Page 28 of Star Prince

She turned. Her face conveyed an air of fragility, but the muscles flexing beneath the skin of her slender limbs indicated endurance and strength. Dim, bluish light illuminated the cockpit, bleaching her tawny complexion. “You have no idea, do ya?”

“Why don’t you enlighten me?”

The cavernous chamber in which they stood rang with mechanical emptiness, but it didn’t come close to matching the desolation in her eyes. “This conversation falls outside the parameters of my job description. You hired me to track for you, not to be your friend.”

“True,” he replied.

“You pay me, I get my ship back. Then we go our separate ways. It’s that simple. Don’t ask for more than that, because you won’t get it.”

“You left out one very important element of your job description,” Gann said.

“Did I?” Her proud stance faltered almost imperceptibly, but he was trained in such subtle clues and so he did not miss the change. He had intended to tease her for leaving out any mention of finding the princess—the reason he had hired her in the firstplace—but seeing the uncertainty tightening her features, he changed his mind.

Had Eston somehow implied to Lara that Gann might require more from her than tracking? Sex, perhaps? Though he couldn’t imagine the cloaker being able to order her to give her body against her will. Sexual servitude was illegal and reviled by theVash Nadahand merchant class alike, but rumors of it still abounded in the outermost reaches of the frontier.

“I was going to tease you,” he said gently. “First you find the princess, then you get paid, then you get your ship back. It’sthatsimple.”

Her expression was as cold and as impenetrable as stone.

His hands folded over his chest, Gann looked out at the stars. “She could be anywhere by now,” he said quietly, conjuring the young princess as she appeared in the holo-image, placing her in his mind’s eye in the raw and dangerous worlds he remembered from his years in the frontier. “Her honor is at stake. It’s my sworn duty to protect that honor.”

“Her honor,” the woman scoffed. “You mean her virginity, don’t you?”

Her smirk threw him. It was clear she didn’t share his courtly views of the princess. “It is my duty—and my wish—to defend her. She is a woman and thus deserving of the highest respect.”

“A treasure to be valued and protected,” she finished for him.

“Yes, like you. Like all women. Beautiful and precious.”

She glanced up sharply. “Please. Save your bad poetry for where it’ll do you some good.” She walked to the gangway leading from the cockpit.

He didn’t understand how he had insulted her with what he considered to be the greatest compliment—his awareness and appreciation of her femininity. “I adhere to the warrior’s code. I trust you’ll grow accustomed to my views by the end of the voyage,” he called after her.

“I doubt that,” she replied, turning. “As for finding your precious princess—believe me,Vash,nothing will please me more. In fact, I will now use my break to determine the best way to speed the process along.”

Determination gleaming in her eyes, she pulled herself up the gangway and disappeared into the corridor leading to her quarters.

During the journey to Barésh,Tee’ah’s confidence in her flying ability soared as her fear of being rounded up by her father’s guards diminished. Driven, like a man possessed, Ian kept her—and the entire crew—to a grueling schedule, requiring her to be on duty almost constantly at the controls of theSun Devil.Her hopes of getting to know the Earth-dweller better succumbed to a string of long days and too-short nights—not to mention an almost complete lack of time alone with him.

Shortly before the scheduled arrival on Barésh, Tee’ah’s alarm chime woke her from a deep dreamless sleep. Struggling out of bed she stumbled into the baggy flightsuit she had borrowed from Push. She alternated between it, her new clothes from Grüma, and her brother’s clothes. The handfuls of cold water she splashed onto her face would have to keep her functioning until she could get her hands on a good, dark, steaming cup of Earth coffee. Not only did the stuff taste like heaven, it did a far better job of waking her than the tockshe was used to.

After a quick stop in the galley to pour herself a cup of Earth-brew from the pot Ian had already prepared, she hurried down the corridor. Only Ian, Muffin, and a grouchy-looking Quin awaited her in the dimly illuminated cockpit.

She sat in her piloting chair, snapped her coffee cup into its spill-proof holder, strapped in, and went to work. Her hands, now accustomed to the pre-launch routine, skimmed over the glowing, touch-activated control panel, her fingers flying as she entered arrival information into the computer.

Then she said, “I’ve sent our request for docking to Barésh control.” She fought back a yawn. “I don’t know what time of day it is where we’re landing, but I hope someone’s awake enough to clear us.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Ian snapped his safety harness into the receptacle between his knees. “We’re docking no matter what.”

A few tousled locks of dark brown hair floppedover his forehead, and faint lines of weariness were etched on either side of his mouth. But counteracting his fatigue was tension.

Strange. As she understood it, they were chasing after a competitor of his named Randall. But sometimes Ian acted as if the fate of the entire galaxy depended on this mission. Perhaps there was more to it than he let on. She found it odd that no one in the crew had spoken about selling the goods in the cargo hold. They told her they were traders, but she was beginning to have her doubts.

Gredda marched into the cockpit; her thick gleaming blond braid draped over one bare shoulder. “I am ready,” she announced, sounding entirely too chipper for the early hour. Push, the assistant cargo handler, stumbled in after her and took his seat. While they buckled in, Tee’ah finished loading the data the ship’s navigation computer needed to guide theSun Devilto the dwarf planet’s surface. Most of the time, she flew arrivals by hand, for the pleasure of it as well as skill-honing practice. Tonight, due to fatigue and the hundreds of smaller deadly asteroids in the area, she had decided to let the automatic flyer do the job. A tired pilot’s best friend, she had heard Mistraal’s cargo pilots call it.

A trail of green lights danced across the control panel before her. She sat up straight. “We’re cleared to dock.”

From what Tee’ah gathered from her research, Barésh was an isolated mining colony protected from space hazards like radiation and asteroids by a dome. The dome owed its tech to the mysterious Ancients, therace that disappeared long before the rise of the Trade Federation—and well before even the Dark Years. As documented in the Treatise of Trade, the Ancients had left behind startlingly advanced technology as their legacy.

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