The Defiant

A few days passed.

The crew decided that the contents of the armory should only be used for target practice, and shouldn’t be carried around the ship. Five thought that the people who would go down to the planets to get supplies should carry weapons, and everyone but Seven and I thought that would be a good idea.

I thought bringing a gun to the surface of a planet would be an invitation to violence. We were supposed to be avoiding detection, and I felt if we brought guns on our mission, it would provoke conflict.

Nobody else thought so.

So after Seven and I discovered the garden, I found myself firing a gun at a target, being watched by seven near strangers.

Turns out I was really good. I could consistently hit the center of the target with either hand, with one eye closed, or looking over my shoulder, my back turned to the target. Five tossed a loaded pistol at me, and I whirled around and fired in one smooth motion.

I had mixed feelings about my newfound talent. On one hand, I could now defend myself if I got into a scrape. On the other, I was trained with a weapon, which meant that they intended me to use it.

Five was pretty good with a gun, as were Six and Eight, but none of the rest could hit the broadside of a barn. Two shrieked girlishly and dropped the gun after he fired, not expecting the kickback.

Two days after the gun incident, Four summoned everyone to the bridge.

“I cracked the encryption key on the coded files from the computer. There was some information in there about how best to avoid detection in Kryllian space, which you don’t care about, and some notes on the culture from Cebos, Byth, and the moon base that’s just beyond Kryllian space, which we can look at when we get there.

“The only information included that I think is relevant now is something I found on the mission, specifically pertaining to the part we’ll be spending on Cebos.

“As you may or may not remember from the video, Imelda told us that we will be attending the prime minister’s annual ball, which is on the third day of their Rest Month, which roughly translates to January 8, earth time.” She paused.

“Also of interest to you is the reason we are included on this mission. Specifically, the reason people of our age were included.

“The Prime Minister of Cebos throws this ball every year mainly for the benefit of the royal officers. However, he does invite the nobility of the three other inhabited planets in the system to attend as well. That’s our in.

“Queen Martiniqua of Erana was invited, but is not able to attend this year because she’s needed to mediate a long-standing argument between rival factions of the government. Instead, she accepted the invitation on behalf of her twin daughters, Rafaela and Rosa-Marie. Do you see where I’m going with this?” she asked.

I groaned. “Let me guess. Eight and I are supposed to pretend to be the princesses in order to get into the ball.” Eight looked horrified.

“Aye. But it gets better. We are also expected to intercept the princesses’ ship en route to Cebos and hold them until the ball is over, at which time we can release them to go home. And of course, two young princesses would not be allowed to attend a ball alone, so they decided to bring some of their friends along. Specifically, their cousins, the young countess Isabella and her sisters Valentina and Antonella,” she gestured at herself, Three, and Seven, “and their personal guards.” She pointed to the boys.

“One question. If all of us are attending the ball, who will be guarding the princesses?” Five asked.

“Seriously? After what you just heard, that’s your only question?” Two asked incredulously.

“We’ll just have to keep them locked in the prison cell downstairs,” Three said.

“Okay, disregarding the fact that kidnapping and holding two princesses and stealing their identities is spectacularly illegal and guarantees a very high price on our heads, which will make it impossible to return to Earth,” I said dryly, “How do they expect us to impersonate members of the Eranian ruling class without someone seeing through the disguise?”

“Well, you were asking me how much thought they’d put into this mission, and the answer is a lot,” Four replied. “Erana is a technology-null zone. They left Earth to escape the proliferation of what they saw as a threat to civilization. They have no ships, and only very rudimentary communication technology. When they need interplanetary travel, they rely on their neighbors. By the time they get ahold of one of the other planets in the system and get hold of a ship to transport anyone to come after us, we’ll be halfway home.

“And because of the lack of technology, the only Eranians that have actually left their planet are the queen and several diplomats. The only thing the prime minister of Cebos knows about the princesses is that they’re twins. It’s easy to make people think you’re a princess when they haven’t met the real thing.”

“Sounds simple,” I said sarcastically.

“It really is. All we have to do is get to the system, nab the princesses, attend the ball, sneak below the house to get the man we need to transport back to earth, get back to the ship, release the princesses, stick our passenger in the prison cell, and then hightail it back home.”

“And break about a hundred laws along the way,” Three said for Six.

“The thing is, we do need to learn how to act. You two,” Four said, indicating Eight and I, “need to learn how to act like princesses. All of us girls should get a handle on some basic Eranian history and politics. And I,” she sighed regretfully, “need to be taught how to speak without my illustrious accent, because unfortunately, Eranians speak like you boring Americans.”

“What about us?” Five asked.

“You lads are just the guards. You follow us around and stand there silently in your uniforms. Easy, especially for you, Six.” Six inclined his head.

“Won’t they be suspicious because we’re so young?” Two asked.

“No—On Erana, personal guards are usually only a few years older than their charges. Most of the time, they’re selected for a member of the royal family from birth, and trained likewise, which means that they take over as the primary guard on their eighteenth birthday. Plus, it’s better to have young guards because they’re more physically fit. So you guys are on the young end of the spectrum, but it won’t be too obvious to the casual observer,” Four explained.

And so, we had our mission. For the next several days, Eight and I occupied ourselves learning proper poise and conversation like princesses. We also had daily sessions with the other girls to learn Eranian history and politics.

“My dear Countess Valentina,” I said to Seven (we’d decided it would be advantageous to practice using our new names), “who was the first ruler of Erana?”

“Why, Princess Rafaela,” Seven said, “it was Queen Magdalena, your Highness’ great great grandmother.”

Three days of that, and I was ready to jump out an airlock.

But while it was insufferably boring, the history and economics and poise lessons were relatively easy to learn. The hardest part of the mission so far was getting Four to not speak with an accent.

“You,” I dictated to Four.

“Ye.”

“You.”

“Ye.”

“Say it with me, more slowly. Yoo.”

“Ye.”

“Let’s do something else.”

Several hours a day spent with Four found her able to speak most words with no accent, though she was still apt to slip into it when she got angry, which was often.

The time I didn’t spend studying for the upcoming culmination of our effort was whiled away in the training room, releasing tension from hours of being stuck in the same room as Three. I had hoped that she would become less insufferable as I got to know her, but the opposite was evidently true. At the end of a long study session, I often had small crescent marks cut into my palms where my nails had dug in from my hands being clenched into fists so they didn’t end up around her neck.

Two, Five, and Six were often in the training room. I honestly wasn’t sure what they did to occupy their time while the rest of us were holed up in the galley, quizzing each other on Erana’s primary exports.

Six mostly used the punching bag or did obscene amounts of push-ups in a corner. I would not want to be on his bad side. His neck was the same width as my waist, and I’d seen his strength firsthand when he’d held Eight still without effort while she’d been fighting like a wildcat. Fortunately, he was generally very kind to me, and of course he didn’t talk, which was very refreshing after a day filled with practicing the inane chatter we would be expected to engage in during the ball.

Five didn’t talk much either, which surprised me. I figured he’d be the kind to talk all the time just to hear his own voice, but he mostly just beat up the punching bag in silence or practiced swordplay solo.

Two didn’t seem to belong in the training room. His physique looked more suited to a desk than a gym, but he was in there at least twice a day, often early in the morning, lifting (rather light) weights or doing push-ups or crunches.

A couple of days after Four had given us the details from the encrypted files, Two and I were alone in the training room. Seven was down in the garden, Eight and Four were doing speech therapy, and I didn’t know where the others were.

“Why are you in here so often?” I asked Two after a few minutes. He’d been sitting on the floor by the dueling ring, staring off into space while I did my stretches.

“For fun?” he said after a moment, sounding startled at my interruption.

“Come on. Neither of us believe that. Why are you really here?”

He said nothing.

“Three?”

He sighed. “Yeah. I can’t stop thinking about her. I thought if I buffed up a little she’d look at me instead of Five.”

“Personally, I think you’re dodging a bullet,” I said. “Three’s a nightmare.”

“An unbelievably hot nightmare. And I’m just a loser.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Five may be gorgeous, but—”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“But you’re a very sweet guy, and if she can’t see that, then she’s the loser,” I said.

“You think I’m sweet?”

“Sure I do.”

“Thanks, One.”

“No prob. Go get her, tiger.” Tiger? What on earth was coming out of my mouth?

“So you think I should go talk to her?”

“Of course. Tell her how you feel.”

“I think I will.” He stood up and left the training room.

“Jeez,” I said to myself in the silence of the training room. “Ask Three out? Why not just stick your leg in a bear trap? That would probably be less painful.”

Fantastic. Now I was talking to myself, too. Maybe I was going crazy.

But my possible insanity was the least of my problems. The day after Two consulted me in the training room, we reached the border of Kryllian space.