Page 30 of Star Prince

Her wide golden 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 mistdiscolored the rarefied atmosphere of the asteroid colony’s massive habitation dome. It smelled as foul as it looked. “Something we don’t want to think too hard about breathing,” Muffin muttered as they observed the other ships visiting Barésh, 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 had expected as much. The senator had beat him here by two days, and he had said that his side trips would be short. But Randall’s absence didn’t irk him as much as he had expected. 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 Grüma,” 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 theVash.

The buildings were different in appearance from anything he had seen on Earth, let alone any of theVashworlds he had visited. They reminded him of squat, upside-down ice cream cones wrapped in ribbons of pale silver with glittering, pointy-tipped or domed 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 façade 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 theVasheradicated poverty and sickness after the Dark Years.”

“TheVashthink they did too.”

“Ignorance is no excuse. Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?”

Her passion on the subject startled Ian. He foundhimself again wondering where she came from, what her background was beyond the little history she 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. Before Earth and the rest of the frontier grow too disgusted with theVashFederation’s apparent double standard and pull the hell out.

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 centurybefore 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. They had arrived in the midst of what he guessed was a shift change. 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 packed with clubs and also 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. Baréshtis appeared to be as crazy about the technology as Earth people were. Of all the wonders his home planet had inherited from theVash,V.R. had made the most impact on popular culture. And if the inhabitants ofthis 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 tookTee’ah a few disbelieving seconds to realize she had 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 weapon 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 Baréshtis mostly ignoredher, too overburdened to allocate energy for curiosity.

Since 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 had experienced hopelessness on a far smaller scale. But she had 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 dark 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 theVashgentleman she had 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 servers entitled her to charge high fees for sexual services,allowing her such vanities in addition to buying food.

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