The Star Princess (38 page)

Two standard hours, my lord. No more… " The pilot stopped speaking in mid-sentence. He and his co-pilot peered at their screens, and then at each other.

"What— what is it?" Ché demanded.

The lead pilot looked up slowly, meeting the king's eyes first before turning his gaze to Ché. The princess's speeder has merged with another target."

Che's father pushed forward. "What target?"

"One that matches the identity of the missing star-fighter."

"It's a starfighter," Ilana said. "It has weapons. But he wants to dock?"

Linda tried to sound hopeful. "At least we know he didn't mean to hit us on purpose."

"Yeah. But I don't know if I like the idea of strangers boarding us, either. Then again, we're in the middle of nowhere and I don't know how to get anywhere." She squinted at the approaching fighter. "It's a Vedla ship. I can tell by the lettering."

"Rescue!"

"That, or they're here to kill me."

Linda groaned. "If they really wanted you out of the picture, Ilana, we'd be bits and pieces of metal already. This speeder slowed down by itself— it probably sends out an SOS by itself, too."

Everything Linda said made sense. Ilana worked at trying to believe it.

The speeder jolted. Ilana grabbed for her armrests. "What the hell was that?"

As if he had heard her, the starfighter pilot trans-rnitted, "We have your craft under control. Tow to docking… commencing on my count… three, two, one."

The speeder shuddered and began moving toward the larger craft. Ilana's heart thumped, and she tried to keep her breathing steady. It would be so easy to hyperventilate.

The fighter's fuselage filled the entire forward window now. Sweat prickled Ilana's skin. Neither she nor Linda spoke. Then a metallic clanging noise signaled contact. A dull thump confirmed it. Something pinched her eardrums, and was gone as soon as the sensation registered. A pressure change, she thought. The connection between the ships must have been made. Not that she knew anything about docking spaceships, but making intelligent guesses worked wonders at keeping her calm.

Ilana unstrapped. "I'll go answer the door."

"I'm coming with you." Linda bounced out of her seat and followed Ilana to an airlock.

There was a knocking from the other side. "Oh, so we have to open it?" Ilana asked. "So much for automated doors. But I guess you can't have everything."

"We're being rescued and you're complaining?"

"Linda, I'm in a very, very bad mood." She put her hands on the handle. "Okay— together."

Linda grabbed hold with her and they pulled; The door swung inward, revealing a tall, amber-skinned man with pale gold eyes. Klark Vedla. Che's fanatical brother. Ilana would know him anywhere.

Muffin practically breathed down the necks of the cargo pilots. "Can't you go any faster?" "If we go any faster, our skin will ignite." The older of the two pilots turned around. "Not our flesh, the ship's," he clarified.

"I know that," Muffin growled.

"And if the fuselage combusts, guess what follows?" The two pilots scowled at each other.

Muffin considered himself an easy soul with whom to get along. But ever since Romlijhian B'kah had ordered the two cargo pilots to pursue Ilana Hamilton's speeder, the pressure to reach her before Klark did had eroded his patience to nothing.

"I will check back soon," he grumbled and lumbered back to the seats where he'd left Copper sleeping. The pilots were right, of course. They were traveling as fast as they could. Ian had given them the speeder's identification. That was all they'd needed to track it. At first, they'd merely kept pace with the princess's craft. But in the past few hours, they'd eaten up the distance between them like a plate full of Copper's brownies. Muffin feared the worst: that the speeder was no longer flying but was floating, marooned in space. He prayed that when he finally caught up to Ilana, he would find her alive.

Ilana raised her fists in the sparring stance she remembered from childhood Tae Kwon Do lessons. Her nostrils flared with each breath, and her heart felt as if it would jump out of her chest. "So, you wanted to do it in person, you bastard."

Klark raised both hands in a move that so resembled Che's gesture when she used too much slang that her offensive stance faltered. Then she caught herself and lifted her fists, her feet apart. "Basic, please," he said. "I don't know English."

"Yeah, I bet you don't. You probably think it's beneath you." But wasn't her own prejudice toward the Vash the reason she hadn't perfected her Basic over the years?

She gritted her teeth. "I will speak Basic." If only to keep Linda from getting hurt. And maybe to avoid answering her own inner question. "Why you here?"

"You are in danger."

"Well, duh." And Klark was supposed to be the cunning brother.

"I have come to take you aboard my starfighter and bring you to the Wheel, where my brother awaits you."

"You rescue me?" Was he for real? "You try to hurt my brother," she said in a low voice. "Why I trust you now?"

His sharp golden gaze softened almost imperceptibly. "Because Ché is in love with you."

Her mouth fell open. She snapped it shut. That he'd rendered her speechless was an understatement.

The expression in her face must have confirmed Klark's hypothesis. He appeared almost amused by her discomposure. "It wasn't difficult to guess his feelings for you. I saw how he looked at you that day on Earth— I read what was in his eyes. That is how I knew, knew the real reason he went to Earth… before, it seems, he knew it himself." Klark took a breath.

"I want superiority for my family first and foremost. We Vedlas deserve it," he said simply. "We have earned it. But, too, perhaps equally, I want contentment for my brother. He, too, deserves it." Regret flared briefly in the man's pale eyes. "In the past, I tried to win him that contentment in ways that displeased him. Through this, I hope to regain his favor and secure my family's reputation. I am escorting you to Cheya's Fist, an impenetrable outpost at the border of Eireyan space. I have summoned my family to meet us there— if they respond to ray message." His mouth spread thin. "I am not the most liked, or the most trusted man in my family at the moment. But I cannot yet risk announcing that I have you safe. The news may force your would-be assassin to take desperate measures to counter my move. He… is a desperate man. The battleship will follow us there. My father is aboard," he said with confidence. "As is your future protector."

Protector. It was the ancient term for husband or spouse. He meant Ché. Her pulse quickened, and a thousand unnamed emotions whirled like seagulls in a storm. Love, longing, anxiousness, doubt. And the sense that in marrying him, she was doing something right. She'd had a similar rush of lightness the day she decided to apply to UCLA, only this was much more powerful. She was, as Klark put it, about to accept Ché as her "protector." And she was none the weaker for it.

Klark pushed past her and crouched by the dead starpilot, checking him for vital signs as Ilana quickly translated for Linda.

Ilana wasn't sure, but she thought she'd detected a bit of guilt under all that arrogant posturing and noble, holier-than-thou attitude. Guilt for what? For trying to hurt Ian and Tee'ah? Could it be possible? She could have sworn that when he appeared in the airlock that she was dead for the sin of wanting to marry Ché.

Ilana remembered the night Ché had come to her house, how sure she'd been that he was a killer. She prayed she was wrong again.

Klark stood and wiped his hands. His face was lean, almost as if the bronze skin was stretched too tightly over the bones beneath. He had no dent in his jaw— like Che's tenseometer, a useful little tool for determining worry. Nonetheless, a sense of urgency flowed off him in waves. A rock could have picked up on his apprehension. Why was he scared? Not knowing frightened her. "Someone hurt the pilot," she said, swallowing.

"On solo missions, a ship's computer monitors star-pilots' brainwaves and heartbeats. Through these sensors that touch the skin, it is possible to disrupt a body's nervous system."

This disrupt"— damn, if she lived through this, she was becoming fluent in Basic— "it go from ship to man?"

"Yes, it is meant to restart a heart, correct a seizure."

"But not kill."

His gaze was grim. "No. Obviously not. But one can program the computer to administer a deadly shock, through nefarious means." Klark drew himself up to his full height. He was a little shorter than Ché, but there was a brutal sleekness to him, as if he were skin, sinew, and muscle and nothing else. A deadly weapon on legs. "I know who did this."

Ilana's stomach sank. Crap. Someone did want her dead.

"Come quickly. We must leave this speeder." Klark's mouth twisted. "The little worm despises me. He would be no sadder to see me dead than he would you." Che's brother glanced at Linda. "And you simply because you were fool enough to come on this journey."

"Oh, boy." Getting a grip on herself, just barely— now was not the time to puddle to the floor in a quivering, sniffling mass, as much as the thought appealed— Ilana translated for Linda.

Linda grabbed her arm. "We're going with him, Ilana," the woman said in a no-arguments tone that

Ilana knew all too well. "Pardon my French, but screw the history between you two, honey. He's making nice. Take it!"

"I'm with you, Linda. I don't know what's happening, or what's going to happen, but… I believe him." Klark. The nut job jailed for trying to knock off her brother. Well, the Vash made everything complicated, and this was proof.

The women grabbed their gear and abandoned the speeder. Ilana was startled to see a pilot in the seat when they entered the starfighter. The man looked worn-out and apprehensive. "Prince Klark," he said, "we are being called by one of our battleships. A flagship."

Klark lifted a brow. "My father. And brother."

Ilana's pulse surged. Ché.

"They moved quickly," Klark told her, as if she understood the intricacies of this unfolding plot. "Don't open communication with them. We'll leave for Cheya's Fist, as planned."

When the pilot hesitated, Klark barked, "Now, Ensign!"

"But— but they have our coordinates. They'll follow."

Klark groaned, glancing at Ilana as if looking for support in his irritation with subordinates. "Of course they'll follow. That's the point." He pointed a determined finger at the stars ahead. "Now go! We will lead them onward in a merry chase."

Linda, hugging her purse to her lap, took one of the empty seats in the fighter and buckled her seat-belt. The woman was a trouper, but Ilana had no doubt she'd be hearing about this for years. Maybe the rest of her life. Speaking of which, it'd been at least an hour since Linda had harassed her for her worst-case-scenario neuroticism. Too many far-fetched tilings had happened in too short a period of time for Linda to argue that philosophy. Hah.

Klark stayed by Ilana's side. The urgency he radiated was making her twitch. He could use one of her Valiums. He turned to her and said: "When we reach Cheya's Fist, you must marry without delay."

"What?" she blurted out in English. Today?" Marry? Help! She wasn't quite ready for this.

Klark's face contorted with hatred. "Yes. Before the man who wishes to prevent the union does so. Do you understand? The longer we wait, the more likely those who wish to stop the union will do so. Your family will not be able to attend in person, but you will see their images on the comm— though we do need a B'kah witness, according to the Treatise of Trade, and I am hoping via two-way comm is sufficient." Klark looked positively frazzled. Wedding fever. "My family will be there, whether they realize the reason or not. The attire, the documents, the ceremonial oils— it is all in place."

"You make my wedding? You invite the guests? Choose place?" Klark Vedla, wedding planner. She had to be dreaming.

He tried to make light of her amazement. "The ceremony, if done properly, would last seven days. We don't have that luxury, I'm afraid."

"I happy, Klark," she assured him. "Very happy! I not want a week of ceremony." Shoving curb away from her forehead, she pressed one hand to her brow as she regarded the man she saw in a new light: a troubled soul, maybe, but one loyal to his brother— out of love, not obligation. "No trick?" she asked quietly.

Fluidry he brought his fist to his chest and dipped his head in the traditional show of Vash fealty. "You have my word, Princess."

Princess. He'd actually called her princess, a title she'd never thought she'd hear from this racist's lips. Who's held on to more prejudice? her conscience demanded. You or him? The fact that she couldn't answer the question quickly and without reservation gave her the answer. She'd been wrong on a lot of things about Che's people. She nodded back. "Let's go to the wedding."

As the battleship approached Cheya's Fist at top speed, Che's doubts threatened to overwhelm him. Hoe had produced proof that incriminated Klark. And yet Klark had brought the woman Hoe accused him of trying to kill… to Cheya's Fist. And, as if bringing Ilana to a highly guarded outpost wasn't inexplicable enough, Klark had apparently invited Che's mother, Queen Isiqir, and his sisters, Tajha and Katjian, to join them there— and had contacted the B'kahs, inviting them, too! Security had documented all the transmissions from Klark's fighter. Ché could see their cruiser now, docked at the Fist along with Klark's stolen starfighter.

Che's father stood beside him. "Has Hoe arrived?" "No. I expect to hear from him soon." "It is good, to want him here." Approval shone in his father's gaze. "I will let you handle the situation as you wish. I will intervene only if necessary."

Ché nodded. "I hope it will not come to that." If he was wrong about Hoe… He gave his head a curt shake. He did not want to ponder any further the lifelong loyalty and almost fatherly devotion of his advisor— and what it may have led the man to do. Patience. He must say nothing to Hoe yet. He must not give the man the motivation to flee, should he have reason to do so. Better to lure him into the net Ché had cast. Then, if Hoe had helpers, he'd snare them as well.