P: Side Tracked

Brendan cursed quietly. Each of the Eks Corp Security officers who had tried to follow them away from the wedding announcement party claimed to have different orders.

He glanced at Lief, whose collection of bruises was still darkening, and couldn't help feeling more than a little impressed. Rafaela Donatella had technically taken down more Eks Corp Security officers in one fight, but his brother had taken less damage and captured all three of them alive.

The two who had done the most damage when waylaid by the eldest of the King's sons had each assumed that being captured meant being killed. They still claimed that as far as they knew their orders came from the current King or Queen of Eks Corp. Neither Lief nor Brendan actually believed them, but the two refused to answer anything more to anyone except their direct superiors, which was actually in line with Eks Corp Security policies.

The third, and most informative officer, had identified the source of her orders as Jade Corp and decided that the worst that would happen would be losing her job. Brendan didn't want to make her transfer between corporations easy, so he suggested that administration merely dock her pay when they finally turned the three over to the internal affairs team. He couldn't even argue her assumption, it fit with the data he had too well, and the race's runner up was Doris Rian Donatella who might have been the Rian family heir if her genes had held the standard LM pair.

If one Eks Corp security officer was knowingly willing to risk her employment for a reward from Jade Corp, there were likely to be others.

When the station notified him that Rafaela's ship was reporting a break in attempt, Brendan looked at his brother and winced internally. Lief was looking visibly more beat-up after over an hour of nothing but talking. "I could call another security team to assist me while you visited a medical unit," he offered.

"I'm okay," Lief insisted.

--

Brendan cursed again when the airlock refused to open, but fell silent when Lief said, "Stop trying to open it, the ship is moving."

"No…" he protested, even though he could see that the exterior monitor for the docking space was showing exactly that. "We can't be too late!"

Dozens of station tubes were retracting from the beyonder ship, some of them with sharp gaseous bursts that indicated that they'd been detached without being fully emptied.

Brendan urgently switched from trying to open the door to trying to send a message that asked, 'Are you okay? Are you still…'

His message was cut short by the arrival of a message from Rafaela that said, 'Sorry, I had to undock to prevent whatever that guy put into the connection from doing anything when you opened the station airlock. My stepsister Doris and Arturius Nebel were just taken away by an Eks Corp Security Team who said that they'd notified the princess and were taking them to meet her!'

He cursed again, making Lief raise an eyebrow at him, and replaced his half written message with, 'Okay, stay close please.' Aloud he said, "Nova Corp heir and a SkyWater girl, who was a Rian until her mother remarried, have been taken."

"Rats," Lief muttered. He raised a hand for a moment, as though he was going to run it through his hair, but winced with the motion and dropped it to his side again.

"You could wait here," Brendan offered.

Lief shook his head. "Nova Corp," he explained succinctly.

Brendan nodded, and then stared at the ship he'd been trying to board for a moment before switching interfaces on the device on his wrist. He casually overrode the station's privacy laws in order to locate the two individuals he was seeking. Fortunately they were still traveling well monitored corridors instead of having slipped into the maintenance routes that the team who had taken Cinderella had used.

"They aren't responding," he announced after a minute of trying to contact the security team or either of two people being escorted through normal channels.

"Might think they are on red alert," Lief replied.

Brendan shrugged, and then led his brother away from the cargo dock at a brisk pace. The problem with secure communications was that when they were hacked it was very difficult for the user to tell, and Eks Corp hadn't had any secure channels interrupted for a few generations. From what he could see on the station surveillance, he was guessing that the security team members were quite likely innocent or oblivious, rather than actively ignoring the communications of Eks Corp's princes.

As they walked, anim records of Nova Corp's heir trying to gain access to SkyWater's winning ship occupied part of his view. He sent the anim access code to Lief as they chased after the Eks Corp Security Team who weren't responding to messages or calls. "I think you should see this," he told his older brother.

Lief frowned as he watched the anim while keeping pace with Brendan. "Any guesses for what's aboard your Cinder girl's ship that a corporate heir would bother with?"

Brendan blinked at the term Cinder girl, but then considered the information he'd collected on the ship that had still been registered as wreckage only a few months ago, and suggested, "One of Adrian's experimental cores, or its beyonder tech drive systems?"

"Adrian's? Did you actually rig your own race?" Lief asked with a startled expression.

Lief's surprise was amusing, but Brendan still remembered his own alarm when Adrian had informed him that an entrant's ship was running one of his experimental core designs with an ancient beyonder system that had hacked into the transportation network. "No, and I don't even think that Adrian did, I think her luck is just that good."

They had almost caught up with the security team, and he wished that they had one they could trust at their backs as they rounded the next corridor junction. The two princes split apart as though they could surround the five people ahead of them, and Brendan called out boldly, "Arturius Nebel, what were you looking for?"

Arturius stopped walking and turned toward him almost calmly. "What makes you think I was looking for anything?" he asked rather coolly.

Around him the security team came to a more ragged and startled halt, while Doris visibly startled, and then froze as she saw who had spoken.

Brendan eyed the sharp eyed girl curiously. Since she'd placed within the top ten, he'd studied her available data fairly carefully, but he wasn't entirely certain that Arturius was actually the one who'd wanted to get into Rafaela's ship. It was also possible that it was the Rian family who had wormed their way into Eks Corp Security, and sabotaged SkyWater's freighter.

The security team leader stepped forward and asked nervously, "Prince Brendan?"

"I was informed that you claim to be escorting these two to meet my new princess?" Brendan asked with false lightness. Rafaela's message implied that she was still aboard her ship.

"Yes, that is correct," the team leader replied warily. "You did imply that you'd like us to assist her as much as possible."

"I did," Brendan agreed promptly. He made a few assumptions based on the short reply: that the team didn't know their communications were being blocked, and that they really thought they were headed toward Rafaela. His eyes turned to meet his brother's as he asked, "Mind if we join you?"

Lief nodded.