Page 2 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
Around me, the control room is a mess of smoking consoles, dead warriors, discarded weapons, and general filth. The whole room smells of blood and aliens and burning electronics. The Vyrpy only assaulted and captured this ship a month ago, but already they’ve turned it into something very different than the stately Imperial warship that it was before. Its former crew were summarily jettisoned into space when the Vyrpy hijacked the ship, and now several of my soldiers lie dead both here in the control room and all through the ship. The Vyrpy were not many, but they are always fierce.
One of my own Khavgren officers salutes at the doorway. “Your Imperial Highness, there is an Imperial messenger here for you.”
I tear myself away from the sorry sight of the control room. “An Imperial messenger, Centurion?Here?” It’s a long way for a messenger to travel from Khav.
“Yes, sir. Shall I let her in?”
Behind the centurion, I spot the flash of purple that designates a messenger as coming straight from the Emperor himself. Keeping her back is a court-martial offense, but my soldiers are more loyal to me than to the rules of the Empire.
“Bring her forward,” I command.
The messenger comes into the room, closely followed by the centurion. She straightens and salutes, discreetly pointing to the impossible-to-miss purple scarf around her neck. “Your Imperial Highness! I bring a message to Crown Prince Mareliux from His Imperial Majesty, the Magnificent Ruler of the Khavgren Empire, the Pontifex Maximus and Imperator, Craxallo.”
“I am Crown Prince Mareliux,” I mechanically give the formal reply. The ’Crown’ part of the title is cumbersome, and I rarely use it. What could this possibly be? I’ve only had a formal message from my stepfather a handful of times in my whole life, and never has a messenger followed me into battle to deliver it. “What is the message?”
“The message is to be given to you in private, Your Highness.”
The centurion pulls away to be out of earshot, but Caret’ax stays.
“Inprivate,” the messenger insists, glancing at him.
“Caret’ax can’t hear,” I lie, “And anyway, he wouldn’t speak Khavgrese.”
“Very well,” the messenger says, her bureaucratic rear end now covered. “It is a Vox message.” She draws herself up and fixes her eyes on a distant wall. “Prince Mareliux! My dear stepson and heir apparent,” she drones, carefully keeping her voice flat and unemotional. “Did you think that becoming Emperor of the Khavgren Empire was as easy as simply waiting until I kicked the bucket? Did you think you could while away the years fighting our enemies and harvesting medals and honor, without spending time on your own homeworld, preparing for an effective administration when the time comes? Did you think you don’t need allies at court? Did you think you can defuse any conspiracy against your life simply by being your charming self? Oh, to be so young and innocent again! I thought these things, too. And my reign has been all the harder for it. But time is running out for me, thank the gods.”
The messenger takes a break, following the precise Vox protocol and mimicking the way the message was given to her. My stepfather must have thought about the next part. Or maybe he had one of his coughing fits.
“Adopted stepson,”the messenger goes on, “the greatest challenge an emperor will face is neither the enemies of the Empire nor conspiracies nor rebelling legions. No, the worst threats come from closer to home. Much closer. You must learn to deal with that, Prince. You must learn to deal with the person closest to you: you must learn to deal with your wife. But since you have inexplicably neglected that part of your life, it means you have to get one first. In other words, I have decided that any successor of mine must be married. Before I die, Prince. I want to see her myself. Craxallo Imperator.”The messengertakes a breath. “This message was given to me verbatim on the fifteenth day of Garith, this year, at seventeen hours and sixty-one hectimes.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You got here in only five days. Not bad. At ease, legionnaire.”
Still the messenger stands rigid, subtly letting me know that she’s not under my command, but under the Emperor’s. “Is the message received, Your Imperial Highness?”
I nod curtly. “The message is received. There is no reply.”
She salutes again, takes one step back, turns on her heel, and marches out of the control room, carefully stepping over dead legionnaires and Vyrpy insurgents.
“Fuck,”I state with feeling the moment she’s out of the room. “That’s the last thing I needed.”
“Or the first thing,” Caret’ax says softly. “His Imperial Majesty may have a point, sir.”
“That’s just it,” I seethe. “It makes sense.” I shudder at the idea of marrying a woman from the Imperial Court on Khav. They’re the worst, cruelest, most vicious and most scheming group of females in the universe. Marrying one would be like marrying a whole nest of slitheringslikesof the most venomous kind.
“I have to get out of this,” I mutter. “One way or the other.”
But first things first. “We have to clean up this ship, Centurion. Interrogate any still living Vyrpy. Evacuate our own wounded; make sure they get the best care. I want a list of those recommended for medals ready in fifty hectimes. Dispatch a skeleton crew to take this ship back to base.”
The centurion nods once. “Yes, sir. Usually the Vyrpy don’t tell us much during interrogation. And you have ordered that we are not to…enhancethe interrogations.”
“My order stands,” I tell him, which I have to do every time. “We will not torture them. If we can’t get information from them, send them to the usual camp for prisoners of war. Sometimes they talk among themselves about things we want to know. There shall be no mistreatment.”
“Yes, sir!” The centurion turns and marches out of the control room.
“The Vyrpy would never be so kind to their captives,” Caret’ax comments. “The reports about their prison ships leave no doubt about their cruelty. They would use any means necessary to get the information they wanted.”
“They would,” I agree. “Because they are the Vyrpy. But we are the Khavgren Empire, and we are born to rule the galaxy. We wage war in our own way, not in the way the enemy does. We are grim in battle and generous in victory. When we win, we win with honor.”
“And when we lose, we just lose,”comes a thin voice from my belt. “Seems like most of the time, now.”
