Regency

I woke to a knocking at my quarter doors. Knocking, I noted with satisfaction as I came to, and not the soft chime of that the cabin monitoring system would have produced if it had been functional.

The fact that whoever wanted me up had to knock rather than just pinging me suggested that the ‘nanos hadn’t yet repaired my room monitoring, either because the little hack I’d worked on all day yesterday was preventing them from noticing, or because they hadn’t yet figured out how to repair the clipped wires in the compartment that I’d filled with a combination of milkshake and gluon lubricant.

I checked my clock. 0500 spacer standard time. “Whazzit?” I groaned as I hauled my legs off the side of the bed and tried to shake my grogginess.

There was a cough. From the low timbre and wearied tone, I guessed the voice was Metchell’e, second engineer and my reticent handler for our present voyage.

“I’m sorry to bother you, your highness,” Metchell’e said, as I clenched my teeth at the title, “but you asked us to tell you if we were hailed by a non-regency vessel.” Sleepiness quickly fled my system as I stood up from my bed.

“Fuck!” I said, trying and failing to suppress my excitement “give me two ticks.” I ran to my dresser and attempted to assemble a practical outfit.

As I grabbed the snug-fitting utility pants and tank top, my father’s voice rang in my ears, “A Queen-to-be must wear an outfit which conveys the dignity of her role.”

Well fuck him. I donned the clothes (smuggled on, of course), put on the least pretentious jacket I could find (the cute, pink hue was marred by the deep red royal crest and some seriously unfortunate frills, but it’d have to do), and pulled the release lever on my door.

I determined, as the door opened, that I was correct in my original assessment. The person who’d been sent knocking was indeed Metchell’e. He was a short, broad man with piercing, gold-flecked eyes and shoulder-length locs which he kept bundled with a large elastic whenever he was working. He was a wicked clever programmer and I’d occasionally found myself caught me off guard by his dry sense of humor. I imagine I’d have gotten along with him quite well with him if he hadn’t had an enormous structural rod perpetually lodged deep in his rectum.

“Dude,” I placed my left hand on my hip, “I keep telling you, call me Hava. Cut it out with this ‘your highness’ bullshit.”

Metchell’e just grimaced. Part of my perversely hoped that my antics were making him question his 25 years of loyal support for the crown. They weren’t, of course, but they sure as hell seemed to bother him. Whatever. I wouldn’t have to deal with this shit for much longer.

Shifting to the subject at hand, I double checked what he’d said. “You woke me because we’re being hailed?”

He nodded. “Looks like an old United Colonies vessel. It probably belongs to the New Federation.”

I raised an eyebrow. “ColComm? That has to be ancient.”

The United Colonies of Earth, the unified human nation which was created shortly after the discovery of the FTL Aland Drive, had reigned for nearly a century before rapidly collapsing over resource shortages in the outer colonies and its increasingly nasty war with the Sarucian Empire. From the ashes of the dead nation, several smaller human states emerged. My grandmother, Fatima Saphira, consolidated several of the wealthier middle colonies to form the Regency and crowned herself queen. Earth, as well as a couple of her nearest colonies, made up the closest thing UCE had to a successor sate, a rich conglomeration known as the New Terran Federation. They inherited most of the remaining Colonial Command starships along with the UCE’s predilection for direct media censorship and party purges. It was likely a ship belonging to them that sat silent in the viewscreen on the bridge of the RSV Hatshepsut when I entered, following Metchell’e.

The captain, who I admired a great deal, was a thirty-something woman with bleached, close-cropped hair. She had already opened a comms channel with the NF Ship.

“…right,” she was saying, “I’m sure the cargo you’re carrying will serve a good cause, but that doesn’t explain why a New Federation vessel is flying through regency territory without escort or beacon.”

The ship responded with something about having to divert around a dark energy storm, but I wasn’t listening carefully. I had noticed the title of the ship on the main viewscreen’s HUD: the NTF Mandela. I swear I’ve heard that name before…

The captain’s exasperated voice cut through my thoughts, “even so, you can’t just waltz into our territory without permission. You should have stopped at the nearest waypoint and hailed…”

I continued half listening as I tried to recall where I’d heard that name. The Mandela...

The conversation continued. “Sure, fine as a representative of the Regency, I can give you a route and a beacon to transit through the territory, next time though, please—”

The captain never got to finish telling the other ship what they should or should not do next time as I shouted, “Oh shit, the Mandela!” Everyone on the bridge turned to look at me. I continued, oblivious. “Like, the, UCS Mandela? The first ship to defect from Colonial Command under the crew that arguably started the civil war?” There was a hand clenched on my shoulder now. Too excited. I ignored it. “Come to think of it, I’m honestly shocked that it ended up under NTF control. The original crew would have hated that.” I was drawing on several late night NeoWiki Binges at this point, my words piling up on one another as they left my mouth. “After the war, most of them ended up settling on Unisary Prime, and as far as anyone knows, their ship went to the Free Human Republic, though I suppose Unisary has always been a bit at odds with the central planets of the FHR so maybe it was sold, but even so I can’t imagine—”

“Ahem” I was cut off by the captain’s cough as she stared dagger s at whoever was standing behind me and grabbing my shoulder with uncomfortable vigor. Metchell’e, I guessed.

She opened her mouth but didn’t get to speak before the captain of the other ship cut through, “and who, Captain Al-Reah, is the person who seems to have taken over you bridge.”

Captain Al-Reah turned back to the viewscreen and said painstakingly, “It’s nobody, captain Wyverval, just a new, inexperienced crewmember who’s lost hold of herself and will be disciplined accordingly.”

Now, you don’t have to tell me that my title is bullshit. The whole ‘dynastic rule’ thing is a heap of archaic nonsense, and I have no idea how grandmum managed to foist it on her fellow generals in the war. Still, despite my distaste for royal nonsense, our captain’s tone rubbed me the wrong way, so I drew myself up to my full height and declared in my best noble tone, “I am not nobody. I am Hava Farim of the house of Saphira, princess and heir apparent to the Centaurian Regency. I am presently under way to a diplomatic summit with The Free Human Republic where I am to serve as representative for our immortal kingdom. To what end have you entered our territory?”

I saw deep annoyance, resignation, and intense worry skirmish on Captain Al-Reah’s face before the worry won out.

There was a pause. Time expanded. I was staring at the viewscreen, chin held high. I liked this feeling of power, which was bad, of course, but what could I do? More time, maybe a minute passed. Nobody seemed able to move.

Finally, the comms line came back to life, “apologies, Princess Hava,” there was something odd in the other captain’s voice, but I couldn’t tell what it was, “as I was telling your captain,” again, something strange about the way she said ‘captain,’ “we’re a NTF cargo vessel transporting humanitarian aid to the starbase at Epsilon Eridani.”

“You’re using The Mandela as a cargo vessel?” I struggled not to drop the royal pretense as my inner starship preservationist tried to reassert herself, “I would assume that with the NTF’s resources you could afford to spare such an important vessel for preservation rather than retrofitting it to do cargo runs!”

The Mandela’s captain responded, “yes, well, these are strange times, I suppose.”

I was taken aback for a beat. I tilted my head. Before I had time to fully process the odd statement, the voice on the other end of the line continued.

“Oh, and princess?”

I looked around. Al-Reah’s eyes had narrowed, then opened wide. Hesitantly, I responded, “yes?”

“Sorry about this next part.”

The line clicked off, and the ship’s computer replaced the other captain on the speaker, intoning flatly, “warning, sonic weapon inbound.”

Alarms began to blare, but they were soon drowned out as a truly horrible shrieking sound split my brain. I fell to ground. Others were doing the same. Al-Reah and Metchell’e both were making a truly heroic effort to remain standing and raise the shields, but the control panels also seemed to have gone on the fritz and soon they too succumbed to the keening that seemed to be coming from every corner of the ship. The last thing I thought about before I passed out was how cool it was to be attacked by the Mandela, even if it should have been in a museum.

*** Minutes passed. Or decades. If I dreamt, it was in disturbing fragments, with crowns of feathers that somehow grew so heavy they broke my neck and so tight they crushed my skull. Later, perhaps as I was starting to wake up I thought I heard the shuffling of footsteps and felt somebody gently shift my body. Perhaps that was a dream too. ***

When I came to, I was in the same place on the bridge of the Hatshepsut, but I was sitting and my hands were tied. Three people stood in front of the viewscreen, facing the crewmembers on the bridge, all of whom seemed to be rapidly coming to. Two of our captors (Captors? Definitely captors.) were sporting matched black-leather combat looks and holding large pulser rifles menacingly. The third, the one in the middle, seemed to have foregone the jackboot-ed style of the other two in favor of something out of a movie about pre-Aland Europe. They their straight hair cropped short, dyed blue, and they were wearing a red and blue madras button down. Two laser pistols were slung around their waist, one on either side, in holsters that looked to be designed to match their grey dress pants. I couldn’t seem to look away.

“Everyone up!” one of the jackboots said, gesturing with her rifle.

I got to my feet. For all that I like to talk about hating calcified power structures or whatever, turns out I’ll listen to the instructions of somebody willing to point a large weapon at me.

Several of the bridge officers got up too.

“Okay here’s what’s happening,” this was the other Jackboot, “As you’ve probably figured out at this point, we’re not from the NTF. We’re an independent raiding vessel, and we’re taking y’all on the bridge hostage, along with the Princess here.” He nodded at me. “The rest of your crew belowdecks is still knocked out and will remain so until we get far away from here. We’re leaving them enough fuel and oxygen to send word and make it back to Centurion, so they’ll be fine.”

The first jackboot spoke again, “All of you, though, are coming with us; if you would be so kind as to follow our colleague and pilot Jax here,” she gestured at the captivating third person standing in front of us, “and don’t try any funny business. We’re planning to shoot first and ask questions later, which means we end up with back pain from carrying you, and you end up with a truly nasty headache from these girls.” She patted her rifle.

Jax moved to the door leading off the bridge, and with some maneuvering, everyone ended up behind them, with yours truly first in line.

As we set off down the passageway towards the docking airlock, Jax shot a glance back at me. “By the way, I didn’t get to thank you, your highness, for letting us know that you were on board.”

I should have just said nothing, or maybe something about where they could take their gratitude and shove it, but I did neither. Instead I clenched my teeth and hissed, “Don’t call me that”

“Huh?” They’d turned back around now, carefully navigating the twisting service corridor.

“Your highness,” I grumbled, “it’s apparent that you have no respect for the Regency, so there’s no need to use that title”

“Oh, trust me,” Jax didn’t even bother looking back, “I mean you no respect by the title.”

Lost in thought, I didn’t see that we’d arrived at the docking door. That Jax had punched in a combination on the access panel. Then the door opened and we stepped through onto the UCS Mandela.