by Susan Grant
And it roused his curiosity.
“All right, Miss Sunshine, what is it about me, or maybe men in general, that’s so blasted distasteful to you?”
She turned. Her face conveyed an air of fragility, but the muscles flexing beneath the skin of her slender limbs indicated endurance and strength. Dim, bluish light illuminated the cockpit, bleaching her tawny complexion. “You have no idea, do you?”
“Why don’t you enlighten me?”
The cavernous chamber in which they stood rang with mechanical emptiness, but it didn’t come close to matching the desolation in her eyes. “This conversation falls outside the parameters of my job description. You hired me to track for you, not to be your friend.”
“True,” he replied.
“You pay me, I get my ship back. Then we go our separate ways. It’s that simple. Don’t ask for more than that, because you won’t get it.”
“You left out one very important element of your job description,” Gann said.
“Did I?” Her proud stance faltered almost imperceptibly, but he was trained in such subtle clues and so he did not miss the change. He’d intended to tease her for leaving out any mention of finding the princess—the reason he’d hired her in the first place—but seeing the uncertainty tightening her features, he changed his mind.
Had Eston somehow implied to Lara that Gann might require more from her than tracking? Sex, perhaps? Though he couldn’t imagine the cloaker being able to order her to give her body against her will. Sexual servitude was illegal and reviled by the Vash Nadah and merchant class alike, but rumors of it still abounded in the outermost reaches of the frontier.
“I was going to tease you,” he said gently. “First you find the princess, then you get paid, then you get your ship back. It’s that simple.”
Her expression was as cold and as impenetrable as stone.
His hands folded over his chest, Gann looked out at the stars. “She could be anywhere by now,” he said quietly, conjuring the young princess as she appeared in the holo-image, placing her in his mind’s eye in the raw and dangerous worlds he remembered from his years in the frontier. “Her honor is at stake. It’s my sworn duty to protect that honor.”
“Her honor,” the woman scoffed. “You mean her virginity, don’t you?”
Her smirk threw him. It was clear she didn’t share his courtly views of the princess. “It is my duty—and my wish—to defend her. She is a woman, and thus deserving of the highest respect.”
“A treasure to be valued and protected,” she finished for him.
“Yes, like you. Like all women. Beautiful and precious.”
She glanced up sharply. “Please. Save your bad poetry for where it’ll do you some good.” She walked to the gangway leading from the cockpit.
He didn’t understand how he’d insulted her with what he considered to be the greatest compliment: his awareness and appreciation of her femininity. “I adhere to the warrior’s code. I trust you’ll grow accustomed to my views by the end of the voyage,” he called after her.
“I doubt that,” she replied, turning. “As for finding your precious princess—believe me, Vash, nothing will please me more. In fact, I will now use my break to determine the best way to speed the process along.”
Determination gleaming in her eyes, she pulled herself up the gangway and disappeared into the corridor leading to her quarters.
During the journey to Barésh, Tee’ah’s confidence in her flying ability soared as her fear of being rounded up by her father’s guards diminished. Driven, like a man possessed, Ian kept her—and the entire crew—to a grueling schedule, requiring her to be on duty almost constantly at the controls of the Sun Devil. Her hopes of getting to know the Earth dweller better succumbed to a string of long days and too-short nights—not to mention an almost complete lack of time alone with him.
Shortly before the scheduled arrival on Barésh, Tee’ah’s alarm chime woke her from a deep dreamless sleep. Struggling out of bed she stumbled into the baggy flightsuit she’d borrowed from Push. She alternated between it, her new clothes from Grüma, and her brother’s clothes. The handfuls of cold water she splashed onto her face would have to keep her functioning until she could get her hands on a good, dark, steaming cup of Earth coffee. Not only did the stuff taste like heaven, it did a far better job of waking her than the tock she was used to.
After a quick stop in the galley to pour herself a cup of Earth-brew from the pot Ian had already prepared, she hurried down the corridor. Only Ian, Muffin, and a grouchy-looking Quin awaited her in the dimly illuminated cockpit.
She sat in her piloting chair, snapped her coffee cup into its spill-proof holder, strapped in, and went to work. Her hands, now accustomed to the prelaunch routine, skimmed over the glowing, touch-activated control panel, her fingers flying as she entered arrival information into the computer.
Then she said, “I’ve sent our request for docking to Barésh control.” She fought back a yawn. “I don’t know what time of day it is where we’re landing, but I hope someone’s awake enough to clear us.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ian snapped his safety harness into the receptacle between his knees. “We’re docking no matter what.”
A few tousled locks of dark brown hair flopped over his forehead, and faint lines of weariness were etched on either side of his mouth. But counteracting his fatigue was tension.
Strange. As she understood it, they were chasing after a competitor of his named Randall. But sometimes Ian acted as if the fate of the entire galaxy depended on this mission. Perhaps there was more to it than he let on. She found it odd that no one in the crew had spoken about selling the goods in the cargo hold. They’d told her they were traders, but she was beginning to have her doubts.
Gredda marched into the cockpit, her thick gleaming blond braid draped over one bare shoulder. “I am ready,” she announced, sounding entirely too chipper for the early hour. Push, the assistant cargo handler, stumbled in after her and took his seat. While they buckled in, Tee’ah finished loading the data the ship’s navigation computer needed to guide the Sun Devil to the colonized asteroid’s surface. Most of the time, she flew arrivals by hand, for the pleasure of it as well as skill-honing practice. Tonight, due to fatigue and the hundreds of smaller deadly asteroids in the area, she’d decided to let the automatic flyer do the job. A tired pilot’s best friend, she’d heard Mistraal’s cargo pilots call it.
A trail of green lights danced across the control panel before her. She sat up straight. “We’re cleared to dock.”
The front viewscreen showed nothing but a star-filled void; it was deceptively empty. However, three-dimensional, temperature enhanced images on her instruments warned of innumerable asteroids ahead.
A mining colony in the middle of an asteroid field…The ore that was gleaned from the rock here was obviously deemed more important than human life and safety.
The huge space-boulders tumbled past, a few, like the one they’d just passed had glinting lights: mining colonies attached to their surfaces like glittering ticks. Just as she reached for her cooling cup of coffee, Tee’ah felt an odd vibration from somewhere under her seat. The Sun Devil banked right and several items not secured properly skidded off a shelf and clattered to the floor. She grabbed hold of the control yoke, then a sharp jolt set off a klaxon, telling her what she already knew: the computer was no longer steering the ship through the asteroids. She was.
“Hang on,” she shouted.
Her heart drummed a staccato beat, but her hands held the controls, and the ship, steady. Guided by the images on her instruments, she chose which way to turn to avoid the asteroids, though she didn’t weave between them as precisely as the computer might have.
She thought of the day she’d docked the cargo freighter on Mistraal. Captain Riss had been there, ready to offer her instruction—or take over if need be. Tonight there was no one watching over her. Only her skill could get the ship safely past danger.
Her s
tomach squeezed tightly. Concentrate.
At last the flight path smoothed out, and she made the transition from asteroid dodging to final approach. Moments later, she docked in their assigned spot, an enclosed berth connected by a pressurized tube leading into an immense habitation dome. Barésh.
Slumping back in her seat, she blew a stream of air out of her mouth. “Well, then,” she told Ian. “Docking complete.”
Quin muttered a silent prayer of thanks and unbuckled from his seat. Then Gredda and Push thumped a few thankful, hearty pats on her back before they left to check for bounced-around goods in the cargo bay.
Ian’s gray-green eyes glowed. “I could use a crowbar to pry my hands from these armrests. But that was some flying, Ace.”
She smiled with pleasure at his compliment. “The appropriate starpilot response would be—it was nothing.”
“No.” His voice softened a fraction. “You’re really something.”
They regarded each other in the star-drenched shadows. Reflected in Ian’s eyes was a capable and adventurous woman—not a too-often-reproached king’s daughter who had laughed too hard, talked too much, and escaped into daydreams always more vivid than her life. No, in the Earth dweller’s gaze she saw only her marvelous transformation.
Princess Tee’ah Dar had disappeared. Pilot Tee was here to stay.
While the pixie busied herself with after-landing checks, Ian sat up, elbows on his knees, and ran his fingers through his hair. They’d narrowly missed plowing head-on into that asteroid!
God, he must be crazy, hiring someone he knew so little about. Sure, he had confidence in his instincts, in his abilities to pick good people to work for him…but that gut wrenching ride through those asteroids had made him wonder for a brief moment if in Tee’s case he trusted himself too much. He’d pictured his mother weeping at his funeral, and Rom B’kah standing by her side, secretly thankful that his stepson had died before he could assume the throne to the galaxy—since it was obvious the boy couldn’t even staff his ship with a competent pilot.
But Tee had come through for him beautifully. Her quick and accurate recovery to what might have been a fatal malfunction had kept him and his crew alive. And for that Ian was grateful.
He pushed himself off his command chair and joined Quin, who was hunched over a viewscreen, studying maintenance readouts on what was quickly turning out to be their lemon of a starship. “What happened this time?” he asked the mechanic with a baleful look.
“I don’t know.”
Ian stared at him for a long moment. “That inspires confidence.”
“I’m at my wits’ end, too, Captain. Automatic flight guidance systems go out; that’s not unheard of. It’s why we always have someone posted at the controls. But we should have gotten a warning before the whole thing went belly up; there are alarms built in for just that purpose.”
“And even in the case of a breakdown, shouldn’t the backup system take over automatically?”
Quin spread his hands. “Yes. Which tells me there’s a software problem. But I’ve done a diagnostic, and the computer says there are no malfunctions.”
“Maybe the computer is wrong.” Ian thought of the frustrating breakdowns they’d suffered over the past few weeks, and the muscles in his jaw tightened. How much bad luck could one crew have? “Work on it.”
“Will do, Captain.”
Ian grabbed his jacket, then called out to his crew, “Tee, Muffin, you’re with me. As standard, we’ll check in every hour.”
Tee turned around in her chair. “I’m going?”
Ian wasn’t sure what had prompted him to take her, so he answered nonchalantly. “I believe that’s what I said.”
Her wide gold eyes sparkled with excitement. She appeared as surprised as he was, asking her to come along. He supposed the decision wasn’t all that strange; his reasons for having her join them fell somewhere between enjoying her company and not wanting her too long out of his sight. He didn’t know her all that well, he reminded himself. “I always take an extra crewmember, and everyone else is busy,” he said, then shrugged on his jacket. “Bring your pistol.”
A brownish mist discolored the rarefied atmosphere of the asteroid colony’s immense habitation dome. “Something we don’t want to think too hard about breathing,” Muffin muttered as they made the rounds of the ships in residence, all huge cargo vessels but for one late-model starspeeder similar to the one Tee had lost.
“Randall’s ship’s not here,” Ian said. He’d expected as much. The senator had beat him here by two days, and he’d said that his side trips would be short. But Randall’s absence didn’t irk him as much as he’d thought. As long as the man was traipsing around the frontier, he couldn’t cheer on his anti-Federation pals on Earth. “It looks like we’ll have to chase him right back to Grüma,” he said with an apologetic glance in Tee’s direction. “But let’s take a look around the city first.”
But “city” didn’t come close to describing what met them beyond the docks. Cesspool would have been a far better description. The thin air smelled of overworked heavy equipment, burning tobacco—or similar—and something putrid, like sewage. With a sinking feeling, Ian saw why Randall had come here. This place would be an embarrassment to the Vash.
The buildings were different in appearance from anything he’d seen on Earth, let alone any of the Vash worlds he’d visited. They reminded him of squat, upside-down ice cream cones constructed of a material that resembled amber—though logically couldn’t be—and wrapped in ribbons of pale silver trillidium with glittering, pointy-tipped roofs. The architecture made it obvious that someone once cared about this colony. Now all it did was give the squalid city a strange and ludicrous facade as false as expensive lace on some junkie prostitute.
Passersby reeked of body odor, indicating hygiene wasn’t high on their list of priorities. Hard lives had etched premature lines in their faces. Many wore primitive mining gear and showed evidence of disease and injury. Others had missing limbs and ill-stitched scars.
Tee broke the party’s shocked silence. “I thought we—I thought the Vash eradicated poverty and sickness after the Dark Years.”
“The Vash think they did, too.”
“Ignorance is no excuse. Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?”
Her passion on the subject startled Ian. He found himself again wondering where she came from, what her background was beyond the little history she’d already revealed to him. “I take it you haven’t seen conditions like this anywhere else in your travels?” he asked.
“Never,” she answered to his relief. “The Trade Federation is an enlightened society. Everyone is educated; no one goes hungry.” She cleared her throat. “Or so I always thought.”
“Me, too.” He wedged his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, wondering how much he could tell her and not compromise his mission. “The crown prince is from Earth. I have the strong feeling he’s going to force the central galaxy to acknowledge what lies beyond its borders.” And I had better do it soon, Ian thought, before Earth and the rest of the frontier grow too disgusted with the Vash federation’s apparent double standard. They’d pull out en masse.
Perspiration glittered on Tee’s forehead. He wondered if he appeared as discouraged as she did as she watched docile groups of miners board the lifts that descended into the bowels of the asteroid.
“I would think there’d be signs of rebellion,” she almost whispered. “But there are none.”
She was right. Not even a mild protest such as graffiti was evident anywhere. “I suspect they’re too busy trying to survive to spare energy for a revolt.” The miners’ plight reminded him of what had existed in North Korea for the better part of a century before its people finally booted their dictator and demanded reunification with South Korea.
They walked, passing a pair of eating establishments half-hidden behind a trash receptacle. A klaxon sounded and a surge of miners emptied out of the lifts.
“Shift c
hange,” Muffin surmised.
The off-duty miners jostled them as they swarmed past. Muffin towered above the crowd, but Ian didn’t depend on the man’s size; he checked continuously to ensure that Tee was still close by. The miners all around stank even worse than the others who had passed him, and Ian gagged, his eyes watering from the stench. The flood of people was tough to struggle against, but he managed to keep his place.
The workers crisscrossed in front of him, pushing toward an area housing what looked like several video arcades overflowing with patrons eager to spend their few credits on an escape from real life in banks of virtual reality booths. For a price, buyers could spend time in smart-suits that stimulated their nervous systems into “feeling” what they chose to watch on special screens, from tropical vacations and ancient battles to simulated sex. Baréshtis appeared to be as crazy about the technology as Earth people were. Of all the wonders his home planet had inherited from the Vash, V.R. had made the most impact on popular culture. And if the inhabitants of this asteroid hellhole considered computer games the only escape from their hopeless existence, he wondered what that said about Earth.
Ian had seen enough. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, turning to find Tee and Muffin. His heart froze. Tee was no longer behind him. “Tee. Where’s Tee?” he called to his bodyguard.
The color drained from Muffin’s face as he craned his neck, scanning the light brown heads of the miners milling all around. Nowhere was there a green-haired sprite wearing an ASU baseball cap.
Ian grabbed his personal comm, the stench of the miners’ tightly packed bodies all around him made it an effort to breathe. “Tee, Ian here,” he called. “Where are you?”
There came no answer. He tried again. Nothing.
“Let’s backtrack,” Muffin said, shoving close to him.
“Agreed.” They pushed against the tide of incoming miners, calling for their pilot, but only a sea of misery-hardened eyes answered them.