The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  He looked at the digital display near the wall screen.

  “It’s nearly dinner time. What say we head into the dining room and we can give your young man the third degree over dinner.”

  He said this with a bit of a grin at least, Gizel noticed. Her father turned to her mother and the two of them headed out of the room via the large door on the far side to the one she and Karvon had entered through. Beyond was a corridor. To the left was the Formal Dining Room used for state occasions whilst to the right was a door that led to what was known as the Family Dining Room.

  The Family Dining Room? Karvon snickered to himself when Gizel mentioned that name to him. The room was as big as the shuttle bay on the Kormorant, with ancient-looking wooden credenzas and cupboards around the walls. In the center of the room was a dining table that could seat twelve, easily, with plenty of room for the servants to walk around serving those seated. The room probably wasn’t any older than the original part of his family’s home on Brython, but it felt older, almost archaic. Which was strange when you thought about it.

  The Emperor directed Karvon to the left, and then led his wife along the right side of the table and instead of stopping at the head of the table as expected, he and the Empress took the two seats at the top of the row on that side. Gizel was behind her father and she and Karvon took the opposing chairs on the left side of the table with Karvon sitting directly across from the Emperor and Gizel opposite her mother. So, let the grilling begin!

  Except first a very superior person entered the room and asked for their preferences for drinks before dinner was served. Unfortunately for Karvon, dinner was still going to be a good fifteen minutes of interrogation time away. Karvon chose a low alcohol beer and Gizel followed suit. He decided it must have been something she drank at home regularly as her parents made no comment on her choice, either verbally or by a questioning glance. As the servant departed via a partially camouflaged door to Karvon’s right the Emperor opened up with his first broadside.

  “So, second son of Baron Huntsmouth eh? That is a surprisingly old title I will admit. How is your father?”

  He made it sound almost like he knew Karvon’s father.

  Karvon shrugged. “I haven’t been home in over a year, sir. Actually, I think it’s nearer two. Last I heard he was fine. Still active in the House of Lords.”

  The Emperor nodded.

  “And your older brother?”

  Karvon shook his head. “Haven’t seen him other than to say hello in over four years. He didn’t take kindly to my going on half-pay and roaming the galaxy in my own ship. Thinks I’m an idiot.”

  He paused and shook his head with a grin.

  “This is going to come as a surprise to him,” he offered, waving a hand around the room.

  The Emperor harrumphed. The Empress looked over at him.

  “Your brother doesn’t know about your undercover position?”

  “No,” Karvon replied. “I’m surprised you do,” he said, and then he remembered the earlier rescue. “Oh. I guess all that business two and half years ago made you aware of what I do.”

  The Empress nodded and looked at her husband before turning back to him.

  “We never did get a chance to thank you personally for looking after Gizel, even if it did take you such a long time to send her home. In hindsight, given whom we now know was behind the attempt, I can now appreciate how cautious you were in the roundabout method used to send her home. At the time I couldn’t decide between giving you a medal or getting my hands round your neck and giving you a good shake.” she laughed “Or at least having one of my Imperial Security goons do the shaking for me.”

  She turned to face Gizel.

  “I had hoped your girly crush on this man would fade over time, or at least as you grew up. Going to the Academy certainly seemed to have had that effect on you. I don’t think you ever mentioned Karvon beyond that first leave you got from the Academy. Did your infatuation finally fade or did you just stop mentioning it to anyone?”

  Gizel reddened. She glanced at Karvon.

  “I never stopped thinking about him.” she admitted. “Everyone told me it would just be a passing fancy and that I’d grow out of it, but, well, I never thought of it as a crush. At least not like the sort of sighing, mushy, dribbly way some of my friends went on about this guy or that guy, or girl, in one case. Their dreamy sighs made me bilious. I never viewed Karvon in that light, I knew it was much deeper than just a teenage fantasy. The trouble was everyone else thought that the feelings I had towards him was just a crush, including Karvon. He saw me as a schoolgirl and thought I was far too young for him. With some justification, I will admit. So, I shut up about him and decided I’d wait a few years and then track him down.”

  She paused and grinned at Karvon.

  “I knew several of the IDs his ship used, so I figured sooner or later I’d been on a Kimerian ship in the same system, hopefully at the same dock and if I tracked him down, well forty to thirty is nowhere near the difference eighteen to twenty-eight is.”

  Her mother shook her head while Karvon smiled at her!

  “And then he came and rescued me again!”

  She looked over at her parents, her face going serious.

  “We were dead. I mean that. We’d lost all power with the previous hit. The last shields had gone down as well and it was only a matter of the few seconds it was going to take for their capacitors to recycle for their next shot and that would have been it.”

  Voicing her imminent death out loud to her parents broke something inside of her and tears began rolling down her cheeks.

  “And they all died because of me!”

  Karvon reached over and took her in his arms and just held her to him, while letting her sob. And sob.

  He looked over her shoulder at her parents.

  “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  And then he hugged her tighter and whispered words of comfort. Eventually, the sobs stopped and she pulled away from him, smiling up at him blearily. Then she looked over at her parents.

  “After that he refused to leave my side and I decided it would simply be both easier and safer if we made that a permanent arrangement. I waited until we were part of the way back before I told him he was stuck with me.”

  She glanced back at him, and smiling, pulled him into a hug.

  He looked over at her parents and smiled.

  “Well, I wasn’t about to tell the daughter of the most powerful man in this part of the galaxy that she couldn’t have what she wanted. Besides, she had that damn gun handy!”

  Karvon quipped and earned himself a thump on the shoulder.

  “I think I need to see this gun.” her father commented.

  “I never did show it off before. Huh. It’s in my luggage which I presume is now in my room?” she continued at her mother’s nod. “And where have you put Karvon?”

  “Nowhere yet.” her father said. “Well nowhere in particular. We didn’t realize he was coming with you until we saw the coverage of the shuttle landing.”

  He paused. Looked at the two of them slowly.

  “It is very hard for me adjusting to this,” he said finally.

  Gizel shook her head but found herself smiling at the pained look on her father’s face. Her mother sighed. Loudly. Then spoke to her husband

  “So dear, do we fight it or just get swept along by the flow?”

  Her father shook his head but bared the comm on his wrist.

  “Georg? Have Captain Alistair’s luggage taken to the Princess’ suite please.” he listened, nodded. “Very well.”

  He looked over at the pair of them, to find them looking expectantly back at him from the other side of the table.

  “Happening as we speak.”

  He paused, before continuing. “You are sure about this, aren’t you Gizel?” he asked.

  Gizel smiled at him. “Yes, dad.”

  He sighed loudly then waited first for the dessert to be placed before them by t
he staff, then for the staff to leave the room.

  “We will make the best of it. No official announcements until we’ve had a chance to talk to the Brython government.”

  He stopped and frowned.

  “We can’t hide the Captain being here in the Palace so officially we will leak that we have lots of questions that need answering. Questions that can only be answered by him, and the answers need to be recorded in person. Unofficially our people will imply that you fell for him as a result of his ship saving you and that we doubt things will go any further.”

  He waved down her attempt to interject.

  “We need to ease people into this so that your Captain here doesn’t look like some sort of fortune hunter, Gizel. Besides we will still have to wait until we’ve spoken to the Brythons. We can’t even get started on those negotiations until Travgar has finished his investigation into the current situation.”

  Her father grimaced as he said that.

  “This is going to get very messy.”

  Her mother joined in.

  “Perhaps we should hide Petro’s involvement. We can announce he died from a heart attack or something while he was out at some isolated location. The other traitors can be found to have been working for foreign powers, identity unprovable, and those not executed can be given nice long sentences somewhere isolated.”

  The Emperor looked at his wife for a moment, then nodded.

  “Good idea. Give me a moment.”

  He clicked on his communicator and got hold of the Baron and explained the idea to that worthy. Whatever the Baron replied had him nodding. He turned back to the others.

  “Travgar thinks that it can be done given the small circle of people who know who was behind it.” He glanced over at Gizel. “He said to tell you that your concerns about the Operations Officer on the Navy Station were the right call. That officer and one other person were in on the plot, and in return for being allowed to continue living, they have pointed ImpSec to a few more people who were also involved.”

  Gizel nodded as it suddenly hit home that those directly involved, if convicted of treason, would be executed. Oh. Then she thought of seeing Lieutenant Mizach decapitated and her heart hardened with a sense of grim exultation that the bastards responsible were going to get what they deserved. Karvon must have sensed the change in her mood because he gave her a quick hug.

  “Coffee?” the Emperor asked.

  Karvon glanced at Gizel and they both nodded. He said something into his comm and shortly after two of the staff arrived with cups, a pot of coffee, milk, and sugar all in silver jugs and pots, the glass pot with the coffee having silver fittings. Karvon poured out a cup for her, with the right amount of milk and the one sugar she took before pouring a cup for himself.

  The four of them then sat and sipped their coffee for some time while they each considered matters.

  “So, do you spend all your time sailing around the galaxy rescuing damsels in distress?” The Empress asked finally.

  Karvon snickered. “No. Gizel is a special case.”

  He smiled at the Princess and she gave him a cheesy grin back.

  “Mostly we transport low bulk sensitive cargoes for people who need their shipments delivered fast, securely, and with no questions asked. While the Kormorant is nowhere near as fast as a packet boat she is much better armed and the people we deal with know it. It’s a bit of a specialized market, but one that suits the ship, as our cargo capacity is not as large as what it should be for a ship of our class. All those guns, shields, and the big power plants reduce our cargo-carrying capacity significantly. As does the active camouflage.”

  “Active camouflage?” the Empress asked.

  Karvon nodded. “Yes. We have a number of reconfigurable hull panels that allow us to change our ship to look like any one of five different small freighter types, plus we have the matching registration papers as well. Being, supposedly, a tramp freighter we rarely get looked at too closely. Any searches, which happen regularly at customs stations, find our manifest matches our usually quite small cargo perfectly and the bulk of the hold looks empty. This is just an optical illusion, but so far no one has questioned what their eyes can see, so we’ve had no trouble in that sense. Items that aren’t on the manifest are not going to be found without the actual nature of the ship becoming obvious.” He nodded to the Empress.

  The Emperor looked over at him.

  “And given the shields and the firepower your ship carries you could probably escape any customs vessel out there.”

  “Well true. But I try and avoid that sort of thing.”

  He paused for a moment thinking about something.

  “I think we’ve only had problems in six systems so far, and in each case, it was just one of our identities. I have a list on the main computer on the ship, but it’s not many.”

  “That surprises me.” The Emperor offered.

  “Well, it’s partly because we work through a dead drop mailbox. We send encrypted messages back to the clients from random, public information kiosks that we often hack into from a good distance anyway. We don’t tell the client what ship will be picking up the goods until right before the pickup time, and then we use a different identity at the delivery point a lot of the time. Depends a bit on who the client is and what the job is.” He shrugged.

  “I see. And do you carry cargoes of, ah, a questionable nature often?” The Emperor kept his face impassive, not giving anything away.

  “Oh yes. Probably half the jobs we take are for criminals and the like. We take note of every dubious piece of cargo we collect and pass the information on to certain authorities. These authorities have agreed not to reveal the information they receive immediately because that would give our involvement away. Instead, they use the information to keep tabs on the criminal organizations and what they are up to. We have been known to place the odd tracking device in amongst the cargo shipments we are transporting. Very, very carefully hidden of course. So far we have had no problems.”

  The Emperor shook his head. “And all your crew are intelligence operatives for one state or another?”

  Karvon nodded. “Well, except for our medic. I don’t think she is working for anyone, but all the others, yep. It can get quite interesting at times watching them weigh practicality against their national interests, but overall, I think it has worked quite well. A couple of times when we’ve gotten into real problems, the appropriate member of the crew pulled out their security identity and was able to mollify the local authorities. Fortunately, these occasions have been very rare and so far our security has held. Which is surprising really, given how many security agencies and even navy personnel have heard of us.”

  The Emperor nodded. Gizel turned to Karvon.

  “I think that is more the case with the Kimerian Navy than any of the others, and while many have heard of the Kormorant, most have never seen her or met you or any of the others. Of if they have they haven't recognized what they are looking at. It’s one of those stories that is passed around the mess, or in bars, about the phantom cargo ship and its mysterious crew.” she grinned. “And besides, most of the time you are running as some other ship anyway. It’s only at times like saving the Thister that you make sure that people know you are the Kormorant. Mostly, you’re just rumors and hearsay.” She smiled sweetly at him.

  “Ha,” he responded. “I’ve been reduced to mere hearsay.”

  Gizel laughed. “I didn’t say mere hearsay, silly. There’s nothing mere about you on any level.”

  Then she blushed and looked over at her parents with a stricken expression. Her father shook his head and her mother bowed hers.

  “I think we’ll call it a night, there,” the Emperor said, standing. The other three followed suit and then he and his wife left the two younger ones at the table.

  “Sorry,” Gizel said after a moment.

  Karvon shrugged.

  “You have noticed that they have not said we can’t get married. If anything they app
ear resigned to it.” he offered.

  Gizel brightened. “They do, don’t they. Great. Come on. I should warn you my room is a very girly one.”

  Karvon put a hand over his heart.

  “For you, I will bravely forebear to complain about the frilly curtains, the pinks sheets, or lace-covered pillows.”

  Gizel laughed and thumped him on his shoulder.

  “It’s not that bad. Come on.” And taking his hand she led him out of the room via the same door her parents had departed through.

  Chapter 26

  Karvon gets grilled some more

  The next two days passed rather strangely for Gizel. Her parents went about their imperial duties during the days and pumped Karvon for more information about himself and his family in the evenings over dinner. Other than that the two of them were left to themselves. Her parents made no objection to them spending quite a bit of time together in her room and her father even avoided making any smart comments about what they were doing.

  The second day after lunch her father asked her to bring her gun to the Imperial Security shooting range so he could see her amazing shooting prowess for himself. The shooting range had been installed in the wing that housed the Palace guards so they could maintain their training regime. Gizel found herself feeling rather nervous as she took her place at the gallery with her gun holstered in its normal position just below her hip. The duty officer had cleared the range, but Gizel only had to look up to the right to see the observation room was packed, not just with her parents, but also with every off-duty Imperial Security man in the Palace. Even some of the general palace staff were in attendance, she thought. At least that’s what it looked like to her.

  Karvon must have sensed how nervous she was because he turned up next to her and gave her a smile of encouragement.

  “Forget about them,” he said firmly. “Just think about how much Lothar is going to laugh if I show him the video of you stuffing up!”

  “Ooh, you. You would, too!” she exclaimed and mock hit him on the shoulder.

  She looked down the range at the target, drew her weapon, and fired three shots, straight from the hip. She re-holstered the gun, crossed her arms, and waited for the duty officer to bring the target up to where she was.