The Star Prince (13 page)

God, he must be crazy, hiring someone he knew so little about. Sure, he had confidence in his instincts, in his abilities to pick good people to work for him… but that gut wrenching ride through those asteroids had made him wonder for a brief moment if in Tee's case he trusted himself too much. He'd pictured his mother weeping at his funeral, and Rom B'kah standing by her side, secretly thankful that his stepson had died before he could assume the throne to the galaxy— since it was obvious the boy couldn't even staff his ship with a competent pilot.

But Tee had come through for him beautifully. Her quick and accurate recovery to what might have been a fatal malfunction had kept him and his crew alive. And for that Ian was grateful.

He pushed himself off his command chair and joined Quin, who was hunched over a viewscreen, studying maintenance readouts on what was quickly turning out to be their lemon of a starship. "What happened this time?" he asked the mechanic with a baleful look

"I don't know."

Ian stared at him for a long moment. "That inspires confidence."

"I'm at my wits' end, too, Captain. Automatic flight guidance systems go out; that's not unheard of. It's why we always have someone posted at the controls. But we should have gotten a warning before the whole thing went belly up; there are alarms built in for just that purpose."

"And even in the case of a breakdown, shouldn't the backup system take over automatically?"

Quin spread his hands. "Yes. Which tells me there's a software problem. But I've done a diagnostic, and the computer says there are no malfunctions."

"Maybe the computer is wrong." Ian thought of the frustrating breakdowns they'd suffered over the past few weeks, and the muscles in his jaw tightened. How much bad luck could one crew have? "Work on it."

"Will do, Captain."

Ian grabbed his jacket, then called out to his crew, "Tee, Muffin, you're with me. As standard, we'll check in every hour."

Tee turned around in her chair. "I'm going?"

Ian wasn't sure what had prompted him to take her, so he answered nonchalantly. "I believe that's what I said."

Her wide gold eyes sparkled with excitement. She appeared as surprised as he was, asking her to come along. He supposed the decision wasn't all that strange; his reasons for having her join them fell somewhere between enjoying her company and not wanting her too long out of his sight. He didn't know her all that well, he reminded himself. "I always take an extra crewmember, and everyone else is busy," he said, then shrugged on his jacket. "Bring your pistol."

A brownish mist discolored the rarefied atmosphere of the asteroid colony's immense habitation dome. "Something we don't want to think too hard about breathing," Muffin muttered as they made the rounds of the ships in residence, all huge cargo vessels but for one late-model starspeeder similar to the one Tee had lost.

"Randall's ship's not here," Ian said. He'd expected as much. The senator had beat him here by two days, and he'd said that his side trips would be short. But Randall's absence didn't irk him as much as he'd thought. As long as the man was traipsing around the frontier, he couldn't cheer on his anti-Federation pals on Earth. "It looks like we'll have to chase him right back to Grama," he said with an apologetic glance in Tee's direction. "But let's take a look around the city first."

But "city" didn't come close to describing what met them beyond the docks. Cesspool would have been a far better description. The thin air smelled of overworked heavy equipment, burning tobacco— or similar— and something putrid, like sewage. With a sinking feeling, Ian saw why Randall had come here. This place would be an embarrassment to the Vash.

The buildings were different in appearance from anything he'd seen on Earth, let alone any of the Vash worlds he'd visited. They reminded him of squat, upside-down ice cream cones constructed of a material that resembled amber— though logically couldn't be— and wrapped in ribbons of pale silver trillidium with glittering, pointy-tipped roofs. The architecture made it obvious that someone once cared about this colony. Now all it did was give the squalid city a strange and ludicrous facade as false as expensive lace on some junkie prostitute.

Passersby reeked of body odor, indicating hygiene wasn't high on their list of priorities. Hard lives had etched premature lines in their faces. Many wore primitive mining gear and showed evidence of disease and injury. Others had missing limbs and ill-stitched scars.

Tee broke the party's shocked silence. "I thought we— I thought the Vash eradicated poverty and sickness after the Dark Years."

"The Vash think they did, too."

"Ignorance is no excuse. Why hasn't anyone done anything about this?"

Her passion on the subject startled Ian. He found himself again wondering where she came from, what her background was beyond the little history she'd already revealed to him. "I take it you haven't seen conditions like this anywhere else in your travels?" he asked.

"Never," she answered to his relief. "The Trade Federation is an enlightened society. Everyone is educated; no one goes hungry." She cleared her throat. "Or so I always thought."

"Me, too." He wedged his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, wondering how much he could tell her and not compromise his mission. "The crown prince is from Earth. I have the strong feeling he's going to force the central galaxy to acknowledge what lies beyond its borders." And I had better do it soon, Ian thought, before Earth and the rest of the frontier grow too disgusted with the Vash federation's apparent double standard. They'd pull out en masse.

Perspiration glittered on Tee's forehead. He wondered if he appeared as discouraged as she did as she watched docile groups of miners board the lifts that descended into the bowels of the asteroid.

"I would think there'd be signs of rebellion," she almost whispered. "But there are none."

She was right. Not even a mild protest such as graffiti was evident anywhere. "I suspect they're too busy trying to survive to spare energy for a revolt." The miners' plight reminded him of what had existed in North Korea for the better part of a century before its people finally booted their dictator and demanded reunification with South Korea.

They walked, passing a pair of eating establishments half-hidden behind a trash receptacle. A klaxon sounded and a surge of miners emptied out of the lifts.

"Shift change," Muffin surmised.

The off-duty miners jostled them as they swarmed past. Muffin towered above the crowd, but Ian didn't depend on the man's size; he checked continuously to ensure that Tee was still close by. The miners all around stank even worse than the others who had passed him, and Ian gagged, his eyes watering from the stench. The flood of people was tough to struggle against, but he managed to keep his place.

The workers crisscrossed in front of him, pushing toward an area housing what looked like several video arcades overflowing with patrons eager to spend their few credits on an escape from real life in banks of virtual reality booths. For a price, buyers could spend time in smart-suits that stimulated their nervous systems into "feeling" what they chose to watch on special screens, from tropical vacations and ancient battles to simulated sex. Bareshtis appeared to be as crazy about the technology as Earth people were. Of all the wonders his home planet had inherited from the Vash, V.R. had made the most impact on popular culture. And if the inhabitants of this asteroid hellhole considered computer games the only escape from their hopeless existence, he wondered what that said about Earth.

Ian had seen enough. "Let's get out of here," he said, turning to find Tee and Muffin. His heart froze. Tee was no longer behind him. "Tee. Where's Tee?" he called to his bodyguard.

The color drained from Muffin's face as he craned his neck, scanning the light brown heads of the miners milling all around. Nowhere was there a green-haired sprite wearing an ASU baseball cap.

Ian grabbed his personal comm, the stench of the miners' tightly packed bodies all around him made it an effort to breathe. "Tee, Ian here," he called. "Where are you?"

There came no answer. He tried again. Nothing.

"Let's backtrack," Muffin said, shoving close to him.

"Agreed." They pushed against the tide of incoming miners, calling for their pilot, but only a sea of misery-hardened eyes answered them.

Chapter Ten

It took Tee'ah a few disbelieving seconds to realize she'd become separated from Ian and Muffin, swept away by the tide of miners. Instinctively she caught herself before calling out for them. Better to not broadcast the fact that she was now lost and alone. She reached for her comm, but it wasn't in her pocket. Fortunately, her laser pistol was.

Within the length of several arcades, she gave up searching for her comrades. Too many people blocked her line of sight. She pushed her eyeshaders farther up the bridge of her nose. What would Ian and Muffin do? Turn back; she was certain of it. She spun on her heel and headed toward the docks. Infusing her stride with feigned confidence, she aimed to deter any possible predators, as she had on Donavan's Blunder. But the Bareshtis mostly ignored her, too overburdened to allocate energy for curiosity.

Since she'd fled from the palace, her own concerns had dominated her thoughts. Now they seemed incredibly trivial. It wasn't the barrenness of the mining outpost, the indigence, the disease or proliferation of what she suspected was hallucinogenic drug-use that disturbed her most: it was the lack of hope she sensed in the hearts of these people. She'd experienced hopelessness on a far smaller scale. But she'd escaped it. These people hadn't that luxury.

To her left, she noticed a tall figure keeping pace with her. Kept at a distance by a mass of bodies, a man in a pale gray hooded cloak flickered in and out of view like moonlight between trees.

Her chest tightened. His luxurious cloak was a different color than that of the Vash gentleman she'd glimpsed on Grüma, but her senses prickled. He had the same look about him.

She ducked into an elevated doorway of a bustling arcade from where she could watch the street. A thin, very young woman regarded her from inside. Her blouse was see-through enough for Tee'ah to notice her breasts and nipples were plumped with ornate body art— tattoos and metallic implants. Tee'ah suspected that the scarcity of pleasure servants entitled her to charge high fees for sexual services, allowing her such vanities in addition to buying food.

Her study of the young pleasure servant was cut short as Tee'ah looked back over her shoulder. The hooded man was heading toward the doorway into which she'd ducked. Balling her left hand in a fist, Tee'ah made an abrupt about-face and pushed into the arcade. Her pursuer was right on her heels. She tried to run, but the crowd pressed in all around her.

"Tee'ah, stop," a voice called. "I want to talk to you." The voice was deep and sweetened by the educated burr of a full-blooded Vash. One that knew her name.

She made a sound of dismay and dove forward. She'd barely gotten a taste of freedom, and she wasn't about to give it up so soon.

"Tee'ah. Stop." Her pursuer grabbed her upper arm, spinning her toward him so fast that her eye-shaders clattered to the floor. Almost instantly, they were crushed by the boots of one of the arcade's customers.

"Let go!" Her plea was drowned by the thunder of voices.

The man tugged off his hood, revealing Vash-gold eyes and hair the color of Mistraal sunshine. "Tsk, tsk," he said, smiling. "The entire family is talking about you."

"Dear heaven," she gasped. Her ex-betrothed's younger brother's face was painfully familiar after all the holo-recordings their families had exchanged.

Her thoughts spun wildly. Klark Vedla's ambition and brash behavior were often frowned upon at her father's palace, although many of the same critics admired him for being an impassioned supporter of his older brother, Che— the prince she was supposed to have married. But never would Tee'ah have guessed that Klark was devoted enough— or smart enough— to find her in a trash-littered virtual reality arcade on a poverty-stricken asteroid at the farthest edge of settled space.

"How did you know I was here?" she demanded.

"I've been following you since Donavan's Blunder."

Klark was on Blunder? Tee'ah scoured her memory for anything she might have seen or heard that would substantiate that claim. Then she remembered the hooded man in the market on Grüma. He'd been following her, indeed.

He must have guessed diat she'd made me connection. "So, you did see me that day," he said smugly.

She took a step backward. "What a surprise that we bumped into each other. Small galaxy, yes? My apologies for running off, but I'm needed at my ship— "

The man's hand shot out, and his fingers clamped around her upper arm. Her heart lurched and her moudi went dry. Her free hand inched toward her pistol. "Forget it, Klark. I'm not coming with you. I'm not going home."

"Relax," he said. "I'm not here to apprehend you. I'm not supposed to be here myself. So let's keep this little meeting from the family— agreed?"

Tee'ah stared at him. "Che didn't send you?"

"None of this is about you, princess— as hard as that is to believe."

She bristled. His implication that she was self-centered hit a nerve. She'd struggled with that doubt since leaving home. "Then what are you doing here?"

He took her by the arm and pushed her toward the bar. "We're two vagabonds far from home. Let us share our experiences over a drink."

"I don't want a drink" She didn't have time for one, either. Ian would be frantic by now. Or furious.

Klark waved away her protest as if she were a bug with no opinions or desires of her own, and he pulled a floating tray between them. Amazed by the absurdity of the situation, she watched him take a flask and two thimble-sized glasses from his cloak, filling them with a pink-tinged liquid. "Join me in sampling a liqueur created from one of the rarest fruits in the galaxy. It is from a planet with the briefest of summers. When the snow melts, the star-berry bushes bloom."