Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 (30 page)

Queen Majel clutched her hands together, her face white with strain. “Please, Charlotte. I’m begging you.”

The disabled ship crashed into one of the buildings and debris began to tumble from the sky. The Ravens scattered into the fleeing crowd, while Prince Gong slung the Emperor’s body over his shoulder and hurried toward safety with the Dowager Empresses.

“I’ll help you,” Charlotte yelled over the din, “but in my own way, in my own time. Don’t try to force us to Londonium again!”

“Wyre!” Majel screamed after them. “Look what your creation has done to me!”

Chapter Nineteen

Leading the way, Gil dodged smoking chunks of metal, broken cement and stone, praying they could get out of the central park before the entire ship came down on them. Luckily it wasn’t one of the massive warships, but it was still going to cause a lot of damage. He checked back over his shoulder to make sure Sig was keeping up, but he shouldn’t have worried. The man was fueled by Charlotte’s inventions, both his super-powered heart and the buoyant device she’d added to his boots. Even carrying her, he could have easily outpaced Gil, but he kept a steady pace at his back.

He was more worried about Charlotte. It wasn’t like her to allow one of them to coddle her like this. She’d made no protests when Sig had picked her up, and she certainly hadn’t demanded to be set back down on her own feet. Had she been injured? Knocked unconscious? He didn’t know, and worry burned like acid in the pit of his stomach.

He fell back beside Sig so he could see her face, and the boiling pit of acid exploded into a full-fledged volcano. Charlotte was crying.

She ducked her face against her shoulder, burrowing deeper into Sig’s embrace. He’d shifted her down into his arms so she didn’t bounce awkwardly on his shoulder. It shredded Gil’s heart to see her so vulnerable, curled up and crying. He wanted to hold her himself and beg her to tell him what troubled her, but with the Britannian ship falling apart above them, there wasn’t time.

Gritting his teeth, he fought back the questions.
Later. Get her to safety first. Then we can hold each other and simply be glad we’re all still alive.

He pointed down an alleyway. “This way.” Taking the lead once more, he counted the turns in his head, carefully looking back several times to make sure no one followed them. If she’d disabled the bug in Sig, it wouldn’t do to allow a tail to attach itself to them all over again. Thick black smoke billowed into the air and the piercing shriek of alarms continued in the distance, but no one else roamed these back ways. As he’d hoped when he’d hid the ship here in the wee hours of the morning.

He had a stitch in his side before they finally left behind the tenements and shops for the larger warehouses along the docks. Guards stood at the entry, but he didn’t slow his pace, merely waved the parchment with the distinctive Imperial golden seal. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when the guards allowed them through. They kept a worried gaze on the smoke in the distance, but evidently word hadn’t spread yet of the Emperor’s demise.

They hustled aboard and Sig transferred her over to Gil so he could fly them out of the port. She didn’t say anything, but kept her still-wet face pressed to his shirt, her shoulders shaking. Her hands were icy, and even after he tucked her into a chair and belted her in for takeoff, she was listless and withdrawn.

Their lady would want tea above all.

“How much longer until we’re ready for takeoff?” he called to Sig in the cockpit.

“Long enough to make a spot of tea via the replicator. Just splash a healthy dose of good Americus bourbon in with it to put some color back in her cheeks.”

She hated replicated tea, but they didn’t have time for the real thing.
Later
, he promised himself again.
Once we’re away. Once we’re safe.

She
will
be safe.

Sig was a much better pilot than he’d ever be, but takeoffs were always a little rocky. Especially rushed ones to flee Britannian—and possibly Zijin—forces. So Gil brought her a steaming mug instead of her preferred china teacup. She wrapped her hands around the warm mug and huddled around it like it was a roaring campfire in the wilderness. He slipped off her shoes and chafed her chilly toes between his palms, and then tucked a thick down blanket around her.

“Thank you,” she whispered, still averting her gaze.

He pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head and then joined Sig in the cockpit. Even the legendary Lady Wyre needed a little time to gather her composure.

“That was good work getting a paper from the Emperor.” Sig’s hands flew over the panel without him even having to look. “Any bets whether that ship was alone or not?”

“I’m betting not.” Gil turned on the radio, hoping to pick up news of other ships. “Majel would never put all her eggs in one basket.”

“Right. So how do we get out of here?” Muttering, Sig lifted
Oblivion
out of the dock and steered for the main port exit. The entire airspace was empty, which sure didn’t look good for their escape. “Have they already shut down Bei-Jing?”

Gil checked the news alerts. “Not that I’ve seen. Maybe everyone was docked for the Imperial procession.”

“Or maybe there are a couple of Britannian birds of prey shooting everyone out of the sky as soon as they pop up on the radar.” They both scanned the skies and view panels constantly, but nothing showed up. “Where’d she say she wanted to go next?”

“Morocco.”

Sig entered the coordinates and then settled back against the pilot’s chair. “Brace for maximum speed. Charlie, lock that mug away, sweetheart!”

The engines rumbled beneath them, building speed to fight out of the planet’s gravity field. With all the friction, they lost visibility. All they could do was hold on, wait until they cleared the upper levels of the atmosphere, and hope for the best.

Gil braced his head against the back of the seat and tried to keep his body loose, instead of fighting the pull of gravity. Pressure made the entire right side of his head throb. His swollen lip felt like it was going to split open again, and he feared his blackened eye might just pop out of his skull.

Finally, they soared free of Bei-Jing’s atmosphere. They were already at the edge of Zijin’s system, but they had to pass the chain of satellite moons—of which the most popular was Hoeng Gong. The one Ci’an had ceded to Britannia. If Majel had already claimed it…

The comm beeped, making Gil jump.

“It’s Prince Gong’s personal signature on a secure line.” Sig answered the call. “Your Majesty, this is
Oblivion
. How may we help you?”

“I’m hoping
I
may help you one last time,” Prince Gong replied. Behind him, Gil could make out the server room of Xuanyuan. “Thanks to Lady Wyre, we were easily able to prevent the Britannian hackers from taking over as she suggested they would.”

“I’m so glad,” Charlotte said behind them. She dropped a hand on each of their shoulders, as though she needed even a modest physical connection to them both, but her voice was firmer and more like her usual self. “Your firewalls are holding, then?”

“Absolutely, and your…surprise…has deployed in response.”

“Excellent. How many ships are waiting for us outside Hoeng Gong?”

“There are four ships there now, but they’re all claiming to be merchant frigates. Their systems are running much too hot to be simple trade ships, though.”

“Four,” Sig growled beneath his breath. “We can outrun them unless they have Razari engines under the hood, but they’ll have warship backup just out of sensor range.”

“I have a suggestion that might help us both,” Prince Gong said. “See if you can lure them into following you through the Xuanyuan wormhole. Then we’ll easily be able to dispose of any ships that follow you, and we’ll send you back through the wormhole to any location you desire.”

The wormhole again? Gil suppressed a groan, but his dismay must have been evident on his face, because Prince Gong laughed.

“We’ll make this trip as smooth as possible, and easily shave days if not weeks of space travel off, depending on your lady’s destination. Even better, your enemies will have no idea where you’ve gone, unless they can decrypt our entire security system after surviving their own trip to the Forbidden City.”

Charlotte frowned. “I don’t want to end up close to Britannian airspace, and I’d planned to rendezvous with a friend at Morocco. Can you get us anywhere close to that?”

Prince Gong typed at his workstation. “Let me see… Yes. I have codes for as-Sahra. That’s just a few days’ travel on normal engine speed to your destination.”

“The Great Desert planet,” she mused aloud, tapping her fingers on Gil’s shoulders.

“Not much shopping,” Sig teased.

“Not much of anything but sand,” she admitted, “and heat.”

“And worms,” Prince Gong added, “big ones.”

Gil frowned harder at the viewscreen. “That’s not helping your case for sending us through that bumpy wormhole not once but twice more. I hate worms.”

Laughing softly, she leaned against him and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, dearest. I’ll protect you from the big bad worms.”

Glancing back over his shoulder to make sure Charlie was safely secured back in her chair, Sig engaged the new flight plan. Within minutes, the busy satellite port of Hoeng Gong filled the screen, and there were the four ships hovering just outside the security station. The
Oblivion
altered direction slightly, as though they were surprised to see visitors waiting, and the four ships immediately followed.

“Merchants my ass.” The Razari engine hummed with pleasure as he increased power, rumbling like a big cat anxious for an energetic chase. He wove in and out of legitimate merchant ships waiting for their turn to enter the port, pretending that they really were trying to evade the Britannian ships, but the engine barely revved past thirty-percent power.

They dodged back toward Bei-Jing. Without the trade traffic, the Britannian ships narrowed the gap.

“Incoming,” Masters warned in a low voice.

“Our shields are up. We should be fine.”

“I’m surprised Prince Gong didn’t mention the guns on the ship,” she called from the passenger area. “Surely he would have—”

Oblivion
rocked and alarms began blinking all across his dashboard. Masters cursed and began returning fire, while Sig tried to figure out what they’d been hit with. Normal pulse cannon wouldn’t have affected the shields like that. Worse, the Razari crystal that powered the engines had taken the brunt of the hit. “The crystal’s down to fifty-percent power. What kind of weapon does that?”

“A new one,” she said at his shoulder. “Good thing I sent a little surprise their way as soon as they tried to hack into Zijin systems.”

“Bloody hell, Charlie, get back in your seat!”

She leaned against him, her left arm locked around his shoulders to help her stay on her feet, while she scrolled with the other hand through the command screen. Her fingers moved too quickly for him to track exactly what she did. “Shift over to the regular engines and spare the crystal in case we really need it.”

“Are you sure? We won’t be able to outrun them on normal power. If we can’t make it to the wormhole, they’ll snag us in a force field. We’ll be as helpless as a beached whale.”

“That weapon was targeted specifically to the energy frequency of the crystal. If you shut it down, they won’t be able to hit us again.”

He powered the top-notch engine down and shifted over to auxiliary traditionally powered—aka slow—engines. It might have been only his imagination, but the
Oblivion
’s ride seemed less smooth now and they felt like they were crawling through space. He’d turned his ultrasleek catamaran into a tugboat. If the Xuanyuan cannon failed to take out those blasted ships as soon as they crossed…

She squeezed his shoulder. “We just need a few more minutes and I’ll have control of their ship computers. Head for the wormhole as planned.”

Luckily it was already in sight, the pink tendrils curling out like tentacles ready to ensnare its prey.

“Another shot’s coming,” Masters growled, pounding out another round of shots. “Damnation, why don’t you have something better than a single pulsor gun on this baby? It’s like shooting with a slingshot.”

“Weaponry makes us a target,” Sig replied, trying to keep his voice from sounding too defensive. “Big guns mean we’ve got big treasures for someone to try and steal. It’s always been my philosophy to flip the switch on the Razari engine and basically disappear before anyone can get a shot off.”

The ship shimmied beneath the hit as the energy wave passed through, but nothing else happened.

“See?” Charlie said with a pleased laugh. “Truth be told, Sig’s as particular about the appearance of his ship as he is about his attire.”

He was sure his cheeks were flushing. “A big gun will mess up the aerodynamic lines.”

The other man glanced over at him and laughed, which only made him flush more. “A bad guy’s cannon will definitely mess up these pretty lines when it tears the ship apart.”

Staring straight ahead, Sig ignored the jibe and opened the line to Prince Gong. “We’re nearly at the wormhole now. Make sure you don’t shoot us by accident!”