Alien Prince
CHAPTER TWO—LORELEI VAUSS

The transport vessel could not have gotten far when it was intercepted, ripped violently out of faster than light travel to a lurching halt. I'd strapped myself in, and I gritted my teeth against the force that pressed me forward into my restraints as my stomach pitched and turned over when I settled back again.

I wasn't alone in the passenger's quarters, and the other three people were looking just as green as I was. We were seated in a small chamber with a foot or so of space around each of us.

"Oh, God," I muttered, and turned as far as my chair would allow to be sick onto the cold metal flooring, away from the rest of the passengers. "Sorry," I murmured, but the act had a sort of chain reaction, and the blond Europax sitting next to me vomited up bright green bile. For a second, I thought I recognized her from somewhere, but couldn't place her.

When I was confident that the vessel wasn't going to shoot back into faster than light travel, I unlatched my harness and scrambled to my feet, shaking woozily as I walked.

"Where are you going?" one of the passengers demanded, a human woman who was about ten years my senior.

"To see what the problem is," I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. "Don't worry," I continued, "I know the pilot."

I made my way forward and rapped lightly on the door to the cockpit. Tel threw it open, looking just as shaky on her feet as I was. Behind her, the control console glowed and buzzed in protest, all sorts of alarm lights blinking. Her co-pilot was furiously flipping switches and typing in commands and twisting dials and turning knobs; he looked intent, his broad shoulders hunched forward. I furrowed my brow. "What's going on?" I asked.

"I don't know," Tel breathed, steadying herself in the doorway. I canted my chin toward her co-pilot.

"What is he doing?"

"Trying to get our nav system back online."

I started. Our navigation was offline? Tel registered the fear on my face, and her stern look told me well enough to keep my shit together, lest I incite a panic in the rest of the passengers. I looked past her to the co-pilot, who eventually turned to look at me and Tel. He was a human male, mid-forties probably, with salt and pepper hair and a five o'clock shadow; if I weren't terrified, I may have thought he was kind of cute, in a Daddy Issues kind of way.

"I got nothin'," he said, throwing his hands up in resignation. "Whoever snagged us has totally overridden our controls."

"Send a distress signal to the Atria. We can't be more than a couple clicks away, and they should be able to send someone to our coordinates with some speed." Tel sucked in a deep breath of air before she moved into the passenger seating area. The faces of the three other women turned up to look at their leader, who forced herself to present a demeanor of calm. But I knew Teldara well enough to know that she felt anything but.

"Ladies," she said, pressing her fingers to her lips for a moment as though she were going to be sick, "we've been thrown out of hyperdrive, and someone has taken remote access of our navigation. I have my co-pilot sending a distress signal back to the Atria, along with the names on our passenger roster and our cargo list. I'm confident that we should be on our way in short order."

The other women began to chatter amongst themselves, their voices hushed and desperate whispers, even as Teldara turned her attention to me. "Keep them calm," she muttered, and all I could do was nod, my jaw hanging slightly agape. But when Tel turned to go back into the cockpit, I caught her by the arm.

"Tel," I whispered, "what do you really think is going to happen?"

She considered me levelly, and spoke: "I think we'll be boarded, and I think all our cargo will be taken. If we're lucky, we'll leave with our lives."

The Keldeeri, not to paint with too broad a stroke, are not exactly what you would call a peaceful people. At least not historically. Their war-torn planet necessitated the evacuation and relocation of some three million Keldeeri. And while their women are not extinct, per se, they are so few in numbers that they have been continuously petitioning the Echelon for a crossbreeding program, the same way they did for the more peaceful Qetesh. The Echelon, however, have denied this request, saying that it is too invasive a maneuver for a ratio of 3 males to every one female, and that the Keldeeri would do well to try to fix the problem on their own. This has been met, thus far, with begrudging compliance. The Keldeeri are also not what you might call a beautiful people, what with the mandibles and carapaces. They tend to be on the stouter side, rippled with muscle, and looking rather like someone had crossed an insect with a lizard. Hairless and aggressive, with a sibilant style of speech, the Kaldeeri I had known had never really become my best friends.

Given all that, I had to say that I wasn't entirely surprised when a contingent of Keldeeri smugglers strode aboard our tiny little transport vessel. I was, however, slack-jawed with shock when Teldara's co-pilot strode over to them and shook hands with one.

"Five females, three Europax, two Human," the co-pilot said, and I saw Tel's jaw tense with the onset of her rage. "Fitz, you disease-ridden son of a whore," she spat, and her co-pilot, so-called Fitz, just chuckled low and shrugged. "It's nothing personal, Tel," he said, "It's just business."

"You promised us six, Fitzgerald," one of the Keldeeri hissed, his words caught in the trap of his mandibles. His eyes looked like those of a bee, and they were trained intently on Teldara. "The difference will come out of what you're owed." "How about," Fitz offered, holding his hands out to the side, ever the good salesman, "I throw in the cargo. We've got Earth wine, Qeteshi greenery, clothes, electronics, some Keldeer grains."

"He's lying," Teldara spat, looking smugly satisfied as he absently tapped the place on her hip where her gun would have been if this hadn't been a standard run with someone she trusted. "We haven't picked up our cargo yet."

"I meant," Fitz insisted, "that I would bring it to you after I picked it all up."

"No," the Keldeeri said. He was leading the contingent and gripped a large rifle in his three-fingered fists. "We will take the girls and dock you for one."

"Fine," Fitz conceded, and another Keldeeri, with scales the color of piss, began to swipe his fingers over his communications tablet.

"Your account number, please," he said to Fitz, who took the tablet in hand.

"You'll explain to everyone what's happening, won't you, Tel?" Fitz asked as he handed the tablet back to the Keldeeri and secured a cloth over his nose and mouth.

"She can explain it," the Keldeeri in charge interrupted, "after she wakes up." The Keldeeri put their gas masks over their horrible faces as Fitz disappeared into the cockpit. Then, one of the smugglers rolled a small silver ball into the middle of the room, and when it stopped, it hissed and sputtered as smoke began to rise out of it. In an instant, everything went black.