An Imperfect Princess (2 page)

“Admit it,
Aijo.  You want to tell them to go to hell too.”

"Vulgar gestures
and sentiments will accomplish nothing, Your Highness.”

"They make
me feel better!"

"That is
nothing more than a brief emotional victory.”

“So you admit it’s
a victory?” Eneria grinned to herself.  Sparring verbally with Aijo was fun.

"I admit
nothing.”  Aijo stuck her delicate nose in the air.  In addition to having the
universal humanoid shape, the Pharinae also shared similar gestures to their
physical matter counterparts, gestures they imparted to the humanoids they
influenced.   Eneria chuckled at her friend’s prissy attitude.  Aijo still
believed they were the legitimate rulers of Lathlor, and mildly disapproved of
Eneria’s decision to abandon her royal upbringing in favor of survival.  But
she would stick with her no matter what.  You couldn’t put a price on that kind
of loyalty.

Before long,
they had cleared the orbital station and were on their way out of the solar
system.  Once they were out of the planet’s gravity well, Eneria felt safe
enough to return to her work.

“So they just
handed you this extra thingy and you took it? Was that wise?”  The fairy had
settled onto the bookshelf above Eneria’s head, her delicate wings emitting
photons with each slow flutter.

“Well, I couldn’t
exactly say no.”  Eneria reached for a tiny set of screwdrivers to start prying
apart the stones.

“You’re too
trustworthy.”

"The chief
wouldn’t sell me out.”  She sorted the pulled out diamonds into a pile to be
cleaned further. “His village can’t survive without us smugglers.”

"I suppose.” 
Aijo watched her work for a few minutes, then yawned.  "I’m going to take
a nap.  Wake me if anything exciting happens.”

“Hey, I’m the
organic being here, I should be the one napping,” Eneria replied, but she
smiled as the tiny fairy curled into a ball.  She had often wondered why the
Pharinae needed to sleep at all, let alone how they could fall asleep at the
drop of a hat like glowing hyper narcoleptics.  It wasn’t as if they needed to
forge new neuron connections or anything.  She doubted they even had anything
analogous to neurons in their unusual bodies.

Before long,
Eneria began to yawn herself.  It
had
been a long day, after all.

“Maybe just a
little nap,”” she murmured to Aijo, and set her head on the table.

Almost
immediately, she began to dream of days gone by.

“Isn’t it
pretty, Mother?” she said, holding up her latest necklace.

“It’s still
crude looking,” Emerita said, looking down at her daughter from the ladder on
which she stood.  Emerita d’Munt, the great artist Queen, had been working on a
giant landscape when her daughter barged in.  “You need to have more polish,
child.”  She wore a white smock over her royal robes and her hair had been
piled up high, away from the volatile oil paint.  Emerita somehow managed to
never get smudges of paint on her smock either, which often prompted Eneria to
wonder why she bothered to wear it at all.

“I worked on
it for four days, though!”

“Do you see
this painting, Eneria?  I have been working on it for four weeks.”  She
gestured at the panoramic vista, which was coming not from a photo, but from
her own seamless memory.   It was a sunset on Montares. “It is not done yet,
and I will not consider it done until it is perfect.  When you have decided you
are satisfied with something, you must examine it closely, and then reconsider
until you are dissatisfied again.”

And with
that, Emerita returned to her painting, ignoring her daughter.  Crestfallen,
Eneria put the necklace on anyway and skipped out of the studio, back through
the giant echoing halls of the palace.  Maybe her mother was right.  Maybe it
wasn’t good enough.  But Vaz would still like it anyway.

The lawn that
connected the House of d’Munt with the House of d’Tar was crisp and green.
Eneria walked a little more carefully, mindful of her white clothing.  Aijo
joined her, fussing at her for not walking straight and for getting blades of
freshly cut grass on her shoes.

When she
found Vaz, she wasn’t at her fencing lesson, but in the Cathedral of the Gods. 
They morphed from young children into young women, and Vazeria d’Tar looked at
the rough beginner’s necklace around Eneria’s neck.

“It’s pretty
enough for a bride,” she said with a smile, but her groom disagreed, reaching
up to rip it off Eneria’s neck and throwing it to the ground.

“Nothing is
good enough for me!” he said, and Vaz passed out, leaving Eneria to scream and
scream as Prince Xyling laughed at her terrible necklace.

She woke up to
his mocking laughter ringing in her head.  Not that she had ever heard him
laugh.  He had smirked most of the time instead.         

Eneria never
liked it when she dreamed of that time.  She hated dreaming of
him
.  It
shamed her a little, that she had simply stood there while a man tried to gas
her and her cousin then killed her uncle and aunt in cold blood.  She should
have dragged Vaz away the second he approached them.  They never found out who
had killed everyone else; the best that they had been able to piece together
was that the fake Konkastian honor guard had selectively sniped the Lathlian nobles
out of the crowd, leaving the red-uniformed Konkastians alive. Emerita had
crumpled to the ground with only a minor wound, where Eneria’s brother Emmett
found her moments later.  Emerita had never spoken of the incident after that.

Emmett had been
lost in the escape.  Only Eneria, Vaz, Emerita, and their childhood friend Seth
Heshina had made it off the planet before it was completely shut down.

The deposed
princess thus found herself where she was today—trying to survive.  She couldn’t
stand to live life as a refugee on Montares; she needed the freedom of open
spaces and she loved technology too much to live without it.

There was also
the pesky problem of being the lone witness to the Konkastian prince himself
murdering Gordani and Everiza d’Tar – out of the whole wedding party, only she
had remained conscious.  The official word that had emerged from the chaos was
that the Konkastians had put down an internal rebellion. The Konkast considered
her a nuisance to their empire building and she’d had a price on her head from
their government that was worth twenty times more than the cargo she carried. 

They were
nicknamed the Rats of Lathlor.  Rats who had fled the sinking ship of the
planet and who had evaded capture for almost two years.

The sooner
Eneria d’Munt officially ceased to exist, the better.

She yawned and
stretched, moving her shoulders to try to work out a crick.  They’d be arriving
at the node in another few hours, and from there she’d deliver her cargo to
Perihelion’s headquarters on Ulugool.  She and Seth had both found new careers
there; Ulugool had not been pleased with the incident on Lathlor and was on the
verge of declaring war against the Konkastians.  In the meantime, Perihelion
traded materials and information within the Konkastian Empire, against the laws
and embargoes of both planets.

She glanced down
at the Perihelion uniform she wore–a comfortable pair of black trousers with
lots of pockets, a crisp white shirt, and a little black waist cincher.  Most
of the couriers wore some variation on the uniform; Seth had a vest instead of
a girdle.

“Someone is
following us,” Aijo said suddenly, a faint note of alarm in her slightly tinny
voice, going from sleep to wakefulness without notice. She had the ability to
monitor the electromagnetic spectrum even when unconscious; a change in the
spectrum when she was asleep was akin to a loud noise to a humanoid.

“Oh, you can’t
be serious,” Enny complained, rapidly shifting her attention from the brooch
she had been fiddling with to the laptop screen in front of her.  She nimbly
called up their rear radar and spectrum scanners, biting her lip at the
identification of the ships.  They were Konkastian patrol ships, and while they
weren’t flashing their alert message, they weren’t broadcasting friendly ones
either. 

“They deployed
from the orbital fortress shortly after we left Yertarf.”  Aijo was examining
the logs from the sensors, analyzing the data in her quantum mind faster than a
human—and probably a computer—could even dream of.  “They have been in stealth
mode, which is why we didn’t notice them.”

“Those bastards!”
Enny banged her fist on the dashboard.  “They followed us.  Were we bugged?” 
She paused for a moment, then hit her forehead with her palm.  “The brooch!  I
knew there was something weird in that scan. It’s not just platinum plate over
copper.  It’s platinum plate over electronics!” She grabbed her loop and a
screwdriver, then thought better of it and grabbed the spectrometer again. 
Maybe she was wrong.  Maybe there was something else in the cargo.

She jumped up
from her chair. Please, no, her heart cried, not wanting to believe she had
been betrayed yet again.  She slid her goggles up over her forehead so she
could see more clearly.

“We’re also
being jammed,”,” Aijo called to Eneria, who was busy opening the cases of
illegal contraband and pulling out piles of precious jewels and metals and
running the scanner over them.  Everything came up clean.

“Not like it
matters, I wouldn’t dare to send out a distress signal with this kind of cargo.” 
She snapped the case shut and stomped back to her desk. She held up the brooch
accusingly and talked to it angrily, as if it was capable of listening. Maybe
it was. "I should have known.  Gods above, of course a planet under
Konkastian rule is going to try to take advantage of the wanted posters. 
Anything to make money these days...” 

No longer caring
about keeping the stone intact to turn it into a pendant, she dismantled the
brooch quickly and stuck the platinum casing into an electronic crucible.  It
started to melt into an unhappy burble, revealing its contents. Silicon and
copper, the scanner had told her.  How could she have been so stupid?  She had
been blinded by a
pretty rock.
  They knew her weakness, all right.

“Enny, you might
want to come up here,” Aijo said from the front of the ship.

Clutching the
electronic crucible that held the remains of the offending brooch, Eneria
returned to the tiny cockpit.  The two patrol ships had been joined by half a
dozen more.  They still sent forth no message, and the Lathlian pursed her
lips.

“They’re trying
to surround us.”

“Well, they’re
gonna have to try harder to trap this rat, I’d say.” She held up the small
crucible, showing it to Aijo.  “Did this kill the bug?”

Aijo fluttered
over and touched one translucent hand to melting platinum.  She was not
affected by the heat.  She closed her eyes, and Eneria knew she was examining
the matter inside the circuits, severing crystal and copper connections.  Once
again, Enny was grateful to have the Pharinae with her, not only for
companionship, but for her own safety.

“It is toast now,”
Aijo said after a moment, imperceptibly dimmer from the energy expenditure.

With the bug
suddenly silenced, the Konkast patrol ships suddenly blared forth unfriendly
codes on dozens of spectrums.  The ship sounded an alarm in warning.

Eneria laughed. “That
got their attention.”” She heedlessly set the crucible on the floor and settled
firmly into the seat.  She blinked a few times and bit her lip, a habit she was
prone to when she concentrated. 

She’d never had
a chance to practice any sort of emergency maneuvering or evasive action. Or
anything, for that matter.  She was no pilot.

A video message
popped up on the monitor in the dashboard.  The slender panel screen rose
smoothly upright and Eneria tentatively accepted it, wondering what they wanted
to say to her in person.  She placed her end of the transmission on mute.

An older man was
pictured, his cheekbones high and sharp, his pale yellow hair trimmed neatly. 
She recognized him as one of the blue-coated men that had talked with Xyling
shortly after the death of Gordani d’Tar.

“Greetings,
unidentified ship.  This is Captain Kordan of the Konkastian Imperial Army.  On
behalf of the President of Konkast, we ask that you stop your engines and
permit boarding, or else we will be forced to take drastic measures.”

Eneria tapped
her fingers on the dashboard.  “So, Aijo.  Should I just ignore it, or should I
tell them how I really feel?”  She grinned as she held her hand above the
record button on the smooth, touch sensitive dash.

Aijo sighed.  “I’d
ignore them… Oh no, Enny, not that gesture again! Really, you bring shame to
the house of your ancestors!”

Eneria winked as
she sent the recording of the very rude hand gesture to their enemies.  She
then accelerated, indicating that in no uncertain terms was she going to slow
down for boarding.

Ah, that had
felt
good.

Within moments,
they began firing at her.

“What are we
going to do?”  Aijo started to panic.  Although her race was by all definitions
of the word an immortal one, executive decision making ranked low on their list
of talents. If she was abandoned in space without normal matter to power her
internal nuclear power plants and constant light to interact with, she too
would die.  She needed this ship to survive as much as Eneria did.

“We’re going to
surprise them.”  A dangerous gleam lit up in Eneria’s eyes.  “Are we in an area
relatively free of dark matter?”

“What?”  Aijo’s
tiny eyes widened.  “Oh no, no no, we can’t possibly do a jump to hyperspace
from here.  We’re nowhere near the node.   We only have enough energy for one
jump!”

“Does that
really matter?”