Rebel Princess(3)

No further words from her captors as they motioned her out of the room  and down the hall. Obviously, news of the midnight invasion had spread.  Cadets stood in every doorway, some shocked and gaping, some cheering,  some . . .

"All hail Regula! Got the little witch at last."

"That'll teach the Psyclid bitch. Give her a good one for us!"

"Hey, no fair. We had our own plans for her."         

     



 

Kass could swear she still heard the jeers as the elevator doors slammed  closed. Dear goddess, these were her friends. Head bowed, her spirit as  crushed as her portapad, she let the three men lead her where they  would.

Kass was in the back seat of a groundcar driving toward the city when  she realized she'd picked up a scent in the elevator. A spicy blend she  recognized from the times Dorn Jorkan, Orion's First Officer, sat next  to her at Tactical. Or maybe her growing awareness of her captors was  due to the leader's arrogant king-of-the-galaxy stance, the flash of  hard blue eyes through the holes in his mask. Or maybe it was because  all three had taken care to say as little as possible. She knew these  men. And they weren't cadets.

They'd told her to pack . . . was it possible they were sending her  home, putting her on the next transport out before war was declared?

No. Kass stifled a sigh. The Titan InterSystem Spaceport was in the  opposite direction, the Fleet's main base as well. She was not being  deported, not going home to Psyclid.

The great lighted towers of Titan, the Regulon Empire's capital city,  grew taller and brighter, glowing in shades of white, gold, brilliant  red, and royal blue. A city of oversized imposing buildings by day,  Titan turned into beauty worthy of Psyclid at night. As much as Kass  admired the Regulons' dynamic approach to life, she could never  understand their concept of bigger is better, their devotion to rules  and regs, their lack of interest in anything but conquest.

No, that wasn't true. Regulons based their culture on the great  civilizations of old Earth. Philosophy and Spartan military discipline  from the Greeks, lessons in conquest from the Romans, Genghis Khan,  Alexander the Great, Karlmann, Napoleon, and Hitler. But they had little  interest in music, art, and architecture. Most particularly, they  abhorred the acrobatics of the mind practiced by Psyclids.

People fear what they don't understand.

Yet she'd flaunted her special skills in their faces. Oh, she'd thought  she was being subtle, that only the captain had caught her playing  games. But maybe not.

The Regulon Psyclidphobia was generic. No matter they shared the same  Earth ancestors, Psyclids were weird. A good enough reason to obliterate  them.

What a meshug she was to believe she could fit in.

So where were they taking her? Interrogation? But by whom? An internment  camp in the city seemed unlikely, Fleet HQ was behind them, and Kass  could think of no reason why she'd be turned over to the Titan City  Police.

The man sitting beside her shifted in his seat, drew a deep breath, and  spoke at last. "There are some things you need to know," said a voice  she'd know even if they'd been transported to the farthest corner of the  galaxy. "At the moment we're improvising. I hadn't expected things to  go bad quite so soon, and we're scrambling to put some very tentative  plans in place on the instant. But we had no choice. Last night Mica-ah,  there was talk at the Perseus Club. The minute war is declared-a matter  of days-some of the pilots you pissed off were planning gang rape."

She couldn't have heard right. Regulon officers would never-

"Followed by spreadeagling you, naked, on the nymph statue in the fountain."

The images that flashed through her head were so cruel, Kass couldn't  breathe, couldn't think. Bile rose in her throat. No-o-o! She'd loved  Orion, was so proud to serve those six weeks. Proud to serve with  Captain Talryn Rigel.

But of course every word he said was true. She was the fool, seeing only  what she wanted to see. Training, Kass, training. Suck it up. Deal with  it. "I should have listened to you."

"Yes."

"And now . . .?"

"Technically, you are a prisoner of war. You will be guarded around the  clock. Conditions will be stark at first, but they will improve. You  will be alone, perhaps for a very long time. No one can tell when, or  ever, it will be safe for a Psyclid to walk our streets again. But you  will be alive."

And forever a virgin. Perhaps she should have thrown herself at Tal  Rigel when she'd had the chance. As all the other females on Orion had  done. Or attempted to do. Girl-talk said he rarely succumbed to passion.  Only Liona Dann, Orion's psych doc, had been able to boast she could  guarantee the captain wasn't celibate. Kass couldn't stand the  woman-what Tal Rigel saw in that tall, cool, absolute bitch she could  not begin to imagine.

Not that it mattered. The captain had not come for her because he had  any interest in her as a woman. He was Talryn Rigel, son of one of  Regula's great families, brought up on honor, integrity, and all the old  Earth legends Regulons so much admired, from Greek gods to knights  rescuing fair maidens. It wasn't Kass Kiolani he was saving but a damsel  in distress, following a code far more ancient than the Regulon Empire.         

     



 

And yet one day soon, he would join-no, likely spearhead-the Fleet as it  made war on the defenseless planet of Psyclid. A planet that was  Regula's nearest neighbor, a planet that had been ignored as the Empire  expanded, considered worthless, beneath contempt. Everyone knew Psyclids  were a backward, bucolic race whose thought patterns didn't fit with  the rest of the galaxy. Just plain crazy, the lot of them. How many  times had Kass heard an incipient argument broken up with the Regulon  expression, "Hey, don't go Psyclid on me"?

So what had changed?

Show-off, show-off, show-off! You hit them where it hurt. Twisted the  knife. Not just last summer, but every day of every academic year.

You betrayed your people.

Couldn't be. Kass refused to listen to that nasty jeering voice deep  inside. The Regulon High Command had simply noticed the inexplicably  independent blip on their holoview of the Nebulon Sector and decided it  was time to do something about it. The recent hate campaign must have  been part of their plan. It had nothing to do with her personally.  Surely. But what about . . .

Mama. Papa. M'lani. Do you know they're coming for you?

Kass lifted her head and responded with the strict formality drummed  into her since childhood, a formality designed to cover even the most  challenging situations. "I am most sincerely sorry for causing so much  trouble. You and your friends have put yourselves at risk for me, and I  thank you. The fate you describe is beyond my imagination. I had not  thought it possible."

She thought she heard him murmur, "Nor did I."

The groundcar turned hard left into an alley behind an imposing building  Kass didn't recognize. One weak security light illuminated a small  door, dwarfed by the size of the loading platform next to it. Dear  goddess. Maybe these men weren't the friends, or at least sympathizers,  she'd begun to think they were.

Their leader-surely the captain, her captain-took Kass firmly by the  arm, steering her through the unlocked door, down a corridor, and into  what appeared to be a large storage room. Plasticrates were stacked to  the ceiling along one wall and what looked like haphazard stacks of  metal shelving along another. A uniformed guard, armed with a P-11 as  nasty-looking as the one held by her captors, stepped out of the  shadows.

"See that she stays here," the leader told him. "Further orders later."

"Yes, sir."

The leader turned back to Kass. "Leave here and you're dead. Is that clear?"

She almost snapped out, "Aye, Captain," but settled for a simple yes.

To her astonishment the three men spun around and marched out, leaving  her alone with the guard who looked as uncertain about what was going on  as Kass was.

That was it? They'd done their job, parked her in a warehouse, and  simply abandoned her? Going off to what? Frightening her peaceful,  unarmed planet into submission?

"Cot in the corner," the guard told her, jerking his head toward the room's left corner. "Next to the sani-closet."

Still stunned by the abrupt departure of her kidnappers-rescuers?-Kass  wandered in the direction the guard had indicated. Cot indeed. Nothing  more than a thin mattress on legs and a blanket. With her carry-all set  neatly on top. The sani-closet was exactly that, a closet barely big  enough to turn around in. Never in her life, not even on board the  confined space of Orion, had Kass Kiolani been expected to live in such .  . . such . . .

Leave here and you're dead.

As prisons went, she should thank the goddess. She would endure.

Two mornings later, Kass's vow of endurance was already listing badly as  she faced the reality of living in isolation day after day, week after  week, year after year. She was sitting on the side of her cot,  attempting to hold a paper plate in her lap while buttering a muffin and  trying to shut out the smell of coffee rising from the cup sitting on  the faustone floor at her feet. As much as she liked coffee, it reminded  her of breakfasts in other times and other places, all infinitely  superior to this one.