I watch the pattern of star clusters on the monitor screen. It's beautiful. “Begin anywhere. Go."
"How far back?"
"Wherever you're comfortable." I catch sight of a small chunk of space debris floating past. Luckily it was a long way away from our ship.
It’s so relaxing, sitting here with him, holding hands. I’m starting to lose that pent-up fear feeling. Things seem kind of… nice.
He opens his mouth to begin his tale.
And then I see it. There, on the screen.
Danger.
Before I even register in my conscious mind what it is, I let out a scream. Prince Jalton jumps fully to his feet, on red alert.
"What's up, Corby?"
I register dimly that he called me by just my first name, but that doesn't matter right now. Words seem to have left me. I'm still capable of pointing though. So I point to the monitoring screen behind him.
He spins around, and sees what I see.
There’s a ship on the monitor. And it's not an Imperial Order ship this time. It’s much worse than that.
It's Kreapers. The deadliest space pirates in this multigalactic zone. Their red-alloy ships are legendary in the galaxy. It’s rare to see them these days, but they still operate. The entire galaxy lives in fear of an encounter.
The only people who can speak of them are those who ran for their lives and got away. If they capture you, it’s all over.
Nobody has ever been caught by Kreapers and lived to tell the tale. Nobody.
“Is that what I think it is?” he says, his voice suddenly urgent.
"Yes," I manage to squeak. “Kreapers.”
“You know what that means?"
“They see us. They're locked on to us." I see the gun barrels raise up out of the Reaper ship flank, just as he does.
“Presumably we can’t get away before they shoot.”
“No we can’t. We're screwed.”
He pauses for a second, and then he sits down in the pilot seat.
“No,” he snarls. “No way. Not happening.” The lion is suddenly visible behind his face. He growls, a low, deep rumble that vibrates in my spine. “What is wrong with today?
“But—” I begin. He doesn’t let me finish.
"Fuck them. No. Not on my watch.” He jabs at the controls and calls out “Prepare weapons” to the ship’s computer. He indicates the seat next to him. “Sit down, Commander."
I obey immediately, my stomach fizzing with horror and dread. The Kreapers seem to have snuck up on us out of nowhere. They’re so close. If we can get away in time, it’ll be a miracle. I already know it’s not my lucky day.
Prince Jalton prepares to fight them, and I sit next to him, paralysed with dread.
“We're taking these bastards down,” he says. “Here goes."
8 Jalton
It is fortunate that we had finished eating before the Kreaper crew decided to mess with us. Filling my belly seems to have brought me back to life again. My hangover is almost gone. My lion roars with righteous rage.
The Kreapers will not win this time. How dare they mess with us? They will regret their foolish error.
The ship we are using is small, and it’s possible they mistake its small size for vulnerability. But it is a technically advanced piece of engineering. It is not the kind of ramshackle vehicle Corby Frayne uses to roam the stars. That one would be helpless if attacked.
Why the hothead wants to return to a vehicle like that, I have no idea. I will look into providing her with a new one. Perhaps she can keep this ship, if it does not become too damaged by the fight we are about to have.
Perhaps the Kreapers have every confidence that they can take over our ship and wreak whatever terrible havoc they wish. That is the nature of thugs, and thieves. But they picked the wrong ship today.
It's not going to happen. I will not allow it.
I will not put Corby Frayne in harm’s way for a single moment.
I pat the edge of the control panel a few times. "List contents of ship's armoury," I say aloud.
A hologram appears, with a rotating array of weapons. Good. The ship is pretty heavily armed. I'm not convinced even the largest guns could take out a Kreaper vessel instantly, but they could certainly do plenty of damage. That might be enough to convince the Kreapers to pick on somebody else. If not, I’ll try something else. I will not rest until they are defeated.
"What are we going to do?" Corby says, sounding anguished. She gets up again suddenly, as though she might bolt somewhere. But there is nowhere for her to go.
“You really are going to have to let me handle this. Please sit down. Perhaps you would be more comfortable out of range of the viewing monitors.“
I nod my head toward a crew seat in back, but she returns to the co-commander chair next to me, with a peevish look.
"Well, all right then," I mutter. She may as well sit where I can keep an eye on her.
"What shall we do, Your Highness?” There’s that sarcastic tone again.
"We?" I say, glancing at her for a second as I prepare the heaviest duty laser rays. “First of all, please call me Jalton from now on. Royal formalities are pointless in this situation. And second of all, there is no ‘we’. You're not participating in this battle. You've never even been inside a ship like this before, let alone handled the guns.”
She makes a snorting noise which, if I'm not very much mistaken, sounds like she's laughing at me.
"Oh please, Prince Hoity-Toity. You've never been in a battle before, in any kind of ship. Right? I'm going to go out on a ledge here and say I don't think you've ever been in combat your whole life."
"Not true." I think about all the fights I had with my brothers growing up. Some of those were brutal.
"Fistfights with siblings don't count."
"Look, you're not operating the weapons on this ship, Corby. They're serious firepower."
"Dude, who do you think you're talking to? I live and breathe weaponry. Let me take a look at this." She scoots over to the control panel and peers at it.
Her leg presses against mine, and she doesn't move it. I know I should edge away to give us both more space, but the fragrance of her wild hair and her peachy skin is captivating. Breathing in her unique human scent, I memorize its high notes, its base notes, and the slightly vanilla undertone. She still smells fearful, but there is strength in her. She has a heart of steel.
The warmth of her thigh stokes a fire in my body.
"Are you listening to me, Your Highness?"
Her irritated tone jolts me out of my sensory reverie. “I said call me Jalton. And of course I'm listening. Look, we don't have time for a discussion. The Kreapers are gaining on us."
"And once they lock on close to a target, they're near impossible to shake off. That's why they're every pilot's worst nightmare."
"It's great that you're thinking so positively about this, Commander Frayne." I take the manual control stick in my right hand and hover my left over the armory panel. "That's just the kind of blue-sky thinking we need." Two can play at sarcasm.
“Whatever. Listen, Jalton. Do you have any acrobatic flight experience? Like, did you pull the kind of stupid stunts most teenagers do when they first get their pilot's license?"
“God, yes.” I think back to my younger days, when Reago and I were learning to fly. We got up to some unbelievably stupid shit. Our mother was permanently in a state of high stress. “I know my way around a three-sixty loop.”
"Great. So here's our plan. You fly like a bat out of hell, and I'll shoot 'em up."
"That's our plan?"
"You have a better one?"
I think about it for a moment. If she's right about her weapons experience, maybe she is the best choice of armory operator. I can handle this sleek ship. Okay, I was banned from combat duties because of my royal blood, but I aced my space fleet military service.
I nod. “What the hell. Let's do this.”
The armory control panel is wireless, so I mo
ve the entire thing over so it's in front of her.
"Engage pilot and co-pilot combat harnesses," I say out loud to the voice command sensors. The straps cross over us and hold us steady in our seats. We’re going to need those, if I really let rip with the stunt moves.
I engage the manual boosters. "Hold on tight, Corby,” I say, with supreme understatement.
"On it." Her face is stern. Her delicate jaw is set firmly to don't fuck with me.
I prepare myself mentally for a sharp steer, and then act on it. The ship lurches violently to the side.
“Doing okay so far?” I ask, not turning away from the navigation screen.
"I'm good," she says. "How do I engage these—no wait, I got it."
As our ship darts around in space, Corby Frayne blasts ammunition at our pursuers. The Kreapers are about to get a lot more than they bargained for.
The first laser jet streams miss the Kreapers, but that has more to do with my deliberately jerky steering than with Corby’s aim.
The second blast she sends out hits the ship square in the left gun flank.
"Fuck, yes," she shouts, already sending a second stream from the other side of our vehicle. This time, she fries the entire front of the Kreaper ship's bodywork.
"You've done this before," I say, spinning the ship around and flying it upside down at 180 degrees from our previous flight path.
"Guilty as charged," she says. Then she realizes what she’s said. “Wait, I’m only guilty of that though. Not the other bullshit forty-two charges. Move!"
I snap the reverse on and shoot us backwards at high speed, just as a Kreaper bomb jet explodes in front of us. We narrowly missed that by an unimaginably tiny fraction of time.
"That was close," I say.
“Sure was, Prince Obvious.”
I can't help but smile at her terrible attitude. It’s probably the first time anyone has talked to me like this. And it’s outrageously hot. Nothing sexier than a bit of spirit, when everyone has kissed your ass your entire life.
The Kreapers seem to be on the back foot, but I know that can only be temporary. I pull the steering around so we're now hovering parallel to their ship, with our nose pointing away from the nearest planet. With any luck, they'll think we're about to dart forward, to make a break for open space.
"Do we have any serious laser power on this thing?" she asks.
I glance at the control panel, then back at my own controls. The Kreapers are hovering too. They probably think they can catch us if they just wait to see which way we're going.
"This is a fourth-generation ship, so it must have the Laser Atomizer function. It’s hard to get right though.“
Her lips pucker in delight. “Laser Atomizer. Ooh, I like the sound of that. Where do I find that one?"
I take another quick look at the Kreaper position. It does seem to be constant. They're waiting for us to make our move. Grabbing the control panel, I slide it back over to me and check the screen.
"There. See the square marked with that symbol? Like a circle with two lines through it? That's all the Atomizer jets. You'll have to scroll through and see which ones you want. Then you need to hit the timer just so, or it vaporizes.”
"Is there any way this thing can display the names of each gun in English? I don't speak symbol."
"Sorry, no. We all have multilingual brain software. Translation functionality is not something that’s relevant to us.”
She makes an exaggerated groaning noise, and I smile again.
"You know, I'm not sure I've ever met anyone like you, Commander Frayne,” I say, as I guide the ship slowly around.
“Ditto.”
She pats the control panel, and a blue plume of laser fire shoots out of our ship. On the monitor screen, I can see it doesn't connect with the Kreaper ship.
"Shit.” She recalibrates the gun. “Align the two guns together, then load up the targeting sensor. Got it. Sorry Jalton, what did you say?"
"Nothing." I address the voice activated control again. “Locate nearest wormhole. Prepare ultra drop boosters."
"Ultra drop? That sounds like we're going to whizz right out of the sky or something."
"Is your harness on, Corby?”
"Yeah, you know it went—“
"Hang on." I touch the red triangle on the screen and it starts.
Our ship shoots down a wormhole leading toward the nearest planet, which the tracker tells me is Skoogmel. Never been there. Hope the restaurants are good.
"Oh... my... god..." squeals my co-pilot. She can't say much else, because the gravity force pulling us into the seat makes it impossible to speak.
I concentrate on keeping my head still. The ship is moving so fast down the wormhole, the monitor has stopped showing pictures and has instead become just a black rectangle of nothingness.
This ship has a good range of emergency moves, and the Kreapers' ship is clearly a lot older. If luck is on our side, we'll be out of range of their sensory equipment before they can get a second lock on.
The hurtling seems to go on for ever. We feel as heavy as a planet ourselves, being sucked downward at warp speed, like a rock being thrown off the Flagatrovian mountain range.
At last, our descent begins to slow. The ship vibrates a little, and I take that to mean we’re approaching the atmosphere of Skoogmel. If we can get through this part without burning up, we're good.
Our velocity is now back within the usual flight range, so I can move my limbs again. The first thing I do is take Corby Frayne's hand and hold on tight.
“Asshole,” she hisses.
"Sorry. Better than being torn limb from limb by the Kreapers though."
Corby Frayne simply makes an “ugh” sound in her throat, and I give her hand another squeeze.
We blast through Skoogmel's atmosphere with no trouble at all. It seems a pretty thin layer. According to the flight desk meters, we barely lose any of our external fireproofing.
"What now?" Corby says, releasing my hand. "Where are we? Also, next time can you tell me what you're doing before you shoot us like a bullet across space?"
"Things happened pretty quickly. I didn't really have the opportunity to describe the emergency escape function in much detail." I pull up the Skoogmel guide on my screen. Then I look back at her. "Wait a minute, next time? You want to fly with me again?"
"Well, you said you were hiding me, remember? So you’ll need to take me someplace else after.” Then her eyes widen. "Oh my god. You were planning to leave me here on this planet?" She looks a little alarmed. "Where are we? What kind of place is it?"
I don't want to admit I don't have a fully-formed plan at all yet, so I opt for a mysterious shrug. "Let's find out."
The Skoogmel guide shows us shots of the planet taken from various latitudes. It seems to be made up mostly of dusty arid plains, with hardly anything growing. It's a backwater.
There won’t be anywhere to hide Corby here. She'd be easy pickings for anyone who traced her. We need a more urban environment, where she can blend in with all the other intergalactic citizens.
Just as I'm about to prepare the landing protocol, there's a bleep from the ship's computer. "Fuel low. Please refuel."
"Okay, so we need to refuel," I say aloud, without thinking. Then I turn to Corby. “Excuse me for being Prince Obvious again."
"Let's hope they have rocket fuel on this planet. What's this place called?"
"Skoogmel," I say. "And we're going to touchdown right about..." I pause as the reverse engines power on, slowing our drop to the planet's surface. "Now."
The ship glides to the planet’s surface smoothly. I’m feeling pretty pleased with the way things went.
Whatever we’re about to find, it can’t be as bad as the things we’re running from.
Nobody has that much bad luck in one day. Do they?
9 Corby
”I’m not so sure about this place," I say, as I edge down the stairway.
My legs are still jello from the ridicul
ous high speed escape we just did. It just shows me what an old gal my ship is. I’m not used to any fancy moves, or locating hidden wormholes. Yes, it was my idea to fly like crazy people to get away, but I didn’t know quite how drastically Prince Jalton would interpret that idea. Glad he did, though. Otherwise we'd be Kreaper snacks right about now.
“Are you hungry?" he says, stretching his long arms, one right behind my head.
"What? No. We just ate." I look at him quizzically. "Wait, you're hungry again already?"
"I have a healthy appetite," he says, with a lazy grin.
For some reason, his words send a little prickle across my flesh. Damn. I can't afford to keep noticing how hot this royal mystery dude is. He’s the enemy. He might be helping me now, but who knows how things will turn out? Not me. I’m never going to trust someone from the Imperial Order. I’d be stupid if I did.
We look around for a moment, getting our bearings. Jalton taps a device on his wrist, then nods. "Okay, there’s a refueling plant about one hundred vaylons from here."
"Vaylons?"
"How do you humans measure distance? I forget.“
"Miles, usually. Maybe kilometers. Depends where on Earth you’re from.”
Jalton frowns, and shakes his head. "We'll stick with vaylons. And it's this way."
He starts to walk, and I don't move. When he turns to see why, I point at the ship. "We're not taking the thing that needs fuel to the place that sells fuel?"
He looks nonplussed. “Of course not. Someone will come and fill it up where it is.”
"Oh dear. Buddy, you have a lot to learn about the non-royal world. I don't know how they do things here on Skoogmel, but I'm not convinced it works like that outside your royal bubble." I beckon to him. "Come on. Let's fly the ship to the fuel place. That way, if we need to do our own refueling, we’re right on the spot.”
He looks skeptical, but he follows me back on board and starts the engines. It only takes a few minutes to fly to the refueling station.
The station is situated right on the edge of a dusty desert, and it looks like the kind of place you'd drive five hundred miles to avoid. Still, we don't have enough juice left to be choosy. So we have to just make the best of it.
A Shift in the Sky_In the Stars Romance Page 6
