded.
“I didn’t figure you’d mind, since you were busy with your fancy officer over there,” I laughed.
“I don’t know why you have to leave at all,” the princess huffed, “much less why you have to leave without even telling me.”
“I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”
“I thought we… I thought I meant more to you than that,” she murmured.
“Look, princess, we had a great time,” I told her. “You’re great, I’m great, so we had a great time together. But like I told you before, I’ve got no interest in fighting somebody else’s war.”
“Not even for me?” the princess whispered as she blinked her eyes quickly.
“Nope,” I answered. “So you have fun running your new little world, alright? Let me know if you ever figure out that the Dominion and the ULA and everybody else is the damn same, and--”
“They’re not,” Orla sighed.
“And that the only person you should be concerned with is yourself,” I finished. “Because you never know what might be coming.”
“The Vespidae?” she whispered.
I shrugged. I had told her that the Vespidae were far away and thought I was dead, and as far as I knew, both were true. But I couldn’t say that with complete confidence, just like I couldn’t say with complete confidence that the Vespidae wouldn’t come into this galaxy again, like they had once long ago.
If they did, I wouldn’t be the only one screwed.
“Trevor, do you mean--”
“I just mean that all the politic
s in the world don’t mean shit if you’re dead,” I said flatly. “Now, sweetness, I gotta go. I got a job to finish, and--”
“I know,” she sighed. “A job’s a fucking job.”
I laughed, and Orla went up on her tiptoes to kiss me. Her teeth tugged on my lower lip, her tongue slipped against mine, but she pulled away as suddenly as she’d kissed me. Then the princess just slapped me full across the face.
“Oh, just fuck off!” she growled.
“Your wish is my command,” I said with a grin and a bow.
“I hope I never see you again!” She whirled and stormed off with a toss of her thick brown hair.
I sauntered back to the Skyhawk, gave a little salute to the man working the docks, and headed up my boarding ramp. I knew Orla already regretted the slap and the fact that I was leaving, but I also knew she was too proud to turn around. She was a princess, through and through.
I powered the Skyhawk on and got ready to reverse her. Just as I was about to leave the Napoleon, I caught sight of Orla through the cockpit window. The princess had actually half-turned around to watch me go.
“She must have fallen for us hard,” Honey Bee chimed.
“Well,” I sighed, “can you blame her?”
“It is a logical reaction for her to have,” my chip observed. “You did inseminate her multiple times. Human females often feel attached to their mates once they receive his seed.”
I rolled my eyes. For a piece of alien technology, Honey Bee sure had one hell of an ego. I raised my hand and gave a little wave to the princess, and I imagined I could hear her sigh before she turned back around.
She was probably thinking about when, or if, she would see me again.
I backed the Skyhawk out of the Napoleon. As soon as I was a safe distance away, I input the coordinates for Grith’s space station and jolted myself into hyperspace. This ride was bound to be a lot more boring.
I was right, up until the end. I had to spend almost a week in hyperspace to get back to the Alexandria, and I killed time as best I could. Meal replacement bars were as calorie dense as they were disgusting, but I managed to eat two of them every day to keep my strength up while I worked on repairs to the ship. Most of the damage to the Skyhawk had already been done before I stole her, but I tried to polish her up as much as I could so that Grith was less likely to lower his initial offer price.
I had almost more money now than I knew what to do with… but only almost, and I wanted to squeeze Grith for as much cash as I could. I grinned as I thought about how much I had earned just within the last month. I was well on my way to my very own space station and to anything and everything else money could buy me. For someone who had lost a significant chunk of time to the Vespidae, I had more than made up for not earning an income during my time with them.
At the end of my last day in hyperspace, I got ready to take the Skyhawk back into normal space. There was only about an hour of regular travel between me and the planet of Deltulu, and that meant less than an hour between me and the Alexandria where it was still in orbit around the planet. Before I could take her out of hyperdrive, the Skyhawk’s warning systems all lit up that someone had locked onto my position. That should have been impossible in hyperspace.
It should have been, but it wasn’t, because two seconds later, something collided with the Skyhawk, and we hurtled out of hyperspace and into a world of hurt.
Chapter 16
The Skyhawk fell out of hyperspace and went immediately into a tailspin.
My forearms strained as I held onto the throttle, but I let the worst of the spin take us. Sometimes, it was just better to ride it out. Besides, I was a little distracted by the small matter of the ship’s alarm systems. They exploded with warnings to the point that I thought the speakers in the Skyhawk might all just break from the sounds.
Whatever had hit us out of hyperspace had also knocked the ship into the middle of a cluster of Dominion fighters. They swarmed around me on every side like angry hornets, and their hive was right behind them in the shape of a massive Dominion cruiser.
My first thought was that Orla had really taken it personally when I left the Napoleon. But then I realized that she would have had to hail the dominion from on board the ULA station, and I didn’t think even the daughter of the Supreme Commander was that bold. And on top of that, I doubted she was so angry that she would hand me over to the enemy. Sure, she was angry, but I knew that at the end of the day, she was more fond of me than she was mad at me.
Probably.
“It may be an understatement that she is fond of us,” Honey Bee chimed.
“Not helpful right now,” I growled.
I dodged a fighter who tried to dive-bomb me and then two more before I noticed something strange. None of them fired on me. They all just moved wherever they needed so that they would block my attempted escape. Before I could fire on the Dominion ships and get the hell out of there, a voice from the Dominion cruiser came over the Skyhawk’s speakers.
“Power down and prepare for entry,” the voice commanded.
“Don’t you want to at least buy me dinner first?” I joked.
“The Dominion orders you to stand down for crimes committed on the space station known as the Antioch,” the voice said seriously.
Well, that explained it. The princess hadn’t betrayed me after all, so I’d been right. Instead, someone must have sent footage or eyewitness accounts or some such up to Dominion headquarters, and now they’d put out the word to watch for the Skyhawk.
They probably thought the princess was still onboard.
“Leon Cotranis, you have been ordered to power down,” the voice from the Dominion craft continued.
I sighed. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I still had to pilot this piece of floating garbage. Of course they still thought I was that smug fucking asshole.
“Leon Cotranis,” the voice spoke again, “you are under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of Princess Orla Medalla.”
“Now hold on just a minute,” I groaned. “Nobody’s kidnapped anybody, and the princess definitely hasn’t been murdered, thank you very much.”
“She will be if you don’t surrender immediately,” the voice responded, “and then you will most definitely be charged with her murder. Should you survive the crash, of course.”
Everybody thought they were a fucking comedian. They still thought Orla was on board, but unluckily for me, that didn’t seem to matter. If I didn’t surrender to these assholes, they would shoot me out of the sky in a goddamn heartbeat. And then, if I survived, I’d be off to some hellhole of a Dominion prison. And that, of course, meant I’d end up as some fucker’s lab rat the second that they saw what was behind my shielding glasses.
“You know,” I sighed, “I’m starting to get real goddamn sick of everybody calling me that name.”
“Do you have another name that you would prefer we use before we shoot you out of the sky?” the voice asked dryly.
“I do, actually,” I replied.
“Well?” the voice demanded. “What is it?”
“Oh, you’ll know it when you hear it,” I told the speaker. “You’ve heard it screamed out in the middle of the night.”
“Who has screamed it out?”
“Your mother,” I said with a grin.
Static fuzzed the other end of the line, and I knew there was no way that the Dominion wouldn’t try to shoot me out of the sky now. I just couldn’t help myself. If this asshole was going to call me by that other asshole’s name, I might as well insult him right back.
The Dominion officer was so angry that for a second, he couldn’t even speak clearly, so Honey Bee fired up, and everything slowed to a crawl.
I took full advantage of his spluttered command and fired first, straight into the two closest fighters who stood between me and the open sky. They exploded in an instant, and I dove the Skyhawk down between the corpses of the two crafts.
Only then did the Dominion fighters turn the full fury of
their guns on me. Between Honey Bee and the Skyhawk’s radar, I successfully dodged each new onslaught of gunfire, but I knew I had to get out of there before my streak of luck ran out.
Every time I tried to skirt past a cluster of fighters, they all swarmed together, and I was forced to retreat. The Dominion cruiser just poured more out for each one I shot out of the sky, and it was only a matter of time before the cruiser turned their own guns on me.
“Any idea what knocked us out of hyperspace?” I asked Honey Bee.
“We are working to answer that question,” my chip answered.
The Dominion cruiser was big, but I hadn’t heard of a ship with the capabilities to lock onto another craft in hyperspace. That was some futuristic shit for sure, but then again, something had knocked me the fuck back into normal space.
I could just shift into hyperdrive even in the middle of all this, and I thought about it for a second. But then I glanced at the warning light on the controls and saw that the hyperdrive had taken too much damage for me to use it again. I sighed. It was just as well. If I’d tried, I would have probably just burned myself to a crisp from all the interference from the other crafts around me.
I glided right behind a Dominion fighter and rolled back and forth to match its movements, even as it tried to shake me. It was like the Abn Presa race all over again, but this time, I just used the other craft as a cover so the Dominion assholes wouldn’t shoot me.
That gave me just enough of an idea.
“We cannot detect any weapons systems on the cruiser powerful enough to reach through hyperspace,” Honey Bee chimed, “but that does not mean they are not present.”
“Well that’s not super helpful,” I muttered.
“However,” my chip emphasized, “we do detect unusual magnetic activity around the cruiser. We suspect this may be related.”
I didn’t have time to think about the fact that the Dominion might have some kind of magnet big enough to knock ships out of hyperspace. That would have to be a problem for a different day.
I dipped the Skyhawk to the side again to stay right behind my chosen fighter craft. The other fighters shot at me anyway, and I guessed the Dominion had decided one fighter craft wasn’t worth saving.