Storm Princess

by M. Garnet

  THE STORM PLANET SERIES:

  STORM PRINCESS

  By M. Garnet

  ( c ) copyright by Murial Garnet Yantiss, June 2016

  Cover art by Jenny Dixon, 2016

  ISBN 978-1-60394-

  Smashwords Edition

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Dedication:

  For all my friends in Florida that

  love the storms we live through.

  Prologue

  As usual, Prime Assassin Misrot was the last person to enter the meeting that had been called in this faraway place in the universe. There was hardly any commotion at his entrance as his dark threatening eyes looked around at the beings that were in attendance.

  This meeting was again about the storm planet that produced a strange power source called the Threads of Targent, that were valued by any community or planet, moon or base that needed a power source that was unlimited.

  It was also the one source that could power the jump ships that made it possible to quickly travel the long distances in this portion of the universe that intelligent beings shared.

  Misrot was surprised at the change that met his eyes as he examined the beings and the area with the senses of the trained killer. Gone were the fancy drapes and covers in this plain metal room with its protection from outside listening devices. Even the dress of those attending was plain and more in a military appearance.

  There were faces missing and new ones making an appearance for the first time.

  Misrot spoke with a whisper, as did all Assassins. “So, you want another war?”

  There was silence, as everyone looked down and avoided the eyes of others. Finally, a male who represented a large group of planets and communities cleared his throat and spoke.

  “Perhaps war is the wrong approach. Maybe we should try a peace offering.”

  PRINCESS MIKLA’S STORY

  Chapter One

  I stand on this water world, whipped by the winds that always scour across the top of this plateau with what the gardener has told me is young growth.

  I hold my arms across my chest, trying to keep my broken heart from being blown away in this heavy wind, as I watch the dark waters below. I think of the world I was born on that had water on it also. Water is a rare and good commodity in the universe.

  I learned early that my father was the ruler over many worlds and moons and areas where life was established. In time I was told by tutors, how strong and wealthy and important this made my family, especially my father.

  As a small child, the firstborn, this meant nothing to me, a girl child. Except that, I got pretty clothes and exotic foods. My life was surrounded by tutors and guards and beings from other worlds, all brought in to teach me.

  My memory is strange as it is cluttered with all the people I have met and all the worlds I have lived on or learned of from books and teaching units. I don't have one of those eidetic brains. I just collect memories of my life.

  For example, I see the sand stretched out as far as I could view but my mind turns the page to a younger vision. I was fascinated by the waves that the winds had left in the sand. We had all hidden within the basement, away from the dust.

  I wasn't supposed to be out here, but it was easy for me as a seven-year-old girl to slip past the many guards that were bored with the protection duty of four royal girls and their mother.

  My mother had been the first wife of the King of Questes Consortium. My father, the King, had doted on me as his firstborn child. Life was full of everything beautiful and exotic and anything a child could want until I was seven. According to the age times of the Federated accounting, if you used that to determine age.

  I slept in my mother's room. This is where I learned the difference between sex with love and animal sex. My mother's bedroom was large and it had such a high ceiling that I could make echoes.

  There were two fireplaces on each opposite wall along with the floor heating. There were desks, chairs, and couches and a sitting area between the wall where my mother's giant bed set, covered by hanging silk covers that came down from the ceiling.

  My nice size bed was on the faraway wall and covered with soft screenings, dropped down from a hook against the wall above my bed. When my sisters came along, their beds were placed alongside mine.

  I did notice my sisters slept through the noise when my father visited my mother. For me, it was a learning experience. I could remember when the noise turned from sweet words and soft sounds. After my second sister, the sweet words stopped coming and the noise was shorter. I could no longer hear the soft sighs of my mother from the act.

  After the third girl child, father would burst in, hardly checking to see if we girls were in bed. I could hear his grunts and afterward and he had left, there were the soft sobs from my mother.

  My mother had a fourth child and it was another girl. An angry King sent all of us off to a distant planet and advanced his first concubine to Second Wife.

  For me, the landscape might have changed, but my life didn't. I was still surrounded with tutors, dance instructors, musicians, cosmetologists, and boring historians.

  My clothes might not be as plentiful or as beautiful, but they were acceptable. The food might not be as exotic, but we still all ate well. I hated all these extra instructors now as much as I disliked any that I had in my previous home on the main planet of Questes. A planet that had a lot of water that my many mentors told me was rare. Information that a five or six or seven age girl just was not too interested in.

  I was interested in the sand dunes. There was something way out there in the distance making shadows. My guards would not let me get away long enough to find out about the distant movements.

  My tutors, guards, and mother all told me that a firstborn girl was not allowed to have such interest in the unknown. So it was their job to turn me away from things that would not show manners and into things that would draw the attention of the opposite sex.

  I was being trained from birth to be the perfect product that the king could eventually use as a trade item for a very valuable return. So I couldn't be a person and I couldn't have any interest except to be malleable. I must be shaped to be pliable and do only what was going to be useful to the Questes Consortium.

  I thought about this often, wondering why I had inherited my mother's looks and my father's brains. My mother's looks pleased everyone. My father's brain made me watch the shadows on the dunes and figure out a way to escape from my guards to travel the sand.

  When I still lived in my father's place, I would slip through the dusty ways hidden between the walls. I would find my way to my father's office and then I could hide beneath his desk. His desk was so deep and dark that even when he stretched out his legs, I still had room in the footwell to huddle and listen and learn.

  I may have been young, but I understood when my father was lying. He played a rough game with his many would-be supporters. I learned early that the king was not to be trusted so I never asked him for anything. Perhaps I was the only one smart enough not to ask him for favors, knowing the price.

  In all my many years, I didn't hate him. I just didn't like him. He had no morals, no feeling of right or wrong. He only knew what he wanted or what would advance his power and growth in the universe.

  It was under this dark hole beneath the desk, smelling of wood and floor polish and my father's boots that I first heard of the Threads of Targent.

  It was on the dune planet that I fooled a tutor into letting me study what po
wered the jump ships and where that power originated. But I was still too interested on what or who was out on the dunes to think much about traveling in the universe.

  I finally got the right clothes stashed away. I found ways to steal soldiers' canteens and slowly hid them full of water near one of the containment walls. I took pockets full of dried fruit and meat and was finally ready.

  I got sick and threw up supper. I had a fever and my personal nanny called the healer. I knew he couldn't find anything wrong once I threw away the hot water bottle.

  He insisted I stay in bed for a couple of days and—at my cross-eyed request—that I be left alone. I had been moved to a private room in the nursery. I waited until most of the lights were out in our residence compound and then just left.

  It took me longer to sneak past the guards and over the containment wall than it did to walk across the dark desert. I discovered heat and light confused the eyes on distance in the desert just like it did on water.

  The caravan people accepted a child without question. Of course, we didn't speak the same language, but I shared my water and they shared their fresh milk from the animals they herded.

  I played with the children that were my size and ran with the small animals. Then life taught me another lesson. Five floaters came in fast, dumping the troopers in their completely enclosed suits.

  I stood, trying to wave and draw attention to myself. It was ridiculous that I thought they didn't know me, as I was the only one they didn't shoot. They shot the boys and girls I had wrestled with and the women who had shared food with me.

  They shot the men who milked the goats and the older ones who carried items and babies. To make it a complete insult, they shot the herd.

  It took me a while to find out the teams who had been in on the assault. It took the healers having them lifted off the desert planet to isolate them with a strange debilitating sickness that hit these troopers for me to get my revenge.

  As I said, I had my mother's beauty and my father's brains. Too bad I couldn't reach the ones who gave the orders.

  Chapter Two

  I had a birthday celebration, not for a Federation age of twelve but for the fact that I was now a woman, as my menses commenced. Yuck.

  I was not thrilled with this event and even worse it was decided to allow my body to remain in a normal process. I knew from this decision that my father still had plans for me.

  I made no further effort to leave the residence compound, not wanting to put any other life at stake. It was this same year that we were moved again.

  It seems that the Second Wife had been able to have four more children for the King. Unfortunately, these children had also been all girls. So, I overheard the head house manager instruct everyone that the Second Wife and her brood would be in the desert residence compound and the First Wife and all those important to the firstborn would go to Mond.

  Mond turned out to be a large moon circling a giant gas planet in one of my father's mining areas that he had recently acquired. I now had acquired secretly enough knowledge to know that he had taken or forced the beings in this area to turn over the mining facilities.

  The moon Mond was so old, that history could not trace its actual beginning of being settled. Their home was a real stone castle embattlement that had been restructured inside to all modern conveniences.

  For my mother, it was a horrible place without gentle decorations. For me, a tomboy of twelve, it was a place of excitement and exploration. There were so many places to hide and follow and chase that no one could find me on any day.

  I had cut out the tracking pellet after the debacle of the desert nomads. My father was afraid I would disfigure my body if they put in more. It took surgery to hide the scar I made with my borrowed knife.

  For the next couple of years, I looked out on waves of snow. They were the same shape as the sand dunes, caused by the wind moving the snow over the frozen ground. At least this moon had water, even though it was in a hard form.

  I was allowed to play with the electronic games, convincing my teachers that I was sure that a future husband would be interested in such things.

  Out of sight of the teachers, it didn't take a bored girl long to find a way to expand the ability of the game units and then it was easy to reach the circling satellites.

  Now I was getting a real education, not the pap that was being fed to me by the tutors hired by my father. I could understand the strange whispers from the workers who were dissatisfied.

  At the age of fourteen of the Federated years, something changed in my body. I don't mean the monthly curse that my other sisters didn't have to participate in. Their ability to have children had been halted.

  I would be allowed to give my future male the heir. Once my father decided what was important enough of a trade to gain my father what would help his wealth grow.

  The change I am now referring to is that I found an interest other than playing tricks or to hurt the troopers that guarded me. I began to hunt out a couple that I realized were cute. Did I say cute?

  Suddenly, so many of the troopers began to look different and when I saw a smile on one, I got strange feelings in my stomach and other parts of my body. Now I suddenly knew what all those sex lessons really meant.

  Having slept in the same room where my father impregnated my mother, I was introduced to the act at an early age. That was more interesting than what the sex tutors taught me. Somehow the fact that a man could be brought to a climax with a hand, or a tongue, or a female body lost some heat when it was written in dull words.

  When a wrinkled female yawned as she explained about the actual nerve endings that created a certain feeling, it had no real meaning. Now, seeing what I thought was a handsome young trooper smile suddenly made sense out of all of those words.

  I realized I could make him feel good with all those moves that earlier were just words. I also realized that in turn, it would give me great pleasure.

  Oh, I thanked all those sex tutors and began to look at all those guards in a different manner. I would smile more and I would quit the tricks and began to dress differently.

  There came a time in the exercise room that I actually approached a cute smiling trooper and put my hands on his sweaty wide chest. Oh, the swirling that took place in my body. My blood seemed to catch fire.

  At that time, I heard a Commander call everyone to attention and then for the guards and troopers to leave immediately. I never saw the young male again. Also, whenever I went to the exercise room, everyone would immediately leave. Another lesson learned.

  So, I could not flirt or let the good feelings play out in my body or the cute troopers would end up like all the goats in the desert herd. My life was now restricted tighter than my father would even understand. I didn't want others to die because of me.

  I now spent my time avoiding my tutors and all guards and troopers. On my sixteenth birthday, I was called back to the Royal Residence on the main planet of Questes, to live again with my father.

  Suddenly I was bathed in oils, my hair pulled and twisted and hung in long curls. I no longer had tutors. I had males and females who spent long periods of the daylight in what they called making me look beautiful.

  I heard from the gossip of the people working on me that my father had chopped off the head of next wife and the one after that because they gave him female children.

  I was taught some new dances and was told they were sensuous movements that would entertain or draw males because of the movements.

  I had a suite of rooms, but I knew the layout of this enormous fortress and I was far from my father's quarters. The rooms where he kept his wives, the one I had slept in as a child would take a long hike to reach.

  Yet this was the compound that I had run through before I had to wear shoes. I was in my bedroom area only two sunrises before I found a hollow wall. I worked behind the dressing screen and was able to pry a panel loose with one of my combs. I decided to leave everything alone until night when I was suppos
ed to be sleeping.

  I got up late in the night. Taking a small glow stone, I carefully went behind the screen to enter the hollow section. I got behind the screen to find not only the panel replaced but the entire wall covered with beautiful heavy wood. It was obvious that this wall would not pry open.

  I waited a couple of sunrises before asking one of the men putting on my eye colors. I asked him who was watching me and how? I was shocked by his answer.

  "It is an honor to have the King know of all your time." He then raised his eyes up at a corner of the room we were in. I tried not to look at the same time. I waited until the food was brought in before I stretched and looked up at the corner.

  It was a compound that didn't allow animals and that had flash killers to take out any small insect; however, there was a small black bug slowly moving in the shadowed corner. Okay, now I knew what to look for, but finding some way to cheat and beat my father was going to be fun.

  It took me a long time to figure out about a three-dimensional free floating image that didn't flicker and was solid, not somewhat transparent. With this, I could take a bath in privacy.

  Chapter Three

  I was twenty, with sixteen sisters and my father, the King, did not have a male heir. He had four living wives and many females that were headless. There was a certain whispering in the compound that he shot only female bullets. There were also fears about curses, poisons, and possible control from other worlds.

  One of my dressers brought some special desserts and several of my silly beings that were making me beautiful wished me a birthday grant. Of course, since none of us were free, there was no grant, so it was a foolish tradition.

  We were smiling and dividing up the treats when the guards came in, more than usual, and announced that the King demanded my presence.

  Complete panic moved in, as everyone set about dressing me and primping me. I was then wrapped in a full dark robe that had a heavy hood pulled down over my face. No one would see me as I was hustled through the halls. The biggest surprise was a personnel floater was soon available and I was whipped away to quickly get to the royal rooms of my father.