Yes, I am that good. Yes, I am that amazing.
Yes, I’m about to be sick.
On the galley control panel, the comms light flashes red. I ignore it.
I take my time sitting up. Continents drift faster. Only the promise of a grease-filled breakfast gets me moving. I work some moisture into my mouth.
“Rose?”
A soothing automated voice answers me from the wall speakers. “Good afternoon, Captain Farshot. Your physiological outputs are suboptimal and indicate you may have engaged in excess. Do you require a BEC?”
“In my hour of need, Rose, you’re always there for me.”
“Affirmative.”
I pull down the banner and wrap it around my shoulders like a robe. Here she is, Queen Alyssa, dauntless pursuer of calorie-rich hangover cures. I roll off my table-bed as the smell of sizzling bacon fills the galley. So good.
The comms are still flashing. No thanks. Not right now.
Go. Away.
The main party, the big event, went pretty late at the Society’s ballroom down on Apex—open bar, fancy snacks on silver trays, credit awards for me and the other explorers who earned badges in the last quarter. I was pretty well hammered by the time Hell Monkey and I headed back into orbit. I should have called it a night then, but H.M. had other plans. Time for the after-party! he’d said. Bottles for each of us. A card game. Nachos, apparently, and . . . Did I . . . ?
I check under my shirt. Bra’s missing.
Dammit. Did I hook up with Hell Monkey? Again? I really need to stop doing that. I mean, he’s a buddy and a top-notch worldcruiser engineer, but he calls himself Hell Monkey.
The oven pops up with my bacon-egg-and-cheese. Oh yes.
I grab my sandwich and start down the starboard-side corridor to the bridge. The bacon is actually crisp—nice work, Rose—and the bun is soaked in grease. Heavenly. I’ve ignored the red blinking comms long enough that the alert lights have begun to strobe overhead. Each illumination is like a bolt to my temple. But I know this ship like the back of my hand. I could navigate it with my eyes closed, so that’s exactly what I do right now. One hand clutching the last of my breakfast, the other waving in front of me like I’m some sort of undead prowler who’s given up brains for eggs and cheese.
My fingers brush the back of my captain’s chair, and I sit.
For the second time this morning, I wrench my eyes open.
The comms are still going off, lighting up the whole conn. Someone is hailing my vessel. No identification, no call sign. Just some unmarked liftship. I don’t even need to check the viewscreen—I can see the damn thing through the windows that wrap the Vagabond’s prow. It hangs there, in synchronous orbit with us above the blue orb of Apex. How long has it been hailing me? An hour? Two? What kind of mad sadist wakes a girl this early in the morning?
I glance at the time readout on the conn. Okay, maybe not quite morning. Maybe more like late afternoon. But still.
Sadist.
I mash the unmute button on the conn’s interface and flip on audio communications.
“What?” I say, mouth half-full. “What? What? What? If this is another interview request, I hope you can spacewalk because I’m about to board your scrap-metal liftship and dump you out the airlock. Quote me on that.” Silence. “Now, now—don’t let my cheery disposition intimidate you. Identify yourself already.”
A readout streams across my display, the interstellar equivalent of a calling card. Fancy font. A familiar seal. A very familiar name. In fact, probably the last name I want to see right now.
Shit.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The name is Charles Viqtorial, my uncle’s husband and chief envoy.
The readout says, “Urgent Business.”
And the seal? It’s the imperial kind.
Yeah, my uncle is the emperor. Sometimes even I forget.
Two
“H.M., WAKE UP. WE’VE GOT COMPANY.”
I nudge Hell Monkey’s leg, and my partner in exploring jolts up, hits his head, and crumples back into bed like the loser of an otari bare-knuckle brawl. There’s padding bolted to the bulkhead above H.M.’s pillow, because this is not the first time he’s had a hangover run-in with it. His face—with his brown hair shaved close to his head and two days’ stubble darkening the fair skin of his jawline—is half-obscured by a solar visor, something he usually only dons when dealing with the radiant lights of our engine panels. The rest of him is swaddled in streamers, a flimsy sheet, and not much else.
“Who goes there?” H.M. mumbles, voice rough like radio static. He coughs and lifts up the visor. “Oh. Hey there.”
He needs to put that face away. It’s too kissable—apparently. According to my inebriated self. But I’m woefully sober right now, so there’d be no excuse for it. No more hooking up with Hell Monkey, Alyssa. Especially not when Uncle Charlie is on his way to our ship.
“Hey, yourself. Get your butt out of bed. We’ve got a visitor.” I nudge him again. “That’s an order.”
“You should be more careful waking me like that,” Hell Monkey says. “You know I sleep armed. My reflexes might take over and—bam—you’re disintegrated before you can say ‘let me get you some coffee, lover.’”
He reaches into the sheets and yanks out what he expects to be his blaster.
“That’s my boot, you idiot.”
He blinks at it. “Yeah, well. I could have booted you to death.”
I smile and yank up him upright. “Get dressed, ya grunt.”
He looks around for his clothes. “Help me.”
I start to pick through the piles of dirty shirts and underpants on Hell Monkey’s floor. This is the life of a top-tier science jockey and worldcruiser captain. Behold the glamour.
“Do you remember naming me cocaptain last night?” Hell Monkey asks as he tugs on some pants.
“That one hundred percent did not happen.”
He grins at me. “Oh, it def—” He’s cut off by a hiccup and seems to forget the whole thing when I step in front of him and wipe a bit of lip gloss—my lip gloss—off the corner of his mouth.
I raise my eyebrows, standing just a bit too close to be professional. Like, not even our standard of professional. “You were saying?”
“I . . .” H.M. blinks, drags his shirt on over his head. “I was saying, who the hell is hailing us?”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
A few minutes later, Charlie’s liftship has docked, and the light above the port-side seal turns green. The doors open with a hiss and a rush of coolant, and in steps Charlie. Sash. Glittering ceremonial medals. White, freckled skin. Thinning hair. You don’t get to be the chief envoy of an intergalactic empire without going prematurely bald, I guess.
It’s a grand entrance, but I’m surprised Charlie’s alone. He’s usually flanked by two gunned-up otari crownsguards, all stony skin and bad attitudes. The fact he’s unaccompanied means this isn’t an official, on-the-books visit. This is much worse.
“Hey, Charlie, how’s tricks?” I say, trying to sound casual.
Charlie’s face pinches. “This is how you greet official guests?”
H.M. and I are seated with our coffee on the floor of the corridor right in front of the docking seal. I’m still wrapped in the “CONGRATS!” banner and H.M.’s all wrinkled clothes and mussed hair. Hardly a royal welcome.