A Shift in the Sky_In the Stars Romance

by Suki Selborne

  I slump back in my chair and click my fingers for the serving droid. “Get me another glass of whatever the hell that was.”

  “Yes sir,” the droid replies, and scoots away.

  I’m going to drown my sorrows. Tonight is a washout.

  So I lost a bet I should never have taken. So I have to go outside my comfort zone and mix with intergalactic lowlife. So what? I could handle it. Tomorrow was going to be long as hell, but I’d live. Probably.

  The last thing I remember is convincing Reago and Kaljo to order shots, while singing songs at the tops of our voices. It was a pretty messy night. Lucky I didn’t have to get up early for work in the morning, like a regular person.

  Oh, shit.

  I wake with a jump, as a serving droid shrieks in my ear.

  “Good morning! Time to awaken, Your Highness. I have brought you a refreshing breakfast drink.”

  “What the hell?” I mumble, turning over. The clock says it’s still the middle of the night, at least to me.

  “Would you like me to prepare a fragrant bath for you?”

  The droid’s singsong voice really pisses me off. I slump back onto the bed, rubbing my eyes. Somewhere inside my skull, a million drummers beat out a painful rhythm.

  “Why are you here, droid? Who ordered you to wake me?”

  “Prince Reago issued the order, Your Highness. You are expected in the prisoner wing in thirty vilzins’ time.”

  Damn it. Hazy memories of last night crowded back into my aching head.

  The bet. I lost a bet. And the payment is… Oh, man. Checking in petty criminals and searching their filthy junkyard-refugee ships. Great.

  “The prisoner wing? I don’t even know where that is on this ship.” Why would I? Royalty never deals with crap like that.

  “I can give you directions,” the droid says, in her sugar-sweet tone. “Or I can take you there myself. It’s up to you.”

  “Great,” I say, forcing myself to sit up. Oh, hell. The room is spinning. I reach out for my “refreshing breakfast drink”, and almost knock it over. Luckily, I steady it just in time. “This drink had better be as refreshing as you say it is,” I say, sniffing it dubiously.

  “Oh, it is, your highness. It is full of soothing, energizing ingredients and fresh herbs from Quintagon.”

  “Perfect,” I say, and take a sip. It’s actually pretty good, although my stomach warns me not to attempt solid food just yet.

  How much did I drink last night? It went way beyond my usual level of partying. I’m going to have to grow up sometime, because this irresponsible crap is starting to get old. As old as I feel right now.

  “Yeah, please do prepare the bathtub,” I say, after a few moments regaining the power of speech. “But don’t bother laying out clothes. I have to shift today.”

  The droid scampers to fulfill my demand, and I put one foot on the floor. Nausea zigzags upward from my belly. I shut my eyes and concentrate on standing up. I’ll almost certainly feel better once I shift, but I have to get to that point first.

  After a soak in the tub, I feel slightly more alive. I immerse myself completely in the water, and emerge with a splash.

  “Time to head down to the prison wing,” the droid sings. “Shall I show you the route myself?”

  “Please do.”

  I dry myself gingerly, and shift into my lion form. My lion can handle this hangover from hell. He’s way stronger and more resilient than his royal alter ego.

  One day. One day of working like a little person. That’s all this is. I can handle one tedious day with shitty company.

  Tomorrow, I’ll be back to my carefree royal life. And the good times will roll once more.

  And no more bets with Reago. That’s for damn sure. Well, not unless I’m sure I’ll win. He can kiss my ass if he thinks I’m going along with any more of his stupid ideas.

  Shaking my mane and growling softly to psych myself up, I pad after the droid, all the way down to the prison wing.

  3 Corby

  “Just get us the hell out of here,” I yelp.

  “You got it,” my ship’s computer Neela replies.

  Neela switches on the supplementary emergency harness, and it flips itself over me. I’m now pinned in my seat, unable to reach the controls. It makes sense to leave the getaway strategy to Neela, because she’s AI and serene, and I have a puny human brain that’s freaking the fuck out right now.

  “Engaging warp speed.”

  Oh boy. This is going to get messy. My ship probably hasn’t hit warp speed since before my grandparents were born. I can’t be sure it’s going to hold out. But we have no choice. We have to try.

  The floor vibrates beneath my feet. Vibration quickly turns to shuddering, then shaking. I hold on to my secondary harness with trembling fingers. We’re flying so fast, the coordinates screen has gone blank.

  “Heading into open space,” Neela says, calm as a summer cloud.

  I’m lost without my pilot screens on. The whole ship undulates and rattles, like a giant toddler picked it up and is waving it around.

  “Are we losing the Imperial Order ship?” I yell.

  “No.”

  There’s a certainty to Neela’s voice that really scares me. I mean, there’s no tone at all in it, because she’s not real. Obviously I’m projecting tone onto her words, because I’m the one who’s terrified of being caught with stolen goods, and because I can’t stand the thought that I’m in this much trouble all by myself. But either way, my heart rate is through the roof again. And Neela can’t calm me this time. All the meditation in the world isn’t going to fix my current problem.

  “So they’re still following us?” I ask, gritting my teeth.

  Please say no. Please say they just went another way.

  “They appear to be following our course exactly, at a distance of approximately one kilometer.”

  “Oh God.” I shut my eyes and try to think clearly. “Have they sent any communications? Maybe they just want to check our flight permit or something?”

  “No communications. I will try to initiate a link.” Neela goes silent for a moment, and then speaks again. “I am unable to connect with their computer. Their mainframe will not accept the connection. It is therefore likely that they wish to meet with you in person.”

  I want to hide my face in my hands and yell, but what’s the point? It’s hopeless. We’re never going to outrun them, even if we do travel at warp speed. Imperial Order ships can fly way past that velocity anyway. We’re like a kitten trying to outrun a cheetah.

  We’re doomed. And by we, I mean I. However much I adore Neela’s company, there’s only one lifeform on this ship.

  The screen flickers back on, and I get a good perspective on open space. The blackness stretching out in front of me looks like sweet liberty.

  “How’s the rear view looking?”

  Neela swaps the camera aspect so I can see behind us.

  I whimper as the entire screen is filled with the Imperial Order ship. “They’re hot on our tail, Neela.”

  “Correct.”

  “We can’t escape, can we?”

  “The odds of our managing to escape now are one in seven hundred trillion.”

  “That good, huh?”

  “Maximum period of warp drive engine use now reached. Warp drive engines deactivated.”

  The turbulence tossing the ship around seems to subside. It feels like we’re gliding on water now. Neela pulls the camera focus back so we can see more of our pursuers.

  “The Imperial Order ship has locked on,” she says.

  My spine feels like icicles just slid down it. “Locked on?”

  “They are pulling us into their gravity field.”

  “Shit. Neela, we have to do something.” I struggle against my emergency harness. “Get this thing off me.” Neela obeys.

  My fingers work fast, opening up the communications panel and activating my fingerprint identification. I speak into the microphone. “Greetings, Imperial O
rder vehicle. What is the nature of your inquiry?” My words are instantly converted to their language, and I hit Send.

  I stare at the screen, willing the reply to be “Sorry ma’am, just a case of mistaken identity. You’re free to go.”

  Instead, there is nothing. Silence. The lack of a reply feels worse than a hostile one. And then the gravity pull begins.

  The first tug backwards throws me forward, and I scream. “Get the harness back on me, Neela.”

  There is a second, and a third, and a fourth tug. It feels like my ship is being sucked into a black hole. Or a vortex. Not that I know what either of those really feels like.

  “Preparing to dock on Imperial Order ship,” Neela says in a slightly bored voice, like she’s waiting for her nail polish to dry so she can eat her M&Ms. “The system will shut down in ninety seconds.”

  “What?” I gasp for words, unable to formulate language for a moment. Then reality comes back to me. “Shutdown? Neela, what the fuck? What are you doing?”

  “The Imperial Order ship is operating a vacuum procedure. The system must shutdown to preserve essential circuitry. Imperial Order override in operation. System shutdown in sixty seconds.”

  “Neela, how can you be shutting down? I’m not authorizing a shutdown.”

  “System shutdown in forty-five seconds.”

  “Do not shut down,” I order her.

  “System shutdown in thirty seconds.”

  “I’m the commander on this ship,” I bellow, but apparently this means zero to my artificial pal. When she announces the twenty-second warning, I kick the flight desk. It doesn’t help, and it leaves a black streak on the trim.

  “System shutdown in five seconds.”

  “Neela, don’t go,” I holler.

  It’s pointless. With one last flash of the flight desk panels, the ship is plunged into darkness.

  There’s no way out of this. I’ve been absorbed into an Imperial Order ship. I may never be seen again.

  I think quickly. Is there any place I can stash the chip? Probably not. If they find it somewhere on this vehicle, I’ll be punished just the same as if they find it on me. I decide to just leave it in the unscannable compartment in my boot, in case I get lucky and they want me for some other business.

  The ship stops moving, and I realize it must have docked. Nothing’s happening.

  I call out into the blackness. “Okay motherfuckers. Are you coming to get me, or what?”

  The door release clicks, and a white light appears around the edges of it. The door descends slowly. I squint to see who’s standing there, but the light is so bright, I can hardly make it out.

  When I finally get my eyes to focus, they almost pop out of my damn head.

  There’s a lion at the bottom of the stairway.

  A lion.

  A lion.

  “There are lions in space?” I screech, even though there’s nobody to hear me except the freaking lion.

  It takes my brain a good few seconds to realize that this is an Imperial Order shifter. He just happens to be shaped like a lion right now. Of course.

  He’s an impressive beast. And he’s an honest-to-god lion.

  “Holy shit,” I whisper, as the lion leaps toward me.

  4 Jalton

  I prowl around the female, who cowers in her seat. She pulls her legs up and hugs them close to her, like that’s going to stop me attacking her.

  Humans are idiots. If I’d planned to attack her, I could have destroyed her entire ship from a distance. But I guess she doesn’t know that.

  She also doesn’t know I’m just moonlighting in this job for today, and really couldn’t care less about any of it. I only plan to do a quick checkover here, and then move on to the next prisoner in line. If she gives me any trouble, I’ll roar at her, or something. That ought to keep her in line.

  The female is very pretty in a disheveled sort of way. She has a sulky pout, hourglass curves, and wild tangled auburn hair. I like the look of her already, even though I know she’s a criminal. She’s easy on the eye.

  But I don’t stare for too long. No point pursuing my interest. According to Kaljo’s helpful Imperial Order Prisons 101 explanation last night, she’s likely to be either locked up or executed before the day is out.

  As I turn to survey the ship, my lion nose detects a metallic, elemental scent I can’t identify. That’s strange. Technology from another world? The scent is not from Earth, although this female is definitely human. And it isn’t from any of the main planets in the galaxies surrounding us either.

  A quick visual sweep reveals nothing but ancient human electronics and computer circuits. Yet the alien technology scent persists.

  Intriguing. I need to know more.

  I sniff the air, and the human freezes. Tracking the scent around her seat makes her squeak in terror.

  The scent is more concentrated around the floor. I glance over it to see if there are any compartments or storage facilities leading down from the floor panels, but there are so many patched together that the job would be impossible. Easily dismantled, when the wrecking crew strips down the ship later.

  Irritatingly, I the mysterious metallic odor is also masked by an artificial fragrance wafting around the ship’s interior. It carries the scent profile of Earth-based floral plants.

  Humans and their dumb perfumes.

  A quick tour of the whole flight deck takes seconds, because the ship is so narrow. The exterior casing is laughably fragile. I find it hard to believe this vehicle can even fly. It would be shredded in an asteroid storm.

  “What do you want?” the human says. Then a thought seems to light up her beautiful face. “Oh, wait. You’re an Imperial Order shifter. You probably don’t speak English. Let me feed that through the translator.” She opens up a tab on her ancient screen and begins to shout into it. “What? Do? You? Want?”

  I’m tired of this already, so I stand still and will myself to shift back into my two-legged form. I need to talk to her, and she’ll be less freaked out by my words if I’m on two legs and not four.

  Immediately, I stand before her, my skin now stripped of golden fur. To her, I must look like a human man. Only much taller, and broader. Human men are tiny and feeble. Their muscles are flimsy as an eyelash. Mine are sturdy and strong, as they should be.

  “Don’t bother with the translator,” I say. “Were you harmed by the ship transportation process? Do you need any medical assistance?”

  She jumps, as though my words gave her an electric shock. “You can speak English?”

  “I speak all languages in this galaxy and the two hundred surrounding it. Don’t you?”

  She’s staring. She can’t stop staring.

  “Nnnn…no,” she says, at last. “I use the translator app. I didn’t… I don’t…” She breaks off, still gawping at me with that wide-eyed expression. She can’t take her eyes off my body. How curious.

  “Why are you regarding me with such intensity of purpose, human female?”

  She clears her throat. Her eyes do not move from my central zone. “Dude. You’re… .” She clears her throat again. “Oh, come on. You’re butt naked. What the heck?”

  Apparently humans know nothing of shifting. Such a strange, bewitching creature, with her luscious curves and empty mind.

  “I just shifted,” I say, incredulously. “And clothes don’t shift with me. It isn’t rocket science.”

  It was going to be a long morning.

  After I catalog this scrapper and give her a code, I’ll still have another eleven captured ships waiting in the docking bay. Can I get away with leaving some of them for the real prisoner warden team? I don’t want to break a bet, but this shit is getting time-consuming already. Usually I’d still be in bed, or sitting down to a leisurely five-course breakfast.

  “Well, okay,” she says, pursing those pink lips again. “Yeah, perfectly normal to be standing in front of a woman you’ve never met with all your manly goods on display. Because you’re a space
lion. Of course. Yeah, what could be weird about that? I mean, why would a guy bother getting dressed? Especially when he’s a lion. In space.”

  We have a feisty one here, I think to myself as I reach for her touchscreen. “This won’t take long.”

  “What won’t?”

  “I need to catalog you.”

  “Catalog me? What am I now, a specimen?” Her voice has gotten higher and squeakier. “What is it you want from me anyway?”

  I lay a hand over her touchscreen and it springs to life. All vehicles in the tri-galaxy have an Imperial Order override function. It’s a legal requirement. The service droid told me this morning. With a few swipes, I find the ship’s serial number and the pilot’s flight credentials.

  “Name: Commander Corby Frayne. Place of birth: Minneapolis, United States of America, Earth. Age: 26. Confirm these details please.”

  “That’s me. Who’s asking?”

  I pat a few more commands into the screen interface. It’s ancient technology, but I’ve seen worse. “I’m Prince Jalton.”

  “You’re a prince?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Right.” She nods, then looks back sharply. “Wait, they send princes to interrogate lowly freelance couriers? Who does the important stuff? Janitors?”

  “I lost a bet with my brother.” I frown, irritated that I’m being drawn into personal conversation. “Okay, Commander Frayne. You’ll need to come with me.”

  “Sure. Do you plan to slip into something a little less comfortable first?”

  “Stop talking. I said follow me.”

  I shift back into my lion form, because that’s what I’m supposed to be today. It’s what the prison wing expects. Corby Frayne looks dubious, but she rises from her seat and follows me, at a slight distance.

  The door to her ship remained open after I entered. I pad through it and down the stairway, looking back to check she’s following right behind me. She is.

  “Where are we going exactly, Your Royal Highness?”