An Imperfect Princess (3 page)

“An unplanned
jump could land us anywhere!”  Aijo’s panic was full blow.  “The heart of a
star, an event horizon—”

“And much more
likely someplace safer than here.”  One of the ships’ energy beams hit a fin,
causing the artificial gravity to blink for a moment, and Eneria lifted off the
ground for a few seconds before the secondary system took over.  “Again, is
this area clear of dark matter?”

“Yes,” Aijo
said, only hesitating another moment as she scanned in multiple dimensions
around them.  “A jump here is safe.  But we will be flying blind.”

“Sounds like the
last few years of my life.  A blind rat.”  Another blast rocked the small ship,
and alarms started blinking madly across the dash.  “It’s now or never!”

She slammed on
the accelerator and clutch.  The ship lurched for a minute, then blinked out of
existence as the dark matter engine accelerated them away at thousands of times
the speed of light.  It was if it had never even been there.  The Konkastians
and Captain Kordan were left firing at the emptiness of space.

The nodes,
natural signs in the invisible freeways of dark matter, acted as markers for
travelers going faster than light.  The cold dark matter did not appear on any
spectrums until one exceeded the speed of light, at which point it became a
maze of tunnels, islands, and shortcuts known to many as wormholes.  It was
into one of these tunnels that the two women piloted the ship, knowing that it
was their best chance of escaping alive.

“There’s a
wormhole close by,” Aijo said, surprised.  Unlike Eneria, she had no need to
rely on the ship’s sensors to read the space around them.

Eneria put her
goggles back on and joined Aijo in studying the readouts. “Knowing my luck, it’ll
drop us off in the Konkast solar system,” Eneria muttered darkly.

But the wormhole
had no markers.  No one had passed here before.  Aijo, doing the duty of
Pharinae across the galaxy, added in a marker into the ship’s database in the
maze of dark matter to indicate that she had passed through there, in case any
of her kind were unfortunate enough to travel this way as well.  The Konkast
would probably ignore a Pharinae marker, especially an undated one; their race
had left an untold number of them across the galaxy for millions of years.  If
they ever survived to upload the data into the Pharinae matrix on her home
world of the Seven Sisters, she’d mark the other end where they came out as
well.

The wormhole was
longer than either of them had expected.  After several hours of traveling, it
ended abruptly, depositing them into an area of dark matter space devoid of any
markers.  Pharinae markers were almost undetectable after several thousand
years, but that didn’t mean no one had ever been here before.  Just not for a
very long time.

“We can drop out
here,” Aijo said warily, looking at the screen with its non-existent markers
with a frown on her tiny face.  “But I couldn’t begin to tell you
where
here is.”

“Worst case
scenario, we’re still in Konkastian space.” Eneria grimaced.  “Anywhere else,
and we have a chance of survival.”

Calm and
deliberate, Eneria disengaged the dark matter engine.  The tunnels and mazes of
dark matter space disappeared around them as they returned to sub-light speeds.

The computer
scanned an unfamiliar solar system around them.

“Woot! We’re in
a solar system!” Aijo said, pleased.  With a sun nearby, she could technically
survive.  But if Eneria died, Aijo was honor-bound to commit suicide, so
keeping her alive was in her vested interest. The thought was somehow not
comforting to Eneria.

“And it’s not
Konkastian space!”  Eneria’s joyful smile dissipated as she continued to read
the data from the screen.  “It’s not anyone’s space.  Good gods, Aijo, we’re
over a thousand light years away from Montares. Almost five hundred from the
Seven Sisters.”

“Ergh,” the
Pharinae said, frowning at the readouts. “The third planet from the star has
markers of organic life, although they’re not broadcasting any kind of radio
signal at all.  It might be a primitive world.”

Primitive
worlds, like Yertarf, had not developed sufficient technology on their own to
reach space.  They ranged from tiny rocky worlds with microbial life to fairly
advanced civilizations on the brink of space travel. 

“Are there any
Pharinae around here?”

Aijo closed her
eyes, reaching out through super strings and alternate dimensions to try to
discern the signals of her people.  “Not as far as I can tell.”

“Well, if there
are any people on that primitive planet at all, they’re about to encounter some
intelligent life from outer space.  Let’s go there.”

The dark matter
engine had dropped them off above a beautiful ringed planet, but the nearest
inhabited world was still several hours by sub-light speed away.

In the meantime,
Eneria tinkered with the remains of the offending brooch.  She refused to
believe that the village chief had deliberately betrayed her; she suspected
that the brooch had been planted to track any random off-world jewel smuggling
or activity from Perihelion.  Yertarf was a primitive world, but with valuable
materials that the Konkastians were probably keen on keeping to themselves.  
Only native organic matter products were permitted in trade, any metals or
jewels were forbidden.  Captain Kordan hadn’t realized who she was or else he
would have fired without the message.  The Konkastians wanted her dead, not
captured alive.

She tried not to
think about how she was going to get back home, not stopping to determine what
exactly “home” meant at this point.  A primitive world would probably not have
the electricity needed to jump start her dark matter engine.  The amount of
power needed was enormous, and her tiny ship only had enough for one trip at a
time.   Normally it would be a matter of just re-energizing the hydrogen fuel
cell, something that could be done at any orbital station in Konkastian or
Lathlian space, but she doubted they had a handy power station around a
primitive world.

After a few
hours of drilling and soldering, she had transformed the opal brooch into a
heavy pendant on a real platinum chain.  She put it on, noting with wry
amusement that it looked quite out of place against her Perihelion uniform. 
She put on a pair of matching diamond and platinum earrings, her one remaining
vanity.   She shook her head, admiring the way the earrings glinted in her
reflection on the dashboard.

“I’m not going
to sell this one,” she told Aijo, fingering the chain as she eyed herself in
the tiny mirror.  “I paid too dearly for it.”

“We’ll arrive at
the planet in about six more hours,” Aijo said, not needing to glance at the
instrumentation.  “We need to figure out a game plan.  It’s a primitive world,
so there isn’t an orbital station to give us landing coordinates.”

“We’ll have to
eyeball it then.”

“Limousine
shuttles weren’t made to eyeball it.”  Aijo sighed.  “I can probably get us on
the surface intact, maybe.  But then what? It’s an oxygen atmosphere and the
local fauna seems to have similar bio-signatures to you so I guess it’s safe to
say that you’ll be able to breath, but they obviously won’t have fuel for a
dark matter engine or any means for you to contact anyone for help.”

“Let’s see those
bio-signatures again.”  Eneria tapped a few buttons on the dashboard and
examined the data that came up.  “At least it looks like they’re burning coal
in some places.”  She zoomed in on an exquisitely beautiful blue world ringed
with green continents.  “And it appears like it’s mostly centered around here.” 
She jabbed at a tiny island beside one of the continents. “If they’ve developed
steam technology, then perhaps I can find someone that can help me build an
electrical generator.” 

“And just how
are you going to communicate with them?”

Eneria grinned
at the Pharinae.  “You’re pretty fast at picking up languages, aren’t you?”

Aijo blinked. “Oh,
yeah.”  Her position as governess to the royal family had been earned through
that specialization, after all. “It’s not that fast, though.  It’ll still take
me several days to analyze a spoken language and then another few days to
transmit that information into your mind.”

“You have to try
to keep me alive,” Eneria reminded her softly.  “This is the only way to do it.”

“I just hope
they’re vocal humanoids,” Aijo said with a resigned sigh.  "I don’t think
you
can
communicate with chemicals or through sonar."

“Let’s also hope
they’re not xenophobic.” 

The shuttle
approached the blue planet far too soon.  Eneria and Aijo were both nervous. Attempting
a blind landing in a damaged shuttle was probably not a smart idea, but they
had no choice.  They didn’t have enough supplies to last them for very long. 
Aijo’s bond to the d’Munt family dictated that she could not abandon Eneria
under any circumstances. If she did, she would have to commit suicide. If she
did not, her own people would reject her for breaking a promise, and she’d be an
outcast forever. The Pharinae did not form life partnerships lightly.  In Aijo’s
case, her father had been bonded to Narin d’Munt, and when Eneria had been
born, he had given Aijo to her and Vaz as their governess, continuing a tradition
in the d’Munt family that had spanned for many generations.  Aijo was
technically a servant, but she was also Eneria’s only remaining friend besides
Vaz and Seth.

The planet grew
larger on the small view screen.  The computer bleeped mournfully that it wasn’t
finding an orbital station to feed it a pre-recorded flight path to a landing
site.  The delicate balance between atmosphere and ship was too complex for the
average shuttle pilot, and the auto-pilot would normally receive those vital
instructions and take them down with a minimal amount of fuss.

Unfortunately,
Eneria was a pretty below average pilot.  She could take her refurbished
shuttle apart piece by piece and reassemble it without breaking a sweat, but
actually
flying
it was another story.

That’s where
Aijo came in.  She had a more intuitive understanding of the physics in space
to surface flight and knew she was going to have to take charge in this case.

“Hit the yellow
button there, it’ll tell the computer we’re going to do a manual flight.”

Eneria obliged,
feeling pretty useless.

“Now pull back
the far lever.  That will turn off the main sub-light engine.  We’re going to
be using auxiliary power for most of this.”  Aijo looked over the
instrumentation and let out a small whimper.

“Enny, we have a
problem.”

“What’s wrong?”

“One of the
steering wings is missing.”

“Missing?”
Eneria pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah.  I think
our Konkastian friends may have clipped it off us.”

“So… what does
that mean?”

Aijo gulped
noiselessly and said in her tiny voice, “We can’t steer.”

The planet
loomed closer. The two friends looked on it with trepidation.

“Maybe we could
stay in space after all...” Eneria began.

“We’ll run out
of power and then you’ll die and then I’ll have to die out of honor for letting
that happen. Not an option.”

“Okay, so what
can we do?”

“We’re going to
try to aim ourselves with the main thrusters.”.”  Aijo grimaced.  "I’m
going to have to do this the messy way.”

The tiny girl
dissolved her glowing outline until she was nothing more than a hazy sphere of
light. She sank into the keyboard and disappeared into the circuitry.   The
non-incorporated form of a Pharinae was a rare sight; they preferred to stay in
a solid outline whenever possible.

It was dangerous
for her to spread herself out through the ship.  If something shorted out, her
consciousness
—
which
technically existed in another dimension
—
could
be severed from what was her corporeal body, if that term could be applied to a
being made of light.  Yet Eneria got the impression that there was no other way
for them to live through this.

“Good luck,” she
whispered.

A readout on the
computer screen fizzled out for a second and was replaced by the words, “We’re
going to need it.  Brace for impact.”

Eneria strapped
herself into the pilot’s seat, wishing she had a helmet or something to wear. 
She pulled her goggles over her eyes and winced at all the red lights on the
instrumentation around her. She placed her hands over the back of her neck,
vaguely remembering the protective move from a long ago flying lesson.

“Remember to aim
for the island where we saw the coal burning activity,” she reminded the fairy,
as they entered the atmosphere of the planet.  Strong winds began to buffet
them.  The air began to ionize around the shuttle, but that was normal.  Eneria
had always loved the play of plasma around the ship as a child.  Now what had
once seemed to be innocent and friendly appeared to be dangerous and deadly.

 They approached
the island, which became larger and larger ahead of them.

“Aijo, get out
of there.” Eneria tried not to panic.  They were going way too fast. 

“Pull the
emergency brake!” Aijo said over the ship’s speakers, her normally tinny voice
ringing true with the amplification.

“Where is it?” 
Of course there was supposed to be a braking system someplace she could engage,
but she had no idea which lever it was.  She tried to call up implanted
memories from piloting lessons from Aijo, but failed.  They’d never gone over
this.

Frantically, she
scanned the dashboard, ignoring the unfamiliar readouts of the manual pilot in
favor of things with clear labels.  After an agonizing few seconds, Aijo popped
back out of the circuitry, shimmering weakly.