The Rogue Prince

by Lindsay Buroker

  Her senses warned her of three people approaching her from the opposite direction, following the hull of the Snapper, as if they meant to pull themselves onto the top of the ramp and sneak in behind her—or maybe knock her to the side and charge in behind her.

  Jelena whirled toward them, thrusting out with her barrier, using it like a battering ram. The three men—no, those were three boys, barely into their teens—stumbled back. They were as gaunt as the rest of the people, all clad in clothes that didn’t fit. Two of them didn’t have shoes. Even though she hadn’t hurt them badly, mostly startling them, she promptly felt bad about the assault. She lowered her barrier, trying to think of something she might say or do to convince them to break off before they were seriously hurt. She didn’t want to fight starving kids.

  Lemaire fired from behind her, and she jumped. She’d forgotten about him, and she gaped in horror as his blazer blast struck one of the boys in the chest.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  The boy clutched a hand to his chest, eyes huge with pain and horror. He tripped backward and fell to the ground. Dead.

  “My job,” Lemaire growled, starting to fire again.

  This time, Jelena grabbed his wrist, pulling it to the side so his blast didn’t hit a second boy. The two remaining thieves were standing in shock and staring down at their companion. Seeing Lemaire’s blazer bolt bouncing off the hull of the Snapper spurred them into motion. They sprinted away, disappearing into the smoke.

  “They’re just kids.”

  “They’re thieves.” Lemaire pushed past her, shooting into the smoke again. “If you won’t help, get out of my way.”

  She had been helping.

  She was tempted to knock Lemaire off the ramp, but more cries from the truck distracted her.

  Try not to hurt them, please! she spoke into Erick’s, Thor’s, and Masika’s minds. There wasn’t time to elaborate. She was forced to turn to the side to defend against two more boys coming at her. One had a slingshot, and the other was throwing rocks.

  Retreat, or you’ll all be killed, Jelena silently ordered them, breaking her personal rule about not using telepathy on strangers. She made the words forceful, hoping to scare the boys into running.

  Their eyes widened with fear, but they still hurled their rocks. Through her brief mental contact with them, she could sense the hunger gnawing at their stomachs, along with their surface thoughts. If they could just get one crate, they could gorge themselves and be full for the first time in months. Maybe years.

  Jelena raised her shield again, halting their approach, but feelings of sympathy almost made her falter. A big part of her wished she could let them slip in, to steal a few items from one of Lemaire’s boss’s crates. She had no idea where the food was going—her job was to deliver it and nothing more—but Lemaire and his colleagues all appeared well fed. She imagined they could part with a few items.

  “Got it,” Austin said, startling her.

  Her concentration lapsed, and the determined rock-slingers almost made it to the ramp. She refocused, erected her barrier, and pushed them backward with it. They were confused and afraid, but not yet ready to give up. They felt themselves so close. It was worth risking pain for this much food.

  Lemaire turned toward the boys and fired, absolutely no sympathy in his jaded heart. But this time, her barrier was up, and it worked both ways. His blazer bolt ricocheted off it and zipped back over his shoulder.

  Yelping, he flung himself to the ramp. “What in all three suns’ hells was that?”

  “A Starseer shield,” she said, leveling a cool gaze at him, hoping he would connect some dots and realize he’d been foolish to grab her wrist.

  “Here,” Austin said, tapping something tucked under his arm. A box of exposed wires and circuitry. Then he opened his palm, displaying small objects. “Put these in. You, too, mister.”

  Jelena managed to keep her barrier up while she accepted the items Austin pressed into her hand. Were those earplugs? He gave two to Lemaire, who was still on his belly on the ramp, glowering into the smoke around them, then ran down the ramp, calling, “Erick?”

  Jelena struggled to extend her barrier to protect Austin as he moved closer to the truck. She would never forgive herself if she let Erick’s little brother get killed.

  Another grenade came sailing out of the smoke, this time, toward the truck. Jelena was on the verge of dropping her barrier so she could knock it away, but a breeze whispered through, stealing some of the smoke, and she saw Thor flick a finger. The grenade not only bounced away, but it flew so high into the gray sky that it detonated a thousand feet above their heads where it did not harm anyone.

  Thor whirled to face two men as they leaped onto the cargo bed from the side—it was clear they had intended to get to the truck under the chaos created by the grenade. Its failure did not deter them. One swung a board with sharp nails protruding from the end. Thor swiped through it with the curved blade of his sword, then threw a side kick. His heel slammed into the man’s stomach, the power of the blow hurling him out of the truck where he landed hard on the road. Without pausing, Thor knocked a makeshift weapon out of his second foe’s hands and flung him back, too, this time, using pure Starseer power rather than a physical attack. The man flew farther than his comrade, his back hammering into a shipping container.

  Jelena only glimpsed Masika before the smoke curled in again, obscuring her view, but numerous foes were down around her. Jelena took some solace in the fact that Thor’s sword hadn’t been dripping blood, but she had no idea if the people at Masika’s feet were unconscious or dead. An angry, frustrated ball formed in the pit of her stomach.

  “Stop attacking!” she yelled, trying to infuse the power of persuasion into her order, hoping something might get through to these people. They couldn’t win. Didn’t they understand that?

  Austin appeared out of the smoke again and set his machine at the base of the ramp. He tapped a button, and an ear-splitting wail erupted from it. Ear-splitting was no exaggeration. It was all Jelena could do not to crumple to her knees.

  Austin pointed at her hand, and she thrust the earplugs in. A horrible caterwauling came from the cargo hold. Alfie. Jelena sensed her fleeing from the ramp—from that machine. She raced all the way to NavCom and flung herself onto the folded blanket under the console, her paws over her ears.

  Jelena could still hear the awful noise through the earplugs, but it wasn’t quite as debilitating. Lemaire rolled to his knees and stuffed his own plugs in. Two men ran past the base of the ramp, clutching at their ears. One had blood trickling down his jaw. Damn, that was an effective weapon, whatever it was. But a weapon that didn’t kill. Those who were capable of it ran away. Earlier, there had been other people on the road and the docks, but they had disappeared into their ships as soon as the fighting began. Far in the distance, a couple of people leaned out of hatches and shook fists in Jelena’s direction before disappearing back inside. Those without ships to retreat into ran toward the city. Except for those who were too injured to manage. At least five people were dead, Jelena realized, letting her senses trickle over the road—over the battleground.

  All of them had died from blazer fire. That of Lemaire and his helpers. The woman who’d been loading cargo was injured, her arm hanging limply at her side, and Jelena couldn’t blame her for opening fire, but the entire situation frustrated her.

  Let’s get this cargo unloaded and off our hands, Erick spoke into her mind as he stomped up the ramp, his face like a storm cloud. He gave a significant look to the dead boy, and Jelena knew he shared her frustration.

  Austin left the machine running, and Jelena’s small team passed Lemaire to grab hand tractors and finish the task. He made a quick comm call, then positioned himself at the top of the ramp, on guard instead of helping. As if anyone would try again with that noise generator blaring.

  In an impressively short time, the cargo was out of the Snapper’s hold and piled into the back of the big
truck.

  Austin turned off his machine. Jelena’s ears still rang, and she didn’t hurry to remove the plugs. She tapped Lemaire’s shoulder and held up the holodisplay, needing his virtual signature. She made her eyes steely, hoping he wasn’t going to balk again.

  He gave her an exasperated look, as if that mess had all been her fault, but swiped his finger through the air above her netdisc.

  A small truck rolled down the promenade. Jelena expected the authorities or maybe an ambulance. Instead, a few people in black, collared shirts like Lemaire’s jumped out, all wearing flak vests and carrying blazer rifles. He strode down the ramp without a farewell, directed a couple of them into the back of his company’s truck and another into the cab. He claimed the driver’s seat for himself and drove away. The other truck followed. Security escort.

  “Enjoy your food,” Jelena muttered and turned toward the hold.

  She almost bumped into Erick. He was scowling after the trucks.

  “What a mess,” he said.

  “Not quite what I expected from our first freight run out here,” Jelena admitted.

  “No?” Erick snorted. “What did you think it would be like working out among the border worlds? The Alliance’s reach doesn’t extend out here, and most of the moon and planetary governments, if they exist at all, are corrupt. There’s a reason your parents don’t take runs out here that often.” He shook his head and stomped toward engineering.

  He hadn’t said it, but Jelena couldn’t help but feel he was blaming her for this predicament, or at least the fact that they were running freight out here. If so, it wouldn’t be misplaced blame. Her fiasco back on Alpha 17, rescuing lab animals from a corporation that had a long reach, had led her parents to decide their new freighter—and its crew—would be better off taking jobs in a part of the system that fewer people paid attention to. Jelena still didn’t know if the Alliance wanted her arrested—or worse—for the damage she had done to a space base when they’d been escaping pursuit.

  Austin grabbed his machine, tucked it under his arm, and headed for engineering.

  “Austin?” Jelena decided not to call him Little Ostberg, as her mom sometimes did. After his help, he deserved to be called by his first name. “Thanks. That was a good idea.”

  “Welcome.” He gave her a crisp salute, as if he were an Alliance military officer rather than a seventeen-year-old kid working to save money for the university.

  Jelena looked around their dock and the road again as she reached for the hatch controls. She shook her head at the dead people, the potholes created by the grenades, the broken boards and clubs that had once been used as weapons, and at the utter lack of any police, enforcers, or similar authorities coming out to investigate. Coming to help people.

  Feeling like she was running from the scene of a crime, she let her chin drop to her chest as she tapped the buttons to withdraw the ramp and close the hatch.

  “It’s only going to get worse,” Thor said quietly, as he walked over to stand beside her.

  Jelena scowled, not wanting another lecture, or something she would interpret as a lecture. He’d been assassinating his father’s old enemies when she’d talked him into taking a break and lying low with her crew for a while—surely he didn’t have the right to lecture. “I didn’t know prognostication was among your Starseer talents.”

  “It’s not, but I’ve traveled out here. For training exercises and to make contact with old allies of my father, people who find it preferable to live out here rather than in Alliance territory.” He tilted his head, almost reminding her of Alfie, as he regarded her. “If you can, you need to harden your heart to the poverty and desperation, or you’ll be miserable every time we stop.”

  “Harden my heart? Thor, I rescue animals, never want anybody to feel bad, and don’t eat meat that isn’t vat-grown because I can’t stomach the thought of something dying on my behalf. What makes you think I could possibly harden anything?”

  “So you’re opting for misery?”

  “Maybe the stars have deemed it my fate.”

  “The stars are indifferent to us. We create our own fate.” He extended a hand toward the cabins and NavCom, perhaps offering to walk that way with her.

  “If you believed that was true, you wouldn’t be trying to do your father’s bidding ten years after his death.”

  His face grew closed, and Jelena wished she could retract the comment. Unlike Erick, he hadn’t been blaming her for anything. He’d almost seemed consoling, or at least as close to it as someone could get while dressed like an Old Earth ninja, carrying around an uber sword, and wearing a chip on his shoulder the size of an asteroid.

  “Trying to become the man my father groomed me to be isn’t casting my fate to the stars,” Thor said. “The more I see of these planets out here, the more convinced I am that the empire needs to return. The Alliance is too content with the territory it has—you’ll notice that they took the wealthiest, most resource-rich planets for themselves while abandoning the rest—to care about what happens out here. My father wanted everyone to be protected and have a job and food and shelter. Not just those born on desirable planets.”

  He walked away, his back stiffer than it had been before they started talking, and Jelena resisted the urge to point out that a lot of the employed people in the empire had resented the utter lack of freedom they’d had. They might not have been physically hungry, but their souls had been starved.

  She kept the words to herself. She didn’t want to argue with Thor, and she also didn’t want him pointing out again that she’d been eight when the empire fell and didn’t truly know how it had been. He never seemed to want to accept that he’d only been ten and had been so sheltered as the son of an emperor that he hadn’t had any idea how it had been, either.

  “Jelena?” Masika called from the corridor. “Comm message for you.”

  Jelena waved in acknowledgment but grimaced too. Maybe it was only because of Thor’s prediction, but she doubted that message would herald anything good.

  ~

  If you enjoyed this excerpt, please look for Angle of Truth wherever you buy your ebooks.