Page 6 of Star Champion

When did she last see him this way? The old Nico. Not since the accident did he show this much passion about something. It made her heart ache.

“All right,” she conceded. “Aye.”

He punched the air. “Yes!”

She wanted to caution him that her agreement was conditional; it did not mean she had promised anything beyond the rematch with Black Hole. But Nico was already light-years away, lost in his fantasies, his big ideas, about money not yet earned. Meanwhile all she could think about was next week’s match looming closer with each breath. How odd that terror and hope could blend together so thoroughly that they became one impossible emotion.

Expelling a breath, she rolled her gear and the sens-sword in the fabric of her jumpsuit, forming a bundle to carry home. “I’m not changing my ring name.”

“No. Why would ya?” Nico sobered some. “It was Da’s pet name for ya. He’d be so proud to see ya use it while playing the sport he loved.”

“I think so, too.” She brushed the backs of her fingers across his cheek. His open, friendly face was so much like their mother’s, minus the hollow cheeks and pallid skin. But his hazel eyes were rimmed in green and tinted a golden hue in the center like hers. Like their Da’s eyes. “Let’s go home.”

They took off into the night, racing across the rooftops toward the clustered, conical buildings of the old city silhouetted against a star-filled dome. The dome, like the city, came alive after sundown. With each rapid rotation of the colony, diminutive moons rose and set like the components of an ancient time clock. Day after day, night after night, never changing, it was a scene as familiar as the back of her hand. Yet, tonight, for the first time in her life, the entire world seemed new and all things possible. She could even believe that nothing would stop her dreams from coming true.

CHAPTER2

Eireya

A door chime, soft but persistent, floated through an apartment fit for a prince: a suite of rooms carved out of a palace that was without argument the most expensive real estate in the galaxy. The origins of the Vedla ancestral home predated the Trade Federation itself, which for the past eleven thousand years had unified a vast league of worlds. But in the “time before” the Vedlas had ruled for so many eons that they became overconfident, lazy, and careless. It took losing the throne and an ensuing massacre that reduced them to only three survivors to wake them up to their failings. But they overcame them and helped reunite and stabilize the galaxy after the Great War with the help of seven other clans. Now there were eight kings instead of one; together they were known as theVash Nadah: “pious warriors” in the language of the Ancients. The eight royal families sustained a popular and benevolent government, but the idea of having to share power still grated on the Vedla psyche like sand between the toes.

While the other seven clans chose harsh and forbidding worlds on which to live—to set the example of sacrifice—at least the Vedlas were able to return to soft and lovely Eireya after expelling the ruthless warlords who took up residence during the Dark Years. Some said echoes of that inconceivable violation whispered through the palace halls to this day. They warned:Never allow complacency. Be vigilant in all things. This was the Vedla credo. But on this fine morning, ancient whispers did not invade Prince Klark Vedla’s awareness; a blasted door chime did.

A visitor at this early hour? Klark exhaled through his nose as he stowed his sens-sword in its beautifully engraved, antique case. For what purpose would someone disturb him other than to exasperate him? His after-workout refreshment had already been delivered discreetly while he was absent from his quarters, and he was not aware of any appointments. This was his private time; this dawn hour was his favorite part of the day, which he kept free from palace drivel. Any staffers who did not want to deal with the consequences of souring his mood would know better than to disturb him right after he finished bajha practice.

His muscles might be sore and spent but his mind remained as becalmed as the sea at sunrise, a soul-deep quiet that he not only cherished butneeded, and that never seemed to last long enough once the lights in the arena came up. He wanted no visitors violating his rapidly receding sense of peace. Great Mother, was that too much to ask?

Unfastening his bajha suit to the waist, he poured a glass of an icy ion and botanically infused beverage. Custom-matched to his body chemistry by the family physician, the drink was further personalized to his taste in the palace kitchens.

“Con, open windows,” he told the suite’s controller. A wall of glass panels retracted and disappeared. The scents of fresh-cut lawn and the sea drifted in from the terrace. Beyond, a vast ocean sparkled under an equally endless fair-weather sky. It looked, deceptively, like freedom. But Klark knew better.

He might not wear a surgically implanted locator in his neck any longer but the force-shield the palace security detail had erected all around his quarters was still in place. When he was first sentenced to house arrest they had briefed him that while the shield would not cause him any injury, a breach would alert security in an instant and initiate a warning on monitors all through the palace.

Klark knew how to escape in other ways. He closed his eyes, casting his senses outward, farther and farther, until he fancied he had reached the edge of…everything. There he probed with the very fingertips of his thoughts, looking for the key, sensing that something wonderful existed beyond his reach that he could never manage to grasp.

Then the keening, spirited call of a sea kestrel beckoned him back.

He opened his eyes in time to catch a glimpse of the native raptor hovering before it dove and soared low over the water. Gray, gold, and black glinted on spread wings as it glided away. Standing there, his boots rooted on the thick, flawless black slab floor, he watched the bird until it vanished from sight. Part of him yearned to fly off with it.

Then a second ring of the door chime dragged him back to reality with all the force of a hard landing. Simultaneously, he felt a vibration in his pocket, ending once and for all his post-bajha quietude.

The buzzing narrowed the possibilities of who dared disturb him at this hour. It was neither a servant nor a lowly palace advisor. That left only family or someone of enough rank to have access to his private comm. In that case, he supposed he ought to answer the door.

Klark turned his back to the sea and refilled his glass. “Con, show alcove.” A holo-display floating above his desk illuminated. Six of the king’s senior councilmen dressed in traditional black suits, capes, and boots waited outside. They were the very last people to whom he wanted to speak.

“Why are they here, Con?” he asked the room controller. “To make certain I still am?”

“Please repeat your request,” intoned the female voice.

Klark frowned. “Rhetorical question. Display bajha scores.” Watching his team ascend through the galactic league rankings was always a mood lifter. Although it was still the preseason and most of his players were participating in the annual goodwill tour of the Eireyan worlds, the exhibition matches boosted his hopes that this would be the best season in years. In what was probably the most difficult part of his detention, he had not been allowed to attend any matches in person. It had turned him into an absentee owner.

He remembered the councilmen waiting at his door. “Con, allow entry,” he grumbled.

The doors to his suite whooshed open. The men bowed deeply, fists thumping on their chests as Klark regarded them with annoyance, his partially undone bajha exposing a black T-shirt underneath, the weeping glass gripped in his hand. “Rise,” he said.

One gentleman stepped toward him and stopped, the fabric of his cape swirling in an eddy around his boots. His five compatriots remained clustered together near the doors like a school of minnows that feared being eaten after wandering into the deep. “Your Highness,” he greeted.

“Councilman Toren,” Klark acknowledged. Palace gossip often recounted the stern councilman’s handsome appearance when he was a younger man; his charisma broke the hearts of numerous ladies at court. But the years had thinned his coppery skin, making his features razor-sharp. His eyebrows grew so long and feathery that Klark’s brother, Ché, had dubbed him “The Goth-hawk” after a species of raptor in the Eireyan highlands. The councilman was a contemporary of their father the king, his closest advisor and lifelong confidant. Klark recalled the days of having an advisor, but the last he had heard the man was serving out a life sentence on a remote penal colony. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” he said in the coldest possible tone.

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