The Princess & The Privateer

by Peter Rhodan

  The Princess & The Privateer

  Princess Gizel Book 1

  Peter Rhodan

  Copyright © 2021 Peter Rhodan

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: AlienT

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Leanne for all she has done to support me and edit this book

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Afterword

  Chapter 1

  Year 843: Imperial Palace, Kimeria

  The thrown open door crashed against the dark stone wall with a wooden clunk as Her Imperial Highness Gizel Alexa Verena Dorotina Desnoute stormed out of the room, her two attendants quickly following behind her after a quick bow in the direction of Gizel’s parents. Only by hurrying in a manner most unbecoming to Imperial Attendants, did they finally manage to catch up to their eighteen years old charge just as she reached her suite in the old east wing of the Palace. Gizel was above average in height, she was lithe and fit as the elite private school she attended included physical exercises of a semi-military nature as part of the curriculum as well as academic courses. She had light brown or dark blonde hair depending on the light, green eyes, and at this moment a deep furrow was set in her forehead as a sign of her displeasure with all things to do with her Imperial parents. Dressed as she was in a simple dark blue pants suit with a cream bolero jacket she marched easily. Her two companions on the other hand had to skitter along in a most undignified manner dressed as they were in the more formal tight court dresses the Princess’ parents struggled to get her to wear.

  The stone corridors echoed to the sound of her feet as the Princess stomped to her room followed by the two hurrying attendants. After crashing the door to her room open in a most unladylike manner, Gizel threw herself onto her bed and made various wailing noises which her two attendants ignored, not daring to address Her Imperial Highness until Her Highness had calmed down somewhat. Gizel was known to throw things when really enraged and her aim was superior. After a period of time stretching well past the quarter-hour, Her Highness stopped clenching the bedclothes and mouthing horrible swear words under her breath and turned to glare at the two women patiently standing by the door.

  “Well?” she said overly loudly and somewhat harshly given her tantrum had nothing to do with either of them. “What do you want?”

  Although she knew perfectly well they couldn’t leave her side until she gave them leave to do so. They had both found that being an Imperial Attendant to Princess Gizel was not a calling that was at all appealing at times. Seeing as the Princess was not actually armed with any objects that could be thrown in their direction, the taller and older of the two spoke up.

  “Would you like us to get you something, Your Highness?”

  The girl who was maybe a year or two older than the Princess paused in thought.

  “Some jeric perhaps?”

  Jeric was a semi-legal drug that was supposedly non-addictive and had a similar effect to alcohol on the human body, although slightly more hallucinatory and with stronger activation of the pleasure receptors. It was the recreational drug of the Empire. Personal use was not prohibited but it was expensive to buy, deliberately, so there was a flourishing black market for the drug that was not very costly to produce.

  “No. Leave me. No, wait. One of you ask Lena to come here, please. That will be all. Goodnight.”

  Lena Travgar was her best friend. They had known each other since secondary school when Lena’s military father had found the money to get his daughter into the very private school Gizel had attended. His subsequent elevation to head of Imperial Security while also being ennobled with a Barony meant Lena had become an ‘acceptable’ friend for the Princess and as such, they were able to see each other outside of school as well. Baron Travgar and his family now lived in the protected enclave adjoining the palace where other bureaucrats of high rank and important government officials were encouraged to buy their houses.

  It didn’t even occur to her highness that her friend might be doing something herself, or perhaps already had plans for the rest of the evening. Being Princess of the biggest star realm in the region she sometimes forgot that people were not objects for her to use. Generally, she remembered later rather than sooner and apologized profusely, but it was one of her traits that most infuriated her mother.

  Lena turned up an hour later having been dropped off at the Palace by her brother who was on his way into town for a night out with friends. He was used to his sister taking advantage of him as a taxi service and he was not overly miffed, more resigned than anything. Lena was admitted to the Princess’s room without any fanfare.

  “Hey Gizel, What’s happening?” she asked, bouncing into the room.

  “Lena! Thank God. It’s terrible! My parents are such fogies!”

  “Well yes, so you keep telling me. What have they done now?” the tall svelte girl queried.

  “They’ve refused to let me go to Starfire again! Not even for a few hours. They are so restrictive. I can’t believe they have refused to let me go this year too!” she complained.

  The Princess stood up and stomped around her bedroom. Her friend who was perched on the end of the bed just sat and watched her, having been witness to many Imperial temper tantrums in the past.

  “It’s not like I’m a child anymore!” Gizel wailed. “I’m eighteen now and graduate in two months. Yet they won’t let me do anything!”

  “Did they say why?”

  The Princess stopped flouncing around and sat down on the bed next to her friend.

  “Oh yes. Security of course. The same excuse they use for every other thing I really wanted to do!”

  Her friend made no attempt to correct this view of things. Lena thought the Princess was probably overindulged, if anything, but wisely kept this thought to herself. Gizel certainly got away with a great deal more than Lena could get past her own parents.

  Generally, it was only large public events like this that her friend’s parents drew the line with. Starfire was the single biggest music and cultural event in the known galaxy. It was also the most disorganized. A huge tract of desert on the small southern continent was given over to a week of folk festival, music performances from all genres, crafts, hobbies, carnivals, and foods of all kinds in no real order. The organizers laid out temporary guides to designate areas and it was left to the performers, vendors, and traders to sort themselves out. Outside of the entertainment precin
cts, there were marked parking areas for aerial vehicles of all kinds, from small winged flyers to space to ground shuttles, and even small space ships.

  Twenty different transport companies laid on around the clock high capacity people shuttles from the major cities and spaceports around the planet. As many as two million people would likely attend this year, possibly even a record number if the weather forecast remained fine. Five different security firms had been subcontracted to provide security, the continental police force set up temporary offices around the site and even Imperial Security had a presence, although exactly what they did nobody was told.

  Given the complete chaos that occurred at Starfire every year, Lena doubted the Princess’ parents had even considered letting her go for one second. To let the Princess attend would be a security nightmare of epic proportions. She could only imagine her father’s reaction if the Princess had been allowed to go, a sort of goggle-eyed look accompanied by sounds like he was choking. He’d looked like that when he had been promoted to head of Imperial Security, which had come completely out of the blue, and was announced in front of his whole family at an Imperial birthday party.

  “Well, I can’t say I don’t understand Gizel. I do know how you feel, my parents can be overprotective too, and I’m not even a Princess, but I do understand your parent's concerns for your safety. I, for one, would not want to be in charge of your security!” she said cautiously after her friend had calmed down a little.

  The Princess just rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, I know all that. But my idea was so simple and easy. I would go in disguise and no one would have any clue I was there. I could take a couple of young security people in plain clothes to keep an eye on me and it would have been great.”

  The way she explained her idea made it sound like it was the simplest thing imaginable and not at all dangerous.

  Lena rather thought that the idea was stupidly dangerous, but she kept that thought to herself too. Instead, she tried to sound sympathetic.

  “Of course, that would have been fine! No one would have known it was you and even if someone said something, all you would have had to do would be to laugh it off. You could say you get that all the time and you just wished you were as rich as the Princess, and everyone would think you just looked like you and weren’t you at all.”

  The fact that this sentence was somewhat convoluted was completely ignored by the Princess who nodded enthusiastically.

  “Exactly Lena. That is just what I tried to tell them. No one would ever think it was really me if I didn’t have to take the whole circus along. We could have asked for Teron to be the male guard, he is part of my security detail anyway, and you could have come too and had fun with him away from all the prying eyes here.”

  Lena smiled at this. Teron Longarm was her current boyfriend. As yet, they had not gone far beyond a quick kiss when they thought they were not being observed. Lena was not sure of how attracted she was to the rather handsome Teron on anything more than a physical level and was keeping things tame until she felt herself to have real deep down feelings for him.

  Teron on the other hand followed Lena around like a salivating little puppy dog whenever he was off duty, and it was through no lack of trying on his part that their relationship hadn’t reached that planet-moving moment yet, but he was still optimistic. Lena was playing her cards close to her chest and overtly not giving him as much physical attention as he would like, but he knew from the smile on her face, and the look in her eyes when she surreptitiously glanced at him that she really was smitten.

  He was treading a fine line though, after all, Lena was the boss’ daughter, and when the boss was the head of Imperial Security, you needed to tread very carefully around his little girl. Teron couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong personally and risk losing Lena’s affection, or professionally where he could be hauled up to face her father in his official capacity and be given a demotion, or even worse losing the job he had yearned for since he was a small boy. So, as much it galled him to go slow, he had to let Lena take the lead in their burgeoning romance and bide his time.

  “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now Gizel, their decision has been made. If you could have gotten out of the palace Teron has that runabout he bought last year. I’m pretty sure it can go suborbital so getting to Starfire wouldn’t have been a problem.”

  She said this in part to sound helpful to her friend, but she did not regard it as a serious option. If nothing else, Teron would not risk his career for anything so stupidly dangerous. She was to be immediately sorry she’d opened her mouth she discovered.

  “Yes!” Gizel shouted. “Oh, Lena you’re a genius. I can sneak out of the palace tomorrow night and Teron will be off duty so we can meet in the city somewhere and the three of us can fly south. No one here will know until the next morning and we can hide in the crowd at Starfire!”

  By now she up on her feet again, smiling and almost bouncing around her room.

  “But Gizel, you can’t do that. Everyone would go ballistic!”

  “So. Serve them right.” Gizel stated firmly with an evil smile on her face.

  “How would you sneak out anyway?” her friend asked.

  Gizel simply shook her head and refused to say.

  “It’s a secret.”

  Even to Gizel, that statement sounded weak and childish.

  “Just what I thought. You can’t sneak out, can you?” Lena countered.

  Gizel smiled at her like the cat that swallowed the canary.

  “Yes, I can. Which is more than you can do!” she snorted.

  Her friend laughed. “I don’t need to sneak out of my home, I’m not an Imperial Princess.”

  Gizel stuck her tongue out which caused her friend to laugh even more. Then Gizel sobered.

  “Okay, then it’s all set. Starfire begins in two days. Tomorrow night I’ll sneak out of the palace and meet you at that coffee shop next to the library.”

  Lena stopped dead realizing to her horror that her friend was actually being serious.

  “You can’t Gizel. Even if you can escape from the palace think of the effect your absconding will cause. God my father will have a fit, as you know he is ultimately responsible for your safety. Your dad will go ballistic and your poor mother will be beside herself.”

  “Serve them right,” Gizel said uncaringly.

  She realized belatedly that her friend wasn’t really in favor of the plan but had just been humoring her.

  “It will be great Lena. Really. I will be disguised so no one will know who I am and we can have a wonderful time without having the watchdogs all over the place. We can fly down there and spend the day and night at Starfire then fly back the next morning and I will sneak back into the palace.”

  Lena doubted it would be quite as easy to sneak back into the Palace if she did indeed manage to get out in the first place. The entire Palace complex would be crawling with Imperial Security agents once her disappearance was discovered!

  “As if. You may well be able to sneak out, and I have my doubts as to that, but there’s no way you’ll get back in undetected after being missing for two days. As much as you hate having security people trail your every move they are there for your protection, venturing out without them will be foolhardy.”

  Gizel smiled. “Probably not. But what are they going to do to me? Teron will be with us, he can be my personal security guard.” the Princess retorted.

  That is a good point Lena thought to herself.

  Lena still didn’t want to be involved in this mad scheme, but having made the suggestion in the first place, she couldn’t think of any useful arguments to get out of it.

  “And if Teron and I won’t help you, what then?”

  “I’m sure Garrick would be only too happy to fly me down there.”

  Garrick Horgarst was a sort of boyfriend to Gizel at school. Lena had never been sure whether they were sleeping together or not. The difficulty for the Princess was being able to meet up
with a boy in private, since her guards monitored her around the clock, and that sort of precluded any chance of intimacy. Or so Lena had thought, although at times Gizel had said things that made her think perhaps Gizel had done more than just hold hands with Garrick somehow or other, despite the security that surrounded her.

  At that moment Lena knew she could not dissuade her friend and so her only hope now was that the Princess would not be able to sneak out.

  “Okay, okay. I will talk to Teron tomorrow. I’ll comm you.”

  “No. Imperial Security monitors my calls. Just drop in when you can.” she paused and looked at her friend.” You won’t renege will you?”

  Lena wondered what would happen if she informed on the Princess. Gizel had always been very easy-going for an Imperial Princess and rarely played on her Imperial rank, treating all equally. Except when she lost her temper, and even then she didn’t hold grudges, usually, unless she felt the person had betrayed her confidence. If that happened, then that person would never again be welcomed as a friend. Even so, Lena spent a lot of time that night thinking about what was the right thing to do as opposed to what was the expedient thing to do.

  The next day she sought out Teron and told him what the Princess had planned. At first he too was undecided in helping Gizel attend Starfire against her parents’ wishes, but after some thought he somewhat surprisingly tended to favor the plan.

  “It’s only going to be for one day. I’ll be there to keep an eye on her. I’ll make her promise not to ditch me and to follow my orders if I feel the need. You know what she’s like, if I get her to promise, she might complain about it a lot initially but she will stick to her word.”

  “That’s true,” Lena said.

  She could see she was not going to be able to avoid having to face a very irate parent of her own sometime in the very near future. She casually wandered over to the palace that afternoon and saw Gizel. The Princess made no obvious effort to be alone with Lena but Lena still managed to give her the okay and the Princes smiled a special smile in anticipation.