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“Thank you.”
“It’s still early. Did you eat first meal?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you rest before takeoff? There isn’t much to do for now. It promises to be a long, boring journey, in fact, though I’ll try to think of activities for you to do to keep you entertained. Do you like to lift weights? Your brothers Anarr and Vannos used to enjoy that.”
“Yes, I do. Do you know my brothers?”
“We were in the same Lower School.” He went inside and quickly checked over my room, even looking inside the storage bins. He was really thorough. When he was through, he glanced back at me. “Lock your door and admit no one. I’ll be back later. It may be best to go to the weights room during mealtime, so it won’t be as crowded. It’s not a large facility.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You’re not much like your brothers, are you?”
“Not much, no. We didn’t grow up together really. Except for Mikos, of course. Is that good or bad?”
“Neither—just an observation. Get some rest, and I’ll see you later. If you need me or want to go anywhere on the ship, call me on your communicator and wait for me to come for you.” He held out his hand for it, and when I gave it to him, he quickly punched in his number and added his name—like I was likely to forget it. “We’ll be leaving soon, so settle in.”
I don’t even think he realized he was already briskly giving me orders, but somehow, I didn’t mind them coming from him. Well, not much anyway.
I’d felt that way since I was sixteen years old, and I’d first seen him. He’d been only a lieutenant at the time, and still on active duty in the King’s Army. He was recovering from being wounded and had been assigned to the Training Academy as an instructor for a while on Tygeria. At that time, Blake wouldn’t allow me to go to the ones off planet, so I commuted from the palace each day.
The instructor positions were considered light duty, but training young cadets like us must still have been physically taxing for him, considering the severity of his wounds. If he had ever been in pain, though, he never let it show. Half our class was in love with him, and I had probably the worst crush of anyone. The day he arrived, he had smiled at me in the dining hall—a rare occurrence as I came to find out. He was so handsome it took my breath away for a second or two. From that point on, I was totally in love.
I was convinced he hung the moon and most of the stars and during my training, and whenever I saw him, my heart literally leaped in my chest. When I found out that he had left to rejoin his unit, I’d been devastated. It wasn’t too long afterward that I was moping around my bedroom at the palace on a break from school and Omak noticed me. He asked me about it, and interrogation being one of his particular skill sets, he soon had me confessing everything to him, except for my crush’s name. I held that secret close to my heart and refused to tell him. But since Tariq’s name had figured prominently in all my stories about training, I think he guessed.
He didn’t press me, though, or laugh at me or tell me that what I felt wasn’t “real” love or that I’d get over it in time—none of that, and I wouldn’t have believed him if he had. It felt far too real to me. He just gave me a hug and told the cook to bring us some chocolate cake, and we ate way too much of it in front of the fire, while he played a game with me on our communicators, where I got to shoot monster aliens. We didn’t talk about it anymore, but I never forgot Tariq, and I knew even then that I never would.
****
Colonel Tariq
I left the prince in his quarters and went to eat first meal with my friends. I didn’t want to leave him, but I was trying to keep this thing from getting out of hand. I knew the others would be full of questions, like the Imperials I’d met outside on the dock. I think some of them had a bit of envy over my new assignment. All of them were mated, more or less happily, and they were all far too well bred to make any crude remarks, but they were still men, and Prince Rakkur was generally considered to be almost excessively good looking and desirable.
The king’s marriage had always been controversial and always a matter of curiosity in our kingdom. Human love slaves had enjoyed great popularity during the war, both because humans were our enemies and we enjoyed their humiliation, and because secretly, we found their kind to be so attractive. Then Prince Mikos had married a beautiful little Alliance colonel, and General Haggoz had mated a handsome Alliance marine. The interest in humans became even more obsessive. After the war, a love slave industry of sorts sprang up, with some of the humans who had no interest in returning to Earth, deciding to stay on our planet and become private contractors.
Then years later, the Royal Consort Blake had his seventh child without any of the DNA suppressors being given to him, so that his child was born half-human and half-Tygerian. From the first, people had been fascinated by the child. I’d only been a young teenager then, but I still remembered all the talk about it.
As I made my way onto the mess deck and took one of the trays already prepared, I found a seat near one of the portholes and sat down. Because of safety concerns, the glass was thick and the distance between the outside of the hull and the glass was great, but it still afforded a view of sorts. The food was standard fare, but this was one of the royal transports, after all, so the food was perhaps a little better than usual. The man across from me, another Imperial guard named Major Bonnos, nodded at me.
“We’ll be taking off soon. Are you settled in yet?”
“I dropped my packs off in my quarters, but I don’t have anything stowed away yet. Plenty of time for that, with nothing much to do until we reach Loros.”
“I just returned from Earth,” Bonnos said, “on a temporary duty assignment there that wound up lasting a few cycles. I’d hoped I’d have some time at home before shipping out again. I needed it. But` I got orders late last night to report here this morning.” He gave me a narrow and not particularly friendly look. “To replace someone. I think I’m replacing you.”
“Sorry, though I had no say in this either. The king gave me my orders last night. But I don’t need a replacement. My assignment is only temporary, just until we arrive.”
“Kah,” he said, making the half-grunting, half-doubtful sound commonly used by Tygerians for any number of reasons. “The king does whatever he wants. He always has.”
The major sounded angry. And I was uneasy about him speaking that way about the king. Though they were popular, neither Davos nor his son, the bloody prince Mikos, were known for their tolerance.
As for me, I felt confused. The king hadn’t indicated in any way that this was any kind of new orders for a long-term assignment. He had specifically told me that I could turn my charge over to his nephew, Prince Mikol, after we arrived. So why had he sent a replacement for me to take over my duties on Loros? Did he want to extend my assignment?
“Why aren’t the royal guards doing this?” Bonnos asked, still sounding disgruntled. “This is simple bodyguard duty, isn’t it? Imperial soldiers aren’t normally used for anything like this.”
“I know. His Majesty said I’d be finished when we reached Loros. Maybe they’ll send you home then.”
