Rebel Princess(5)

The sonorous notes of the Regulon national anthem suddenly filled the  cubicle. For some reason the newsroom had turned up the volume. Kass  glanced at the screen. The large black and white flag of the Empire was  displayed against the wall behind the newscaster's desk. Kass sighed as  the bombastic notes of the national anthem blared out of the portapad's  small speaker. Regula must have triumphed again. Down with another star  system.

The volume suddenly dropped, the newscaster raised a solemn face from  the small portapad on his desk. "Citizens of Regula Prime . . ." He  paused, swallowed, visibly moved. He rubbed two fingers to his temple  and began again. "We have received word of a severe blow to forces of  the Regulon Fleet."

The announcer had Kass's full attention.

"During an action on the outer rim, the huntership Orion was attacked by  an overwhelming number of Nyx forces. Fleet Admiral Rigel has announced  that Orion was totally destroyed. There were no survivors. The time and  place of a memorial service for our gallant fighting men will be  announced shortly. Admiral Rigel's son, Captain Talryn Rigel, was among  the three hundred lost on Orion. We will bring you further details as  soon as they become available."         

     



 

The newsman, still with solemn face, moved on. Kass slid slowly out of  her chair, dropping onto the cold faustone floor. Back against the  cubicle walls, she drew up her legs, hugged her knees, and dropped her  forehead. Shivers wracked her body, her teeth chattered. It shouldn't  have mattered so much. She barely knew Tal Rigel. But over the years,  the months, the endless days, she'd needed someone to talk to, and she'd  chosen the captain. Her captain. He sat by her side while she worked  her way through the Archive's horde of ancient books. She argued  navigation problems with him while studying on her portapad. He sat in  an imaginary chair next to her when she ate. He hovered, watching, while  she showered. He filled her dreams at night. Best friend. Only friend.  Lover.

And he was gone.

The shivers stopped abruptly. Kass's head rose from her knees. Other  than personal tragedy, what did Tal Rigel's death mean to her? She'd  assumed that one day he'd come back for her, and now that was never  going to happen. What if the credits stopped coming? No food, no guards,  Kass Kiolani exposed to a rabid Psyclid-hating Regulon horde.

Or was Admiral Rigel involved, as she'd long suspected? It hadn't taken  her long to discover he was on the board of the Regulon Interplanetary  Archives. In that case, two, no, three possibilities. If the goddess  smiled, she'd be sent back to Psyclid, which had become a vast  internment camp designed to keep strange Psyclidian skills from  contaminating the good people of Regula. More likely, she'd be  transferred to a much less comfortable prison, perhaps becoming a lab  rat for Regulons who wanted to know how a Psyclid's special abilities  worked.

Or, third, some unknown fund would ensure she was penned up here forever  and ever, growing old without ever again seeing her family . . . or the  Blue Moon of Psyclid, hanging huge and low in the sky.

Without breathing fresh air, without a husband, children . . .

Dimi! She was Kass-

No! Knees still weak, she used the chair to pull herself to her feet.  Back straight, head high, chin up-as the females in her family had been  trained for a thousand years or more, she made a vow. She was L'ira  Faelle Maedan Orlondami, Psyclid Princess Royal, and she would survive.

By the official calendar of Regula Prime

One year, three months, and nine days later

Cort Baran ambled toward Kass, carrying her lunch tray. "Ay, Kiolani, you see what that Sirkan guy's done now?"

"S'sorrokan," Kass corrected with a smile. "Haven't checked the news this morning. What is it this time?"

Baran placed her lunch on a small table at one end of her room. "Snagged  the Deimos, that's what. M-class frigate on patrol near Talos."

"The crew?"

"The usual. Took the ones willing to turn rebel, left the others on a  hunk of rock with a distress beacon. Got to hand it to the man, he's  good. But, mark my words, the Fleet'll get that batani pirate yet."

Kass shook her head. "He's a rebel, Cort, not a pirate."

"Takes merchant ships too, don't he? That makes him a pirate."

"Well, I guess his people need supplies just like the rest of us."

Baran gave her his wise-old-man nod. "Of course you like him, Kiolani.  He's twitching Imperial tail. Guess you can't help but think he's a  hero."

Kass toed an invisible speck on the spotlessly clean floor. "You know  you spend half your shift searching for news of the rebellion. It's the  most interesting thing that's happened since you ended up in solitary  along with me."

Baran's bushy eyebrows twitched as he frowned, his gray eyes clouded. "I  get to go home at night, Kiolani. That's a long way from solitary. And  you know I'm sincerely sorry for it. Never could figure out why they've  kept you here so long."

"I am"-Kass drew a ragged breath-"I am grateful for your kindness,  Baran. You have made my life here tolerable." They exchanged nods, and  Kass settled to her meal before returning once again to the Archives.

She meant it when she called Cort Baran friend. The older man, now a  grandfather, was the one constant in her life. Other guards came and  went, perhaps as many as eight different faces over the past three  years. But he wasn't her only friend. When she'd stopped shutting Tal  Rigel out of her mind in order to avoid the pain, she'd finally realized  that the wonderful thing about a fantasy best friend and lover was that  he couldn't die. She could still talk to him, share her life with him.  Dream erotic dreams of him . . .

Well, not quite. When it came to erotic dreams, virgins suffered from a  decided handicap. She'd attempted enlightenment through erotic sites on  her portapad, but had quickly decided if that was love, she'd stick with  her dreams, thank you very much.         

     



 

When she'd left Psyclid, second only to her thirst for what the Academy  could teach was her determination to lose her virginity. All part of her  grand personal rebellion. But at the crucial moment, something awful  had happened. She discovered being naked, being flesh to flesh with a  man she barely knew, appalled her. The strict standards she thought  she'd put behind her had jerked her back to reality as if she were a  puppet dancing at the end of a string so long it went all the way back  to her home planet.

She hadn't experimented again, adding further to her isolation at the  Academy. And to the Regulon conviction that Psyclids were weird. So with  no truly intimate memories to fall back on, all she had was her  fantasies of Tal Rigel. In her heart she mourned him still. But that  didn't keep him from hovering by her side every minute of every day.  They had embraced a thousand times. He kissed her and she heard the song  of the Aurelian lark. She kissed him back, and her prison became a  Psyclidian meadow filled with flowers . . .

Were they still there, the flowers? Or had they been crushed under the treads of Regulon war machines?

Kass rejected reality. Reality was not her friend. Was her serene green  and blue planet now as charcoal as Regulon Fleet uniforms, her mother,  father, sister reduced to cosmic dust? Reality also reminded her that  Captain Talryn Rigel of Orion had been a man who seldom smiled, a  high-ranking Fleet officer who adhered to all the rules and regs. You  are a prisoner of war. He might have tempered Regulon justice with an  occasional flash of noblesse oblige-Cadet Kass Kiolani did not deserve  rape or the degradation of being displayed naked in the Academy's  courtyard fountain. But the truth was, Captain Tal Rigel had abandoned  her. And gotten himself killed in a meaningless corner of the galaxy  Regula wanted only because it wasn't already theirs.

Her Tal Rigel, however, was quite different. Strong but yielding. A man  who loved and allowed himself to be loved. A man who saw beauty in the  world around him. A man who smiled, but always with a sadness in the  depths of his eyes that reminded her he was only a figment of her  imagination. The real Tal Rigel was part of a debris field drifting  above the latest planet Regula had targeted for submission.

Her Tal Rigel had never existed.

So now-though she'd never let Cort know it-she had added a second hero  to her fantasies. Nameless, faceless, he challenged her dream Tal Rigel  for her favor.

S'sorrokan. Rebel leader. Vital. Alive. And out there flicking the Empire's tail.

And someday . . .

Reality, Kass, reality. It will take a generation to whip the Empire.

If ever.

Fyd! A person could live only so long on dreams.





Chapter 4


By the official calendar of Regula Prime

One month, three days later

Another new guard, this one on the evening shift, and for the first time  in nearly four Reg years Kass felt uneasy. So far her guards had been a  light burden to bear. She had come to look on them as a barrier to keep  xenophobia out rather than armed security to keep her in. After all,  she was Academy-trained, she had her special gifts. She could have  escaped at any time. But to what?