“Hi.” He kept his tone casual, not wanting to startle her. It didn’t work. Instant recognition twisted her expression.
Her dark eyes widened, and the weapon dropped to the deck with a clattering thump. “I’m sorry, Prince Jason. I didn’t know.” She was probably scared out of her mind. Pointing a weapon at him had to be a death sentence in his father’s view of the world. At least she didn’t drop to the ground like most people who saw him. A point in her favor. He didn’t know if it was backbone or ignorance.
The question was answered a moment later when her knees began to bend.
“Don’t bother. As a matter of fact, go. Leave the ship. It’s mine for now.”
Her muscular body tensed as she straightened and glanced around the bridge, then out to the corridor, her attention flittering like a nervous bird. “Are you alone?” There was an extended pause before she added, “My Prince… Sir.” Realizing he was missing an entourage, and more importantly, a father, made her bolder. She made direct eye contact as she spoke. It was uncommon for anyone other than close friends or family to meet his eyes. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than him. A faint scar drew a line across the top of her forehead. It made her face more intriguing than disfigured.
“Yes, I’m alone. Please leave. I’m taking this ship.”
Back straightening more, it gave her diminutive form an extra air of authority. “No, you’re not.” The hesitation came again. “Sir.”
Her nerve impressed him, but the timing was a little inconvenient. Except for when he was playing in the simulator, it was rare anyone dared deny him a request. “Yes, I am. Now go.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “You can’t fly this ship, and I’m certainly not leaving a child in charge of my new baby.” Her lips tightened, and she clicked her tongue before spitting out “sir” like a curse.
The ship might’ve been new to her, but it was hardly fresh off the factory floor. The austere beast was old enough to have been making runs long before either of them were born.
Jason’s palm shifted to a control panel. “Computer, delete all command control access to everyone except me.”
“Command complete,” rang out from the speakers.
Her face tensed. “You can’t do that!”
“I just did.” He turned his mouth into a smirk.
“Were you planning on going through a node?”
“I’m planning on getting as far away from Rhime as I can.”
“You don’t get it.” Her hips shifted. “Let me spell this out to you, my lordship.” She began to enunciate each word slowly. “You… can… not… fly… this… ship.”
Jason crossed his arms. “What do you know about what I can do? I’ve flown a Greyson Hawk Three for years.”
She shook her head with disgust, braid flapping like a tail. “A Hawk Three.”
“Yes,” he said indignantly.
“Let me guess. You learned in a simulator?”
Jason hesitated for a moment, scratching his head. “Well, yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
Unused to such treatment, there was no way he was going to allow anyone to speak to him like that. “Look, you prole, I’ve trained for years using that simulator. It’s supposed to be nearly accurate.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s how they sell those things to rich children like you. Greyson doesn’t make a Hawk Three.” With her jumpsuit rolled up to her elbows it showed arms which did far more than dust lamps and make beds. She pointed to the pale scar across her head. “And you’re missing this.”
“What? A brain injury?”
“No, you idiot. The cerebral connection to the ship. You can’t use the tegan drive without one. No node hopping for you.” She picked up her gun and slipped it into her belt.
That was news to him. “But the simulator…” His protest was beginning to sound silly even to him, and the clock in his head ticked louder. He needed to get the ship in the air. “Fine, you can stay. Get us out of here.”
“You think I’m going to take you off the planet? Your father would kill me.” It was her turn to cross her arms. “Sir.”
“I’ll launch us up to the node if you won’t. I can probably get us that far.” She didn’t seem convinced, so he added, “I hate to break the news to you.” This was going to be a lie but perhaps only a small one. He wasn’t entirely sure how much danger he was in. “If the Imperial Guards catch me here with you, I doubt you’ll ever pilot anything again.”
She threw her arms in the air, then clutched the sides of her head. “Oh, my God. I just finished eight years of training and apprenticeship. Now you just casually walk in here and screw up my life.” She started to pace.
“Sorry. And we’re kinda on a clock here.” He stood and gestured to the chair. “If you don’t mind.”
“Where do you think we could go? If I don’t stick to my scheduled run, the company will report the ship as stolen.” She mumbled, “idiot” and then backed it up with a sarcastic, “My Prince.”
“Stick to your job. I don’t care. Just get me off this rock.” Jason flopped into the co-pilot’s chair. “Tick, tick, tick.”
She glared at him for a moment, lips slightly parted. She was nothing like the soft overly-sexualized version of women allowed in the palace. Her lips still beckoned him to nibble on one.
“Have you ever been off Rhime?” Lowering herself into the chair, she strapped in.
“Of course. I’m not that sheltered.” Although the year-long tour he’d taken with his uncle had been on a luxury cruise ship with a battalion of servants and guards following at their heels. His stomach roiled at the reminder of Martin’s crushed and bloody body. He dug his nails into his wrist to keep the tears from returning, though a few drops escaped anyway.
Her hand ran over a few controls with no response from the computer. “I need my command back.” Her eyes flicked over at him, then quickly back to the panel.
Still struggling to hold onto the last pieces of his composure, Jason released his lock on the ship without a word to her.
She entered in a few commands, and the cargo bay’s robots pulled the ship out of the slot and into the open night. They rolled slowly down the tarmac. “Why are you so eager to get off Rhime?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
She blew out an extended breath. “I’m gonna regret this, aren’t I?”
Jason lowered his head into his palms, trying to hide his burning eyes.
The door to the bridge sprung open. “Sparrow! Too early. Not ready.” A gruff and heavily-accented voice came from a hulking man that looked more suited to be one of his father’s guards.
“Sparrow?” Jason asked with amusement while hiding a wipe to his face.
“Shut up. It’s a nickname,” she added with a mock. “My Prince.” Sparrow turned to the man and spoke in a language Jason didn’t understand.
Hard eyes examined him, and the man tilted his bald and sweaty head. His gaze passed between Jason and Sparrow a few times. “No.” More of the same garbled speech came next, but he recognized his name mixed into the words.
Sparrow flicked her wrist at the man. “Go. We’ll talk later.” The man thrust up his arms and left, mumbling more words that were probably curses as he walked away.
The distraction broke Jason out of his un-princely waterworks, and he sniffed away the misery. “Who was that?”
“Sparky.” She went back to her work.
Jason let out a short laugh. “Sparky?”
“I couldn’t pronounce his name and Sparky was the only word that came close.” Her lips pursed. “He calls me Sparrow as payback.” The rolling stopped, and they waited for the robots to unclamp and move out of the way.
“So, what’s your real name?”
Her finger stabbed one of the controls with far more force than required. “If I liked my real name, I wouldn’t let people call me Sparrow.”
Well, he wasn’t happy with Jason Junior either. How
ever, he’d never been close enough to someone to be granted a nickname. “Umm, how many people are on board? I wasn’t expecting a crew.”
A soft vibration shook the ship as the engines began cycling up. She mouthed “idiot,” then spoke over the noise. “Did you think the company sends a single pilot into the universe with millions of credits worth of equipment and cargo? What if I dropped dead in the middle of a run?”
He’d always done the simulations alone, but that seemed incredibly naive now. “I guess I never thought about it.”
Sparrow shook her head. “Sparky and his wife, Tina, are the only other crew.” She didn’t pause as long this time and gave him a smile. “My Prince.”
It may have been forced but he still found the smile brightened her face. She looked good with a smile instead of the scowl he’d been watching through most of their conversation. “Tina. At least someone has a normal name.”
Her clearance came through, and the engines roared louder as they lifted off the ground. The G-force in the simulator was nothing compared to the real thing. Even when he’d left Rhime before, the passenger ship had made it a much gentler experience. Jason squeezed his eyes shut and focused on not vomiting through the ten-minute flight until they broke out of Rhime’s gravity well.
Still nauseous from the trip, he asked, “Is there someplace I can lay down?”
Sparrow chewed on a lip before she said a terse, “No.”
“What do you mean no? There must be beds in here somewhere.”
She lifted her visor. “You picked the wrong ship if you wanted luxury accommodations, your majesty.”
“I’m not asking for a suite.”
“Look, my Prince.” She swung her chair to face him directly. Her deep eyes drew him in as she spoke quickly. “Sparky and Tina have the crew cabin. I have the Captain’s cabin. That’s it. No more cabins. This is a cargo ship.” She turned back to her controls. “Idiot.”
“If you stop with the idiot comments, you can also drop all the majesty crap. I’m not stupid. I’m just someplace I’ve never been.”
She inhaled deeply. Even through the thick company jumpsuit, it did amazing things to her chest. She nodded as if she were agreeing to something in her head. “Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t know why you’ve dragged us into this mess, but I’ll try to be nicer to you.” She held out her hand.
She probably meant for him to shake it, but his imperial training took over. He grasped her warm fingers and brought his lips to the back of her hand. When Sparrow withdrew, she absently rubbed at the place he kissed.
“I’m sorry I got you into this. I’ve had a really long and…” He choked back on an urge to break down. “Really awful day. I’m exhausted. Isn’t there a flat surface I can catch a few hours of sleep?”
“Yea, you look like you’ve been through hell.” She bit her lip. It seemed to be a subconscious habit of hers. “I won’t need my cabin for another ten hours.” She punched in a few commands on her control panel. A flap on the wall opened, and an ankle-high robot rolled onto the bridge. “Follow him. He’ll take you to my cabin.” He stood, and her eyes ran up and down his body. “Just don’t do anything weird in there.”
He ignored the jibe. “I can find it on my own.”
“I wouldn’t want your royal person to get lost.” She inhaled deeply as if regretting the comment. “Sorry. I’ll try to stop doing that to you.”
At least she hadn’t included the idiot. “How long before we hit the node?”
“We’ll be in position in about four hours, but there will be a line.” Her hands glided over hundreds of switches, buttons, and touch screens as she talked with barely a glance at what she was doing. “Maybe about three hours after we get in line. Why?”
Seven more hours before he was far away from Rhime. Jason nodded and picked up his monogrammed bag with the imperial Shabin logo. “I’m not sure what or if anyone is following me, but you should probably avoid talking to anyone from home.”
Sparrow rubbed at her forehead in exasperation. “I’m getting fired for this, aren’t I?” Although, getting fired wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen to her if she was indentured to the company. His lunatic father might rip her head off in a fit of rage. Jason felt like such a shit for getting more people involved.
“I don’t know, maybe.”
She stopped her endless manipulations and turned to him. “Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of foo-foo magical fortune telling ability?”
Jason didn’t think of the Mirre as magic, but the details were a company secret. In truth, even he hadn’t been told all of the intricacies of the experiment that started so long ago. His great-grandfather had been part of a project splicing chunks of non-human DNA with his grandfather’s embryo. The DNA had been found about five-hundred years ago on a planet littered with the remains of a long-dead society. It was the only sign of sentient life humans had ever found.
“I can’t see the future.” He grasped for a way to explain it properly. At that point, he cared little for company secrecy. “Have you ever had imaginary conversations with people in your head?”
“Sure.” She let out a short laugh. “Like replaying a conversation in your head only now that it’s two hours later, you’ve thought of a better comeback to someone’s comment.”
“Yea. Well, I can have a conversation like that and find out exactly how someone will react or what they will say. But it’s not perfect.” He shifted his duffle to the other hand. “I’m exhausted. I can tell you all of this later.”
She waved him away but didn’t let him get far. “Jason, how much do you eat?”
“Why?” He wanted sleep, not more questions.
“Because we don’t exactly keep lots of extra supplies on board.”
“How long before we can stop someplace?”
“That depends on how long we have to wait to go through the node.” She got a mischievous look in her eyes. “Do you have money?”
“Sure. I set up an interplanetary account before my last trip.”
“Okay. If we have time, I’ll dock us at Porter Station before we get in line and tegan out of the system.”
He was tempted to ask about the station but decided against it. Instead, he shoved the gunmetal-gray robot with his foot. “Hey, you. Captain's cabin.”
The bot blatted out in a crackly and stilted voice with the volume entirely too loud, “It would be my utmost pleasure.”
Jason followed as it rolled. The robot turned left out of the bridge. He was just starting to wonder how the little robot on wheels was going to make its way past any ladders when it halted about two meters down the corridor. “What’s your problem? Go.” His foot shoved it again.
“We’ve arrived at your destination. Will there be anything else?”
Jason eyed the door — the first door to the left of the bridge. Did she really think he’d get lost? “I’m not that big of an idiot,” he shouted.
A giggling laugh floated from the bridge. Was this how normal people treated each other? Waving his hand over the lock, it slid open.
Chapter Four
It was Jason’s turn to let out a laugh. Muscle-bound tough Sparrow bird back there had a thing for frilly yellow lace. He dropped his bag and closed the door. The tiny cabin had a cozy bed complete with yellow flowers decorating a blanket with those little white strings to dangle off the edges. The pillows matched. Across one wall, a simulated window was adorned with yellow curtains. The scene inside depicted a vast meadow with yellow wildflowers. It was like something out of a fairytale.
“Except it’s the prince that needs saving this time.” He flopped onto the bed. The mattress was thin, hard and lumpy. Getting back up, he checked under the mattress for the rocks that had to be hiding under it. He found only a loose pea-sized rivet underneath.
“Don’t be such a pampered asshole.” He blew out a breath that went on far too long as if the resulting wind would blow away his problems. He got back into bed, rolling on his side, he found h
imself staring at a picture. A little girl, which had to be Sparrow, in front of an older couple. She couldn’t have been more than seven in the scene. Next to it were more pictures. Sparrow with friends. Sparrow at graduation from the Shabin Flight School. Sparrow hand-in-hand with some boy. He didn’t like the shifty look of the boy. All happy images from a life that seemed richer than his. Jason turned away.
He should try talking to his father in the Mirre again to get more information before they left the system. He couldn’t form the link after they went through the node. If someone had already reported him gone, he could lie and tell his father he left for vacation. He tried to gather his focus but failed miserably. The constant thrum of the engines provided a white-noise that lulled his weary mind to sleep even with painful thoughts of his lost uncle.
A bleating emergency alarm flung him back to the world. He jerked upright and then jumped out of bed. His heart raced with adrenaline as he tried to recall what to do. If this had been his Hawk III, the two short wails followed by a long one would mean a fire. Putting his hand on the cabin door, it felt normal. He released the lock and ran down the corridor to the bridge.
Where he found Sparrow calmly looking at a timer. Casually, she flipped a switch and the alarm halted mid-blat. “Thirty-eight seconds.” She shrugged as she tried to hide a grin with a finger pressed to her lips. “That’s pretty fast, but considering you ran out of the cabin without a pressure suit,” she cleared her throat, “or pants, you could easily be dead right now.”
Jason put his hands in front of his boxers. He would not blush. The warmth to his face had to be only in his head. “Why?” It was all he could bring himself to say, and it came out sounding angrier than he meant.
Her bottom lip curled under her teeth as she resisted the urge to laugh. “We’re docked at Porter Station.”
“You gonna wake me up this way every time?”
Her shoulders rolled in a shrug. “I may find better ways to wake you.” Her tone became serious. “But this isn’t one of your fancy yachts. We can’t spend time taking care of you in an emergency. If you’re going to stay with us for a while, you need to learn.”
Shabin- The Reluctant Prince of Rhime Page 3