Imperial Edge

by Celinda Labrousse

  “Oh God, please forgive me!” she prayed. One of his eyebrows raised up just a hair higher than the other. Miranda crossed her arms.

  “What are you doing on the floor, anyways? Wait. Don’t tell me. You were tired.” Or tied up, she thought. “Whatever. Get up. We need to get out of here and find the prince.”

  Eric obeyed by rising up from the floor.

  “You know, for a figment of my imagination, you're pretty bossy.” There was a long pause as he rubbed his chin. His gaze slid over her from head to toe. Miranda could feel her heart thumping louder in her chest. She didn’t know that a look from Eric could give her those feelings.

  “ I like my women with bite,” he whispered into her ear. Miranda tried to stare him down, but her eyes shifted away first. She was not about to dignify his disbelief in her existence with words or allow that comment to enter this... whatever their relationship was.

  “You knew I would come for you if I could get out,” she reminded him.

  “Get out?” he said, questioning the last of her statement.

  “Yes. Get out,” she replied back. “It was easier than I thought it would be, actually. I kind of just, you know, went insane a little bit,” she rambled. “Talking to the walls worked out. When was the last time you had anything to eat?” She took a breath to really look him over. Using her hands, she turned him left then right. He looked gaunt, as if the life had come out of his cheeks. All that healing must have really drained him.

  “I can't remember,” he told her. His voice was smooth. Her head drank up the words. She shook it to clear it. That taser must have been stronger than she realised. She still didn’t know how long she’d been out. Eric must have been in the same boat.

  He smiled that ambitious smile again.

  “But that's why you're here, right?” he confirmed. “And Butterfly, I don't mind you being here one bit.” He leaned into her, placing a hand on her. His eyes were ablaze in a way she’d only seen with her father when he stared at her mother. Miranda looked down at the hand he now had on her shoulder.

  “I think that the lack of food and water has made you a little insane, too,” she confirmed. She tried to shake him off, but she couldn’t move. Her heart was racing too fast.

  “You need food,” she said forcing herself to turn away. She went to call up the drawer of food when she heard a small click.

  She flung herself against one of the corners, willing herself to be invisible in the open white space. She was less than a foot from the door.

  Whoever it was that opened the door did not come through it.

  “All hail the mighty hero,” a male voice boomed from the other side of the door. Eric ground his teeth.

  “You call me a hero, yet you left me here to rot. So nice of you,” Eric said.

  “Well, you know how these things go,” the man replied. “Capture a prince, ask for a large ransom, live happily ever after with all my ill-gotten gains. Leave the prince to rot on a planet no one can get to.”

  “You are a disgrace,” Eric spat at the man. The man must have ignored it because he didn’t step into the room. He continued.

  “Well, Your Highness. It seems that your empire cares nothing for you. It is a shame isn't it? To give one's life and to take the lives of others just to be another life to be taken.” Miranda tried to hear what he said next, but her brain was stuck on what the guy called Eric. Prince. Eric wasn’t the prince. The prince was the person Eric was sent to find and protect. She looked at the man in the cell again. He looked like Eric. His height, his face, the color of his hair, his uniform, the works. Everything was the same. Except his eyes. Yes, the color of his eyes was the same, but the glint in them. The fire. That was new. Eric had never had that fire.

  Eric, who maybe wasn’t Eric, shrugged. “What can I say? The people love me. The Empire? Maybe not so much.”

  “Their timeline is up. They haven’t wired the payment for your release. Not that we were going to release you.”

  “So why bother a dead man?” Eric-who-wasn’t-Eric said, his tone light; his expression playful.

  “I wanted to see the expression on your face in person so I could remember for myself what hopelessness looks like.” The man spat the words at Eric, punctuating each one. Arming them as weapons to strike his target. Eric-who-wasn’t-Eric didn’t even flinch. Didn’t scream. He looked as nonchalant as ever. The exact opposite of what the guy expected to see, it seemed.

  “This is goodbye,” the man said. The panel slid back closed. Eric-who-wasn’t-Eric slumped against the walls that were too tight. Miranda let out the breath that she had been holding.

  “I thought for sure he was going to see you,” he said, his head between his legs.

  “Me, too,” Miranda said, her voice catching on a dry throat.

  ‘All the more reason to get out of here,’ she thought.

  She hadn't realized that it wasn't just the droids on this planet, but of course there would be rebels as well. Why would they take their prized possession to anything but a trap that they controlled? The stress of being surrounded and alone on an abandoned prison planet was getting to her.

  “Okay, food and water. And then we're getting out of here,” she told him.

  “Glad my hallucination has a plan,” Eric-who-wasn’t-Eric said. “Not like I’ve tried to do both those things a thousand times already, but now that you’re here it’s all going to magically happen.”

  Miranda ignored the cutting words and beeped at the control panel, willing it to release its contents. One of the drawers to the left popped from the wall. Inside was the food capsules and two glasses of water.

  “Great, enough for both of us,” she said, handing Eric or His Highness or whoever this person was his capsules and glass. She really needed to get that cleared up. If this wasn’t her Ironside, then she needed to know.

  He took the glass from her and sniffed. Then he sipped its contents slowly. She couldn't tell if he was savoring it, or simply wary of his visions, handing him things to eat and drink. She quickly swallowed her own pellets and water.

  “Who are you?” they both asked each other.

  “I'm Miranda. Did you hit your head so hard in that crash that you forgot me?” she asked, placing her hand on his forehead.

  “If you aren’t Eric, who are you?” she asked. She wanted to verify, make sure that this was her Ironside. He had his face, but something was off in the eyes. They were different: colder, more sarcastic, more in control and somehow, just different, from her Ironside’s eyes.

  “Well, since you're a figment of my imagination, then for sure you know that I am Adam.” He said, using his hands to add a flourish. “Or are you?” He handed the cup back to her. She placed it back in the drawer with her own, and then he rose to his feet to stand beside her.

  “For a figment of my imagination, you sure are welcome sight,” he said, running his hands through her hair and down her chin.

  She froze at the touch. No man had ever touched her hair or face like that. An electric shock resonated through her. Sure, she had been around the boys in her family, been in wrestling games and hugging matches and pillow fights. Who didn't get into a good kickball match and not end up on top of one another? And, yeah, just a couple of seconds ago, she was hugging him, thinking that he was Eric, happy that he was alive. But suddenly, in that moment, every ounce of her body tensed, frozen under the pressure of this man’s two fingers.

  He tilted her up towards him and planted his lips down on hers. She blinked for a second, her brain reeling from the fact that this was her first kiss. That a prince of the empire had just stolen her first kiss. That she was in a jail cell sharing her first kiss with a prince. Her brain short circuited. She closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of his lips on her.

  They stood there that way, lips melding together. Then the absurdity of the situation hit her full force. It left an ache in her heart. She took both her hands and pushed back from him.

  Stuttering she found the wo
rds to say, “What was that?” She was thankful that her mouth worked at all after all that. Prince Adam, Adamantium Hero of the Galaxium Wars, or whatever he was calling himself now, ran a finger over that perfect jaw of his as if shocked that his vision had substance.

  He touched his lips and then reach for her again, as if wanting something that only she could provide. A dying man's daydream.

  “We need to get out of her here,” she said, turning back towards the door. “Do you think that they've gone?” Time was hard to tell in this place, but the talking and the kissing had to have been at least a few minutes. That must be enough time for the rebels to clear out. The guy had said he was leaving.

  “Who knows?” She could feel the shrug in his words. He reached for her again, bending her head back towards him. His arms were like steel. His breath was hot on her skin. She turned her head just in time. The kiss landed on her cheek.

  “If you are a prince, we’re here to rescue you,” she said.

  “‘We?’” he clarified. “I see only you.” Miranda rolled her eyes. Was this how a war hero and a prince acted? Trapping women with kisses as those same women saved their lives. She turned to the control panel that popped out when she commanded the computer in Droid. Instead of asking the door to open, she pressed a button to unlock it. She didn't want to garner any attention, so she slowly slid it open. A good two or three inches, just enough to be able to look out and down the hall.

  She looked both ways to make sure that it was clear. Then she slid it the rest of the way and motioned for him to follow her out the door.

  ‘Which way did I come from?’ she thought, looking backwards and forwards. She wanted to make sure that they weren't going to run into any more rebels or robot guards. In the end she chose right, hoping that that was the case.

  “Stick behind me,” she told him. He brushed up against her backside, then pressed the length of his body against hers and stopped.

  “As close as glue,” he said into her ear, just loud enough to be considered a whisper. Miranda’s knees went weak. She registered that it wasn’t from fear. The two of them headed down the hall Miranda in the front.

  Never in her wildest nightmares had she imagined being on a mission to free a prince for a prison planet. She forced the thought down. She had to keep her mind in the moment. They rounded the next bend to find two robot guards standing at the end of the next hall guarding a cell. Miranda’s breath caught. If they weren’t careful, they would be joining whoever was in that cell.

  Chapter 14

  The robot guard was a dead giveaway. Miranda pulled back from the corner. Her mind filled in all the blanks. Adam ran straight into her, pushing her into the wall. Her first instinct was to push him off, then she remembered the droid.

  “They must be keeping him in there,” Miranda whispered to Adam. Adam nodded. She had already freed the prince; the only other living person that came to mind was Eric.

  “Please, God; let it be Eric this time,” she prayed. Adam looked at her expectantly. The army hero, winner of wars, prince of the galaxies, was looking at her for directions.

  “We need a plan,” she told him.

  “So what is the plan,” he said. She glared at him.

  “Get their attention away from the cell and break the person out,” Miranda replied. Adam nodded his not-Eric head up and down.

  “And we are going to do that, how?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Just as the last word left her mouth, she turned her head back around the corner, coming face to face with the guards. A tentacle-like arm reached out to shock her. She stepped back and beeped.

  “Stop!” she exclaimed in Droid. The droid stopped.

  “Beep beep.” Turn around, she said. It turned around. All of its old gears creaked as it twisted away.

  “Go patrol someplace else.” Both droids started off down the hall away from the cell. Miranda heard a sigh. Adam was right up against her back.

  Miranda beeped a little phrase at the wall. A control panel popped out. She pressed the sequence of buttons; that was becoming normal. The door slid open. She gestured at Adam to stay back. She didn't want them all to get captured or trapped if something happened to her on the other side. This might not be one of her crew waiting to be rescued. Adam got the message and slid back into the shadows.

  The white walls greeted her. She was beginning to believe that they were some kind of hologram plastered over every cell to drive human beings insane. Within these planetary walls, even in its run down state, each of the rooms looked pristine. Yet she knew they couldn't have been dusted for years.

  She looked over into the corner and jumped squeaking with fright. There on the ground was the remains of a human being. Tattered bits of clothing with bones; everything else rotted away a long time ago.

  She felt the wind of an object swinging her direction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw an arm. She shifted to avoid it but she wasn’t fast enough. She took the full force of the blow on her shoulders, just barely missing her head.

  “Ouch,” she yelled. “Is that what I get for trying to save you?”

  The bone clanged to the ground, the Ironside that had been holding it shocked to find his teammate the one to open the door.

  “I thought you were a rebel,” the Ironside said as a way of apologising. Not Eric, but was Eric with him in the room? Then the truth registered.

  “I can't believe you're alive,” Miranda said. She looked at him with admiration. She didn't know if she could have survived a fall like that.

  Behind the Iron side was the body of the other gunner, whose name she’d never learned.. She made the symbol for the dead, unable to get the words from her mouth. She had seen enough death today.

  “Oh no. He's just sleeping.” The Ironside kicked him. “Wake up, Axel.”

  Axel rubbed his eyes, knocking the sleep. Both he and the Ironside looked beat up; scratched uniforms and old healing bruises scarred them. But other than that, they looked relatively whole.

  She shook her head. Happy reunions would have to wait. The rebels were all leaving; something big was happening. And they needed to get off planet. And back to the starship that brought them here before things blew up.

  “Where is the pilot?” she asked. The Ironside and Axel shook their heads.

  “Don’t know, he got thrown from the ship when we fell.”

  “Beep, Beep,” she said, opening the food drawer and allowing them both to have food and water to revive themselves. While the two of them gulfed down the pellets, she slid back the door enough to look out. Seeing that it was all clear she opened the regular door. She motioned Adam, she had to remind herself to call him Adam, to follow them down the left side. They hit an intersection and had to decide where to go from here.

  So far all of the passages had just been rows and rows of prison cells. There was no direction to follow. No up or down, left or right that didn't equal more cells.

  Miranda looked down both corridors and paused. The left corridor. Something about it looked odd. A blank wall of canvas where a cell should be, but wasn't. She whistled at the spot. Another control panel with a holo screen unfolded from the wall, its lights and circuits flashing to life.

  She looked at the screen; everything was in Droid. All ones and zeros in ornate patterns flashing in a regular sequence in front of her. ‘That's interesting,’ she thought.

  “What is that?” Axle asked, leaning over her left shoulder.

  “Haven't you seen a console before?” she inquired of him. Axel shook his head.

  “Can't say they have those on the ships I've been on,” he said. “Most of the tech we get,” he pointed at his head; there was a round disk right next to his left temple, “all the screens we interact with utilize these press points. Nothing requires audio interaction. And certainly not these.” He looked down at the hard plastic buttons that made up the entrance keys to the command center station.

  “Everything's holo. Not this,” he sa
id.

  Miranda rolled her eyes. Of course, being from the army he would have knowledge of the newest tech. But her being from an outpost on a terraformed planetoid in the outer rings, all the technology on her planet, except for in the main cities, was at least 300 years old. New updated tech didn't reach colonial planets. Everything on her family farm had been voice command and push button operated. Even Oscar.

  “This,” she explained to him, “is a control panel. This will show us,” she moved her finger up to the screen, “where we're at, and possibly a map of where we need to get to.”

  “Where do we need to get to the next?” asked Adam. He’d stuck his head over her other shoulder. Miranda looked from Axle to Adam and then hung her head in disgust.

  “See this here. That's where we are at now.” She pointed up into the left corner of the screen with its flashing ones and zeros. “This down here," she pointed to the other side of the screen, "is the launching bay.”

  "These here," she marked out different points, "are the gateway entrances that will get us from where we're at to the launching bay.” She typed a couple of things into the keys. It took a moment for the computer to register. But then an area to the left started to click. A piece of paper spit out from the machine.

  Axel jumped back in surprise when the thing touched his leg.

  "Get off! Get off!" he screamed. Miranda gave him a look.

  "It's just paper," she said, retrieving the slip. The gunner was hunkering behind Adam, fear screaming from his eyes.

  "Haven't you seen paper before?" she said. He straightened and tried to look tough. But Miranda would never see him that way again. He would forever be the man afraid of paper printouts.

  "We need to hurry," she said to suppress her smile. "These halls might have guards."

  Miranda remembered. It wasn't just the robot guards they had to worry about. Somewhere in this prison, rebels roamed. If they found them before they could secure blasters, they would be dead.