Fifteen days. What had the captain meant by “a very long time”? The war was over. Could she not be repatriated with a minimum of fuss?
A lot of credits had gone into making her life as a prisoner less stark. Not a project undertaken for someone who would be incarcerated a mere fifteen days.
Pok!
By the official calendar of Regula Prime
Two years, three months, and five days later
Why?
Kass had her portapad open, checking the latest news bulletins from Regula Prime to the far corners of the Nebulon Sector, at least a third of it now in Regulon control. But the why of what she was still doing in a storage room in the Regulon Interplanetary Archives continued to escape her. A very long time. Well, dimi! Surely the captain hadn’t meant this long. What were they saving her for? If the Regulon High Command wanted to tear her brain apart looking for anomalies, for reasons why trajectories malfunctioned, surely they would have done it long since.
A face suddenly obscured the viewscreen—a face that haunted her night and day. A pair of blue eyes, sharp as a bird of prey’s. Golden blond hair cut military short. Angular features that managed to be handsome in spite of looking as if they’d had been hacked from primal stone. Tall, strong, arrogant—as Reg ruling families always were. Powerful.
Talryn Rigel.
There had been other times in history when men who looked like Tal Rigel had shaken the world. Viking warriors and the Nazi SS came to mind. But Tal Rigel’s eerie resemblance to the ultimate Aryan made no difference. He was her constant companion. She drew on his strength to keep her sane. Fantasy . . . but what else did she have? He would come for her. One of these days, Tal would come for her.
The sonorous notes of the Regulon national anthem suddenly filled the cubicle. For some reason the newsroom had turned up the volume. Kass glanced at the screen. The large black and white flag of the Empire was displayed against the wall behind the newscaster’s desk. Kass sighed as the bombastic notes of the national anthem blared out of the portapad’s small speaker. Regula must have triumphed again. Down with another star system.
The volume suddenly dropped, the newscaster raised a solemn face from the small portapad on his desk. “Citizens of Regula Prime . . .” He paused, swallowed, visibly moved. He rubbed two fingers to his temple and began again. “We have received word of a severe blow to forces of the Regulon Fleet.”
The announcer had Kass’s full attention.
“During an action on the outer rim, the huntership Orion was attacked by an overwhelming number of Nyx forces. Fleet Admiral Rigel has announced that Orion was totally destroyed. There were no survivors. The time and place of a memorial service for our gallant fighting men will be announced shortly. Admiral Rigel’s son, Captain Talryn Rigel, was among the three hundred lost on Orion. We will bring you further details as soon as they become available.”
The newsman, still with solemn face, moved on. Kass slid slowly out of her chair, dropping onto the cold faustone floor. Back against the cubicle walls, she drew up her legs, hugged her knees, and dropped her forehead. Shivers wracked her body, her teeth chattered. It shouldn’t have mattered so much. She barely knew Tal Rigel. But over the years, the months, the endless days, she’d needed someone to talk to, and she’d chosen the captain. Her captain. He sat by her side while she worked her way through the Archive’s horde of ancient books. She argued navigation problems with him while studying on her portapad. He sat in an imaginary chair next to her when she ate. He hovered, watching, while she showered. He filled her dreams at night. Best friend. Only friend. Lover.
And he was gone.
The shivers stopped abruptly. Kass’s head rose from her knees. Other than personal tragedy, what did Tal Rigel’s death mean to her? She’d assumed that one day he’d come back for her, and now that was never going to happen. What if the credits stopped coming? No food, no guards, Kass Kiolani exposed to a rabid Psyclid-hating Regulon horde.
Or was Admiral Rigel involved, as she’d long suspected? It hadn’t taken her long to discover he was on the board of the Regulon Interplanetary Archives. In that case, two, no, three possibilities. If the goddess smiled, she’d be sent back to Psyclid, which had become a vast internment camp designed to keep strange Psyclidian skills from contaminating the good people of Regula. More likely, she’d be transferred to a much less comfortable prison, perhaps becoming a lab rat for Regulons who wanted to know how a Psyclid’s special abilities worked.
Or, third, some unknown fund would ensure she was penned up here forever and ever, growing old without ever again seeing her family . . . or the Blue Moon of Psyclid, hanging huge and low in the sky.
Without breathing fresh air, without a husband, children . . .
Dimi! She was Kass—
No! Knees still weak, she used the chair to pull herself to her feet. Back straight, head high, chin up—as the females in her family had been trained for a thousand years or more, she made a vow. She was L’ira Faelle Maedan Orlondami, Psyclid Princess Royal, and she would survive.
By the official calendar of Regula Prime
One year, three months, and nine days later
Cort Baran ambled toward Kass, carrying her lunch tray. “Ay, Kiolani, you see what that Sirkan guy’s done now?”
“S’sorrokan,” Kass corrected with a smile. “Haven’t checked the news this morning. What is it this time?”
Baran placed her lunch on a small table at one end of her room. “Snagged the Deimos, that’s what. M-class frigate on patrol near Talos.”
“The crew?”
“The usual. Took the ones willing to turn rebel, left the others on a hunk of rock with a distress beacon. Got to hand it to the man, he’s good. But, mark my words, the Fleet’ll get that batani pirate yet.”
Kass shook her head. “He’s a rebel, Cort, not a pirate.”
“Takes merchant ships too, don’t he? That makes him a pirate.”
“Well, I guess his people need supplies just like the rest of us.”
Baran gave her his wise-old-man nod. “Of course you like him, Kiolani. He’s twitching Imperial tail. Guess you can’t help but think he’s a hero.”
Kass toed an invisible speck on the spotlessly clean floor. “You know you spend half your shift searching for news of the rebellion. It’s the most interesting thing that’s happened since you ended up in solitary along with me.”
Baran’s bushy eyebrows twitched as he frowned, his gray eyes clouded. “I get to go home at night, Kiolani. That’s a long way from solitary. And you know I’m sincerely sorry for it. Never could figure out why they’ve kept you here so long.”
“I am”—Kass drew a ragged breath—“I am grateful for your kindness, Baran. You have made my life here tolerable.” They exchanged nods, and Kass settled to her meal before returning once again to the Archives.
She meant it when she called Cort Baran friend. The older man, now a grandfather, was the one constant in her life. Other guards came and went, perhaps as many as eight different faces over the past three years. But he wasn’t her only friend. When she’d stopped shutting Tal Rigel out of her mind in order to avoid the pain, she’d finally realized that the wonderful thing about a fantasy best friend and lover was that he couldn’t die. She could still talk to him, share her life with him. Dream erotic dreams of him . . .
Well, not quite. When it came to erotic dreams, virgins suffered from a decided handicap. She’d attempted enlightenment through erotic sites on her portapad, but had quickly decided if that was love, she’d stick with her dreams, thank you very much.
When she’d left Psyclid, second only to her thirst for what the Academy could teach was her determination to lose her virginity. All part of her grand personal rebellion. But at the crucial moment, something awful had happened. She discovered being naked, being flesh to flesh with a man she barely knew, appalled her. The strict standards she thought she’d put behind her had jerked her back to reality as if she were a puppet dancing at the e
nd of a string so long it went all the way back to her home planet.
She hadn’t experimented again, adding further to her isolation at the Academy. And to the Regulon conviction that Psyclids were weird. So with no truly intimate memories to fall back on, all she had was her fantasies of Tal Rigel. In her heart she mourned him still. But that didn’t keep him from hovering by her side every minute of every day. They had embraced a thousand times. He kissed her and she heard the song of the Aurelian lark. She kissed him back, and her prison became a Psyclidian meadow filled with flowers . . .
Were they still there, the flowers? Or had they been crushed under the treads of Regulon war machines?
Kass rejected reality. Reality was not her friend. Was her serene green and blue planet now as charcoal as Regulon Fleet uniforms, her mother, father, sister reduced to cosmic dust? Reality also reminded her that Captain Talryn Rigel of Orion had been a man who seldom smiled, a high-ranking Fleet officer who adhered to all the rules and regs. You are a prisoner of war. He might have tempered Regulon justice with an occasional flash of noblesse oblige—Cadet Kass Kiolani did not deserve rape or the degradation of being displayed naked in the Academy’s courtyard fountain. But the truth was, Captain Tal Rigel had abandoned her. And gotten himself killed in a meaningless corner of the galaxy Regula wanted only because it wasn’t already theirs.
Her Tal Rigel, however, was quite different. Strong but yielding. A man who loved and allowed himself to be loved. A man who saw beauty in the world around him. A man who smiled, but always with a sadness in the depths of his eyes that reminded her he was only a figment of her imagination. The real Tal Rigel was part of a debris field drifting above the latest planet Regula had targeted for submission.
Her Tal Rigel had never existed.
So now—though she’d never let Cort know it—she had added a second hero to her fantasies. Nameless, faceless, he challenged her dream Tal Rigel for her favor.
S’sorrokan. Rebel leader. Vital. Alive. And out there flicking the Empire’s tail.
And someday . . .
Reality, Kass, reality. It will take a generation to whip the Empire.
If ever.
Fyd! A person could live only so long on dreams.
Chapter 4
By the official calendar of Regula Prime
One month, three days later
Another new guard, this one on the evening shift, and for the first time in nearly four Reg years Kass felt uneasy. So far her guards had been a light burden to bear. She had come to look on them as a barrier to keep xenophobia out rather than armed security to keep her in. After all, she was Academy-trained, she had her special gifts. She could have escaped at any time. But to what?
Leave here and you’re dead.
So here she remained with three well-armed servants, who brought her meals and saw that she was shut up in the Archives when the cleaning crew came in once a week. She had the library, books—paper and electronic—and her portapad’s connection to the outside world. Whatever had inspired Tal Rigel to choose this place, it was a very special prison.
But Olin Lusk was an irritant in her serene little world. Kass reminded herself that, according to legend, irritants in oysters produced pearls, but she doubted Lusk was going to produce anything but shivers down her spine. She’d often wished that someone besides Cort Baran would talk to her, but now she realized talk had its downside. Lusk’s attempts to chat her up had palled his first day on the job. He talked too much, got too close. A time or two he’d even touched her—a hand to her arm, on her shoulder. Compared to many Psyclids, Kass’s empathic gifts weren’t strong, but Olin Lusk made her hair stand on end. She should complain to Cort, but what could she say? That the new guard was overly friendly when she’d been happily chatting with Cort Baran for years?
Lusk had been on the job for eight days now. Kass tried to avoid his gaze when he set her evening meal on the table, but his hot dark eyes demanded her attention. She could actually feel sexual heat radiating from every pore. She grabbed her tray and slipped by him. Afraid that running would propel him into a chase, Kass kept a steady pace as she crossed the storage room to the doors to the Archives. She juggled the food, tapped in the code for the first door, then for the vault. Her hand shook as she punched the button to close both doors behind her.
As she placed her tray on the cubicle’s shelf next to the comp unit, Kass spoke sharply to her nerves. Her training as a Regulon Fleet officer had been only a few months short of completion. She was of the Psyclid House of Orlondami, trained from birth to handle crises. She could survive a guard with rape on his mind. Now that she no longer had any doubts about Lusk’s intentions, she would simply stay here all night, and in the morning she’d tell Cort, and that would be that. She’d never see Olin Lusk again.
Kass settled down to her meal. After all, it wasn’t the first time she’d eaten in her cubicle. Cort often delivered her lunch to the Archives—
Dimi! Kass nearly choked on a bite of atalan, one of Regulon’s finer fish. Did the other guards know the codes for the Archives?
She could hide in the stacks. They went on forever. It might be a nasty night, playing tag among rows of books twice the height of a man, but she could do it. She would have to.
Or . . . if the goddess smiled on her, perhaps Lusk had remembered what an easy job he had. Reason had prevailed, and he was sitting in his chair by the door to the outer corridor, frustrated but resigned.
Alert to the slightest sound of doors opening, Kass forced herself to continue her meal. Dessert was a white pudding that made her long for the fluffy confections served at home. But, as she frequently reminded herself, for prison food her meals were luxurious. Thanks to whatever mysterious benefactor oversaw her captivity.
Kass lowered her tray to the floor and stared at the large comp unit that connected her to the knowledge of the known universe. Not tonight. She couldn’t settle to study. Maybe music? The electronic archives offered the very best, even Psyclidian folk music, from chants and rituals to haunting love songs.
No! She couldn’t bear it. If that miserable son of a Mizarian maw-worm hadn’t gotten himself killed, he’d have come back for her by now. She wouldn’t be sitting here, ears on the prick for the whoosh of the fan-louvers gliding apart and Olin Lusk walking through.
She was supposed to be safe here, not poised to run like some lowly street felon.
No. She wouldn’t do it. Running was for creatures of the night, not for those with the power to defend themselves. She’d grown soft during these years of captivity or she never would have considered it. Playing tag among the stacks? Ridiculous. She was Cadet Kass Kiolani and she’d stand and fight. It wasn’t as if Lusk could possibly win. She had a million weapons at her disposal.
A soft whoosh as the vault door’s louvered fans retracted.
Kass stood and walked to the cubicle entrance. Anticipation curled her lips into a warrior’s smile. Revenge on the Regulons at last, however small the scale.
“I killed him.” Kass sat slumped in her chair, eyes down, as Cort Baran entered her room the next morning.
Without so much as the blink of an eye, he placed her breakfast tray on the table. “Why the long face, Kiolani? You swat a kito?”
“You could say that.” Kass looked up. “Didn’t you notice something missing when you came in this morning?”
“Figured Lusk was in the sani—” A frown creased Baran’s customarily pleasant face. “Kass, my girl, what are you saying?”
“Look in the Archives. Go now. You’ll see what I mean.”
Less than five minutes later, Cort was back. He paused in the doorway to Kass’s room. Their eyes met. “Are you saying he’s under all that?” he whispered. Kass nodded. “How do you know he’s dead?”
“I feel it. His spirit is gone.”
Cort Baran heaved a deep sigh. “Better tell me how it happened.”
“He tried to rape me, I killed him.”
“By burying him under a thousa
nd books?”
“They were the only weapons I had.”
Baran shook his head. “This is trouble, Kiolani. Year in, year out, we go on smooth as glass. Even after the rebellion started, nothing changed. But this . . .”
“I know, I know,” Kass murmured. Dear goddess, she’d killed a man. “But I am Fleet as well as Psyclid. I defended myself.” She raised her head, chin high. “I am sorry for causing trouble, but I absolutely refuse to be sorry for Lusk.”
Baran crossed his arms over his broad chest, his round face as solemn as she’d ever seen it. “I have to tell you, Kiolani, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Whoever’s running this place may be more concerned about damage to the books than what happened to Lusk. And . . . there’re those who are going to want to know how in the nine black hells of Obsidias you did it.”
Kass hung her head. “I just thought to hit him with a few books, chase him away, but he kept on coming. He was twice my size. For all my training, he had me down in less than a minute. So I staggered him with a dictionary to the head, broke away and ran for it. The books just kept coming. I lost it, I couldn’t stop.”
Horrified at her indiscretion, Kass broke off. “It must have been a domino effect,” she added tonelessly. “You know how it is when the adrenaline flows. I was so terrified, I must have been able to shove one of the bookracks over, and the others toppled of their own accord.”
Eyes wide, Cort Baran was looking a little green. He didn’t believe her. Of course he didn’t believe her. Malfunctioning trajectories. Tal Rigel hadn’t believed her either.
Baran visibly gathered himself together, moving into stern parent mode. “There is no fixing this, Kiolani. I am sincerely sorry Lusk slipped through our screening, but his death may bring the world down on our heads. We can get rid of his body, but it will take a small army to restore the books. Stay in your room. Lock the door, open only to me. And pray to your goddess. As I will to Omnovah.”
Rebel Princess Page 3
