Page 88 of Veiled Vixen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - DRADEN

“How do you not remember the back door gate?” Draden was confused. “We’ve been through it so many times.”

“That’s simply not true, Draden,” Booty replied. “I would not have forgotten a trip through the second gate.”

“But we did,” Draden insisted.

“Perhaps it was before you met me?”

Draden was sitting at the navigation table looking at gate maps, desperately trying to piece together the route that would take him to the far side of the ALCOR Sector second gate.

“Hmm,” he finally replied. “You might be right.”

He could tell Booty was trying not to gloat about this. But he didn’t care if she did gloat. They were a team.

“But that doesn’t really make sense either, Boots. Because I clearly remember going through this gate many, many times. And we only left ALCOR Sector one time without you. And that was the very first time. So OK. We probably did leave through the back gate that first time. That makes sense, actually. I’m sure the Akeelians and the Prime Navy were probably monitoring the main gate. But what about all the other times?”

“If you only left Harem once before you came home and met me, then there simply were no other times.”

Draden grabbed his hair in frustration. “I don’t understand. I have memories.”

“Well. That’s good though. Then you can think back and try to remember what the next gate jump was after you left the sector.”

Draden had been trying to focus on this since they left Mighty Minions. It was just all so… foggy. If only Serpint were here. He was sure Serpint would not only remember their gate route, but also all the other times they’d used that second gate. Something was wrong with Booty. That was the only explanation for why she wasn’t able to remember.

It was probably his fault. He did infect her mind after his death. It had really messed her up and Draden felt really bad about that.

“Just… take your time, Draden. Look at the maps. I’ve pulled up all our past routes.”

Draden looked down at the navigation table in front of him and laughed. “What am I supposed to do with this? There’s so many routes it makes no sense.”

“Let’s go through it one at a time. Here. I’ll remove all the routes from the past five years.”

Draden watched as the glowing routes began to disappear. Still, there were a lot left.

“Now I’ll take out the ones closest to the ALCOR Sector.”

“Why? Would those be the most likely candidates?”

“I have a feeling that the far side of the ALCOR gate goes somewhere very far away. It only makes sense. Why would ALCOR protect a gate that just dumped people out close by?”

“True.” Draden watched again as the routes began to disappear. “Now what? There’s still dozens of them to go through.”

“Let’s do them one by one.”

All but a single past route disappeared from the navigation table and together they went through it, discarded it as the route they were looking for, and then went on to the next possible route. They were all familiar routes. Known places where escaping princesses seemed to end up, either from word of mouth inside the Cygnian System or some secret network after they got out. And both Booty and Draden had perfect recall of these routes.

“That’s not it,” Draden kept telling her. And he could tell she was getting frustrated with him.

“I believe you,” Booty said. “But explain to me how you know they’re not the right ones.”

“I just do. It was near a nebula. A gold one. When have we ever been through a gold nebula?”

“There are no gold nebulae,” Booty told Draden.

“But there have to be.” He sighed with frustration. Because ALCOR had even mentioned it. Though, for some reason, he didn’t want to divulge this to Booty. ALCOR’s secrets were confusing, and dark, and mysterious. He needed to figure that stuff out for himself.

“The color of a nebula is based on the gaseous elements inside it, Draden. There is no corresponding color for yellow. Your choices are mainly red, green, and blue. Black for dust. There is no yellow. Unless…”