Princess of the Void

The interceptor explodes. Pieces of black-and-red shrapnel spin through space, continuing their trajectory like a cloud of buckshot, trailing magma and glittering broken glass.

“How did we err, Grantyde?” Sykora taps the simulator screen.

“We exploded.”

“True. We’d prefer not to explode. How would we have survived?”

Grant exhales heavily and sits back, loosening his death grip on the yoke. “Point defense membrane ran out of juice.”

“Correct. And so…”

“So we reroute thruster power,” he says. “And slow down.”

“Very good.” She punches the reset and the digital cockpit appears once again, hovering on the outskirts of the asteroid field. “There’s no time limit, remember. Don’t be afraid to stall your momentum and think things through. I have to dash to a soiree with Vora and Chancellor Treivu after this next attempt. You can remain here with Ajax if you’d like to keep practicing.”

Somehow he had thought that, when she led him to the hangar, they were going to space. Instead, Sykora’s taken him to a rack of egg-shaped simulator pods, to crash a virtual interceptor into asteroids for a few hours. The first few courses were easy, euphorically so. Since hitting the belt he has died several dozen deaths.

“Can we backtrack?” he asks. “I liked that lunar obstacle course.”

“You don’t want the tutorials,” she says. “You want the belt. Pressure makes diamonds. You’re going to know these controls inside and out by the time you’re through.”

“We won’t be flying in that, right?” He gestures to the craggy belt of destruction that has killed him a half a dozen times. “There’s so much open firmament.”

“Every recruit needs to survive the belt.” She ruffles his hair. “Then and only then does her derrière grace an actual cockpit. I made it, after I don’t know how many explosions. And plenty of true knuckle-draggers made it, too. And so will you. This is the final course before you earn your maiden flight.”

“It’s so fast. Feels impossible.”

She cocks her head. “How did it feel the first time you picked up your guitar?”

He purses his lips. “Impossible.”

“And now, you’re so good you charmed an alien princess into kidnapping you.” Her tail tickles his nose. “A little better every time, yes?”

His grin twitches her tail away. “A little,” he affirms.

“I’d like you to try something for me. Let’s fly through like this.” She reaches over to the controls, her hand minuscule on the Maeykonite-sized joystick, and rotates them along their longitude. The asteroid belt tilts and disorients. “Sometimes it’s a matter of changing your perspective on a problem.”

Grant was bracing for friction. For the sass she so often exhibits to make Sykora’s instruction acerbic. But his wife has been the picture of patience as a teacher. Mellow, encouraging, unfussy.

The notion arises in him, and refuses his attempts to shoo it away, that the Princess of the Black Pike would be an excellent mother.

She is also—and this is nothing new, of course—desperately sexy. Ever since the kiss, Grant’s brainstem has proclaimed open rebellion on the rest of his mind. He’ll glance over and she’ll be sitting casually in a way that softly pushes her chest up against her dress’s hemline and it’s all he can do to keep the vessel in one piece. She’ll sometimes get on all fours to reach some instrument or dial on his side of the cockpit, and every time she does he gets a perfect view down her graceful spine right to her big round butt. The kiss was a mistake. Now he knows what that ass feels like, grinding against his hips. He knows how fast her tail wags. He knows the sweet fine-grain scrape of her tongue, like stubble. He wants to know it on more places than his lips.

He chooses to blame his next death, which comes even faster than the last, on that intrusive thought. He blows air out through an exasperated huff.

“Keep experimenting with those angles.” Sykora cracks the wing door on the simulator pod. “You might find one that clicks with you. Would you like to come with me for this chancellor tête-à-tête?”

“Not sure.” He rolls the view clockwise. “What’s your opinion on Chancellor Treivu?”

“She is the very blueprint of an Imperial Core chancellor,” she says.

“I’m going to guess that’s something close to Tedious Blowhard.”

“Tedious blowhard isn’t close. It’s spot-on.”

“I’ll keep practicing, then, if that’s all right.”

“It’s more than all right.” She kisses his temple. “How very charming to see my husband’s doggedness attached to something besides sexually bamboozling me. You didn’t hear that, Sergeant Ajax.”

The shiny-helmed marine outside the simulator stands at parade rest as Sykora emerges from the pod. “Hear what, Majesty?”

“Well done. Should I bring you something to eat once I’m through, Grantyde, or will you return to the cabin before the hour’s struck?”

“Call me once you’re out and I’ll let you know where I’m at.” He holds up his communicator. “We’ll see how far I can get before I start smashing shit at random in here.”

She slaps the top of the pod. “If you do, it’s coming out of your pay.”

“Do I get paid?”

“You do not, darling. So no smashing.” She nods to Ajax. “I leave my consort in your capable care, Sergeant.”

“Majesty.” Ajax plants his fist on his chest in salute.

“Have fun, gals,” Sykora calls, as she saunters off the sim deck.

He watches her hips rock gently back and forth as she sways away.

He will free himself. He will not break first. And the moment he is free, he will fuck the Princess so hard it breaks Waian’s gyros all over again.

Grant plugs himself back in. It turns out nothing fixes sexual frustration like asteroid belt frustration. Six more attempts. Six more explosions, watching that broken fuselage spin off into the abyss. He tries changing the angle. The farthest he gets is after a 270 degree counterclockwise cant. He starts the sim that way every time now. When the rapidfire beepbeepbeepbeep of his point defense membrane is lodged so far into his gray matter he’s in danger of autolobotomy, he departs the pod and shakes his kinks and cramps out. The hard plastic sim seat, like everything else, is just a little too small, its controls a tad too low. Life on the Pike reminds him of one of those historic house museums, that lets you tour the preserved pilgrim settlements. How surprisingly small everything is. He doesn’t feel like a giant, not exactly. He just feels awkward.

Ajax stands nearby, dispassionate as a statue. Grant’s never seen him out of his marine armor. Its sleek black exterior, combined with the sheaths built around his horns, makes his impromptu bodyguard resemble a demonic rhinoceros beetle.

“Prince Consort.” Ajax gives him a shallow bow. It’s disconcerting, not being able to see his eyes. He didn’t realize the man was observing him at the same time.

Grant takes a sip from the miniature thermos of iced tea Sykora provided him. “Have you ever passed the belt, Ajax?”

“Stopped trying after attempt three, sire.” Ajax shakes his head. “Hate flying.”

Grant raises his eyebrows. “You’re a soldier aboard a voidship and you hate flying.”

“Yes, Prince Consort. Too much of a leatherneck.”

“But there’s nowhere else you’d rather be?”

“Nowhere else, sire.”

“You can just call me Grant if you like. Or Grantyde, I guess.”

“Understood, sire.”

“Look, I don’t have to keep talking to you if you don’t want.” He opens the catch on the sim pod door again. “It’s just that you’re the only Taiikari guy I’m regularly around. I’m trying to get my feet on the ground.”

“I’m at your disposal, sire.”

Grant decides this is just how Ajax is. Perhaps he’s making very expressive faces underneath the blackout sheen of his visor. Best to take the guy at his word. “How did you end up aboard the Black Pike?”

“I joined the ZKZ,” Ajax says. “They assigned me here.”

“ZKZ?”

“Imperial Void Armada, Prince Consort.”

“That doesn’t…” He hesitates. Of course, that’s probably the right acronym. He’s not speaking English right now. The words he hears aren’t the words he says. Every time he remembers, it’s as though his brain trips over its feet and he needs a moment to stand up and wipe himself off.

“How did you end up in the ZKZ?” he asks.

“My mother engaged me to her business partner to improve my family’s finances,” Ajax says. “I enlisted instead.”

“That’s horrible, man. I’m sor—”

He cuts himself off. Ajax’s head tilts.

“It angers me that such an injustice happened to you. How’s that?”

“Well phrased, sire.”

“How common is that? Trying to sell your sons off?”

“It’s the way things work on the Imperial Core worlds, sire. A well-bred son is a valuable asset. Running away to join the Armada is a popular escape.”

“I mean no offense to you personally, Ajax, but the more I learn of the Taiikari Empire the more I’m repulsed by it.”

“No offense taken, sire,” Ajax says. “My mother is a pitiful woman. But if she hadn’t done what she did, I would still be Ajax of Clan Pelta. Now I’m Ajax of the Black Pike.”

Grant nods. “It’s lucky to have you.”

“Thank you, sire.”

Grant raises the sim pod door and stoops his head to fit through.

“Grantyde.”

He looks over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“The stories you hear about the Imperial Core…” Ajax pauses. Grant wishes he could see the man’s face. “It’s different in the Void. We’re on the frontier. It may not seem it, from your place as a husband-of-the-void, but the laws, the traditions, they’re relaxed. Out here, you’re either a zealot, a burnout, or a castoff. And your wife wouldn’t suffer the shortsightedness of a zealot on her crew.”

Grant straightens up again. “Are you a burnout, a castoff, or a candy-striped combination?”

An exhalation that sounds shockingly close to laughter from Ajax. “The last one.”

“Which one is Sykora?”

Ajax doesn’t answer for a moment. Carefully, he says, “I did not mean to imply anything about the Princess, sire.”

“It’s just us, Ajax. I swear. Man to man.”

“Every void princess is a castoff,” Ajax says. “The ZKZ is where they banish Imperial daughters, to keep them far from the Core and cut off their lineages. Commanding a voidship is a punishment.”

“What’s Sykora being punished for?”

“Being born, sire.”

Grant drums his fingers on the sim pod door. You surely don’t think your wife is free, do you?

He opens the pod the rest of the way. “Thank you for trusting me with all this talk, Ajax.”

“Of course, sire.”

“I’m going to make three more attempts, and then if I don’t leave the pod, I need you to come and pull me out.”

“Not going to do that, sire.”

Reset. He rams directly into a spiky silicon rock.

Reset. He clips a wing on a splintered stalactite and tumbles into scrapmetal.

Reset. He doesn’t even know how it happens this time. He just explodes. Okay. Time to throw in the towel.

Despite the marine’s insubordination, Grant manages to pull himself away from the sim after three more pyrotechnic failures. His eyes are bleary and his shoulders are tight with the stress of the course. He’s hungry. That’s why he keeps messing up. He clambers out of the sim pod and stretches his back out. “All right, Jax. Let’s get out of here.”

If Ajax doesn’t like the nickname, he’s too deferential to bring it up. Instead he offers a nod and a “sire,” and leads Grant out of the sim bay, past racks of egg-shaped pods.

Grant returns to the cabin; Ajax assumes his guardianship outside. It’s a few degrees cooler in here than the rest of the vessel. There’s some kind of dampening happening behind the mahogany-and-silk walls, too. The omnipresent mechanical hum is muffled here. He hears the organic rhythm of his breath louder. In the kitchenette he finds a glass container, its surface wrapped in wax paper, beneath which is some kind of flaky, syrupy casserole. Reminds him of a baklava.

He cuts himself a piece of it and continues his exploration of Taiikari cuisine. This tastes like a baklava, too. More herbaceous, and with an odd savory edge to it. The Taiikari seem eager to mix sweet-and-savory.

His hunger tamed, Grant washes the tangy syrup from his fingers and slides his guitar out from under his spartan cot.

He’s barely put his fingerpads to the strings when a strident arpeggio plays through the intercom, and the windowed wall’s center pane flashes, in blocky green glyphs:

INCOMING HAIL

A panel slides out of a nearby stripe of vertical redwood, a row of buttons glowing across it. Maybe it’s best to let this go to cosmic voicemail. A disconcerting amount of time passes and the glyphs minimize, scooting into the corner as ONE MISSED HAIL.

He has just enough time to relax before the window begins its aria again. This time he stands and paces to the panel and back before sitting down again. Does the wider firmament know about him, yet? Would his presence cause issues for Sykora?

Another missed hail, and just as quickly another singing attempt. He pulls out his communicator and keys to the MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE entry. “Sykora,” he says, and watches her name blink into view in the text field. “I’m back at the cabin. Someone keeps hailing. It’s the third time now. What should I do? Should I answer?”

The third hail dismisses before his wife’s texted reply.

hi hubby! your first text to me!!! im going to get it framed hehe

answer whoever it is and fob her off ok? tell her ill return her call shortly

compulsion doesnt work over video. no need to pretend

but do please hang up in an outraged huff if its some bastard who tries >:(

He investigates the wall panel that lit up. Is there a way to call back?

The communicator keeps chirping. He pulls it from his pocket. Sykora has sent several followup messages. Another one appears as he watches.

see you soooooon dear!!

i hope the asteroid belt wasnt too painful and my pod is still in one piece. ;)

Itll all be worth it youll see. you are going to have SO much fun doing the real thing!!!

this meeting is INTERMINABLE by the way. wise of you to miss it.

im bringing vora back to the cabin with me to debrief. hope you dont mind. youll like her i think! shes a dear friend

and then after that, i will spend the rest of the day draping myself on you like an annoying kindek.

(thats a little lap pet. cant imagine maekyon has them.)

He grins. He’d wondered what his wife’s texting style would be.

His wife. Grant gazes at her entry on his contact list. The words go fuzzy as his eyes unfocus in thought. She’s called herself his wife since their first day on the Pike. Everyone has. And now he is, too. When did that happen? She abducted you, Grant. You’re forgetting. You’re letting her win. You’re letting her change you.

He fidgets with the scroll wheel. Maybe that’s what he wants. Maybe this yearning for freedom is Maeykonite foolishness.

No, Grant. It’s human foolishness. Grant is a human. And he will not submit.

The window rings again, jolting him from his reverie with such force that he nearly drops his communicator. He scrambles to the wall panel. Why aren’t these buttons labeled? Taiikari seem to use blue the same way Maekyon used green. He hits the blue button.

The center window panel transforms into a view of a Taiikari woman, high-cheekboned and stern-looking, seated in a cream-colored chamber festooned with draping tapestries and elegant brass fixtures. Her ears are so laden with gold and platinum that he isn’t sure how she can keep them upright.

“Good afternoon,” she says. “You, I think, would be the Princess’s new Consort.”

“Yes, ma’am. Grantyde of the Black Pike.” He bows at the waist. “May I know your name?”

“Marquess-Palatine Inadama of Taiikar,” says Marquess-Palatine Inadama of Taiikar. “Calling from the Imperial Core. I pray it’s not an imposition, Prince Consort. But I’d like to speak with my daughter.”