C: Leaping

Rafaela would have said her heart had already been racing, but it leapt again when Arturius smiled with satisfaction and the outer airlock door on the station opened. For a moment the command to disengage from the station hovered on her lips again, but even if they could still do that, now Doris was standing in the docking area that would be depressurized.

She panicked silently, frozen into immobility. An alarm went off outside the ship, overwriting the words that Arturius tried to say to Doris, and he shoved his device back into his bag and turned to step into the airlock tube.

"I have notified the station about the break in," her ship announced calmly, free of the emotions that paralyzed her. "And you can be assured that they cannot open my own locks with such a device."

An Eks Corp Security team dashed into their restricted view a moment later, and Rafaela could see the startled uncertainty on their faces as Arturius pulled Doris closer and turned to look at them questioningly.

Enemies of every kind were just outside of the doorway that the Prince had calmly left through a while ago. Except, Brendan had told her that the people who had tried to take her away from him had thought that they were just following orders, so it was possible that these Eks Corp Security members were actually not her enemies. Her eyes moved back to the step sister who had never been kind. Casual cruelty was often evident in her, but was she really an enemy?

The man hugging Doris had frightened her when she'd met him on the registration station, but his arm around her stepsister looked like a protective gesture now, even though he'd said cruel things about them back then. Rafaela attempted to let reason and logic argue against the instincts that wanted to declare everyone on the screen an enemy. It didn't help that her instincts were insisting loudly that Arturius Nebel might be even more dangerous than the people around him, since he was heir to one of the most powerful corporations in the system.

The noise of the outer alarm that the ship had been relaying suddenly went silent, and one of the Security officers demanded, "What are you doing here? Who are you?"

Arturius' surprised expression when he looked at the security officer looked genuine to Rafaela, even though she knew that he'd been warned that the security team was coming only a minute ago. "I'm Arturius Nebel, and I'm just escorting my fiancé, Doris Rian Donatella, to her sister's ship," he said cooly. "What gives you any right to interfere?"

The team members exchanged glances and then the leader turned back and glared at Doris. Doris flinched, but straightened her shoulders as she stepped protectively in front of Arturius. "I'm here for my stepsister, Cinderella," she announced.

Rafaela watched incredulously, but the security team seemed to take Doris seriously, while Arturius actually smiled a little. "Ah, just a moment while we verify that," the team leader replied.

Rafaela instinctively wanted to protest the name Doris used for her, but it had even been used in the Prince of Eks Corp's announcement, because it had been the name she'd been registered under. The security team probably even recognized it as a real name for her. There were odd crackles now and then in the audio that the ship had said it was magnifying, and one covered up whatever Arturius said quietly a moment later, but Doris looked relieved.

"I'm sorry, but no one is allowed to interact with this ship," the team leader said apologetically. The rest of the security team straightened, as though they expected resistance.

Arturius frowned at them, but replied mildly, "How inconvenient. Then I guess we'll wait for her at another location."

Doris shot him a startled glance, then glared at the leader and asked a bit sharply, "Then she isn't allowed here either?"

Rafaela felt as though she were the only one who was surprised by the team leader's straightforward reply, "No one is allowed to be here right now." She wondered what would happen if she stepped out and objected that she'd been here for hours, but she didn't feel brave enough to find out.

Doris protested immediately, "We have permission!"

Atrurius blinked, but then smiled, nodded, and agreed, "Yes, we were asked to come and take care of things." He halted the security team's automatic protest by adding, "But we can meet the new Princess of Eks Corp elsewhere, and inform her that we were merely complying with security."

The security team members looked uneasy, but the leader simply nodded and agreed, "Yes."

Rafaela protested silently that she didn't want to meet the two of them, here or anywhere else. She definitely hadn't asked anyone to take care of anything here either. Arturius turned back to the open airlock, and waved his hand over the access panel with an unnecessarily elaborate gesture. His other hand returned to his side at the same time, but she couldn't see the bag that held the device he'd used to unlock the door.

The station airlock door began to close a moment later, and she couldn't help releasing a sigh of relief at the sight, until the security team leader said severely, "The princess has been informed. We will escort you to meet her."

"Have I been informed?" a startled Rafaela asked aloud.

"There is nothing relevant in the account you've given me access to, as far as I can determine," her ship replied cheerfully.

Rafaela stared at the security team leader and wondered if he knew that she was watching. Her ship had said that the station had given it access, so presumably a security team could tell if someone was using that access. She wondered uneasily where her stepsister and the corporate heir were about to be escorted to.

"Where do you think they'll think I'm going to meet them?" she asked.

"I suggest somewhere with food," the ship advised. "You haven't eaten anything recently."

She glared at the plump little avatar lurking in the corner of the display screen for a moment before her eyes were drawn back to the view of the cargo dock area. Doris and the Nova Corp heir were leaving under the sharp watch of the Eks Corp Security team. It only took a moment for them all to leave her limited field of view.

She watched the empty space uneasily, reminded of her own experience in being escorted away from the ship by security. The people being led away weren't exactly friends, but even if she were actually an enemy, Doris was also sort of family. Her duty to keep her stepsister safe warred briefly with her desire to keep herself safe.

By the time she decided that she really ought to at least try to warn Doris with a message, and have the ship send an anim of the incident to Brendan, two more people dashed into the surveillance area of the camera that was focused on the station airlock. They were the two princes of Eks Corp she realized with shock. Suddenly she wondered if the Eks Corp Security team leader had actually said that he'd notified the princes instead of the princess.

The little delay created by accessing her memory library distracted her, but she saw Brendan reach for the access panel as her ship announced with alarm, "An unidentified item with an electronic signature has signaled from within the airlock access between the ship and the station."

"Disengage! Now! Before he opens the lock!" Rafaela immediately demanded.

The ship didn't argue that they didn't have enough reaction mass this time, instead it warned her as sharp tones rang across the amplified outer sounds and softer sounds echoed through the cabin, "The station is declining all of my applications and we don't have permission for this maneuver. We may be endangering other vessels."

The last thing Rafaela saw from the video feed was Brendan's upset reaction when the airlock control panel refused his swipe at it. Other data and views from the ship itself quickly replaced the station's data, while relief felt like it surged through her own veins.

The station access hatch wouldn't open if the connection with the vessel wasn't secure, so at least whatever had been left in between the ship and station wouldn't be able to affect the prince directly. If they'd docked in a passenger area instead of the automatic cargo transport they'd have had a much more difficult time disengaging, if they could have done it at all without weaponry. The cargo clasps were very minimal in comparison.

"Is it explosive?" she asked worriedly.

"Permission for an active scan?" the ship requested a bit sourly.

"No! Um, I mean, what if it sets it off? No…" she protested quickly.