1.06

The ship shook minutely as two guards, Sergeant Bates, and I walked towards my room; neither Father nor the pirates seemed to be giving up any time soon. It was a testament to the manoeuvrability of the pirates' corvette and our own ship's lack of military-grade sensors and targeting systems that this debacle had lasted this long. Twenty millennia of galactic civilization and private interests still made the same mistakes in arming their vessels as back on Earth's wet navies. No matter how large your gun, it was worthless if you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. I was about to credit the Trade Federation with at least giving the Doughnut a proper defense, then remembered the size discrepancy between attacker and defender; that the shields could fend off a corvette didn't mean they were appropriate for a ship this size.

We were only a few hundred yards from my place when Sergeant Bates' datapad beeped. The lean, middle-aged officer signalled us to stop, then fixed the little square of crystal and electronics with a hard glare, black eyes gleaming under thick, narrowed eyebrows. His face was expressionless and I wasn't really paying attention after the sudden return of Astra's memories, but I still felt his focus sharpening, anticipation mixing with satisfaction.

"You two escort Lady Andrim to her chambers," he ordered the two security guards, who straightened and threw back a salute. "I am needed back on the bridge."

That statement seemed... off to me, though I couldn't tell exactly why. I had only seen the Sergeant a few times over the past months, not long enough to form an opinion. But perhaps Astra knew him better. The teenage merchant princess had been far better in reading people than I had been in my past life, if the still jumbled memories of easily handling high-society interactions were any indication. Something about the Sergeant seemed off to the instincts I'd inherited, like a discordant note in an otherwise normal melody. But when I finally shook off my hesitation to ask what was going on, the Sergeant had already left.

"This way, my lady," one of the guards said as if I didn't know the way to my own rooms. Their presence suddenly chafed; two chaperones that weren't really needed, escorting me through a ship that was perfectly safe. Astra Andrim might be only twelve, but she had moved through this vast ship freely for months. Besides, twelve wasn't so young in a galaxy sixteen-year-olds could own property and hold positions of authority, not to mention Kuat's millennia-old aristocracy that allowed nobles to wield power from as young an age as the Queens of Naboo. As my antipathy sharpened and my quiet questioning of their presence intensified, I noticed two important details. First, the guards did not have nearly as good a poker face as the Sergeant. And second, their moves were a bit jerky, almost spasmodic, betraying a nervous anticipation they'd never shown before.

The three of us reached my chambers, and I reached up to type in a code at the electronic keypad. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end as a cold wind blew, carrying the echo of someone laughing as they danced on my grave. I dropped as suddenly as I could, a month's training not enough to avoid scraping my knees on the durasteel floor... but just enough for the two stun blasts to miss. Not even pausing to think, everything slowing down as my own pulse roared against my eardrums, I drew my training pistol and rolled around, fingers pulling the trigger as far back as it would go. A silver-blue disc of crackling electricity grazed my shoulder, numbness spreading on my entire right arm, even as the small training blaster barked once... twice... three times.

I got up a bit later, everything having taken a dreamlike quality; from the fuzzy edges of my vision, to the suddenly too narrow corridor, to the electrical scoring marks seemingly shifting on the wall behind me every time I looked. It felt just like my one car crash back on Earth, the seeming loss of awareness even as my eyes and ears took in everything, the inability to think. I stumbled upon something as I stepped forward, which forced me to look down. The security guards' blasters had been set on stun, firing just the high-intensity magnetic containment that would disrupt nerves and electronics, without first filling it with ionized particles that would carry destructive kinetic energy. My little training blaster hadn't. One blind shot had destroyed the second guard's gun with a hit on the power pack. Another had taken that same guard in the throat, half an inch above the collar of his lightly armored suit. The third had taken the other attacker in the left eye. One-in-a-million shots, three times out of three, two bloody corpses.

The door to my room opened, and Ratty the droid tutor walked out.

"Lady Andrim! Lady Andrim! Are you OK? Oh, this is horrible!"

I agreed with her by emptying my stomach's contents on her metal legs.

xxxx xxxx xxxx

​

Ratty insisted on carrying me until I was well enough to stand on my own. I insisted she carry the dead guards' blasters, datapads, and security keys after carrying the corpses into my room and locking the door. It wouldn't keep out anyone serious about entering, or even delay them. The majority of interior doors on starships and space stations were designed to open if their locking mechanism was damaged, because nine times out of ten the damage would be due to various hazards any crew would need to escape. But the... bodies not being obvious might deflect attention.

Now that I was getting better - or more likely too numb to care - I was also getting angry. Two security guards, two people trusted with our protection during long and potentially dangerous space journeys, had betrayed us, attacked without provocation. Not only that, but they'd acted just as the ship was under attack by pirates. I refused to believe that was a coincidence; there were no coincidences in the Star Wars universe. Now that my insides were no longer attempting to become my outsides, I even felt satisfaction that their attempt had failed so... permanently. There hadn't been another way to stop them, or time to think of one during the attack. In all the numbness and nausea, there was no regret. Was it because I still saw this universe as less real than my own? Was it something about Astra's character, or in her past, that just made me indifferent? Or would this be my reaction if people died by my hand back on Earth?

I didn't know and it didn't matter. That this whole situation was far from over was far more important.

"Lady Andrim, we're here," Ratty said as she led me to what seemed at first glance a blank wall. She extended a mechanical limb towards a small socket only two feet up from the ground, deployed a two-inch plug from the edge of her index finger, and connected to the almost hidden keypad. Moments later, a section of the wall retracted to reveal a dark tunnel just broad and high enough for a single person to move through standing up. It was full of hundreds of cables and electric connections, many as thick as a single hair, others as wide as my thigh. It was one of the countless maintenance tunnels in a ship this size, providing access for easy repairs but also protecting the circuitry from anyone stumbling around in the main corridors. It was meant for repair droids, not people, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

"Where does it lead, Ratty?" I asked. We needed to get to the bridge without stumbling into any more traitorous guards, and I had a good feeling about this passage.

"I am not a maintenance droid, Mistress! How should I know?" The indignity was evident in my mechanical tutor's voice as she complained. Well, it was a reasonable complaint. Since the Lucrehulk-class LH-3210 cargo freighter was the capital ship of choice for the Trade Federation, its internal design had been part of my lessons. Unfortunately, an engineer could be looking at those plans for a decade and still not know them by heart; the ship was just too large. I was fairly certain this particular passage led where I wanted to go, but with the Doughnut in combat, accessing the network to check was impossible. Yet that good feeling remained; I decided to trust it.

"This will work, Ratty," I encouraged the rather reluctant droid. "You know what you need to do?"

"Yes, but..."

"Then everything's going to be all right."

"Mistress, I must protest! I am no combat droid!" Ratty waved around one of the guns we'd taken from the two traitors in an exaggeratedly amateurish manner.

"But you do have records of all my training sessions, those simulations I asked you to run, and a computing core more capable than an astromech's," I reassured her. "It'll be fine, you'll see!"

At that exact moment the repeating vibrations of incoming fire and the answering roar of the Doughnut's turbolaser batteries stopped, plunging the ship in ominous silence.