StarSet (The Warrior Prince's Claim - BBW Science Fiction Romance) (3 page)

“I
really
should be going,” Shala stuttered out, her chest heaving for breath in front of the Teleran giant. She was usually more on her level when she encountered the Telerans. This was just... too humiliating for words.

Even worse, she didn't want to leave. She wanted to stay and flirt with the prince. Which was insane because he was beyond off-limits. Diplomatic relations with the Telerans were shaky at best. If she did
anything
to disrupt them,
anything
that broke the already firmly set rules, she could be discharged from the ship.

And that would not bode well for her career.

Sober up, Shala. Time. To. Go.

She heard the female Teleran sniff behind her and held back against the irritation it sparked. The women could be a touch nastier than the men, especially with those of the warrior class, as this one so obviously was.

“At least allow me to escort you back to your room. These are dangerous times, and you do not have your head.”
He reached out and touched her cheek with a playful, not completely untoward affection, and a jag of electricity shot through Shala. It was bad enough she hadn't been touched by a man in... forever. She didn't need the added distraction of perfect chemistry with a friggin' Teleran prince.

Get it together, Chica.

“Sure, if you insist.”

It wasn't a bad idea actually.

“I'll come, as well,” the female Teleran he'd called 'Jana' volunteered.

“No worries. It's your born day. Have another drink with Ral. I'll be back.”

Hearing the female's sharp intake of breath, Shala took her cue and stepped around the prince, her skin prickling with heat when he drew close and took her arm, helping her to the door. Was she really that drunk?

The door slid shut behind them with a woosh, and Shala stole a glance at the prince before shyly looking away.

“Don't be ashamed,” he offered gently.

“Shouldn't I be?”

“No.”

Grimacing, Shala glanced the corridor uneasily.

“I'm an officer. One
without
clearance on this level. If the Captain-”

“Never mind, Captain Von. No one on my detail will breathe a word of it.”
His words were gentle and insistent, and Shala couldn't help but warm to them as a heady relaxation heated her body. If he had this effect on her with words, she couldn't imagine what-

No, Ma'am. She wasn't going there.

“I appreciate that. You don't know how much.”

“It's nothing. You're helping me, too.”

Shala cricked a brow.

“Well, it's my job to investigate-”

“Not with the case. Though I thank you for that. I mean giving me a reason to get out and enjoy a little freedom. It's so rarely afforded me on this floating beast.”

Shala grinned.

The prince had an actual personality. A real one, beyond gruff one word, or even one sentence answers. Beneath the rough Teleran exterior, he had a living heart beating in his chest that didn't seem blindly dogmatic or devoted to the more stifling, Teleran systems.

It was a seriously pleasant surprise. Royalty in any culture could be the absolute worst, and she was sure Tarik was no stranger to being doted on and catered to at the whim-level of nearly all things.

“Do you lose your head very often?”

The prince asked it with the air of a joke, a soft chuckle trailing it.

“Next to never.”

“I thought as much.”

A pang of disappointment struck Shala as they reached deck, but she forced it back and replaced it with a grateful smile when they approached the door to the decks she inhabited. She could sense that he wouldn't go any further, and it was just as well. Nice fantasy. But there was nothing here to pine over when it could never be actualized.

“Well, thank you again.”
“Thank you, Officer Kane.”
A smile that made her heart thud raucously in her chest creased his lush mouth in punctuation, and Shala felt like she'd turn to goo in that moment. Hand shaking as she fumbled to lift her ID bracelet to the sensors, flitting her fingers over the keypad to enter her code, she tried and failed to hide the affect it had on her.

“I'm sure we'll meet again.”

Shala met his eyes once more, desiring that outcome more than she liked.

“Perhaps we will, Prince Tarik. Perhaps, we will.”

Grinning, the prince turned without fanfare, and made his way back along the corridors they'd just traveled together, like teenage sweethearts, she'd imagined, his stride telling of the wildly, potent force within him.

She knew it then with a certainty that would most certainly frustrate her as time went on: he'd fully gotten under her skin.

5

Pressing a warm pack to her head, Shala groaned at her station. Smooth drink her ass. Maybe to a Zeren, but she was pretty sure the near migraine she was battling was entirely due to her old friend's brilliant suggestion. She should have left the promenade when she'd had the chance. Another thought interrupted that one, and she realized she wouldn't have bumped into the prince if she had. She'd have made her way back to her level without the entirely fuzzy head Heren's drink had given her.

Ah, well.
Everything had its reason, she supposed.

“Officer Kane.”

Bristling, Shala stealthily withdrew the warm pack and deposited it at the edge of her seat between her knees. The Captain had impeccable timing, didn't he? Always seemed to catch her off her level. It was like a gift that, for everyone else aboard, was a curse.

“Captain Von. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Turning, she managed a tight smile, relieved that she didn't find a scowl on the Captain's face.

“Tana has a report for you. I don't think you're going to like it.”

He frowned. “I certainly don't.”

“What did she find?”

Shifting uncomfortably, the Captain swallowed his distaste before answering.

So it was bad then.
Really
bad. Shit.

“That was no AI, Shala. She was human. Remade.”

Shala let out a gust of air, only realizing she'd been holding her breath in that instant.

“I was worried the tissue might come back organic.”

“It gets worse.”

Her stomach plummeted, but she fought back against the thoughts that rose to chorus in her head:
It's Nineh. Definitely Nineh. He's about to confirm it.

“How much worse?”

“She's the daughter of a Tavalar. And a
Teleran
killed her.”

“By accident. In defense. He didn't know...”

Shala caught herself a little too late, realizing the overly protective nature of her tone when the Captain's brow rose.

“You don't have to convince me. But we will have a time convincing the Tavalar Enforcer.”

Shala lowered her head.

Shit. This was supremely, fucking bad.

“Check in with Tana then report to the Brix and Lex. We're assembling a round table. There'll be two fires to put out. One could defund us beyond our wildest nightmares; the other... isn't any prettier.”

“Yes, Captain.”

~

Shala dragged her feet down the corridors. Her head was a maelstrom of conflict. How in the worlds were they going to get past
this one
? Even if the allied forces understood the obviousness of the situation, the Tavalar enforcer would insist proper protocols weren't followed. That the Telerans were given free reign of the ship to sate their surly natures, when officers should be posted on every floor.

It was a bent rule, one with a loophole, but Shala was sure that loophole would be keenly ignored in light of what transpired.

The allied forces were charged to observe customs to the best of their ability, but not at the expense of ship or mission security. If no one had actually died on the royal deck, it would have never come up. But someone actually did. A Tavalar's missing daughter. A daughter who'd been remade. His anger would certainly be displaced, but it was understandable.

Shala wasn't entirely sure
she'd
listen to reason if something like this had happened to Nineh. She'd have been looking for heads to roll, too, and she wouldn't have stopped insisting upon it in any of the courts who would hear the case until
someone
paid dearly.

It was like that when you were bound by blood or union to someone you loved with everything you had, and they were ripped from you. If protocols had been followed, this might have gone differently. An officer would have incapacitated her. Telerans had a warrior instinct and a highly suspicious nature. Not knowing the girl's programmed aim, the better choice was to eliminate her in the Prince's mind.

And now they had no daughter to hand back to the Tavalar enforcer. It wouldn't matter that the girl hadn't been his blood child. He'd raised her from a young age when he'd found her in the orphanages on Mala 10. Word had it that her mother had been a courtesan and dropped her there, obviously intent on keeping her lover happy. The girl's real father might have been a man of bearing and position, himself. It was difficult to tell without a blood scan.

Blood tests weren't requisite to the Mala 10 orphanages.

There were too many little ones to find a home for. The man hours and funds couldn't be spared. As far as most saw it, there was no point in chasing down someone's parents if the parents did not want to be found.

Sad but unavoidable.
Shala couldn't imagine what life must have been like for those beginning years. The girl would have had a happy, middle life, but it ended in the worst way possible. No one should have to face the acquisitioners' nets. Except, perhaps, the acquisitioners themselves.

Sweeping into the medical bay, Shala pulled her thoughts back to the task at hand. Slightly ashamed at her relief that it wasn't her own cousin laying there on the table.

It was
someone's
loved one. And
that
was tragic enough.

“You look like death,” Tana quipped, giving her a sizing glance.

“Probably because I feel like it.”

The fire-haired scipath grinned. She had a dark sense of humor and a very cynical view, in general.

Yep, to the business at hand...

At least they'd have an idea how far the acquisitioners' technologies had advanced. It was a foul way to come to that knowledge, but it would go on to preserve someone else's life the sooner they could make sense of it.

“So they've moved past the usual neural wipes to something we'd never have expected them to figure out.”

Shala drew a ragged breath.

Her eyes avoided the girl's limp body on the cold, examination table.

“What's that?”

“Memotic transfer.”

“How? What would it transfer to?”
Tana drew a labored breath.

“If the scans Jake delivered are correct, she's in the ship.”

Shit.

Tana nodded grimly at the fall of Shala's expression.

“Like... in the metal?”

Tana shrugged.

“She could be anywhere, but she's not wholly dead. These bastards play for keeps. They'll be back for her and whatever else they came for. And they'll probably transfer her to an AI's body next.”

“Un-fucking-real.”

“You're telling me.”

~

Shala inched out of her patrol gear, tossing the powder blue bodysuit to her bunk, clenching her jaw. How much worse could things get? Any day now, they'd have the enforcer on their asses, and they had the dead girl to catch in the process. That didn't even factor in the complications that would surely arise when the enforcer tried to bring the prince to trial, which he surely would. Along with any staff involved in sanctioning the use of a private deck for Teleran royalty.

It was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and she was having trouble seeing her way through it positively right now. Every possible turn of events she ran over in her mind led to the worse case scenario.

She'd been in some shit before in her career, but nothing could compare to the way this dilemma looked to be shaping up. Jake's recent scans placed the girl in the hold, by all indications waiting to make her next move. Or reading data. No word back on whether or not any erratic activity had been found in the scans, yet.

If the girl was trying to get into the ship's brain, their problem was a whole lot bigger than what was already a nightmare of epic proportions.

The look on the Captain's face had been pensive, but obviously disturbed as the staff had discussed their options during the mandatory meeting. With so many problems looming, the smartest move was to tackle the biggest first. And that meant isolating the memotic girl wherever she was and somehow finding a way to keep her contained.

It was ironic that a memotic would breach the ship, maybe it's what had been planned the entire time. But so close to the Teleran's version of the Hallow's celebration, it all crept under her skin a little too deeply. There hadn't been a great number of memotics hijacking ships, and for that reason, security precautions against those events hadn't been taken too seriously up to that point. What was worse than the acquisitioners was the acquisitioners with a golden key to the ship's engine systems, security codes, and thruster arsenal.

If the red-eyed bastards got their hands on that, everyone aboard the ship was well and truly done. Those scavengers were the sort to seize the ship with fan fare, even setting up residence on it and flying it straight into unallied territory where it couldn't be touched.

Stepping into the rinse box, Shala flicked on the water, her eyes slipping closed as she fought to calm her mind. Thinking the worst wouldn't help, and she was better than that. She'd been thinking on her feet for most of her life. Surely, she could find the will to do the same thing now.

Nipping her lip, Shala sudsed up with the lemony foam that usually helped her lose herself in the sensuality of it. The warm rivulets of moon water spraying her skin clean from the surfaces of the generators. The heady scents of the nano gels that perfumed her skin. That usually did the drink.

Sighing, Shala finished her rinse and cut the water, stepping out into the fluffy robe that would at least usher her into the realms of deep sleep she'd desperately need before she tackled the main problem: the memotic currently ghosting her ship.