“See, sis,” I said, breaking back into Enestian. “America is an upper life form. I can’t let her die under father’s cruel hand. Please understand that,” I said sternly. “We’ve become friends.” America held out her hand, and Bell jumped to America’s extended finger. “More than friends,” I continued at a volume too low for Murelle to hear.
“But if father finds out, you’ll be banished.” Murelle’s English wasn’t as good as mine, her accent thick as America tilted her head and wrinkled her brow in an effort to understand.
“I know, but if she stays here, she’ll be tortured. Dissected live. I’ve been meeting with her for days to learn about her culture, and I can’t let her suffer like that. I care about her. What our father did to her was wrong, so I am going to make it right. Please don’t try to stop me.” America’s fingers tightened against my waist.
“If I let you go, and father discovers I’d allowed it, he’ll…”
“He won’t. He’ll never know because once I’m gone, I’m not coming back,” I lied. “Then you will take my place as ambassador at the turn of your twenty-second year, and when our father dies, you will become queen.”
“You’re not coming back, ever?” Murelle pulled at the folds of her hood, and her bottom shell lip trembled.
“No,” I said, continuing the fib, knowing I’d return to unseat my father once I was able to do so, even if that took years. “Why return to a life in a prison camp? But why do you care? You despise me anyway.”
“I-it’s not that. I don’t despise you,” she stuttered and switched back to Enestian. “I just despise the fact that our father loves you more than he loves me.”
“What are you talking about? Our father doesn’t know how to love. What he shows us isn’t love. It’s pride, selfish pride. Don’t you get it?”
The light spattering of rain intensified. A flash of lightning danced across the clouds followed by a double clap of thunder. Murelle’s lower lip dropped, and Bell made a squawk barely audible against the increasing rain as she leaped back to Murelle’s shoulder.
“We’re extensions of him,” I continued. “He made us, so he controls us. When we accomplish something, it’s like he’s accomplished it, too. If we do something to humiliate ourselves, then we’re humiliating him, too. If we fail, he’s failed. He can’t handle or face that kind of outcome, so instead, he’d rather break all ties and disown his own kin.”
“But—”
“There’s no but. That’s what’s going to happen to me. I’ll be disowned for this, but I don’t care. Being a prince doesn’t matter to me anymore. I don’t want to be like our father, participating in his morbid experiments and continuing his selfish legacy when he’s gone. The only thing I care about is saving this girl.”
Murelle stroked her heritage badge. In the waning light, it glowed as if it held the Timuary enchantment.
“But I know ruling Enestia means something to you. It means a lot, so please, sis, let us walk away from here and take the cruiser. And don’t tell anyone what happened until morning, when we’ll be far from this galaxy.”
“A human,” Murelle said. “I never thought I’d ever see one. So different than what I imagined. So expressive. So emotional.”
“And intelligent like us,” I said.
“You are beautiful, too,” said Murelle in English, and grazed the tips of her fingers across the side of America’s face. “I would have liked more time to study you, to know you,” she said, her accent so strong I wasn’t sure America understood what she said.
But that didn’t matter. Murelle peered deeply into America’s eyes, her lips parted, her eyes mere slits, and the two returned smiles, so warm I couldn’t believe the Enestian was actually my sister.
“What about the guard?” she asked with stiff lips.
“I’ll take care of the guard. I’m going to convince him that we have permission to leave, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll order him to let us take the cruiser. He’ll stand down. As of this moment, I’m still the prince after all.”
“And I’m the princess.” She smiled. “Two royals will be more convincing than one. Come on.”
Whether it was a speck of hidden sympathy emerging from Murelle’s soul or the knowledge that she’ll be made queen, it didn’t matter, though I believed my sister’s heart warmed while she made a brief, yet unique, connection with a species that she studied. My sister had actually come to her senses for once, bringing me one step closer to getting America home.
“Slaine Timuary!” exclaimed Lestra when we were close enough to the guard to see his face through the rain. “Why are you here?”
“I requested this post. As soon as I found out the prince was scheduled to leave tomorrow, I could only assume he planned to ‘borrow’ this star ship. And I wanted to make sure he’d be able to do it.” He winked. “You should be safe for now.”
“Thank you, Slaine.” I put my hand on his shoulder.
“He’s letting us leave?” asked America.
“Yes,” I told her.
“Thank you, Slaine,” she said and held out her hand.
Slaine took her hand, bent forward, and peered at America’s face under the hood.
“So you know all about this, Slaine!” Murelle exclaimed over the splash of rain, pulling the edge of her hood to cradle her wet bird.
“I do, my royal,” he answered, without a hint of regret in his tone.
“But only because he was under my direct orders,” I lied again. “I threatened disciplinary action if he didn’t obey me. Slaine hasn’t done anything wrong. Please, Murelle, whatever you do, don’t implicate him in these matters or Lestra, either. They only helped me because I forced them to. The only one who’s guilty of defying the king is me, only me, and I will willingly pay the price.”
Murelle folded her arms, surveying Slaine Timuary as he stood, his hands at his sides, his feet slightly apart, his wet tunic and leggings artfully defining the bulging shell of his arms and thighs.
“Go! Go, now. Go, Brother, before I change my mind,” she shouted, turning away, her soaked tunic tight against her body.
“Okay, this is it, America. We’re going to board the ship.”
I nodded for Slaine and Lestra to follow us to the cruiser. It unlocked with my shell scan, the door lowering to the ground as the exterior lit with rows of tiny lights.
“Slaine, thank you for your kindness and sympathy.”
“You’re welcome, my prince,” he said as we clasped each other’s opposite shoulders simultaneously in a sign of genuine Enestian friendship and respect. “And please tell the human girl that I wish her only happiness back on the planet where she belongs.”
“I will, my friend.”
“Thank you, Lestra—for everything. You’ve been such an important person in my life for so long,” I said, swallowing hard and feeling the shell pressure increase under my eyes. “You know how much you mean to me and how much I will miss you.”
I wanted to say more to my best friend, but the words didn’t come. With the strengthening rain, I needed to leave as quickly as possible while I had the chance.
“Murelle,” I said, turning to face her. She turned in my direction but kept her head lowered. “I’ve never asked you for anything before, but I’m asking you for one thing now, not as the prince but as your brother. Please, please help the Timuarys shed their reputations of this. Please make things right after I leave. That’s all I ask and will ever ask of you again.”
She lifted her head and looked up at me with her black and purple eyes, eyes wet with rain, or wet maybe with tears. I could only hope they were tears, that single drop of compassion working its way to the surface of her cold heart. A bit of a nod was all I received in return, but her softened eyes told me she’d abide, and I didn’t need to worry.
America and I hastened up the ramp. I positioned myself behind the helm, and America sat directly behind me on the captain’s bench. The door lifted and closed, and America gasped when her automatic r
estraint belt projected from the seat, slithered across her lap and chest in a crisscross pattern, and locked against her.
Without the flight codes, I had to program our course manually, Caskin having set the codes just hours before. From my bag, I withdrew my handheld communicator, and its screen flashed a bright white with the sweep of my finger.
Typing in the codes manually was laborious. If my father had chosen me as lead, the task would have taken less than a second, with the touch of my communicator against the helm’s up-loader. But without Caskin’s clearance, I had to program our course one number at a time, and I did so as quickly as I could.
Seventy-seven, forty-three, one, thirty— Each tap echoed through the bridge. Eighty-eight, sixty-one, thirty-nine. No, I left out a number—eighty-eight, twelve, sixty-one, thirty-nine. My eyes shifted back and forth from the communicator to the helm’s operating system as I repeated the numbers in my head and tapped the control panel in unison.
Tap. Tap. Tap, and then a louder tap, a rap against the nose of the ship, reverberation through the bridge, sending a chill up my spine. From the window, I saw Murelle pointing to her left, her eye plates wide as she signaled me to raise the ship.
I dashed to the ship’s door and rose onto my toes to peer out the tiny window above, America coming up behind me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Slaine was talking to another guard, a Timuary no doubt. But allegiance to the king was thicker than Timuary blood, with the exception of Lestra and her brother.
Slaine shook his head as the other spoke, gesticulating with both arms wildly enough to make a clack that I was sure Murelle could hear above the rain. The guard turned on his heels, his hands behind his back, and headed toward the lab in a stride verging on a jog.
“Damn it,” I whispered, and raced back to the helm. “There’s another guard.” Fifty-three, seven, nineteen, eighty-one. The plates on my fingers buckled, and I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t experience a premature case of shell lock.
“Hurry, Garran.”
“Just a few more.” Thirty-six, seventy-one, twenty, forty-four, and after what seemed like hours instead of seconds, I entered the last number.
Murelle kept her post at the nose of the ship. I engaged the engines. Her lips flexed into a smile, Bell’s wings poked from the folds of her hood, and the sweet hum of the ship cut through the gusts of rain.
Murelle and Slaine stood in the mud before the cruiser, Murelle clinging on to her hood to keep it and her bird in place, while Slaine let the wind take his, shielding his eyes with his hand instead as I gave them both a final wave from the bridge window.
The dual-propulsion galaxy cruiser lifted above the lab as I took the controls and guided it into the open sky. America was on her way home, and I could only hope that Murelle and Slaine could talk themselves out of disciplinary action.
My sister— Yesterday, I couldn’t have cared less about her fate, but after helping America and me escape, my disgust for her shattered like a fragment of broken shell.
Chapter Thirty-One
America
“Is it safe to fly in this weather?”
The whip of rain was violent, each drop like the hit of a tiny hammer against the ship’s exterior. We shifted left, and I held my breath as the ship dipped and my stomach dropped.
“Yes, very safe. Are you okay?” asked Garran, reaching behind to set his hand on the top of my thigh.
“Yeah, I’m just. I mean. We’re going into space, so I’m a little freaked out. I was unconscious the first time, so this time—” The cruiser began to shake, a rhythmic rattle that vibrated into my bones. “What’s that?” I asked, my heart pounding as rapidly as the ship’s quaking.
“We’re breaking through Enestia’s atmosphere. It will stop once we’re through.”
I gripped the sides of the padded bench and took deep, controlled breaths. “And this is the same kind of ship that brought me to Enestia?” I asked, while secretly praying this tiny vessel wouldn’t break into pieces and burn up while we took orbit.
“Yes, it is. There is no need to worry. We’re almost through,” he said.
The ship steadied, and I peered through the front window at the expanse of stars, and from the window to my right I saw Enestia, a ball of green and blue. Whew!
“So do you think the other guard reported us?” I asked once my pulse slowed.
“Most likely. I’m sure my father knows by now.”
“Do you think he’ll send someone after us?”
“No. He wouldn’t want anyone to know that I betrayed him. He’ll probably explain the situation by saying that I’m attending military training on Mencius Eleven.” Garran chuckled but a moment later his reflection in the front window changed. He blinked several times, and his nose plates lifted in what I believed was a sniffle.
His hand was still on my thigh. I placed mine over it and gave his a light squeeze. He turned his head to look at me and smiled.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed each of his fingertips the way he did mine when we were in the Ring of Reverence.
“Once we’re past the meteor belt, I’ll switch to—”
“Meteor belt? That sounds dangerous.” I gripped his hand hard, forcing his fingers to overlap.
“It’s not.” He laughed again. “This cruiser is equipped with instinctive laser assistance and spontaneous course triangulation. If I misjudge a distance, the ship will either compensate or disintegrate the intrusive space matter.” He threw me another smile over his shoulder. “But that won’t have to happen because I’m, um, what’s the word? Awesome. I’m an awesome pilot—class five—very rare for someone at my age and with my inexperience. There’s only one other person who ranks with me, and that’s Slaine Timuary. Last year, he demonstrated an aptitude for flying, so my father actually allowed him to—”
“Wait. Wait. Wait. Back up. You said you were inexperienced?”
“Only because most of my training was on a simulator, but—”
A simulator? That was basically like playing a video game, one of those fancy types found in arcades. “But that’s not the same…I mean—” The ship bobbled, and the words froze in my throat. “What was that?”
“We hit a band of solar wind. It’s okay. It’s completely normal for the cruiser to react like it did. In the simulator, I’ve tackled bigger bands than that one.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, breathing in through my nose and out my mouth, hoping my blood pressure would drop. “But still, a simulator? What I need is a shot of tequila.”
“You told me my English was awesome, and most of my learning took place communicating with a simulator,” he teased, his eye shells coming together on one eye in a wink.
“You remember I said that?”
“Of course. I remember everything you’ve ever said.” He flexed his fingers to relax my grip, and then re-took my hand so gently his palm felt like skin instead of leathery shell. “Tequila—a distilled beverage made from the blue agave plant.” He smiled. “There should be some quip wine in the food stores. I’ll get you a glass as soon as we pass the asteroid belt.”
“You can leave the controls?”
“Yes, all coordinates have been locked. The ship’s computer will do most of the flying.”
“Automatic pilot.”
“Yes, that’s one way of putting it. Are you feeling any affects from Enestia’s atmosphere?”
“No. Besides being nervous about flying through space, I’m fine.”
The bridge’s design was angular, metallic, and black, mimicking the ship’s triangular exterior. In front of the control panel, Garran sat upon an upholstered seat with a high back. Each side of the ship was flanked with a short row of windows, the largest centered with the control panel, overlooking the nose of the ship. Through those windows lay total darkness, dotted with pinholes of brigh
t light. Space. My stomach dropped. A chill spiked at my spine.
A dashboard stretched below the length of the cruiser’s windshield, and across it ran a strip of illuminated colored squares, slightly bigger than the keys on a computer. In the place where a steering wheel would be, a white Frisbee-sized disk sat flush with the control panel. Using the tips of his fingers, or one or both palms, Garran maneuvered the ship by touching the circular control as if it were the touchpad on a laptop.
Almost everything about the ship was dark—black floor, black seating, black walls—contrasting sharply with Garran’s exposed shell. A large window wrapped around the ship’s nose from the ceiling to the floor. Next to the thickly padded anchored cube where Garran sat at the controls, a smaller panel jutted up from the floor on a black pedestal.
Backlit with bright blue, the angular panel burst with an array of colored buttons, from ruby red to a deep purple that was similar to the eyes of Garran’s sister. Garran sat forward and his fingers danced across the panel, the buttons eclipsing as they morphed from one color to the next in a magical language between the Enestian pilot and his ship.
The cruiser trembled, matching my already unsteady nerves, and Garran pulled his hand from mine to steer the ship with both hands.
“Now what?” I asked, and as I leaned forward to place my hand on Garran’s shoulder, the seat belts tightened, snapping me back into place.
“Space dust. The particles are too small and close together to avoid, so all intergalactic cruisers are fitted with a metrium exterior.”
Asteroids, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, lay ahead of us. Their sizes and shapes varied, but each one scared the crap out of me as they spun in slow motion, floating weightlessly against the expanse of space.
“And that will protect us if we hit them?”
“Most of them, but not all. That’s why manual steering is required until we’ve cleared the belt.”
“Can’t we just go around it?”
“We could, but it would add three days to our travel time, and then we’d encounter another belt even larger than this one.”
“When you go to Verla, will you have to come back this way? I mean, back through these meteors and solar bands?” What if this ship couldn’t take a second beating? What if Garran miscalculated and maneuvered toward danger?
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