The Star Prince

by Susan Grant

  The three men appeared taken aback, as if they’d expected a different response, perhaps aggressive denial or an angry offensive.

  “I immersed myself in the Vash culture out of respect and love for my stepfather,” Ian acknowledged. “I didn’t expect him to name me as his successor, and it’s made for some intense years at the palace. Still, some members of the Great Council don’t think an Earth guy can do the job. I think they’re wrong.”

  Randall rubbed his chin. “I didn’t know what kind of man you’d be,” he said as if thinking aloud. “But I imagine you must be a fish out of water among all those Vash.”

  Ian responded with a self-deprecating smile. “Yeah. I’m sometimes out of my league. But I’ve always liked being the underdog.”

  “So have I,” the senator said in a quiet voice.

  Tee’ah didn’t have to consult her translator to understand that the dynamics of the interaction had shifted. As the two men sized each other up, shivery bumps prickled her skin. Charlie Randall and Ian Hamilton held the power to change the course of history. And she, a once hidden-in-the-shadows princess, had been instrumental in bringing them together on this tiny, far-flung world, with the hope that they might solve their differences with words, not weapons. Her role as a royal Vash woman hadn’t made a direct role in politics a possibility, but now that she was free, someday, somewhere like Earth, she could go after that dream.

  “Work with me,” Ian said. “Let’s bring Earth the future it deserves.”

  Regret shadowed Randall’s sharp features, and that made Tee’ah’s pulse race. “In my absence, the Earth-First movement has taken on a life of its own. They’re protesting in all the major cities of the world. The United Nations is overwhelmed. They’re considering a move to immediately rescind the decision to join the Federation.”

  “Can you keep the footage of those fringe worlds from them until I get there?”

  “I…don’t know.”

  Ian glanced at her, and Tee’ah caught the frustration in his eyes. “Sweet heaven,” she whispered. He had to, or Klark would succeed in his efforts and Ian’s entire mission would be for naught.

  “Son, I sent what I recorded on ahead a few minutes before you showed up. At Kip’s urging,” Randall added with an uneasy expression. “For safekeeping, in case something happened to my ship. It’s in the president’s hands now. I can ask him to wait until we arrive before he shows it to anyone else, maybe.”

  Ian swore. “Do it. I want to speak to him first.”

  “All right. Meet me in Washington. I’ll arrange everything.”

  Randall gave him his contact information and instructions. “But don’t delay. After meeting the president, go to the world leaders next. Whether or not you wanted the job, you’re heir to an empire. It’s time to act the part.”

  Ian extended his arm, and the two men clasped hands, first in the manner of Earth dwellers, then in the hearty, forearm-gripping fashion of the Vash Nadah.

  “Muffin to Hamilton.” A familiar deep voice blasted out of Tee’ah’s trouser pocket. She grabbed her comm at the same time Ian snatched his.

  Ian answered. “Go ahead.”

  “We have a problem, Captain,” Muffin said. “I’m in jail.”

  The main office of Grüma’s detention center was a small room filled with viewscreens and the smell of stale tock. An open door let in cold, fresh air, reminding Ian that Randall was about to launch, if he hadn’t already.

  He paced in front of a pursed-lipped police officer. “Let me see if I heard you right. My crew is charged with disrupting the flow of trade?” He’d expected something more colorful, like beating the crap out of an asshole.

  The women touched her fingertip to the row of golden triangles she wore vertically down the bridge of her nose. It was a gesture he’d noted she fell back on when speaking to him. “Yes, that is the charge. The café owner and several witnesses said the hovercar and resulting disturbance blocked the entrance to his establishment. Thus the more serious charge of disrupting the flow of trade applies.”

  Ian worked to calm himself. “Why didn’t you arrest the driver, too?”

  Tee stared at her boots. He had no doubt her mind was full of images of Klark in various forms of misery.

  “Your crewmen were the aggressors, sir,” the officer explained. “But, as I said, all charges will be dropped with your generous contribution to the local economy.”

  Meaning a sizable bribe. Furious, Ian handed over the credits necessary to secure the crew’s release. Then he smiled tightly. “Now may I escort my crew from your facility?”

  “I can arrange an appearance before the magistrate tomorrow,” the police officer said, studying her viewscreen.

  Tee blurted out, “Tomorrow?”

  Ian flattened his hands on the desk and leaned toward the woman. “I thought the fine—”

  “The contribution,” the officer corrected, rubbing her nose.

  “Yes, the contribution,” Ian said with deadly calm. “It cleared their records of any charges. Or am I mistaken?”

  “No, sir. That’s correct. After the appearance they’ll be released.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  He pushed away from the desk. He didn’t have until tomorrow. If the tapes got into the U.N.’s hands before he got there, Klark would succeed. Not for the first time, he almost told the officer who he was. He’d follow up with a few hints that things would go badly for her if she and her comrades didn’t release his crew. But if he hoped to be the mediator for this region contemplating sovereignty, he couldn’t afford word getting out that the galactic crown prince simply threatened local trade police who didn’t do his bidding. No, he had to play by the rules, now more than ever, or he risked being thrown out of the game.

  He conceded defeat with a charming smile. In response, the officer simply rubbed her skin jewelry faster.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Tee.

  Invisible barriers blocked the entrances to the cells. Muffin and Quin were in one, and Gredda in another. Ian stood with Tee in the area between.

  “Greetings, Captain.” Muffin rolled up his sleeves, revealing massive forearms. Though the air was cool, his skin gleamed. But his sheepish grin shattered the image of a merciless warrior. “We got in a bit of trouble.”

  “They tell me you were the aggressors.” Ian’s voice held a certain approval, despite their now compromised position.

  “I might have been a little rough with him,” the big man admitted readily, “but he deserves much more.”

  “Aggressors, bah.” Quin’s face contorted in the grumpy scowl he’d once reserved only for Tee. “Pretty boy got off lucky. Just a bruised chin and a good scare.”

  “Wish they’d have let me finish with him,” Gredda said. “He wouldn’t have been so pretty…in the end.”

  “All right, listen up,” Ian snapped. “The good news is that the charges will be dropped. I made a generous contribution to the local economy.”

  Tee snorted. “A sizable bribe, he means.”

  “What’s the bad news?” Muffin asked warily.

  “They won’t release you until you appear before the magistrate tomorrow morning. I guess we’ll leave after that.”

  “No, Captain.” Muffin stood so close to the invisible barrier that the air rippled like a layer of phosphorescent film. “Don’t wait. Take Tee and go. The ship’s mostly repaired. Randall’s on his way home, and you have to go after him.”

  “I understand that. But it doesn’t mean I’ll desert my crew.”

  “With all due respect, sir, Gredda, Quin, and I have more time in space than you’ve been alive,” Muffin said.“We’ll be fine.”

  “Listen to him, Ian,” Tee urged. “Push is on the Sun Devil. He’ll stay here when we leave. He’ll take care of the crew.”

  “He’d have to secure lodging,” Ian said thoughtfully.

  “You bet, Captain,” Quin piped in. “For as many days as we need before we get t
ransportation off-planet.”

  Ian massaged the back of his neck. He didn’t like being forced into making a decision before he could give it proper consideration. But what choice did he have? His homeworld was descending into chaos stirred up by a man who’d like to see him dead.

  Tee came to rest on his arm. “Your crew will be fine, but if we wait another day Earth won’t.” Her gold eyes glinted strangely. “The needs of the many outweigh those of the few,” she whispered.

  He searched her ardent face, drawing strength from her certainty; her faith in him. The needs of the many outweigh those of the few—a passage from the Treatise of Trade, the holiest document of the Vash people and the foundation of their society. His mother and stepfather had drawn strength from that particular quote through some rough times. Sometimes Ian felt as if he lived and died by its close cousin: The welfare of the group comes before the desires of an individual. From both passages, he now drew the confidence to finish what he’d started.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time Push arrived at the jail, allowing Tee’ah and Ian to depart, the main road out of town was deserted. Where the sun had set, the sky was soaked with shades of purple, indigo, and streaks of pink. Tee’ah leaned forward, as if she could somehow make the Harley fly swifter than it already was toward the Sun Devil. And, ultimately, to Earth.

  Lately it felt as if her life was speeding by faster than any motorcycle, sweeping her with dizzying speed from one adventure after another, an existence as volatile as her days at the palace had been predictable and dull.

  As Ian brought the Harley to a stop, she pressed her cheek to his strong back and briefly closed her eyes. A poignant pleasure, she thought, for each heart-pounding minute brought her closer to the day that she and Ian would have to go their separate ways.

  “Get her up and going as fast as you safely can,” Ian said as they climbed off the bike.

  “You got it, Captain.” The words seemed so horribly formal after their intimacy hours earlier. She turned to the gangway, but he caught her arm.

  “I just wanted to say…thanks for this morning.”

  Her cheeks warmed. She’d been so awkward, so unskilled. “You don’t have to say that. I’m sure the palace courtesans are far better—”

  “No, Tee.” His mouth tightened, as if she’d insulted him. “They wouldn’t even come close. No one does.”

  His esteem for her as an individual was an aphrodisiac like no other, and her sexual awareness of him skyrocketed. His intense gaze told her he felt the pull between them as strongly as she did. Smiling sadly, she touched her fingertip to the dark prickles of his beard, scratchy on his upper lip and cheeks. He looked so wild, so exotic. How could he truly be the rule-abiding prince she knew him to be?

  But he was. And soon he’d return to the very life she’d fled.

  She dropped her hand and left him standing at the bottom of the gangway. All through her preflight preparations, she remained focused on her tasks. But as the Sun Devil launched, thundering up and away from the forest, she couldn’t help wondering what level fate destiny hid beyond the cloak of the night sky.

  Onboard the Sun Devil, Ian closed the instrument panel on his desk, then stood and stretched. He joined Tee in the forward section of the cockpit, where she sat at her flight station, waiting until they cleared the space lanes before taking the ship to light speed. “I heard you talking,” she said.

  “I sent one-way encrypted messages to Rom B’kah and my evil twin, Ilana. Now they’ll know I’m coming to Earth.”

  She raised a brow. “Evil twin?”

  “Yeah. Black and white. Yin and yang.”

  “Am I going to have to fetch the translator?” she asked dryly.

  He laughed. “No. I call Ilana my evil twin, and she calls me Goody-two-shoes. Which isn’t fair, of course,” he added quickly. “But we have different outlooks.”

  “How?”

  “I like to think things through. She rushes into action headfirst. She also doesn’t care much for rules, and she has no discipline.” He chuckled. “She’d make a terrible Vash. And that’s fine by her.”

  Tee was listening intently. “I believe I would like this woman,” she said slowly.

  The lights flickered and went out. The emergency lights came on but the thrust levers flew back, all on their own. The sudden deceleration threw Ian to the floor, but by some miracle he floated away from what would have been a bone-crushing encounter with the flight console.

  “Gravity generator failure,” called the flight system computer.

  “No kidding,” he muttered.

  Tee worked at putting the thrust levers back where they belonged. “For the love of heaven, Ian! Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” He floated like a kite above the empty chair. “Just relocated.”

  He tugged himself into his chair, buckled in, and inventoried his body parts. What ached from ricocheting off the floor didn’t appear to be broken. Amazingly, his pulse had barely jumped. It meant he was getting used to the almost surreal, 007-like quality of his new existence. Though he couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or bad. “What the hell happened?”

  “I show multiple systems failures.” Her green-brown, red-gold hair floated around her face. “Crat! Systems are dropping off-line faster than the ship can put them back on. And now the computer’s not giving me the backups.”

  “Do it manually!”

  “I am!”

  The lights went out, and the auxiliary lights kicked on, dim and tinted amber.

  “ELECTRICAL FAILURE, UPPER DECK,” droned the computer’s voice.

  His stomach dropped with a wave of nausea, and he felt suddenly heavy in his seat. He swallowed convulsively, cold sweat prickling his forehead.

  “I got the gravity generator back on-line,” Tee shouted.

  There was a jolt and the ship went silent. It took him a few seconds to realize that the ever-present sound of the air-recyclers was gone.

  “PRIMARY LIFE-SUPPORT SYSTEM FAILURE. BACKUP SYSTEM UNAVAILABLE,” the computer reported.

  “There goes our air.” Ian unstrapped. “We’re out of here.”

  Tee slammed her hands onto her desk. “Great Mother, I don’t show any pressure change on the status instruments. It’s got to be a computer malfunction.”

  “We don’t know that,” he shouted back.

  A klaxon blared. “ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP.”

  “Abandon ship?” Tee gaped at him. “How are we going to do that?”

  “The external maintenance pod will do,” he said as the thought occurred to him. It was a chamber of about three hundred square feet, little more than a launching point for space walks when needed for outside repairs. “We can detach it, then drift away from the ship.”

  “HULL BREACH DETECTED. FIVE MINUTES UNTIL STRUCTURAL FAILURE.”

  “Let’s go!” He unbuckled her harness even as she battled to throw more failing systems on-line. Dying he could handle, if he had to, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around the possibility of losing Tee. “Computer!” he commanded. “Transmit mayday message: ‘Situation desperate, need immediate assistance.’ ”

  Tee smacked her open hand on a red disc on the comm panel, activating a distress signal. Then she had the presence of mind to dislodge a portable emergency beacon to bring with them to the pod, to guide a rescuer to their location in case they drifted too far from the Sun Devil.

  No doubt about it: the pixie was clearheaded in a crisis.

  They stumbled out of the cockpit. Pushing her ahead of him along the gangway, he scrambled after her and they sprinted down the corridor.

  “Something’s affected the ship’s warning software,” she speculated, gasping as they ran. “It’s disabled the alerts that were supposed to tell us something was wrong. Now the computer thinks we have massive failures.”

  “THREE MINUTES UNTIL STRUCTURAL FAILURE. ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP.”

  “Or,” she shouted above the klaxon, “we really do hav
e massive failures and we’re about to depressurize.”

  He swore. “Now’s not the time to turn pessimistic.”

  Ahead was the hatch to the external pod. It looked like a golf ball with a white padded interior. He shoved her inside and pushed the heavy hatch closed, but it jammed a finger’s width from sealing.

  “SIXTY SECONDS UNTIL STRUCTURAL FAILURE.”

  He cursed viciously past his clenched teeth. If he couldn’t get the hatch closed and the ship in fact depressurized, they’d lose all the air in the pod, with little time to grasp the thought before their lungs exploded and their blood boiled.

  “FIFTEEN SECONDS UNTIL STRUCTURAL FAILURE.”

  “Kick the door shut!” he shouted. They rolled on their backs, pounding their boots against the jammed hatch. Close, damn it, close.

  “STRUCTURAL FAILURE. ABANDON SHIP.”

  Tee made a strangled scream and rammed the bottoms of her feet on the door. “No!”

  “ABANDON SHIP. ABANDON SHIP.”

  The hatch sealed shut with an ear-popping hiss, and the life-support system inside the pod took over. The air was dry and stale-smelling. Ian sucked in huge, lung-filling gulps. “By your right arm—the manual release—pull it!”

  Tee yanked the release handle.

  His heart pounded like a sledgehammer.

  The pod detached with a jolt and floated free, bobbing in space like a fishing lure in a rippling pond.

  “This thing has propulsion jets. Somewhere.” His fingers searched an unfamiliar control panel. The manufacturer had familiarized him with the pod’s operation once, on the starship’s maiden voyage. “There.” He activated the nozzles and used a tiny joystick to back away from the Sun Devil—even at full speed, maybe too slowly to save them, should the ship blow.

  Tee must have read his thoughts. “At least this way we have a chance,” she insisted. “On the ship we’d have none.”

  They braced themselves for the explosion, huddled together, eyes shielded. But all that thundered around them was their labored breathing.