Page 48 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
Caret’ax steps closer to Mareliux, and Sigise places herself between the soldiers and me. “It’s time to go, Princess Umbra.” She grabs hold of my arm and escorts me out of the tent.
I throw a glance behind me. Mareliux is following, escorted by Caret’ax. Beyond them, Quaestor Preniat has a little smirk on his face. For a change he’s looking me straight in the eyes. I guess the chanting is not going to sit well with the reigning Emperor, and Preniat is absolutely going to snitch.
On an angry impulse, I focus my mind on his robes. Immediately his outer one flies off him and gets entangled in the still cheering soldiers.
“It’s not much, but it’s not nothing,” I mutter to myself as the officers start to yell orders inside the tent.
We walk fast to theGladiux,across the stony ground. Dozens of smaller ships that look like the gunships inside Mareliux’s ship are lined up beside it, as well as a small one that is so grey and so slick-looking that it has to be the Quaestor’s. A bored-looking pilot is leaning up against it, then straightens and salutes when he sees Mareliux.
TheGladiux’s hatch is open, and I lazily wonder if it has been open the whole time. If so, Mareliux really trusts these guys to not cause any mischief inside his ship. But it looks like he has reason to trust them.
Behind us, the thousands of soldiers are jogging out of the big tent and over to their own ones.
“They will change into battle gear,” Sigise says beside me, staring at them. “It’s rare to fight on Grefve itself. And even rarer on the prince’s wedding day. It will be one of the legendary battles.” Her fists open and close in frustration.
“You wish you were among them,” I state, because there’s longing in her gaze. “They’re your soldiers.”
“Some of them are,” she says as we enter the Gladiux. “But I have capable officers to lead them. And I think it’s more important to make sure you’re safe.”
Safely inside the Gladiux, we wait for Mareliux and Caret’ax.
“I don’t want us all to use one ship,” my fake husband says. “Umbra is safe in theGladiux. Colonel Grast, you will travel to Khav on a gunship with your squad. I want it to be difficult for any of our enemies to find out what your real mission is. If wearrive separately, nobody will suspect. You can then receive us when we return. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” Sigise says. “Though it might be impossible. We will arrive after you. TheGladiuxis fast.”
“That can’t be helped,” the prince says.
But I don't like the way they make it sound. I’m not a fan of being on planet Khav without my extraction squad for longer than, say, ten seconds.
“What if,” I pipe up, “Sigise replaces one of theGladiux’s own gunships with one of those out there? If she and the gunship come along inside theGladiux, they can detach close to Khav and they won’t arrive after we do. And nobody will connect that Grefve gunship with theGladiux. It has the wrong markings.”
Mareliux raises his golden eyebrows. “Our princess is becoming as crafty as any noblewoman at the Imperial court. Yes, that is what we’ll do, of course. Good thinking, Umbra.”
And of course he’s such a good leader that his praise makes me blush. “I’d just feel safer with Sigise there.”
“As would I,” he agrees. “See to it, Colonel Grast. Bring your squad aboard. Make sure you are not seen by the quaestor. I will instruct the general to keep that interfering slike out of sight of theGladiux.” He gets busy with the various control panels.
“Sir,” Sigise says and marches out, her perfect gala uniform with a mightily feathered helmet making me envious. But I don’t have the size I’d need to wear it, nor the tentacles.
The ship’s systems start coming online, more panels light up, and there are a variety of hums in the air.
“At least my fainting and the sudden Vyrpy attack created so much chaos that nobody will notice that we didn’t sign the wedding documents,” Mareliux says, still bent over the controls. “Those things give us a great deal of extra time.”
“So you did really faint?” I ask, having half suspected he was acting, for exactly the reason he just stated.
20
- Mareliux-
I lift my gaze from the instruments. “I did. You didn’t feel the immense surge of Syntrix, Umbra? It totally knocked me out. And I should add that the Vyrpy attack is real, too. Although these are both things that I should have thought of before, so I could fake them. I suppose I’m not used to this kind of deception.”
“I think that’s a good sign for who you are as a person,” Umbra says. “It was a good wedding. It must have looked real. Are you worried about what those soldiers will feel when you tell everyone that the wedding was fake?”
“I am,” I admit. It’s one of the things that has troubled me the most about this whole scheme. Those are loyal soldiers, and they really think they just saw me get married. “But once the deception is out, I will come here to Grefve and explain everything myself. As Emperor, if everything turns out well. They will understand.”
Grast and her squad exchange the gunships, camouflaging the dull black one they take out of theGladiuxand making it look as if it belongs to the base. Then they take one of the base’s sand-colored gunships and put it in the hangar on the ship, next to the seven black ones.
“Done, sir,” Grast reports on the comms. “We will stay down here in the hangar and do some maintenance on the ship. We may also want to modify it for the mission. If it becomes activated.”
