Hostage Rescue (Princess Rescue Inc Book 2)

by Hechtl, Chris

  "Uh huh? Wasn't it you who wanted to make up for lost time?" He had to pause when a knock at the door interrupted them.

  "Coming!" she said, slipping away from his clutches as he turned to the door. She scampered out of his reach with a grin and cheeky look before diving into her wardrobe to find something else to wear.

  ~~~^~~~

  A few days later, the queen asked Domina Ciara, the minister of fashion and her favorite seamstress, to make a straitjacket. She called in Charlie and asked the Terran to look it up, but the chemist doubled over laughing.

  "What?" the queen demanded, hands on her hips. "What's so funny?" she looked to Ciara. The Asian woman shrugged in confusion.

  "You want this for your bedroom?" Charlie choked out, hand over her mouth.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Kinky? Sex life?"

  Deidra blinked and then her eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"

  Charlie snorted and then went on to explain that the device was for crazy people to restrain them from harming themselves or others. It was also used for kinky sex. Deidra blushed to the point she felt her ears burning.

  "From your look and the steam coming out of your ears I'd say you were set up," Charlie teased with a grin.

  "Yes, he's going to pay for that," Deidra ground out.

  "It sounds like that's why he did it," Charlie snorted. "Some men like to get their ladies all hot and bothered. Fight to make up. Some of us ladies like it too," she said with a sidelong look at the queen.

  "He'll rue the day!" Deidra growled, shaking her fist.

  Charlie threw her head back and laughed. The domina just shook her head. She was reasonably comfortable with the queen but not that comfortable. She still smiled politely though.

  Deidra watched them and felt they were laughing more with her than at her. She blew her hair with a breath and then brushed her bangs out of her eyes. "Maybe."

  Charlie chortled. "He's probably looking forward to getting tied and spanked," she snorted. "Have fun with that."

  "Oh, I've done that already. It sounds like I need to do it again though," Deidra said absently, and then realized what she had just said as Charlie rocked with fresh laughter and mirth.

  She shook her head but couldn't help smiling at her friend as the woman chortled with tears streaming out of her eyes. When the silly woman finally got control of herself, she managed to gasp herself to reasonable self-control. "Thank you, I've needed a good laugh," Charlie said. "Something tells me your private dungeon may be more fun for him than most," she said wickedly.

  "Not when I'm through with him!" Deidra responded, finally feeling a bit better about the absurdity of the situation.

  Charlie laughed again. Deidra just shook her head and smiled.

  She fully intended to make Eugene pay though, but not with hot pokers or boiling oil. She'd settle for making him sit through a play or something totally boring that he absolutely hated and did his level best to avoid. No, perhaps a ball? That might be fun. Make him play dress up. He'd be absolutely miserable for hours …

  No, a blackhead! Or just say he had one, one somewhere he couldn't easily see. She could spend hours digging at it. And she could spend time swatting his ass whenever he protested, calling him a big baby.

  No, both, she thought, or all of it. Dinner, a ball and event, and then the blackhead afterward.

  Slowly an evil grin spread on her face.

  ~~~^~~~

  Deidra caught up with Eugene later. She couldn't help but shake her fist at him and then beat him on the arm as he protested and asked what was wrong.

  "You set me up!" she said.

  "Um …"

  "I'm going to have them make a straitjacket in your size!" she growled eyes flashing. She shook her fist at him.

  He chuckled. "You asked for it," he said, catching her fist and then kissing it and then her. She felt herself melt a bit. "You were all being miss barbarian queen and wouldn't let me explain," he said as their fingers intertwined.

  She looked up at him, lips puckering. He chuckled again as they play fought for a bit, wrestling before he finally pinned her and got a kiss.

  The play fight was broken by the cry from the baby. She immediately gave him a peck and then slipped away to check on the nannies and their newborn.

  ~~~^~~~

  Deidra frowned as she smelled smoke. She sniffed and traced it outside to the balcony. She looked on until she spotted the fire in the night.

  She hoped it wasn't near one of the factories. No, she hoped it wasn't where there were a lot of people, she checked herself angrily. Things could be replaced, well, most of them.

  No doubt someone had foolishly burned something they shouldn't have or left something unattended. That was changing in the castle, though she had been warned that they could risk an electrical fire now.

  She shivered in the night air but watched as the firefighters arrived on the scene and took charge. That was one thing she deeply appreciated, Max's efforts to provide firefighting equipment. The firefighters had a red wagon with white ladders and were outfitted in seemingly outlandish yellow outfits. But they had been trained to do the job and were quite good at it. As she watched, they got the fire under control before it could spread.

  That was a relief.

  She turned to look on to the night activities in the castle. Not more than a year ago it would have been lit by Rushlight, mushrooms, and torches. Rushlights were dried rushes soaked in rendered fat. They burn in a sconce or enclosure for light. They were far cheaper than tallow candles. They had been lit with an iron and flint.

  Candles were going out of style; it took time to render the wax and make them. Lanterns were still used outside, Max had yet to perfect batteries for things he called flashlights. The better lanterns were quite costly.

  The mushrooms were not very common in the capital since they lacked nearby caves where they could be cultivated. She'd seen them before, some glowed yellow, others blue.

  Lanterns and torches were still used outside regularly, especially by the guard who walked the halls and battlements. Torches were dangerous though, they could catch dry things on fire, something she knew all too well after losing her mother to the fire. They also tended to leave ash, which had to be cleaned up.

  She was heartily glad that most of the torches that she could see were outside the castle walls. In time she hoped they could swap to rushlights or metal lanterns.

  She pulled out a pair of binoculars that were kept on the balcony for distant viewing and studied the area of the fire. She could see that the fireman had lanterns on staffs. They tended to attach them to hooks or other things. They had a scallop-like shape, almost like a flower with a crystal to help diffuse the light. Eugene and Max had said something about the staffs looking like something from a show called SG-1 whatever that was.

  Could they look into those? According to Max, who had briefly been excited about the things, they were something he called piezoelectric crystals. He'd tried to explain it, but all she had gotten out of the exchange was that movement of the crystal and impacts were somehow turned into energy to make the crystal glow.

  But they were expensive, tremendously expensive, which was why only the very rich had them in their canes and nightly walking staffs. A simple tap as they walked lit them.

  She frowned as she tried to focus through the binoculars but the lights made it hard to see clearly. After a short time, she gave up the effort. She would hear about the fire in the morning report at breakfast.

  ~~~^~~~

  When they had a free moment alone, Eugene and Deidra discussed something more serious. He made it clear he didn't appreciate being sidelined by her. "Oh."

  She bit her lip. She'd hoped he'd forgotten about that. Apparently, that was too much to ask for.

  She shook her hair out. She wanted to make it clear she had done it for his own good but one look from him told her that it wasn't the right approach. She never got far when she got autocratic with him. He'd agreed to stay as her partner.


  She had to privately admit that she might have violated his trust in that regard.

  "I do appreciate you wanting to look out for me, but we're partners. We are supposed to trust each other." That statement twisted a knife in her heart. "In the field, I need to make the decisions. Just as I trust the decisions you make here while I'm gone, you need to trust me to make the right decisions there."

  "I do."

  "No, you didn't. You gave them orders to ignore my orders. To lock me up if necessary. That's a slap in the face."

  She looked at his face searchingly and saw the stern resolve. "Oh."

  "You were the one that pointed out that I had to go for a political perception. Now I want to point out that I was restrained from combat. What will the lords say when they hear of it?"

  "None of the men will talk."

  "Wanna bet?" he demanded. "If they don't, the villagers eventually will mention that I wasn't in combat."

  "Oh." She frowned as she did the political calculus. He was right. He would look like a coward. She bit her lip again.

  "That's it? Oh?"

  "I'm not going to apologize for trying to keep you alive," she said defiantly.

  "Yes, you are, even if I have to put you over my knee. I trusted you and you violated that trust. You acted like you couldn't trust me. You extracted a promise from me to not go out to sea. Fine . But you went over the line with that stunt," he said, tone sharpening as her heart sank.

  "I …" she saw his eyes flash and his jaw work and relented. She didn't want a fight. "Okay, I'm sorry." She dropped her head, fingers playing with his.

  "And you won't do it again," he said, eyeing her as she came over to invade his personal space.

  "I'll try not to," she said, taking his face in her hands and kissing him.

  ~~~^~~~

  Despite the introduction of firearms, Max had no intention of ever upsetting or supplanting the blade makers in the kingdom. First, because they were quite good, but second, because they were downright dangerous with the things and he had no intention of pissing someone like that off.

  His lips curled upward in a brief smile.

  Really, it came down to not enough firearms to go around. And they liked it that way. They fully intended to keep the weapons in the hands of the military. If he could come up with a nonlethal alternative for the growing police force, he'd go that route too. Something other than a taser billy club.

  It was impressive as hell to see the blade makers and other artisans at work. They used traditional flux for metalworking. Certain types of clay were used for various things, including being placed and dried on the back of the blade in a selective area. When the blade was quenched, the clay protected that area and made the spine softer and therefore the blade better to absorb impacts without breaking.

  Eugene of all people had explained why; the clay didn't cool down as fast as the edge did. It caused a curve and a pattern to emerge, much like a Japanese blade.

  And all on an alien planet.

  He watched as the smiths, both master and apprentice got the blade up to a nice cherry red color and then quenched it in a tub of water. They cocked their heads, listening for the sound of a ping. He'd been told that sound was the sound of a blade breaking under the stress of the quench which would be bad.

  But no ping, so the blade came out and was carefully examined by the critical eye of the master. He murmured to his apprentice about the Damascus steelwork. Max crossed his arms and remained as a quiet observer.

  They had mixed low quality iron with higher carbon iron by folding it over and over. That had blended the two materials but they'd also put a bit of extra carbon material along the edge. From the looks of things and the discussion it was clear that there was no warp and the curve was even, a sign of success.

  That also meant they didn't need to use the vice and a block of wood to straighten a warp while the blade was still cooling off.

  "After this sharpening and polishing?"

  The master smith nodded and allowed him to examine the pieces. It was nice but still raw; they lacked grinders. He'd been told that the master smith and his apprentice would sharpen the blade over eight weeks, using eight different water stones and then polishing it. It was an entire field to master all in itself.

  From there they assembled the hand guard to protect the hand and then the handle to help balance the blade. No wonder the things took so long to produce and were so expensive. But, a finished high-end blade was a work of art.

  "You come to commission a blade?"

  "Several actually."

  "Why? You are the maker of the metal throwers, correct?" the smith asked, eyes narrowing.

  He nodded. "I am, but there are times when you can fight your enemy at a distance, and other times when they are too close," he said. The smith nodded. "I'd like a blade for those times. Actually several, I intend to give one as a gift to the king."

  "Ah," the smith said with a nod.

  "I can pay of course. But if you wish to barter for new technology, I can help you there," Max said.

  The smith cocked his head. "Let us barter then," the smith said.

  Max settled down to lay out what he could do to help the smith.

  ~~~^~~~

  Cecily checked on the 3D printer filament facility. They were making plastic, really PLA out of vegetable oil products for the 3D printers. Charlie the chemist had worked closely with her husband to get the mix just right.

  They were still limited on the supply of the materials, but now the mixing was easier to handle and the chemist didn't have to take a hand in it. And of course they recycled material. She checked the machinery and then the logs. The technicians assigned to it had dutifully signed and dated the logs.

  She spot-checked the machines anyway. She didn't want any problems, and like Max said trust but check anyway. There was no telling what a second set of eyes might see that the normal set would overlook for one reason or another. But she didn't find anything wrong.

  Her mate was religious about routine maintenance on all things, especially since they had a limited supply of parts they could build in house. That number was rising, but far slower than he'd like to see. It was far lower and slower than she'd like to see too.

  It was one thing to run maintenance on their small fleet of vehicles, aircraft, and machinery, another to do it on the 3D printers, CNC machine, and other gear. She had smaller hands and had learned to deal with them. They had mutually agreed to leave the maintenance of the weapons to the experts and focused on his own long list.

  Making replacement parts like brass nozzles for the 3D printers had stepped things up a bit. They still lacked the metal Max called aluminum though. A lot of things were made out of that metal.

  She did a quick inventory and then withdrew from the room and went to check on the next stop, the printers. A tech was doing some routine maintenance so she paused to watch.

  They could produce DC motors of a variety of sizes, but the servo motors that they could produce were still a bit crude, too crude for precision work in some cases. It had something to do with the encoders. They had similar problems with the electronics; they could produce simple things in low quality but not the complex ones.

  But they were getting better at making plastic parts and wiring she reminded herself.

  She checked the small clay pot on the shelf and snorted. Empty. She knew why too. No doubt Max had already been by and collected his prizes. He liked to have their students do benchies to calibrate the printers after a maintenance check. These he gave to the kids or to techs to give to their children.

  He was big on helping the schools and college with tech whenever possible. He had made a skeleton for the medical college as well as a few samples of other things. He had also made some plastic tool runs for them. He'd made it clear that they needed to get into injection molding if they wanted to do long runs.

  Theft was still an ongoing problem, especially of the Terran tech. Deidra had landed hard on several
of the culprits when they'd been caught trying to fence their ill-gotten gains.

  She knew that her mate had been upset about the harsh draconian punishments but the imperatrix had been right. The technology was for the common good, not for someone to put in some private collection.

  She remembered a conversation that the king and her mate had over the winter. Max had never seen himself as an immigrant until Eugene had pointed it out over beers one evening. Max had thought about it and had admitted it was true, they were immigrants. The interesting thing was that her people wanted immigrants and were eager to learn new things. It made all the difference to him.