Stars of Blood and Glory (13 page)

“
I copy. What’s the
situation?”

“
We have located princess. Suit
up your men—light armor only.”

“
Understood. Ready to roll in
five.”

Roman turned and nodded to Danica. Behind
them, the bridge door hissed open and Corporal Tajjashvili stepped
inside.

“
You summoned me, Captain?” he
asked, saluting.

“
Yes, Corporal,” she said. “We
have located the princess and are about to conduct a boarding
operation to retrieve her. She’s in a private civilian shuttlecraft
currently heading for one of the Lagrangian points. The local
authorities have given us the shut-down code and authorized us to
intercept, but I want you standing by with your fighter wing in
case anything goes wrong.”

“
Understood.” He took his seat in
the back of the room, at the fighter control station. An array of
dozens of holoscreens surrounded him, most of them blank while the
fighter drones were inactive.

Roman leaned back in his chair and yawned.
The men were going to be very happy once they pulled back into port
with that fat bonus. It was always nice to get a job like this,
between the life-and-death commando missions that punctuated the
long stretches of uneventful tedium.

As his mind drifted from thoughts of the
mission, he found himself gazing out the window at the planet
below. New Vela VII was remarkably pretty for an ice giant, the
blue methane clouds of the upper atmosphere mingling with the
swirling shades of purple to create a gorgeous veined effect. It
was beautiful, certainly, but not nearly as beautiful as the deep
blue oceans and green-brown lands of Tajjur V.

“
Do you have the coordinates,
Avanadze?” Danica asked, taking her seat in the captain’s
chair.

“
Yes, Captain,” said Yuri.
“They’re plugged in and ready to go.”

“
Good. Wait for jump on my
mark.”

Danica leaned over and activated the
ship-wide intercom. “Attention all hands, this is the captain
speaking. We are making jump in twenty seconds. Secure all stations
and prepare for maneuvers. Raise the alert level to mark two.”

She switched off the intercom and looked each
of the men on the bridge in the eye. “I know you may think that
this has been an easy job,” she said, “and perhaps that’s true. But
I also want you all to know that it isn’t over until we’ve safely
returned the girl to her guardians. Until then, I expect you all to
be ready for anything.”

“
Captain,” said Roman, saluting.
The others followed suit.

Danica nodded and turned to face the forward
window. “Take us out, Avanadze.”

“
Yes, Captain,” said Yuri. He
began keying a series of commands on the keypad in front of him.
“Making jump in three, two, one …”

Roman shut down his sensory implants and
temporarily switched off his physical consciousness. He’d been
through hundreds of jumps before, but it had gotten harder on him
in his old age. For a brief moment, he felt as if he were in a
white room without a floor, walls, or ceiling, but then his
consciousness shifted back to his body, and he was back on the
bridge, staring out the window at a starfield that remained largely
unchanged.

“
Jump complete,” said Yuri.
“Sensors detect a small spacecraft fifty kilometers off the
starboard bow. Codes check out—it’s the princess.”

“
Excellent,” said Danica. “Begin
docking maneuvers. Roman, have your men stand by for
boarding.”

“
Acknowledged,” said Roman. He
lifted his hand to the keypad, but before he could activate the
comm channel, an alarm went off near the front of the
ship.

Danica frowned. “What is that?”

“
An incoming ship,” said Yuri,
eyes glued to his instruments. “Less than a hundred kilometers off,
moving to intercept the shuttlecraft. Its codes don’t correspond to
any civilian ship, but—Captain, I think it’s Hameji!”

“
Increase throttle and prepare
for combat maneuvers,” said Danica. “In the meantime, try to hail
them. Tajjashvili, launch fighter drones.”

“
Aye, Captain.”

“
Roman, get the men below-decks
to the high-gee coffins. I’m putting the ship on level four combat
alert.”

“
Understood, Captain,” said
Roman. He punched the key that switched on the alarms below
decks—his men were trained to get to the protective coffins in a
matter of seconds. The only one below decks who didn’t have the
training was the Gaian girl, but he had little doubt she’d figure
it out on her own.

“
Captain,” said Yuri, “the Hameji
craft is firing on us—three waves of projectile missiles, incoming
at high speed.”

“
Get a plasma screen up and make
evasive maneuvers. Tajjashvili, how are our fighter
drones?”

“
Deployed and ready for action,”
said Zura. The display screens surrounding his chair had all come
to life, and scrolled every few seconds between the camera feeds of
the various drone fighters.

“
Target the enemy craft’s guns
and engines. I don’t want them getting away.”

“
Yes, Captain. Consider it
done.”

Outside the window, the starfield flashed as
the plasma bursts intercepted the incoming projectiles. Roman’s
stomach twisted as the ship banked and rolled to avoid a collision,
but the gravitic dampers and his own cybernetic countermeasures
dulled the effect.

“
Captain!” said Yuri. “The Hameji
craft is moving rapidly on an intercept course. Only twenty seconds
before they close the gap.”

Danica swore, while Roman glanced down at his
display screens to make sure his men were secure. All the coffins
near the combat airlock were occupied, as well as three others in
the crew quarters and sickbay—Maia, Mikhail, and Rina. He turned to
the captain.

“
The men are secure,” he
reported. “Ready for combat maneuvers.”

“
We’re too late,” said Danica.
“If that gunboat wants to take out the princess, there’s nothing we
can do.”

“
Then let us assume they only
wish to capture her.”

She nodded. “Yuri, get us over there double
quick. Tajjashvili, I want every fighter wing focused on that ship.
Keep me apprised as the situation develops.”

“
I hear you, Captain. Forty-five
seconds to intercept.”

“
That’s not enough. We need more
resources out there—more resources.”

“
The Hameji craft is slowing, but
not enough to initiate docking procedures,” said Yuri. “It’s
launching some sort of—is that a harpoon cable?”

“
What do you see, Avanadze? Stay
with me?”

“
It’s a harpoon cable, all right.
Making impact with the shuttlecraft now. Just a few seconds and
it’ll—” He stopped and frowned.

“
Avanadze? Lieutenant, what’s
happening?”

“
Stars of Earth,” the Lieutenant
cursed, slamming his fist against his chair’s armrest. “That Hameji
bastard just jumped out of local space—and he’s taken the
shuttlecraft with him.”

A somber silence fell over the room. Only the
distant rumbling of the engines and the ever present hum of the
ventilators broke it.

Danica sighed. “Ready the jump beacons, then,
and loop the replay sequence for playback. If it’s a small craft,
it can’t have gone far. Prepare to make pursuit.”

“
Pursuit?” said Yuri, frowning.
“How can we possibly pursue them in deep space?”

“
A ship that small has to
throttle its reactor in order to service dual jump drives,” said
Danica. “If we pepper the sector with jump beacons to interdict
them, we can use our higher energy capacity to catch them. It’s
like a high-stakes shell game, where we’re the ones running the
show.”

“
Against a Hameji strike
team.”

His comment made Roman chuckle, but Danica
only nodded. “Yes,” she said, “against a Hameji strike team.”

“
Time to earn our pay,” said
Roman. He grunted and rose to his feet, giving Danica a quick
salute before leaving the bridge.

Chapter 8

Hikaru moaned as she gradually regained
consciousness. Her body felt sore, her stomach nauseous. She tried
to pull her arms down to rub her eyes, but her hands were bound to
something over her head. Her feet were bound at the ankles and tied
to a post, so he couldn’t stand up. She opened her eyes and
blinked, but the lights were so bright that she couldn’t see
anything.

Gradually, however, her vision adjusted. She
was in the hold of a ship—no, in a bunkroom of some kind. Her
ankles were tied to a foothold at the base of the bunk, her wrists
to a handhold on the opposite wall. The metal floor beneath her was
cold and hard, and the thin fabric of her skirt did nothing to
cushion her from it.

What happened to me?
she wondered, trying
to recall the events that had brought her to this place. She had
been in the private shuttlecraft listening to music when a strange
clanging noise had sounded in the bulkheads, followed by the
gut-wrenching sensation of jumpspace. She’d gotten a little nervous
and tried to fiddle with the shuttle’s manual controls, but the
next she knew the airlock door hissed open and the room filled with
a sickly-sweet green mist. Moments later, she’d passed
out.

I’ve been kidnapped,
she slowly
realized.
I’ve been taken hostage by
… who? Criminals? Thugs? Sex-traffickers?
Her heart skipped a beat as she imagined herself as a slave girl,
performing lewd acts of carnal knowledge for the rest of her life.
It would be a shame for the princess of Shinihon to end up in such
a place—which raised the question, did her captors even know who
she was?

“
Hello?” she called out in Gaian,
looking around the room for any sign of another person. An open
doorway behind her led through to what looked like a cockpit. It
was hard to tell, though, since she didn’t have a good view from
where she was tied.

“
Hello?” she called out again,
“can anyone hear me?”

“
Shut up!” came a young voice
from the other side of the doorway. He spoke Gaian with a heavy
accent, but she understood his words well enough—which meant that
he could understand her.

“
Who are you?” she asked. “Where
am I?”

“
I said, shut up!”

A low, aching throb began to grow between her
legs. She realized that she had to pee.

“
Is there a bathroom?” she called
out. “I have to go.”

Her captor swore, but moments later she heard
footsteps on the cold, hard floor. As he rounded the corner and
came into view, she tensed a little, expecting—

She frowned. “You’re just a boy?”

The boy’s face reddened, and he leaned over
and slapped her hard across the face. “I am a Hameji prince,” he
snapped back. “You would do well to show more respect, planetborn
wench.”

Hikaru’s jaw dropped, and she gave him a
sharp, angry look. “You slapped me!”

“
I’ll do worse, if you give me
any more trouble. There’s no reason I need to keep you
alive.”

He was short, perhaps as much as half a head
shorter than her, with dark cropped hair and a fair complexion that
didn’t match his features. He wore a black flight suit with a
pistol on his belt and a knife strapped to his chest, which looked
a little ridiculous since the knife was almost as big as his
forearm. He scowled at her, but with his round, boyish face and
smooth cheeks, the effect was more comical than intimidating.

“
So why haven’t you killed me
already?” she asked.

“
Because,” he said, letting the
word hang in the air. He opened a wall compartment and pulled out a
pan.

“
Here,” he said, tossing it with
a clang to the floor beside her. “Use that.”

“
Use that? For what?”

“
For taking a pee, of
course.”

Hikaru’s jaw dropped, and her cheeks turned
hot with rage. “For taking a pee? That’s disgusting! Don’t you have
a decent bathroom on this ship?”

“
You’ll use the pan, or you won’t
go at all.”

“
Oh, yeah,” she said, rolling her
eyes. “Because I’m obviously not going to go in my skirt. That
would make a mess and stink up the whole ship, now, wouldn’t
it?”

The boy paused, as if unsure what to do. He
clenched his fists, and for a moment, Hikaru worried that she’d
pushed him too far.

“
Look,” she said, “if you’re
going to make me use the pan, at least free my hands so I can use
them. I can’t rightly go like this.”

“
Fair enough.”

He pulled out a keypin from his wrist
console, but hesitated a moment before using it to unlock her
cuffs. After thinking it through, he pulled out the pistol and held
it in one hand while he undid the lock with the other.

“
There,” he said taking a step
back. He pointed the gun at her. “Now pee.”

Hikaru rubbed her wrists and checked herself
over before doing anything else. She seemed all right—nothing
broken, anyway. With her ankles still tied to the post, she turned
herself around and rose up on her knees. She looked from the boy to
the pan and back to the boy, who stood in the doorway with his gun
still trained on her.

She sighed. “Can you at least give me some
privacy?”