The Rogue Prince

“You can go through the checkpoint,” one said, jerking the muzzle of his blazer rifle toward the exit as he barely glanced at the truck.

  “Excellent. Mind if we bring her too?”

  The guard who had spoken scrutinized Erick more closely. “There’s a system-wide warrant out for her arrest.”

  Jelena was tempted to ask if there was a warrant out for their arrest. “What’s her crime?” she asked instead.

  Erick shot her a don’t-talk-to-them-while-I’m-trying-to-diddle-their-minds look.

  “The warrant doesn’t say, but it’s been issued by the Alliance, so we are obligated to enforce it.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re not with her, are you?” He looked over the truck.

  “The Alliance?” Masika mouthed, and Jelena sensed her surprise. Not comforting to know that Stellacor had favors it could call upon with the Alliance law enforcers, but if they were known for delivering organs and saving lives, why wouldn’t they have people who would support them? People who didn’t know about the scummy things they did in their labs.

  “Do we look like criminals?” Erick asked affably, leaning his arm on the door.

  The man squinted past him and looked at Jelena. She sat with her staff between her knees, looking perfectly normal, she thought.

  “All right, she’s a little shifty, but I’m just an engineer,” Erick said.

  I don’t think you’re doing this right, Jelena told him telepathically. They look more suspicious rather than less.

  Because you’re clearly shifty.

  I’m just sitting here.

  Shiftily.

  “She actually stole from us,” Jelena said, trying to pour some of her mind’s energy into making the words more persuasive. Just like herding cats into a truck, right? “It’s fortunate that you caught her. I’d thought the money would be gone. There’s two hundred tindarks in bills in one of her pockets. It was mine. We’re loyal Alliance citizens heading to the capital on Arkadius next. We could take her with us to save you some trouble.”

  Masika sent her a scathing look rather than an appreciative one.

  “Search her for physical currency,” one security officer said.

  Masika bristled like a cactus, and looked like she would object, but Erick widened his eyes at her, perhaps saying something into her mind. She stood still and allowed the search.

  The officer extracted a wad of bills. “Huh, two hundred. Just like she said.”

  “We’re doing a few errands here and then taking off,” Jelena went on, again trying to pour that persuasive element into her voice. Believe me, she thought, holding the man’s gaze. “If you let us take her, we’ll see to it that she’s turned in, and you won’t have to do any paperwork.”

  The officer looked at the other men, who shrugged back, their eyes appearing glassy. Maybe Erick was helping control them.

  “It sounds like a good idea to let them take her,” the speaker said, his voice wooden. None of his men objected. They lowered their rifles so the muzzles pointed at the ground.

  The one that had counted the wad of bills walked it over to the truck. “Here’s your money back, Miss.”

  Jelena reached across Erick to accept it, holding the man’s gaze, willing him to continue to comply. She felt dirty using these tricks, manipulating people, but she doubted Masika deserved to be incarcerated. Maybe she would just end up back with Stellacor, but maybe not. Jelena didn’t feel she had a grasp on their strange passenger. Ex-passenger, she reminded herself.

  Their movements as wooden as their words, the security officers walked back into their guard station. Masika hesitated, but at Erick’s finger flick, she climbed in, perching on a narrow bench behind the front seat. Erick drove off, his foot heavy on the pedal, and tires squealed as they rounded a corner.

  “You think I’m shifty?” Jelena asked.

  He grinned at her.

  “That’s the first thing you two have done that was what I expected,” Masika said.

  “Rescuing you from the grubby clutches of those guards?” Jelena asked, offering the bills to her over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t need to be rescued. I was about to shove their rifles up their favorite orifices. I’m talking about manipulating people’s minds. I thought all Starseers did that, but I don’t think you’ve tried on me or anyone else.”

  “Not all Starseers do that,” Erick said.

  “All the Starseers I know about do.”

  Jelena looked at her curiously. “You know Starseers?”

  “No, I just know about them. The mind manipulation thing is always a level-one skill in the games.”

  “Games?” Jelena asked at the same time as Erick roared around another corner and glanced back at her.

  “You’re not talking about Solar Age, are you?” he asked. “The depiction of Starseers is totally nadir in that game. None of the games get it right. They clearly need me as a beta tester.”

  “Have you applied?” Jelena asked.

  “All the time. I don’t think they believe I’m a Starseer. Besides, all they worry about getting right is the tech specifications on ships. That’s why Tomich gets invited to beta test everything.” Erick looked back at Masika again. “Do you play games?” His tone suggested he would find that even more surprising than her hidden artistic abilities.

  Masika hesitated, then shrugged. “I did some when I was at the university.”

  “Solar Age?”

  “That and Launch to Antares.”

  “Huh. What about Striker Odyssey?”

  “That wasn’t out yet when I . . . quit school.”

  “You should try it,” Erick said. “You’d level quickly if you’ve played Solar Age. We could use a few medics in our crew if you want to play on my server.”

  “Are you really trying to recruit her to play your game, Erick?” Jelena waved the wad of money at Masika. “If you don’t take this back, we’re going to spend it on dog food.”

  Masika took the bills and slipped them into her pocket again. “The Starseers in the games always wear robes while they’re manipulating people. I thought that was a requirement.”

  “We have robes,” Jelena said, “but Erick’s is always rumpled because he never hangs it up.”

  “Wearing a robe is a good way to stick out,” Erick said, careening around another corner, hitting a pothole, and eliciting yelps and barks from the back of the truck.

  “So is driving a hundred miles an hour. Slow down, will you?”

  Erick peeked at the mirror. “I guess. I saw a couple more security officers jogging out to that station. I thought we might be pursued. It won’t take long for those men to realize their desire to avoid paperwork was uncharacteristically great.”

  “Getting back later may be a challenge.” Something seemed to tickle the back of Jelena’s mind, a memory brushing her senses along with something real, something from the present, the now.

  “I’m sure those people will be off shift by the time we get all these animals off-loaded at the animal shelter. You said it’s a ways outside of town, right?”

  Jelena didn’t answer. She was distracted by that faint tickle, that faint brushing of her mind. She leaned toward her window, peering up into the sky, as if she might see a ship flying overhead.

  “Jelena?” Erick prompted.

  “Yes, let’s go to the shelter and get the animals taken care of.”

  “You all right? You look odd.”

  “I sense . . . I think Thor is here.”

  Chapter 13

  The bumpiness of the road out to Albrecht Ranch suggested people usually flew when they visited the area. The cityscape was still visible behind them, but grasslands had replaced houses and buildings, and it seemed like they were hundreds of miles from civilization instead of five or six. The rain-water-filled potholes in the road were large enough to qualify as ponds. Two suns burned low in the sky, shedding reddish light that reflected off the water.

  Erick had a tendency to drive through the pools instead of around them. Unfort
unate, since the window did not close on Jelena’s side. She’d wiped mud from her cheeks more than once.

  Masika still sat behind them, as she had since before they dropped off the animals. If she minded that Alfie had the more comfortable front seat spot between Jelena and Erick, she hadn’t mentioned it. Of course, with the rusty spring thrusting through the ripped material and prodding Jelena in the butt, she wouldn’t say the seat was that desirable.

  “You still sense him?” Erick asked, nodding to the dirt road ahead.

  A mesh electric fence and a wooden gate framed by peeled log posts had come into view. There hadn’t been any turnoffs for a while, and Jelena didn’t know what they would do when they reached that gate. Ring the bell and ask for an appointment with Albrecht? Did she want to warn him that Thor was coming for him? She’d prefer to find Thor and stop him herself.

  “I do,” Jelena said, though she didn’t sense that he was ahead of them. More that he was above them somewhere.

  “Can you tell if he’s ten miles away? Or a hundred? Or if he landed or just flew over?” Erick didn’t sound skeptical, not exactly, but he didn’t seem to know what she was experiencing. “Because we’re about to come to the end of the public road.”

  Jelena barely knew how to explain her connection with Thor, so all she said was, “I don’t think he’s landed yet. He seems to be up there somewhere.” She waved toward the sky back in the direction of the city. “Closer than before, but . . .”

  She frowned as the tickle at the back of her mind seemed to change. As she had long ago, when they’d been children on the run, and he’d been kidnapped by Tymoteusz, she got the sense that Thor was in trouble. She had no idea how she could tell or how they even shared a link after all this time.

  Jelena leaned out the truck’s window, peering toward the clear blue sky. Abruptly, his presence felt closer than it had for the last hour, much closer. He had to be flying in. Where would he land? At the ranch? Back at the space port? Albrecht must surely have security keeping an eye over his property.

  A black, dart-shaped ship appeared on the horizon, exhaust streaming behind it as it sped toward the city at an alarming speed. It was an old imperial star clipper. Was Thor piloting it? He wasn’t angling toward the space port. And he was coming in so fast. He’d have to do some fancy flying if he planned to land anywhere nearby.

  “Wait,” Jelena muttered. “That’s not exhaust.”

  “What?” Erick asked.

  “It’s smoke. Someone hit him. Or he’s having engine trouble.”

  A lot of engine trouble. Plumes of gray smoke streaked behind the clipper.

  A second ship came into view, one not much larger than the clipper, but it wasn’t damaged. Its hull gleamed gold under the suns’ influence as it sped after its prey. An Alliance military craft. One of the new Strikers.

  Jelena immediately thought of the ones downed back on Halite Moon. This one didn’t look like it was in any danger of crashing. Its prey on the other hand . . .

  Two crimson blazer blasts streaked toward the clipper. The damaged ship turned on its axis, as if its pilot—Thor—had known the attack was coming.

  The blasts passed on either side, close enough to shave any lint off the roof and belly of the craft. The clipper righted itself and looked like it was trying to zigzag, to make a more difficult target, but its movements were jerky, and she imagined the pilot fighting the stick, not getting the response he needed.

  Three more Alliance Strikers came into view, and Jelena groaned. No wonder Thor had been struck. How many were back there? How many were after him?

  “He’s losing altitude fast.” Erick had stopped the truck and was peering out his own window.

  “I think he’s already lost control.”

  “That ship is definitely crashing,” Masika said as it came into view through their windshield.

  The clipper’s wings wobbled again as more fire blazed through the sky after it, but this time, one of the blasts struck the craft. Fire spat from its port wing, and Jelena gasped as it was ripped off. More smoke poured from the craft. She reached out with her mind, not toward Thor but toward the ship following most closely. The pilot seemed to be human, a hulking man that barely fit in the cockpit.

  Avert your mission, she ordered, trying to persuade him the same way she had the security officers. You’ve already destroyed your target. He’s crashing. You’ve won. Avert now.

  She didn’t get any sense that the pilot was swayed or even heard her. In fact, she didn’t get a sense of the man at all, beyond his physical presence in the cockpit.

  “I think they’re drugged,” Erick said. Maybe he’d been trying to do the same thing. “More Qui-gorn.”

  Jelena slumped. Yes, that made sense. The Alliance knew it had sent its men after a Starseer assassin.

  The one-winged clipper spiraled, completely out of control now. It streaked over the ranch gate as it descended, smoke billowing behind it. It disappeared from sight when it flew low over a wooded area to the left of the road and maybe two miles into the ranch, but there was little doubt as to its fate. Soon, black smoke billowed up from the woods.

  Thor? Jelena tried to reach out to him. She hadn’t wanted to distract him while he was fleeing, but now, she wanted to know if he was conscious and how badly injured he’d been. Had that clipper come with an ejector seat? Had he been able to use it?

  She didn’t receive a response to her telepathic inquiry. She could still sense Thor’s aura, his life, but she had a feeling he might be unconscious.

  “Here comes his buddy,” Erick grumbled.

  The Striker flew over the fence and toward the trees. A chill ran through Jelena as she imagined some heartless assassin striding up to the wreck to slice a dagger across Thor’s throat before he woke up.

  The three ships that had been following at a distance also zoomed over the fence toward the trees.

  “Buddies,” Erick corrected as their noses dipped to land.

  “Go.” Jelena slapped his leg. “We have to help him.”

  “We can’t drive through that fence or gate.”

  Jelena gripped her staff with one hand and the door handle with the other. “Get me as close as you can, and I’ll go on foot.”

  Erick sighed but obeyed, and the truck surged forward. “We’ll go.”

  Alfie barked.

  Erick hit a pothole, and Masika’s head cracked against the ceiling.

  “Why do I have a feeling I should have let security arrest me?” she grumbled.

  “That could still happen,” Jelena said as Erick screeched to a stop inches from the wooden gate. She flung open the door and jumped out.

  A security camera on an articulating arm shifted to record their vehicle. And them.

  “Maybe you can take the truck off a ways and wait for us,” Erick suggested. “You’d be the escape-vehicle driver. Those people hardly ever get arrested in the vids.”

  “Don’t they usually get shot or blown up by the mafia?” Masika grumbled.

  Erick jumped out. “We’ll contact you when we need to be picked up.”

  “I don’t have a comm unit.”

  “We’ll contact you anyway.” Erick touched his temple, pointed to her head, and winked.

  She groaned. “You people are freaks.”

  Jelena jumped up to catch the top of the wooden gate—which was not electrified like the fence—and barely heard Erick’s response of, “Someday, you’ll have to tell us what you are, because we’re fairly certain it’s not a cyborg.”

  Jelena almost lost her staff as she pulled herself over the gate, but she managed to shove it over to the other side. It hit the ground, and she snatched it up as soon as she landed. The rutted and pockmarked road stretching deeper into the ranch was in no better condition than the one outside, so she took to the waist-high grass, figuring she could run through it just as quickly. The smoke was coming from deep within that wooded area, so she would have had to leave the road soon, regardless.

  An
engine rumbled behind them—Masika turning the vehicle around. Erick landed behind the gate and ran after Jelena, his longer legs allowing him to catch up easily.

  Jelena grunted as she stumbled over the uneven ground. Navigating it and pushing through the waist-high grass wasn’t as easy as she’d expected. The trees were also farther away than she’d judged. Soon, her breaths came in labored gasps, and she feared she would be forced to slow to a walk.

  No, she couldn’t. She could still sense Thor, his presence closer than ever, but who knew how much time he had? If he was injured, he might not be able to concentrate enough to use his powers. And if he was unconscious . . .

  Jelena’s foot found a hole—they were impossible to see under the heavy grass—and she gasped as pain shot up her ankle. She gritted her teeth and pushed on. Even though evening approached, the hot, muggy air had not abated, and her clothing soon stuck to her body. Sweat dripped down the side of her flushed face, adding further discomfort.

  “Thor, you better . . . appreciate this,” she growled through her labored breaths, urging her legs to keep going. She and Erick were almost to the trees. Hopefully, the groundcover would be easier to navigate in there.

  “You’re going through a lot of work for him. Especially since it looks like we won’t be able to get a ride to Arkadius in his ship.”

  She glared at him, both for the insinuation that Thor wasn’t worth the work and also because he wasn’t breathing hard. The bastard. Was he using some Starseer trick she didn’t know about? Or had he simply been spending more time training with Leonidas in the gym? All she wanted to do was bend over, grip her knees, and suck in deep breaths.

  “Did you wink at her?” Jelena asked, trying to take her mind off her burning legs. How long had it been since the crash? Those Alliance pilots could have landed and slit Thor’s throat multiple times by now.

  “Masika?” Erick glanced at her. “I did.”

  “Was it . . . a flirtatious wink? Did you change your mind . . . about the appeal of her wrists . . . when you learned she’d played . . . some of your games?”

  “I’m not sure. It wasn’t a conscious wink. Do you think . . . she’ll ever stop thinking of us . . . as thieves?” He finally sounded winded. Good.