Chapter Ten

Jago

Blake was pacing and I sat on a soft chair in his room, watching him. It was evening, and I’d worried and fretted over Lord Dominiko all day since that disastrous meeting. So had Blake, apparently, because the minute I brought up my grandfather, he went off like one of the fireworks he enjoyed on his Earthan “holidays.”

“Irritating, insufferable man. I did the best I could, baby, and I’ve been talking to him for hours, but your grandfather is determined to see Lord Dominiko executed. He says the insult to him is far too great, and if others see him let this Pton lord get off so easily then the rest of us in the family are fair game. I got him to agree to wait until morning to make a final decision, in the hope that he’d calm down some, but that damnable temper of his has taken him over completely. He promised me he would think about it, but I believe he’s only trying to humor me.”

I grabbed his hand as he passed, forcing him to sit down beside me. “Omak-ahn, I have an important question for you. Do you trust me?”

“Do I what? Of course, I do, dear, but what has this to do with…”

“I need you to do something for me,” I interrupted. He sighed and nodded.

“All right. What do you want me to do?”

“Give me the access code to your ship.”

“What?”

“I know you have it.”

“Yes, of course I do, but why do you want it?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Naturally, I do.”

“I want to break Lord Dominiko out of jail so he can leave the ship and get away.”

“What?”

“You heard me correctly. I want to get Niko the hell off this ship and get him to safety. I know Grandfather won’t change his mind. He’s far too angry and stubborn. You know it too.”

“He can be insufferable, yes.”

“I can’t let him execute Lord Dominiko.”

“You called him Niko just now.”

I felt my face flame. “Maybe I did. I’ve heard his grandmother say it, and it-it seems to suit him.”

“He’s extraordinarily handsome, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is. I-I can’t let him be put to death. And he really was just doing as he was ordered. He was…kind to me onboard his ship. He offered to send Rakkur to his clinic. He wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“Baby, you barely know him.”

“I know him well enough to know that I don’t like to think of something happening to him. It’s hard to explain. But I guess I do have feelings for him. Of some kind. Maybe it’s my Tygerian genes, sparse though they may be. Maybe I imprinted on him somehow, or maybe it’s a—what do they call it in those books you read? A crush. But I need to get him out of this. I have to.”

“By stealing the striker? Davos will go after him.”

“Not if he disappears into the rift.”

“It’s far too dangerous , Jago. If Davos finds out—and he will—he’ll be so furious, he might lock you up.”

“Hear me out, please. Let me help him. It isn’t an alternate universe, like you experienced. It’s a different galaxy, and they have different ideas about things. He was following orders so he shouldn’t be punished so harshly for it. Let me send him back to the Pton planet and let him carry out this mission of his that his grandmother wanted him to. Let him kill Emperor Linnius, if he can. Then once that dictator is gone, we can all live in peace, both those on his planet and on ours. It could save countless lives, omak-ahn. Emperor Linnius is savage and without pity from what I’ve heard of him.”

“Jago, be serious. This would be horribly dangerous for you. Guards may shoot at him and you could be collateral damage. How do you know this Dominiko wouldn’t harm you? He’s a stranger to us all, and I can’t risk it. I might never see you again! No, it’s completely out of the question!”

“Omak-ahn, listen to me. I know you’re frightened for me, but I have to do what I think is right. I believe in Niko, and I think he might be able to assassinate this tyrant.”

Blake pulled away with a wounded sound, but I took his hand in mine and turned him back around to face me.

“Listen to me for just a moment. I promise I’ll be brief, and if you still won’t agree, I’ll find another way. I don’t think you know this, but my favorite quote is really old, from a book of Earthan poets that came from you. I found it in my omak’s books as a child and wrote it down to store on my communicator, so I’d never forget it. It says, ‘Like Magellan, let us find our islands to die on, far from home, from anywhere familiar. Let us risk the wildest places, lest we go down in comfort and despair.’”

“That’s a quote from a poem by Mary Oliver. I gave Anarr that book a long time ago when you were just... God, baby…do you even know who Magellan was?”

“An ancient explorer from Earth. I looked him up. He died from a poison arrow on an island far from his home and was buried there.”

“I wonder if his family ever even knew what happened to him?” He closed his eyes, and I regretted putting this pressure on him, but it was far too late now.

“It’s too much to ask of me, Jago. If I let you do this, Davos won’t forgive either me or you. He’ll be furious. No, I can’t do it.”

“I want to have adventures, like you did and like my father did and all my uncles. I want to risk the wild places and not just live in comfort—and despair. I think it would kill me not to travel among the stars and do the things I want to do. This is my chance to do something bold and adventurous—and save Niko’s life at the same time. Please, omak-ahn. You, of all people, have to help me.”

“Me of all people?”

“Yes. You did exactly what it says in the poem. And one day, a long time from now, I hope and pray, you’ll have found your island to die on, far from home. But only look at the life you’ve lived. You did exactly what you wanted to and never looked back.”

He stared at me for a long moment and just as I thought I’d failed to make my case to him, he pulled out his communicator, and I thought for one crazy moment that he might be calling the king. Instead, he brought up a screen and showed it to me—it was the access code for the striker.

“I hate this, and I can’t believe I’m doing it.” He grabbed my hand in his. “Damn it, Jago, you better be careful. I heard what you said about traveling in the stars and finding adventure. I can read between the lines here. What are you planning? Tell me you’re not crazy enough to go with this alien?”

“No, I don’t want to go with him. I just want to get him away. Then when he comes back after the assassination to save his grandmother, he’ll know who helped him. Maybe even admire my courage a little.”

“All right. This is dangerous, so give him the code and get back here. Don’t get too close. We know he’s taken hostages before, and there’s nothing to stop him from doing it again.”

“I’ll be careful. I promise.”

“And whatever you do, don’t let him talk you into going with him .”

“I won’t. I’d never do that. I promise. I only want to give him his chance. Thank you, omak-ahn. I love you so much.” I pulled him into a hard hug and then I was gone, racing through the corridors as fast as I could without attracting too much undue notice. I stopped by my quarters long enough to change clothing—my sapphire robes were far too distinctive. And I grabbed a bag that I’d hastily put together, with and some food and water I’d asked the galley staff to bring me. I had no idea if the striker had any supplies on board. I wanted only to get to Lord Dominiko as fast as I could, so afterward I hurried down to the corridor where the holding cells were, let myself in and went down to the one where I’d seen him early that morning.

When we first arrived for our meeting, we’d watched him on closed circuit cameras as the guard let him out of his cell before he went in for the meeting. The king had wanted to overhear any conversation he might have with his grandmother. I’d taken close note of the code the guard had tapped in, and I replicated it now on his door. It was a simple but important number, from a date in Tygerian history and easy to remember—it was the date of the peace treaty between the Axis and its enemies of the Alliance. Every school child learned it when they were young.

I put in the code and the door slid open. Niko had been sitting on his cot, staring into space. He looked up at me, surprised to see the door open and even more surprised to see me standing there.

“What are you doing here? Does anyone know you’re here?”

“No. I’ve come to help you escape. The king is unforgiving, and he’s angry. This isn’t going to end well for you. I think he’ll try to have you executed in the morning.”

“I figured as much. But what do you mean, you’ve come to help me escape? Where exactly do you propose I go?”

“I’m going to give you the access codes for a ship you can steal.”

He stared at me and blinked a few times. “I-I must have misunderstood you.”

“No, I mean it. I have the access codes for my grandparents’ striker. The one they arrived on. You simply have to get it away from the ship and then fly it into the rift before they can catch you.”

“Oh, is that all I have to do? And how do you imagine I can manage to do that?”

“I thought I’d pull the emergency alarm. It’s late and most people are in their quarters and undressed. By the time they’ve thrown on clothing and made it out of their rooms, they’ll be in some confusion and disarray. You’ll run to the striker and leave the docking portals and then race toward the rift. It’s a fast ship, if you’re not familiar with it, small and sleek. If your luck holds, you’ll be in and on your way before they can marshal a response.”

He stared at me like I’d just proposed he blow up the ship with all hands onboard, including us.

“Don’t look like that. It will work, I think. And once you’re inside the rift, you can make our way to your planet.”

“No. It’s out of the question, princeling. Don’t get me wrong—I can’t thank you enough for trying to help me, though I think you need to leave now and take pains not to let anyone know you were ever here. I can’t fathom that this would even work, but if it did, they’d take it out on my grandmother.”

“No, I don’t think they would. She’s a foreign queen and they have an alliance with her husband. But we don’t need to stand here and argue over this,” I said, glancing back down the corridor. “Come quickly and be on your way before one of the guards comes to check.”

He stared at me, his eyes wide, and then he seemed to come to a sudden decision. He rushed over to me and took my hand in his. A reckless look came over his face and he grinned. “I guess I have no other choice. I think this is doomed to failure, but all right then—let’s do this.”

He pulled me to the door and looked both ways before stepping out into the passageway. I nodded over toward one of the many alarms affixed to the walls, and then I boldly went up to it, smashed the glass and pressed the alarm. Immediately, a loud blaring noise began, so loud I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shield them.

Fire was always an extreme, life or death kind of emergency onboard a ship in space, as the options were extremely limited, so an alarm was definitely cause for deep concern. I grinned at him, but he surged forward, took my arm, and began to drag me down the passageway with him. I gave out a muffled squeal and he headed down to the next level, where the shuttle ports were located. By this time, he’d picked me up, carrying me tucked against him, one hand over my mouth. The striker was located on one of the shorter arms of the docking station, and he raced toward it, not meeting anyone along the way. My weight and my struggles against him didn’t slow him down in the least.

I could imagine that it was pretty chaotic elsewhere on the ship, as the crew determined whether it was a false alarm and then got everyone back into their quarters. They would have seen me pulling the alarm by now on the cameras that were all over the ship and know that I helped him. They’d think I was escaping with him.

He was able to make it down the dock and up the ramp to the ship without seeing a soul, and when he got to the striker, he quickly used the access codes I’d given him to get inside.

He tossed me into the co-pilot’s seat and pointed a finger at me. “Stay still and you won’t be hurt!”

I jumped to my feet immediately and he threw me back down. He tore a long strip off my shirt and tied my arm to an arm of the seat, holding me in place with one hand on my chest. He was so strong. Yelling and cursing at him, I fought him hard, but it was no use. He wrangled my other arm down when he finished with the first one and tied it as well.

The ship was small and very compact. The console sat up front with two large chairs in front of it, usually occupied by the pilot and the co-pilot. He threw the bag I’d brought for him in the small space behind the seats, intended for a bit of storage, and slipped confidently into the pilot’s seat.

“Stop struggling,” he told me. “You’re only going to hurt yourself.”

To my surprise, he didn’t say more, but strapped himself in and started the engines.

“No lights until we clear the docking ports,” he told me, his eyes gleaming.

“Let me go! I was trying to help you!”

“And I appreciate it, princeling. We’ll be noticed in a moment or two, but by the time they come after us, I hope to be long gone.”

He maneuvered the striker slowly out of the dock but then a voice come over the audio system, and it was harsh and demanding.

“Attention on the ship,” said the voice in Tygerian. “Identify yourselves!”

“Fuck that,” Niko said softly.

“They’ll lock you down!” I yelled at him.

“Identify yourselves and return to the dock immediately,” the voice came again. “I repeat, return to the dock or we’ll open fire.”

“No, they won’t,” Niko said, “They don’t have a good fix on us or they would have already latched onto us and opened fire. We just need to make it out a little farther.”

“Don’t do this! Please take me back!”

“Too late for that, princeling.” He began to make evasive moves, dropping immediately to a lower altitude, zigging and zagging and using every tool in his arsenal to give the on-board anti-lock technology time to kick in. Luckily for him, this was the king’s personal striker, and the designers had employed many such safety measures, all designed to help evade capture in case of attack. He put on one last burst of speed, straight up, and we shot out away from Miko’s massive ship and into the stars beyond, away from the reach of the tractor devices, but still obviously in danger. They could launch a ship to come after us or simply send photon torpedoes after us to destroy or disable us. I began to fear they’d do just that and said so.

“No, they won’t. They know by now that you’re on board.”

“They have photon torpedoes.”

“So? They won’t use them.”

“How do you know that?”

“We’re too close to the ship. The waves would bounce back and destroy them too.”

“What? How does a photon torpedo work, anyway?” I asked him, because I was nosy, and because I wanted to know how I might be dying. “I remember one of the tutors that my parents hired to teach me saying that a photon was not a wave—but it was not not a wave either. Which, as you can imagine, made no sense to me at all, like so much of mathematics and science. But maybe they’re not so dangerous after all.”

He answered me right away, though, almost casually, while still concentrating on his maps.

“They’re dangerous enough. They’re warp-capable matter/antimatter weapons. Specifically, deuterium and anti-deuterium are separated by magnetic field sustainers, and the collapse of those fields drives the material together at detonation resulting in the release of energy.” He glanced over at me and grinned. “Did you understand any of that?”

“I did not. But it’s not necessary, I guess. Unless they deploy them, which they might if they don’t actually realize I’m onboard. Or if they do realize it and don’t care because they think I’m aiding and abetting a prisoner to escape.”

“They know. And it’s more likely that they’ll be coming after us. Your grandfather doesn’t want to kill you, Jago. I’ll make as much speed as I can on this header I’m laying in now, though, and this will take us directly into the rift. I don’t think they can catch us in time.”

“How far is it?”

“Not all that far. At the speed we’re going, we should be coming up on it any minute.”

So far there was no sign of anyone chasing us, and if they were trying to hail us, they were out of luck, because he had turned off the audio. It was deadly quiet onboard, with only the soft hum of the engines to break the silence. I was hyperaware of Niko’s every move. He was concentrating on the digital maps in front of him currently, probably busy still finding and bringing up maps.

“Did you forget where it was?” I said, with as much sarcasm as I could muster.

He gave me a brief smile. “All these names are different from the maps I’m used to. Don’t worry. I can figure it out, but it’s taking a little time.”

“Oh gods, look at how black it is ahead.”

There was virtually no illumination in the rift, and I knew the sky would appear completely dark once we were inside, except for a faint illumination of light in the far distance, interrupting the stygian darkness. That illumination would no doubt be Niko’s galaxy, the closest one to us. It was still unimaginably far away, and that was why his people used the wormhole to traverse it. However, it was so dark in the rift that finding the thing was difficult, even with maps that marked its location and I knew none of those were on board because my people had never gone there before that I ever knew about.

“The wormhole inside the rift is a space anomaly that’s like a tunnel, in the simplest of terms, connecting two separate locations.” Niko was saying. “Imagine folding a paper at either end and then putting the ends together. Unlike stargates, the wormholes aren’t permanent. Their connections last only for a short time, usually sixteen to forty-eight hours, and collapse if too much mass passes through them. Don’t worry. We’ll have enough time once we enter.”

“And I should believe you why exactly?”

“Because I’ve done this before.” He glanced over at me. “What are you doing?”

I was superstitiously crossing my fingers, like Blake showed me how to do as a child. It was a little hard to do considering my wrists were tied down to the chair.

“I’m crossing my fingers.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s for luck, and because I’m a little scared. I was trying to h-help you, and I can’t believe you kidnapped me again.”

I guess my voice wobbled a bit—because I couldn’t quite believe all that had happened to me so fast. Not because I was scared of him and of what was going to happen to me.

He leaned over and covered one of my hands with his. “I won’t hurt you, princeling.”

“Won’t you?”

He shot me a look and his lips tightened. “I’d give you my word, but I don’t think that would mean much to you right now.”

I didn’t say a word in reply. I couldn’t.

It was shortly after that exchange that we entered the wormhole.

Wormholes weren’t two-dimensional holes, of course, and a ship’s hull must have some kind of negative mass to be able to traverse it without collapsing it. My parents had been in them, and it had been described to me as a little like skimming along the surface of a tunnel, usually with images of distant galaxies and nebulae “painted” on the walls and zooming past them all at incredible speed. The light was as if viewed through a curved lens and the overall effect was quite beautiful.

This trip, if we managed it, wouldn’t be like that. This wormhole was inside the rift, and we’d be in complete darkness the entire time. I admit I was scared to death.

“We’re just crossed over into the rift,” Niko said. “Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine.”

He reached over and released my wrists, watching me carefully to make sure I didn’t suddenly attack him, I guess.

I didn’t make a move to do anything. For all my bold talk of adventuring earlier, reaction was setting in, and I was feeling a little terrified of what had happened to me, leaving behind everything I knew, and all to rescue this man I barely knew. No wonder my legs suddenly felt like jelly, and I thought I might throw up.

I gulped hard and fell back in my seat as he went back to the controls.

“There may be sick bags in the medical kit onboard, if you need one,” he said, angling a look over at me. “You look a little green.”

“I think I’m all right. Give me a minute.”

I had the sudden, unpleasant thought that I might never make it back home again. I took a deep breath and found only more unease in the sound of it, as it was shaky and hitching with the effort not to cry. He reached over and laid a hand on top of mine, and I had to admit it helped.

“We’re fine. And the good news is that I’ve done this before. We’re inside it now,” he said. “Try to relax.”

Never did any two sentences ever occupy such different worlds of thought.

How was I to relax?

I did put my head back and closed my eyes, out of sheer exhaustion, willing myself to get a grip and calm down. This would either be the most adventurous thing that had ever happened to me or by far the worst. If it did turn out to be disastrous, then at least it wouldn’t last too long. Either the wormhole would collapse and kill us or the alien world I was en route to would do the trick. That thought failed to cheer me, but it filled my mind at least. I tightened my hands on the arms of my chair and braced myself.