Yeah. I need to make a deal with that ship. Get me out of this crazy clown show and back to Mighty Minions to pick up Delphi and Dicker. Then grab Xyla off Blue Sand Beach and go home. Queenie won’t be easy to make a deal with, but there is a deal to be made there. She’s the one who offered, not me.
She might even be on my side. My mother’s side, at the very least.
I’m still thinking about that when we turn a corner and come to a massively tall, steel double door.
One of the borgs pushes me off to the side and bangs a metal ring acting as a knocker three times. The knock is inappropriately loud and echoes through the hallway.
On the other side I hear a feminine voice say, “Come.”
And the door opens.
Inside, predictably, there is a Cygnian woman. A silver, like Corla. She is tall, and shapely in her long, white and gray gown. Her hair looks like thin strands of silver metal, but I’ve touched the hair of a silver princess before, and I know it’s not real silver. It’s soft and pliable.
She is pretty. Actually, she is beautiful. Not quite what I was expecting with the nickname Loathsome One. But whatever.
“Leave us,” she commands the cyborg guards.
I pull my eyes away from the princess just long enough to look over my shoulder and see them back out the doors the way they came in. But my attention returns to this woman before the doors close with a bang.
She smiles at me. Clasps her hands in front of her and says, “Jimmy Yates. I never thought I’d see this day.”
“Yates?” I ask. That word again. A name, obviously. But not one I’ve heard before.
The princess waves a hand in the air and says, “There’s time for that later. But first… How are you?”
“How am I?” I scoff. “Are you fucking kidding me? I was kidnapped by a deranged ship, drugged, taken prisoner in this insane asylum, and then dressed up in this truly evil-looking fucking suit and brought here to this creepy lair to—oh, I don’t know. Just taking a wild stab here—be bred to… whoever the fuck you are. That’s how I am. How the fuck are you?”
She smiles at me, looking almost amused at my outburst, then says, “Don’t worry about the ship. I took care of her.”
“What?” My heart beats fast at this revelation. Because ten seconds ago that deranged ship was my only way out of this shit show.
“Queenie?” she says. “She was a traitor from the start. A running joke around here, in fact. We all knew she was concocting up some silly plan to kill me and take you back to Harem. I admit, I didn’t expect Delphi to fail though.” She takes a moment to exaggerate a frown. “I had high hopes for her.”
I let out a long breath and wonder where Delphi is now. Is she still back at Mighty Minions? Where does Dicker think I am? How will they find me?
Will they find me?
Maybe not.
“What happened to her?”
“Delphi? I have no idea. I have to face facts. She’s not one of us. She is something… other than us. Which could’ve come in handy, I suppose. But it was never likely. They did let her escape, after all. And that would not have happened if she had promise. I imagine that’s why everyone has moved on to stage two.” She waves a hand in the air like she’s trying to wipe away the image of Delphi.
My mind yells… WHAT?
But I force myself to focus and say, “No. The ship. Queenie.”
“Oh, her.” The princess laughs. “We blew her up after we got you on board the station. She’s been… how’s that phrase go? Scattered like dust into the galactic wind.”
Fuck.
“Oh, please tell me you didn’t fall for her spiel? That whole mother thing? Please. Such utter bullshit.”
But I don’t think it was. I think she was telling the truth. That talk about my mother might’ve been the only honest thing that ship said to me.
“Of course not,” I say. “But it was an interesting tale.”
The princess huffs out a grunt. Like… If you say so. Then she takes a deep breath and says, “Hello, Jimmy Yates. I’m Princess Veila. It’s so very, very nice to meet you.”
“Veila?” I say, too loud. “As in Queen Corla’s little star-bursting partner?”
Corla is frozen in a cryopod back in a Harem security beacon because she and her princess partner, Veila, were made into explosive devices so powerful, they could blow up planets.
“The one and only,” Veila says.
I almost sigh with relief. Like for two whole seconds I think, Thank the fucking suns! This isn’t what I thought at all! Veila’s on our side!
But then Veila says, “Fucking queen bitch. She was always the one thing standing in my way.”