Ad Astra (I've got a bad feeling about this) - Jonas Brothers, Joe/Nick, R
title: Ad Astra (I've got a bad feeling about this)
pairing: Joe/Nick
rating: R
warnings: The usual Jonas-related caveats, plus space-crack; also, David Henrie.
summary: Bringing down an evil (or at least inconvenient) galactic bureaucracy, one mishap at a time.
notes: So. Bring your senses of humor and your patience to this one, kids, because, for various reasons, this fic is still IN PROGRESS. It's not gonna get stranded or left unfinished. But at the moment, it's not quite done yet. Yeah, I know. I fail at Big Bang. What DOES exist so far is entirely the result of much encouragement, tweaking, and inspiration from my usual partner in crime, theskyturnsred, whom you may thank for any parts you like and whom you may not blame for any parts that suck. Additional inspiration and MUCH flailing and joy are the direct result of smithereen's GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS ART, which has made me laugh and make embarrassing noises over and over and over again. I would like it greatly stressed that she had her artwork done completely on time and in beautiful order. Lateness of posting is my fault alone.
A million light years' worth of thanks to these beautiful ladies. Baby, I'm their biggest fan. <3
Joe hadn’t been expecting the robot.
When he’d startled awake this morning out of a dream that left him feeling like he always did after one of his Foreboding Dreams (a bit clammy, heart racing, and a sense of impending greatness), he’d known something was coming. He couldn’t remember the dream, so he wasn’t sure what was coming, although, really, his Foreboding Dreams rarely bore any resemblance to the real-life things they portended; once, memorably, he’d dreamed about a chorus line of dancing, singing trilobites, and that had only presaged his getting a horrible grade on an exam in stellar cartography. So sometimes the dreams were pretty unhelpful, it was true. Still, he wished all morning that he could remember this one, something about a laser light show, he thought. There was fog, maybe. He wasn’t sure.
But there definitely hadn’t been the squat, excitable little bot growling all the way over the ridge and zooming toward Joe as he perched on his speeder overlooking the salt flats, taking potshots with a practice gun at cheap plastic hoverdiscs he’d launched out into the white expanse. Joe heard the little machine before he saw it, whuffling and wheezing on sand-clogged gears and grunting in metallic alarm every few seconds. It was homing right in on him.
Wary, Joe clambered down off the nose of his hoverspeeder, the stocky little bot rolling insistently toward him on all-terrain treads. Its display lights were arranged such that it appeared to have dark, wide-set, sad eyes, and its small transceiver dish rotated at a steady but hurried pace on top of its carapace. When Joe came near, it let out a high tonal whine and zoomed up, bumping full-tilt into Joe’s shin.
“Ow!” he griped, frowning down at the bot in concern. He looked around for a human chasing after it, but there was no one. A little utility bot like this couldn’t have come very far on its own; he wondered if it was malfunctioning. Certainly headbutting a person’s legs was abnormal behavior for them.
“Where’d you come from, little guy?” he asked it, then remembered that utility bots couldn’t talk. The bot bleated at him, a sound almost like a human blowing a raspberry, and proceeded to whir itself around in tight circles and then rocket off back the way it had come, motors whining again.
“Hey, wait!” Joe cried, starting to run after it, then skidding to a stop, turning around, and jumping into his speeder to give chase instead. He’d never seen a bot like that move so fast; whatever its current running program, it must’ve been very urgent. He revved his vehicle and went after it, catching it up after a few minutes and slowing alongside it to follow it up a large sand dune.
He hadn’t dreamed about the bot, he was pretty sure. And he was very sure he hadn’t dreamed this. He would’ve remembered a starship. Especially if it had been half-buried in the dune as Joe crested it, neatly blocking the only road back into town.
“Um,” Joe said to himself in consternation, kneeling up on the seat of his slowing speeder and peeking over the windscreen, concerned. There were still smoke trails curling off the battered-looking hull of the smallish craft, which might once have been pretty stylish but now most nearly resembled charcoal. It was probably irradiated, Joe thought suddenly, and he already had radiation sickness and was mutating and would end up with a horrible fifth limb. He hoped it was a prehensile tail. That would lessen the sting of radiation-induced mutation considerably.
He hadn’t even heard the ship crash.
“Hello?” he called at the wreckage, though he would have been scared pantsless if he’d actually heard a voice answering. It was probably good that he did not. He bit his lip, wondering what to do. Did he go get the security guys at the outpost? Did he check for survivors? Was there a protocol here?
Luckily (or perhaps unluckily, it was a bit early to tell, what with him not remembering his Dream), Joe just then heard a noise from inside the ship.
He yelped - a manly kind of yelp! - and ducked back down behind the pockmarked windscreen of his vehicle. He wished mightily that he’d thought to bring along his plasma rifle, or, in fact, even just a worthy two-by-four, by way of defense; as it was, he could only watch, wide-eyed, as the frantic, squat little bot raced toward the wreck, whining at the top of its register, transceiver spinning wildly.
“Uhhh,” Joe said again, with much more trepidation. “Good boy?” he offered faintly. The bot did not acknowledge him.
Suddenly there was a frantic, faint pounding sound from the inside of the ship, and the landing lights on the hull flashed rapidly. The bot whined again, louder, and started going around again, this time in even tighter circles. Joe rubbed nervously at his cheek, unsure, but eventually curiosity won out (and he did not yet feel any mutating going on, so he figured it was safe-ish). He slipped over the edge of his hoverspeeder and crept toward the smoking ship.
“Hello?” he called again. The lights flashed more crazily, which Joe took to be a greeting. “Um. Um. Okay.” He flailed a bit at the ship. “Just a second!” he yelled, and dove back into his speeder to fish out his toolbox, upending it on the backseat.
He found a rusty crowbar in the mess of tools and padded back over to the ship, muttering to himself. “There had better not be something nasty inside here...I’m too young to die. Also, my hair is too good.” Jamming the point of the crowbar into the gap where the hatch was partially separated from the hull, Joe put all his weight on it, groaning with the effort of levering it open. Suddenly there was a hiss of pressure equalizing and the hatch popped open, and Joe flew back with another (manly) yelp, grunting as he hit the sand and struggled up again.
From inside the ship emerged a slender figure dressed all in white, stepping daintily out onto the sand and squinting in the overbearing midday desert sun. Joe’s eyes widened as he took in full lips, glossy brown hair, and clever brown eyes. Instantly his heart started racing and his stomach filled with butterflies. He was in love.
“My name is Prince Nicholas,” the boy in white said, drawing himself up to his full height and looking down his straight nose at Joe lying in the sand. “You may call me Your Highness. And you will lead me to the nearest spaceport right this moment.”
*
“But, Your Highness,” Joe said for the fifteenth time, half-tumbling out of the speeder as he tried to keep up with the Prince, who was striding down the street as if he owned it. (Hell, he’d never actually said what he was prince of. Maybe he did own it. Although, by the dirty looks he was getting from vendors and passers-by as he swept officiously through, Joe didn’t think he did.) “You can’t just hire someone to fly you around, we don’t have any money--”
“And, as I told you twenty minutes ago, I am lousy with spare cash,” the Prince replied haughtily, and Joe winced and, noticing the dirty looks around him turn suddenly interested, he wished fervently that Prince Nicholas would keep his voice down. “I shan’t have any trouble commissioning a ship, if we can just find a willing captain.” He paused for a moment to look back and cluck encouragingly at his fat little bot, trundling at a much less breakneck pace behind them now, almost leisurely. With the Prince rescued from his charred ship, the little guy was much calmer, the dish on his head going around in lazy circles and its display lights half-shuttered, making him - Joe couldn’t help but think of it as a him, with its gruff mechanical vocal range - look almost sleepy. The Prince seemed fond of him, too, waiting until the little thing caught up and bumped softly into Joe’s heels before continuing at his fast, striding pace. Joe smiled down at the bot, not watching where he was going when he returned to the conversation.
“But--” He tripped on a crack in the pavement and nearly took a nosedive into the cement. Nicholas, with reflexes which were nearly startlingly fast, caught his arm with an iron grip and steadied him. Joe’s heart galloped around behind his ribcage again; Prince Nicholas was very strong.
“Are you always this clumsy?” Nicholas asked, with a scowl that insinuated he thought Joe somewhat of a liability for being such a klutz. Joe quickly dusted himself off, mumbling something noncommittal, not wanting the Prince to send him away so quickly for being a hazard to life and limb. He stood still and tried to appear graceful. Nicholas smirked. “Or is it my charismatic presence distracting you.”
Joe rolled his eyes and hoped the Prince would think his blush was just a bit of sunburn. The calculating look in his shrewd eyes suggested Joe was fooling no one. Joe heaved a very put-upon sigh. “Look, what I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t ‘just find a willing captain.’ All spacers are under Government commission, you can’t hire them. They’re regulated! And all the ports are regulated. You’ve got, like, three weeks of red tape just to get off the planet!”
Nicholas scoffed. “Like the galaxy isn’t crawling with free spacers.”
Joe blinked at him. “It isn’t.”
“Says you, and who are you?” Nicholas gave Joe a long, disdainful look up and down, spoiled somewhat by the fact that it turned, somehow, into blatantly checking Joe out about halfway through. The Prince looked as stunned and embarrassed by this as Joe was, both of them blushing and ducking their eyes away. Nicholas recovered first. “A mechanic. On a little backwater world I’ve never even heard of.”
“I’m a farmer, technically,” Joe said, mostly to be contrary, because it was far from a point of pride for him. “But I also know ships, and spacing. I’ve had my pilot’s license since I was twelve, and I follow all the shipping news, and I’m telling you you may as well just get in line like everybody else. If you need a ship, you have to go register in the port for passage on one. When it leaves. In, like, a month.” His tone and face softened a little with hope. “You can stay with me, while you wait!”
The Prince clearly would have liked very much to look dismissive at that suggestion, but there was too much in his face that gave away how much he was actually considering it for the half-second it took for him to come back to his senses. He visibly shook himself and scowled again, and Joe tried not to think about how the Prince was beautiful even when he was scowling.
“I am not going to stay anywhere. I need to get to the Capitol right away. I’m on a very important mission!” He looked aggrieved, as if he’d been trying to get this through to Joe for some time, and was yet to be successful. To be fair, he had been trying to get this through to Joe since about five seconds after he climbed out of the ship.
Joe looked crestfallen, shook his head. “Oh. Your...Your Highness, there’s just no way to get to the Capitol right now. They’ve blocked all the shipping lanes from here to there for the next six months, while the insurgents are on trial. The only ways even open still are the official political travel lanes...well, I mean, unless you count all the old star corridors, but no one’s used those in--”
“You said you could fly, right?” Nicholas asked him suddenly, wheeling around on him suddenly and nearly causing Joe to run into him. Joe swallowed thickly, more from being so unexpectedly close to Nicholas than because of the Prince’s suddenly-zealous tone.
“Uhhhh...” Joe offered blankly, then blinked and frowned. “I...yeah.”
Nicholas’ face lit up in a triumphant smile that nearly made Joe whimper. “Then you can fly us!”
Joe felt a little like he’d been slapped with a cold fish. “Uh. No. I have no ship. All I have is my license. I don’t have clearance to fly anything bigger than a hoverspeeder. Your Highness,” he added quickly, as the Prince’s face grew stormy again. Nicholas huffed a sharp and aggravated-sounding sigh through his nose.
“I’ve managed to land on the most worthless planet in the whole galaxy, and out of everyone I could’ve met, I meet the most worthless pilot on this rock.”
Joe frowned. “Hey!”
“Just--” The Prince was visibly restraining himself. “Take me to the nearest dock. I’ll pay you well for your trouble.”
Joe just looked at him a moment, hurt, then turned and walked off through the crowd, murmuring to himself, “Don’t want any payment at all.”
*
It wasn’t every day one met royalty, even if it was royalty one had never heard of. Nicholas was, Joe supposed, exactly like a prince would be, if Joe knew any princes personally. Although, he supposed, he did now. Nicholas was bossy and easily perturbed, and he ordered people around with the sort of tone used by those who are used to being obeyed, no matter how silly their demands.
They finally made it to the nearest public port, Nicholas striding ahead with both Joe and his little robot trailing in his wake. The bot was puffing and grunting irritably as they went, and Joe knew a bit how he felt. The crowds ahead of them parted as the Prince went through, eyeing him distrustfully, and Joe even more so. Joe gave them sheepishly apologetic looks and hurried after Nicholas as he slipped into the small waystation at one side of the big open port, all the bays open to the punishing hot sun with the ships gleaming inside.
Inside it was dusty, muted, and dim. It was basically just a big waiting room for people idling away until their ships departed, or people who were there to get clearance to fly from the port authority. There were tables and chairs and a long desk manned by a very disinterested-looking young man who took clearance applications and stamped them twenty times and then put them in a tray to be sent away for more stamps. It was lazy and slow in here, and Joe felt out of place when everyone looked up at them as they came in. The little bot bleated unhappily and puffed sand out of its gears, making a sound that for all the world was exactly like a person spitting something nasty out of their mouths.
"I wish to purchase passage aboard an intragalactic ship," the Prince said to the authority guy behind the counter, without preamble. The young man blinked as if he'd just been napping with his eyes open, and Nicholas was a rude awakening. Joe tried not to think about how it might be nice, actually, to wake up to Nicholas every day...
"Do you...have boarding permissions?" the young man asked unsurely, as if not totally convinced he'd heard Nicholas correctly. Nicholas waved an irritated hand and Joe got a really horrible feeling this was going to go poorly.
"I'm a well-respected dignitary," the Prince said firmly. "My name is Nicholas Jonas, and I am a Prince of the galaxy. You'll know my name from the news reports, I expect."
Joe pressed his face into the palm of his hand and knew that his horrible feeling had underestimated the situation.
The boy behind the counter did not look amused. "Nnno. I'm afraid not. I'll have to see some identification."
Nicholas looked first surprised, and then like he wanted very much for the attendant to feel extremely silly about himself for asking for something so pedestrian. The boy was unfazed; he just met Nicholas' look with a bland expression of his own. Finally, grudgingly, the Prince muttered, "I...don't have any. I...my transport here was. Incapacitated. And I lost my security clearances."
"Well, sir, I'm sorry, but without identification or flight permissions, you won't be able to board a commercial flight."
"But...you don't understand, this is an emergency! I have to get to--"
"Sir, I don't care if you have to get to the other side of the galaxy because your wife's having a baby," the boy said, his tone becoming snippy. The way he eyed Joe, standing behind the Prince, was speaking; Joe went hot as he realized that the authority officer thought the likelihood of Nicholas having a wife very slim indeed. Joe's stomach did a funny little samba.
Nicholas was not at all pleased with the boy’s tone, though Joe thought he saw a hint of red on the tips of his pale ears. That was most certainly not sunburn; Joe had the impression that the sun would not dare try to burn Prince Nicholas’ ears, or face his wrath.
“I don’t think you really understand the severity of the--” His Highness began, and Joe saw the moment the attendant went from “disinterested kid making a living” to “righteous official of the government.” It almost made a noise when it happened, too. Kind of a low, ominous twang.
“I don’t think,” the young man said, standing from his seat, “that you really understand how much higher I am on the totem pole than you here.” Suddenly, as if they’d emerged from the walls, two very burly men in security uniforms peeled away from their unseen posts in the corners and boxed in Joe, the Prince, and the Prince’s robot, which let out a little whining growl somewhere between plaintive and defensive. Apparently even he didn’t feel good about their chances. Joe sympathized deeply. “You seem to think you have some power. You have exactly shit, here, especially without identification. And within the next hour, your picture will be in every spaceport in the city and you’ll be tagged as a disturber of the peace, because I don’t like you very much, all of a sudden. So good luck getting off-planet anytime in the next month.” He shot a steely look at the security officers, who seized Nicholas’ arm on one side and Joe’s on the other. The fat little bot was already beating a hasty retreat to the door. “You’d better pray you don’t see me the next time you come in here, and I work every day of the week. Good day, gentlemen.”
Joe’d been thrown out of some places in his life, but never from someplace as boring as the port authority, and never had he actually physically been tossed out on his ass by a man who looked like he might’ve been part-giant. He wasn’t sure, as he got to his feet and dusted off his ass, offering Nicholas a hand he refused, whether that made this particular incident more or less disgraceful.
You know, his dreams could stand to be a lot more specific. They might’ve avoided whatever it was that just happened.
“What just happened?” he opined to Nicholas, who looked like any minute he might erupt like a volcano and go up in a glorious conflagration. Hells. He was even sexy when he was hopping mad. “What were you thinking? I told you that wouldn’t work.”
“Well I sure couldn’t have counted on you to do anything worthwhile,” Nicholas gritted back at him, which Joe felt completely unfair. “All you’ve done all day is make excuses! I have to get to the Capitol. If I don’t, the whole galaxy is at risk!”
“And all you’ve done today is talk in your crazy Prince-code about the galaxy being in trouble and you needing to get to the Capitol, and make demands when I’ve told you like a billion times that--”
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” a voice drawled from behind them, “that you two boys are a little bit stuck.”
Nicholas bristled and Joe wheeled around, paranoid after all the dirty looks they’d been getting from the portfolk all day long. Joe really wished he was armed right now. But as it turned out, there was no plasmagun pointed at them, or even a threatening knife. There was only a tall, broad-shouldered, shady-looking character whose good looks somehow only added to the impression that he was breaking laws just by standing there, his hands tucked into the pockets of his duster. He was wearing a bandolier. Who in their right mind actually wears a bandolier like it’s a fashion statement?
“Who are you?” Joe and Nicholas asked at the same time, both of them stealing a glance at each other when they heard their words in stereo. The dark-haired stranger just smirked a little harder at them; that angle of smirk must hurt, Joe thought.
The stranger shrugged in an eloquent way. “That depends, really.”
“On what?” the Prince asked suspiciously, in an arrogant tone that for once Joe thought was probably rightly placed.
“On what exactly you guys are looking for.” Suddenly a knot of men in Government uniforms - municipal security - walked by, and the stranger in the black duster eyed them sidelong. He gestured to Joe and Nicholas, beckoning.
“Come on. Follow me.”
Joe and the Prince traded a look, again, but they did follow, at a distance. The man ducked into a shadowy doorway, out of site of the guards and anyone else who might pass by.
“You said you need passage to the Capitol,” the stranger said, and Nicholas visibly perked up.
“Immediate passage, yes,” the Prince replied. This seemed to please the newcomer, whose smirk returned in full force.
“Good. It just so happens I was planning to leave immediately. Can you pay?”
“What are you asking?” Joe butted in, interrupting the Prince, who had opened his mouth to reply.
The stranger shrugged again, this time visibly more guarded. “What can you offer?”
“A million marks, when we’ve arrived safely in the Capitol,” the Prince replied, which Joe knew immediately would produce exactly the response it got.
The stranger snorted. “Yeah, right. I don’t operate on promises. I need something solid.”
“Just...wait a minute,” Joe said, bristling a little. “Who are you, anyway? How do we know you’re really a pilot?”
The young man narrowed his dark eyes and then pulled a little projector bubble from his bandolier. He held it in his palm and it produced a bright monochrome image on one of the dark walls of their alcove: an electronic pilot’s license, with the name David Henrie at the top. Joe scanned it; a veteran spacer already at the age of twenty-three, no older than Joe himself, and supposedly the captain of a light freighter, named...the Centurion Honeybee?
“That enough convincing for ya?” David Henrie asked in a drawl that was half-amused, half-annoyed. He snapped the bubble shut and pinned it back in its place. “Fastest ship in this arm of the Galaxy, with a few...modifications the Government need not know about. Including a complete map of all the star corridors, including the ones no longer in use.”
Nicholas practically lit up, leaning in closer instinctively, like he was being drawn toward a flame. Joe felt an instantaneous pull of jealousy, and he frowned, bitter that he hadn’t been able to make the Prince smile like that. Or at all, really. David glanced at him, seemed to recognize his frown for what it was. He grinned roguishly and Joe felt almost like pulling Nicholas back, farther away from him. Clearly this guy was not trustworthy. He...smirked too much.
“So you could get us to the Capitol without having to stop at any checkpoints?” Nicholas asked, openly gleeful.
“It’ll cost you,” David reminded him. “Secrecy always costs a little extra.”
Joe scoffed. “We don’t even know if your ship,” his voice conveyed his profound mistrust in the very existence of it, “can fly. It’s probably a glorified tugboat...”
David blinked, a flush of righteous offense rising in his face. “A tugboat? A--” He huffed a furious breath through his nose, sounding like an annoyed animal. “Listen here, kid--”
“I was born the same year as you,” Joe told him, perhaps a little snottily.
“--I know you probably think you’re hot shit and all, but you wouldn’t know a good ship if you fried up in its afterburners. So I don’t expect you to have a grasp on just exactly what I mean when I say that the Bee is the best and most kickass machine in this Galaxy or any other, and I’m the finest pilot you’ll find on this rock. So if you two morons would like to get off the rock sometime in the next half-decade and don’t fancy having to blow that pimple-faced port authority douche anytime soon, I suggest you--”
“I promise you’ll be paid,” Nicholas interjected suddenly, a determined look in his eyes. “I’m a Galactic prince, and as soon as I’m in the Capitol, I’ll have access to my bank accounts again.”
David’s face set in an even more determined expression than Nicholas’. He shook his head. “No can do, Your Worship,” he said, sounding somehow genuinely regretful even as he sounded simultaneously completely unapologetic. “I need something cold and hard in advance. Something.”
Prince Nicholas opened his mouth as if to say something else scathing, then seemed to think better of it and set his jaw, instead, grimly. He looked, for the first time since he’d climbed out of that disaster of a wreck, a little crestfallen. A little desperate. The expression passed quickly, glossed over with his cool facade, but Joe saw it for the moment it was there, and he felt suddenly terrible for all the stonewalling he’d been doing all day, even if it had been necessary and logical. He should’ve been more helpful.
“How’s three thousand sound?” he suddenly blurted, before he’d really put any more thought into that sentiment. It wasn’t in his nature to overthink things once he’d decided they were right to do.
Both David and Nicholas turned to look at him surprise. Joe bit his lip and drew himself up to his full height. “Well?” he pressed David, who visibly shook himself and shrugged.
“That’d get us off the ground,” he drawled, seeming a little skeptical. His neatly-groomed eyebrows drew together. “Do you actually have it?”
“Do you actually have a ship?” Joe snarked back. “I’ve got it.”
“Alright,” David said, putting his hands up in front of himself defensively. He worried at his lip, then grinned. “Alright!” he repeated, more enthusiastically. He put out his hand and aggressively shook Nicholas’; the Prince looked a little bit scandalized, but the lines of tension in his face were easing away. He looked over at Joe, really looked at him, and Joe could feel his ears going pink.
“Let’s see this Honeybee of yours,” the Prince said evenly, and finally stopped staring at Joe as if he could see straight through him. Joe backed out of the alcove in relief and, with the Prince’s wheezy little robot, trailed somewhat despondently behind the Prince and the spacer.
*
“...this is your ship.”
David was visibly offended by the tone of Nicholas’ voice, which was ironic, because Nicholas was visibly offended by everything about David’s ship.
Joe was pretty unsuccessfully trying to swallow a laugh; he choked on it and drew a purse-mouthed glare from their reticent pilot.
“She’s...faster than she looks,” he grumbled. The Prince gave him an incredulous look.
“So a part flies off of her every five minutes, instead of every half-hour, then?”
“Look, do you want a ride or not? Because, to be honest, I’m not sure three thousand is quite going to cover verbal abuse.”
“...alright. As long as it flies, I guess.”
“Famous last words,” Joe muttered, and imagined he saw the corner of Nicholas’ lip curl up. “Look,” he said at conversational level. “I just have to...” He made a complicated gesture that made David tick up an eyebrow. But Nicholas seemed to understand, and he nodded. He moved closer to Joe, obviously to say something meant only for Joe to hear, and David took that as a sign he should go prep the Bee for takeoff.
Nicholas lowered his voice, and he was looking at Joe in that knowing way, again, like Joe was utterly transparent. It made him blush and focus on Nicholas’ mouth instead of his eyes. But that was no help at all, and only made him blush more.
“Thank you,” the Prince said sincerely. “You didn’t...you don’t have to do this. Are you sure you can--”
“I can,” Joe said immediately, meaning it. “I want to. I want to help. Not every day a guy gets to loan money to a handsome prince, right?”
Nicholas blinked at being called handsome, and Joe knew it’d probably been foolish of him to do it, but he couldn’t care. Once he gave David the money, there would really be no reason to stay; Joe wasn’t going to the Capitol, after all. He couldn’t, he had a job, here, and...and an apartment, and a life, and the Prince was just passing through, desperate to get to somewhere else. Joe would certainly never see him again. So what harm was there in calling him handsome? It was only true, anyway.
After the momentary surprise, Nicholas’ face softened, and he smiled, and Joe’s heart stuttered in his chest. “Thank you, Joe. It really...you’ve been so helpful.”
Joe laughed, shrugged. “Not so helpful. But I’m glad I helped. A little.” He rubbed at his right arm, just barely stopping himself from shuffling his feet. He was fidgeting. He didn’t want to have to go get his money yet, wanted to stay and draw out the impossible circumstance of meeting a Prince - meeting someone so stunningly attractive - who had fallen from space.
He realized at the same moment Nicholas did that they were just kind of staring at each other; they both laughed awkwardly. Joe nodded and made a stuttering kind of sound that roughly meant “be right back.” But as he turned to go, he paused, flicking his eyes up at David, then back to Nicholas.
“You gonna...be alright with him for a few minutes?” he asked, wary. David looked at Nicholas, and Joe did not approve of that. (From anybody but himself.)
Nicholas seemed surprised by the question, following Joe’s eyes to David, and then smiling and nodding.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Win2’s got some tricks, if I need help.”
Joe was puzzled for a second. The Prince gestured to his little robot, now going slowly about the landing gear of the Honeybee, scanning it with a series of interested-sounding grunts. “My bot. WIN2-STON2.” He winked at Joe, which made Joe’s stomach flutter. “You’d be surprised the weaponry you can fit in a little bot these days.”
Joe blinked in shock, then eyed the little guy sidelong and wondered just how much weaponry you could fit into a little bot these days.
When he returned from the bank kiosk five minutes later, Joe saw Nicholas and David embroiled in a passionate conversation in the middle of the hangar, David gesticulating and Nicholas glaring. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and he never did. Just as he was opening his mouth to ask what the problem was, he heard a sudden shout, amplified with a voice booster. “STOP RIGHT THERE. ALL OF YOU, HANDS IN THE AIR, NOW!”
Joe jumped nearly a foot in the air, spinning around and nearly dropping the wad of money in his hands. There were municipal security guards flooding into the hangar, and Joe felt his eyes widen in alarm. They were holding plasma rifles, and they were training them on the three of them.
“Whoa!” David said sharply, and Win2, who had frozen in his tracks next to one of the Honeybee’s support struts, started winding tight circles, whining in alarm, red lights flashing on his sensor array. “What the fuck?”
“I SAID HANDS UP!” yelled the guard with the bullhorn, and the masked-and-uniformed officials raised their guns. Joe gasped, heart stuttering in fear, and staggered backward as he realized they were going to be shot!
Suddenly, with a loud grinding squeal that sounded like a growl, Win2 zipped away from Joe and David, barreling straight for the officers (as much as a ten-pound little bot could barrel, anyway). Nobody in the entire hangar seemed to know what to do about this situation, the guards bemused and Joe, Nicholas, and David alarmed, until suddenly Win2 yipped loudly and a shockwave of energy burst out around him, knocking everyone backward as it expanded. The guards opened fire on the plucky little bot, but their plasma bolts sizzled as they hit the wall of energy and were swallowed up.
Realizing they were being shielded, David hollered incoherently and scrambled up from where he’d fallen on the ground. “What the fuck?” he shouted at the Prince, who was trying to get up and slipping on some loose gravel scattered on the hangar floor.
“Just get in the ship!” Nicholas shouted back, diving for the gangplank. He swung around and beckoned frantically at Joe while David disappeared into the belly of the Bee. Glancing between Nicholas and Win2, Joe just froze for a moment, terrified the brave bot would get hurt.
“Win2!” he yelled; the bot turned toward him, his little transceiver dish turning so fast it was almost a blur, and whined. “Come on! C’mon boy!” He motioned him to follow as he backed toward the hatch of the ship. On the other side of the hangar, the officers were frantically talking and one of them was waving several of them around to the other side of the space, trying to get around Win2’s shield.
Win2 was too smart for that, though. He zoomed back toward the ship and Joe calling his name, his shield following him as he went. He only switched it off at the last moment before zipping up the gangplank and up into Joe’s ankles. Joe swore in pain but he was grinning as he scooped up the bot and ran inside. Nicholas, right behind him, punched the door controls and the confused guards only got off one last harmless round of shots before the hatch sealed.
In Joe’s arms, the bot was growling and whining, still all pent-up from his excitement, and Joe laughed a little hysterically as he and Nicholas ran to the cockpit, where David was already hitting buttons and throwing switches. The sound of the engines revving was like the loud hum of insects beneath their feet; suddenly Honeybee didn’t seem such a ridiculous name for the ship.
“Everyone alive?” David growled in a way that seemed to suggest he wasn’t responsible for it if anyone wasn’t. Joe rolled his eyes.
“Yes, we’re alive, just get us out of here!”
“The fuck does it look like I’m doing, kid?” David snapped, and the sound of the engines deepened and swelled. Outside the viewscreen, Joe could see the security guards going nuts, talking into their headsets and rushing around the area. “We gotta fly before they get up an EMP net...do either of you know anything about ships?”
“I do,” Joe said, suddenly tentative. And he did, he’d worked on dozens and dozens of them, just for fun and extra money, but never had he worked with one as big as this. He knew the model, though, had read about it in magazines, so he thought he could help, somehow.
“Great, get over here and work the cartograph while I get us off the planet.”
“Uhhh...”
“...what?”
“This is probably not the best time to mention I flunked stellar cartography.”
Nicholas was gaping at him and David looked like he wanted to punch him in the face. Joe quickly backpedalled. “I mean...I flunked it the first time! I...I got a passing grade in it the second time, but...I know we’re in a hurry and I don’t know if I can...I can pilot instead!!” he added desperately. David was looking more and more like he’d like to hit him.
“Have you ever piloted a Class 7 before?” he asked Joe tersely.
“Well...well no, but--”
“Then like hell am I letting you put my ship through the side of the hangar bay. I’ll do it mys--”
Just then there was a spray of plasma across the viewscreen, like static on a video. It had fizzled off the anodized surface of the viewscreen, but it wasn’t from a plain old rifle. Joe peered down and saw a guard manning one of the near-dilapidated port plasma cannons; they hadn’t been used in decades, but they apparently still worked just fine. And they were plenty big enough to do some damage to a ship the size of the Bee.
“Fucking--alright, alright, here, you just...just get us out of the hangar without hitting any of the walls,” David snarled, crawling out of the pilot’s seat and into the cramped little alcove that housed the navigational port. Joe’s heart leaped into his throat in excitement and he carefully set Win2 down to go take David’s place, the bot immediately retreating under Joe’s vacated seat.
Joe’s nerves flared really badly as he sat down in the cavernous pilot’s seat, but as soon as he set his hands on the controls, he went blissfully, completely calm. He’d never piloted a ship like this before, no. But he knew how it should be done. He didn’t even know how he knew; sure he’d read schematics, technical specifications. He knew all about the ship. But that didn’t mean he could pilot it, or that he even knew what half the buttons did.
That didn’t seem to matter, somehow. Joe knew he could do it, just as surely as he knew he could tie his boots. The feeling of his Foreboding Dream came back to him like misplaced déjà vu; he realized this was what his dream had been telling him about, this was what he’d been waiting for: the chance to actually pilot a full-sized ship, to actually make it into space.
Following nothing but instinct, Joe pulled up the landing gear and fired up the atmospheric engines, hearingfeelingsensing the change in the engines as they revved. It was easy, easier than anything Joe had ever done, to lift the Bee out of the hangar, navigate past the command towers, take them into the sky, up and up and--
“Whoa,” David said, seemingly from miles away, faint in Joe’s ears. He blinked and realized he was in a cockpit, not just flying, all by himself, up through the layers of atmosphere and into the deepening sky. It was like coming back into his body. Disorienting.
“Fuck, you’re one of those naturals, aren’t you,” David said, sounding aggrieved. “Or were you bullshitting me about not having flown a Class 7 before?”
“No,” Joe answered faintly, then realized his hands were moving over the controls practically without his say-so. He didn’t even know everything that he was doing, but at the same time, it all made sense. It was like playing a big instrument that he’d once known well, and since forgotten. It honestly felt more like remembering than learning. Joe shook himself again. “What? No, I...I haven’t, I just...” He grinned. “I told you I could pilot!” He turned and looked back at the viewscreen. David reached over in front of him and flipped a switch; suddenly the cockpit was alive with radio chatter, the frantic tones of the port authority traffic controller high above the rest.
“--just flew out of West Dock 36, hangar bay two. Repeat, we have unauthorized takeoff from West Dock 36, hangar bay two, under injunction from port authority. Request immediate orbital craft scramble, target is entering upper atmosphere and is estimated to be in FTL zone in three minutes. Target is a Class 7 commercial freight liner with significant body modification, ID number four zero zero--”
“Whoops,” David murmured, a smile tugging up at his lips, and Joe’s eyes went wide.
“You didn’t have launch clearance?” he demanded shrilly. David smiled wickedly.
“Clearance, schmearance, if they didn’t want people skipping the red tape, they should tighten their hangar security.”
“I thought when you offered to fly us, it was because you already had permission to--”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve clarified. Besides, I don’t think I’m the only one with an authority problem,” David replied, his tone sharpening. He looked shrewdly between Joe and Nicholas, who was wearing a stony expression but not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Either of you care to explain why the guvvies were up our asses before we were even on board the ship? ‘Cause that cute little firepower demonstration sure as hell wasn’t my fault.”
Joe just blinked at him cluelessly. He and David both turned to look at Nicholas. The Prince’s cheeks had gone bright pink.
“Uh-huh,” David said, his tongue stuck in his jaw. He glared at Nicholas. “So, what. You’re not actually a prince? You’re a con artist.”
“What? No!” Nicholas said in scathing tones. “Of course I’m a prince, who do you think you--”
“You’re not answering the question.”
Nicholas turned away, fury in his face solidifying into something simultaneously cooler and more vulnerable. “I...I’m actually...” He sighed, sounding both young and officious. “There’s a warrant out for my arrest,” he admitted in a low voice.
David’s eyebrows went up, and Joe’s knit together in confusion. “But...you’d just crash-landed, and you were with me the whole time. How could you possibly have an arrest warrant?”
“Not...not on that planet,” Nicholas bit out. “A...a galactic injunction. A Government warrant. I’m wanted everywhere.”
Now Joe’s eyebrows went up, and he was suddenly glad he was staring at the viewscreen, because he wasn’t sure what his face was doing and he didn’t want to make the Prince angry. “You’re what?” he asked, only a bit panicked.
“And you didn’t think to mention this before?” David interjected, tense.
“Would you have agreed to take us if I had?” Nicholas shot back. “I notice you didn’t scruple much to tell us you were unauthorized to even fly us off that rock!”
“Guys!” Joe said, distressed. “Look, we’re off the rock now, okay? Let’s just...focus on not getting shot down.” He looked at Nicholas, now suddenly a bit frightened of him. “What...what are you wanted for?”
The Prince did not look at him when he quietly responded, “Murder.”
Ominously, the comm burst with static at right that second, new voices chattering frantically to each other: pilots of the quick orbital security cruisers coordinating an interception. In another minute they’d have hyperspace mines deployed and if Joe tried to engage the FTL drive they would blow up the Bee - with them in it - spectacularly.
The cartograph was due to return its coordinates in fifty-four seconds.
“Murder?” Joe said weakly, turned entirely around in the pilot’s seat, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be...well, piloting.
“Hey!!” David said, snapping at him frantically, and Joe, pale as the atmosphere trails clinging to the viewscreen, wheeled back around and locked his hands on the throttle and control lever. It was only his preternatural instinct that kept them on trajectory.
David was boring holes into Nicholas with his eyes; the Prince very stolidly did not notice. Finally, after a long several seconds during which the security forces chasing them were the only voices in the cockpit, verbalizing the noose tightening around their necks, David reached out, muted the comm with a serious-sounding click. In the resounding quiet, he asked, simply, “Did you have to do it?”
Nicholas looked up at him while Joe, still as a mouse at the controls, watched the last numbers slot into the navigation sequence like lock tumblers in his display.
“I believe that I did,” Nicholas said, voice somehow vulnerable and imperative at once, as if he simultaneously wished someone would challenge him on his response, and dared them to try.
David nodded once, looking back to his monitor, fingers flying over a last few commands. “Well alright, then.”
Just then, the cartograph returned the final coordinate triangulating the Honeybee’s place in the universe, and Joe, ignoring the sudden scream of alarms signaling the encroachment of a flotilla of hyperspace mines, throttled up the engines to faster-than-light speed. The ship’s insectoid hum rose to an almost angry pitch, and every panel of the hull around them trembled with a rattle of half-rusted rivets. Then realspace dropped away from the viewscreen and all the cabin’s alarms were silent.
*
Joe wet the old rag in his hand with another shot of astringent and set the little canister of it aside, bending over Win2’s little form huddled in the V of Joe’s legs, the bot humming contemplatively to himself. He wasn’t paying Joe’s nervous and habitual chatter any mind whatsoever.
“...didn’t think you’d got this dinged up, little guy,” he was saying in an undertone as he took the cleaning rag to Win2’s molded-polymer casing, scrubbing away several dark score-marks, battle scars left from the little bot’s epic battle with hangar security. “Who knew you had such a big shield in you, anyway? Probably Nicholas knew, huh?”
“What did I know?”
Joe jumped and dropped his cleaning rag onto Win2’s little antenna, making the bot grumble softly at him. “Oh,” Joe said softly, looking up wide-eyed at the Prince where he leaned in the doorway. “Um. Just...that Win2 had an energy shield emitter in him,” he said, a little wary and trying not to be. He’d felt jumpy since they’d taken off, not quite getting past the adrenaline rush, somehow. “He doesn’t look...well. He doesn’t look like the kind of bot that would have a shield hidden in him.”
Nicholas made a kind of full-body shrug without actually shrugging and came into the small bunk room, warm from proximity to the engines but well-muffled from their noise.
“Like I said,” the Prince said breezily, “you’d be surprised what you can get into a small bot. He’s my personal assistant.” Nicholas perched on the edge of one of the narrow, hard-looking bunks that were built into the bulkhead on either side of the cramped space. Joe sat between them on the floor, and he was very aware of how Nicholas had seemed to fill up the room when he’d entered it. “He’s equipped to handle lots of situations that might arise with an intergalactic political figure.”
It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to quip something about Win2 being equipped to handle political assassinations, but he rescued himself from that major mistake just in time, averting his eyes back to Win2 and continuing to clean the burn marks off his carapace. Even so, the space where he’d been about to speak kind of hung empty and accusing behind him, and Nicholas soon heaved an aggravated sigh.
“What? Joe...don’t be like that.” His voice was still bossy, still commanding, but he seemed a little on-edge, too, a little genuinely upset.
“Like what?” Joe asked unnecessarily, rubbing at a spot long after the spot had disappeared.
“Like this, all...afraid of me.” The Prince’s bluster sort of ran out with every word, until his voice just trailed off. Joe finally stopped scrubbing at Win2, then, and looked up at Nicholas, who had found the stitching on his pants suddenly fascinating. “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
“You’re wanted for murder,” Joe blurted out before he could stop himself, this time. His face heated immediately, but he didn’t back down. “What am I supposed to think?”
“I told you,” Nicholas said, exasperated, as if Joe was stupid and had somehow misinterpreted the hurried explanation he and David had received earlier. “I’m part of a resistance group against--”
“--the Government, I get it. And you’re trying to take down the Queen. And the only way to do that is to get to her subordinates first.” Joe was starting to get a little impatient himself, and Win2 whined in an unsettled way, seeming to sense the tension in the room. “I heard all of this the first time!”
“So why are you acting like I’m going to turn on you and stab you with a screwdriver? I don’t kill people, Joe. I helped kill a man who’d killed thousands of people. A killer, working for a dictator, who needs to step down or be taken down. That doesn’t mean I’m a murdering psychopath--”
“Well I’m sorry,” Joe bit out, throwing his rag on the floor with an unsatisfying thwap. “It’s my first time being on a strange ship in the middle of space with a murdering non-psychopath who may or may not have screwdriver on him to stab me with.”
Nicholas looked at him incredulously, then, much to Joe’s annoyance, he burst out laughing. He had a really nice laugh, full and high, almost helpless-sounding, like he just couldn’t stop himself. Joe found his lips twitching into a smile before he could stop himself, and then he was laughing, too, trying not to feel too much like an idiot.
The Prince grinned at him, eyes squinted up, and held out his empty hands. “No screwdriver, see?” he said. “I promise.”
Joe rubbed his eyes, picked his rag back up, and worked out a last couple of scorch-marks from Win2’s side, shaking his head. “Sorry, your Highness,” he said genuinely, blushing a little. “Guess I’m just not cut out for this, really.”
Nicholas was quiet a moment while Joe fished around in the toolbox he’d found for a tube of filling compound, putting some on a new rag and starting to buff away the actual damage he’d revealed under the burn marks on Win2. Finally the Prince said, “You were actually amazing, earlier. Flying the ship, I mean. I think you’re handling this all pretty well, honestly.”
Joe’s blush deepened, and he couldn’t stop a smile creeping back over his face. Win2 hummed softly between his knees, almost like a little snoring sound, and his antenna was still as Joe buffed him. Quietly, he replied, “I don’t really even know how I did it. It was like...I touched the controls and I knew how to do it. I’ve never flown a ship like this before.”
Nicholas ticked up an eyebrow. “C’mon. Really? That wasn’t just you screwing with David?”
Joe shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve seen the blueprints for this kind of ship before and all, but never...never flown one.” He shrugged one-shouldered, rubbed little circles with the patching compound until another scratch disappeared. “I love piloting. I’ve always wanted to fly a ship like this?”
The Prince frowned, cocked his head. “You have your license, so why haven’t you?”
“Too expensive. Flying anywhere, on anything bigger than a hovercar, you’d think you’d asked permission into the Queen’s bedchamber...”
Nicholas made an exasperated hand motion, but, glancing up, Joe could see it wasn’t directed at him. “See?! Do you see? Even on such an far-away backwater little world, you feel all these restrictions and laws, these pointless means of keeping you under their thumb! It’s all so pointless, all so designed to keep you wrapped up constantly worrying about red tape and the tiniest little infractions, to make you afraid...”
He continued talking, impassioned, but Joe got really distracted by the color blooming, warm and agitated, in Nicholas’ cheeks the more and more excited he got. He was so fervent, so enthusiastic about his cause; he really believed what he was talking about, which was a sentiment more than a little strange to someone who’d come from a place and a life where apathy was a basic survival skill. Joe couldn’t even be offended by the Prince slighting his homeworld when he seemed so truly aggrieved by all the things which made it offending that he was willing to pontificate prettily on it for five minutes straight. Joe only became aware he had got utterly caught up staring at Nicholas’ mouth when he realized the Prince had, at some point, stopped talking, and he hadn’t noticed. Even then, it took a second for Joe to tear his eyes away from the bow of those pink lips. Nicholas blinked at him, and his flush deepened a bit, changing just subtly.
“Uh,” Joe said stupidly, emerging slowly from his haze. “You. Seem to know a lot about it,” he offered, ears hot. Nicholas huffed a soft, incredulous sound.
“Did you mean what you said?” he asked softly, his eyelashes flickering as his gaze darted down to...was he looking at Joe’s lips now?
Hushed, barely moving his mouth, Joe asked, “What did I say?”
“About...me being a handsome prince.”
Joe swallowed reflexively. “I...yeah. Of course. You are.” He licked his lips and was more than shocked to see Nick’s color rise again. Win2 suddenly rumbled a tinny little whining sound, startling the both of them, and buzzed around in a little circle in the space between Joe’s legs. Grinning, Joe reached out and rubbed at the rough spot on his casing that he’d been neglecting the last few minutes, finishing working the compound into the scar, and then he plucked a little sander out of the toolbox and shined the rough patch back up. “See?” he said, grinning and blushing. “Even Win2 thinks so.”
Joe didn’t look up, but he knew the Prince was watching him; he could feel his eyes hot on the back of his neck, like the sun shining there. “Well,” he said, sounding amused and maybe a little breathless. “As long as he thinks so.”
PART II
pairing: Joe/Nick
rating: R
warnings: The usual Jonas-related caveats, plus space-crack; also, David Henrie.
summary: Bringing down an evil (or at least inconvenient) galactic bureaucracy, one mishap at a time.
notes: So. Bring your senses of humor and your patience to this one, kids, because, for various reasons, this fic is still IN PROGRESS. It's not gonna get stranded or left unfinished. But at the moment, it's not quite done yet. Yeah, I know. I fail at Big Bang. What DOES exist so far is entirely the result of much encouragement, tweaking, and inspiration from my usual partner in crime, theskyturnsred, whom you may thank for any parts you like and whom you may not blame for any parts that suck. Additional inspiration and MUCH flailing and joy are the direct result of smithereen's GLORIOUS, GLORIOUS ART, which has made me laugh and make embarrassing noises over and over and over again. I would like it greatly stressed that she had her artwork done completely on time and in beautiful order. Lateness of posting is my fault alone.
A million light years' worth of thanks to these beautiful ladies. Baby, I'm their biggest fan. <3
Joe hadn’t been expecting the robot.
When he’d startled awake this morning out of a dream that left him feeling like he always did after one of his Foreboding Dreams (a bit clammy, heart racing, and a sense of impending greatness), he’d known something was coming. He couldn’t remember the dream, so he wasn’t sure what was coming, although, really, his Foreboding Dreams rarely bore any resemblance to the real-life things they portended; once, memorably, he’d dreamed about a chorus line of dancing, singing trilobites, and that had only presaged his getting a horrible grade on an exam in stellar cartography. So sometimes the dreams were pretty unhelpful, it was true. Still, he wished all morning that he could remember this one, something about a laser light show, he thought. There was fog, maybe. He wasn’t sure.
But there definitely hadn’t been the squat, excitable little bot growling all the way over the ridge and zooming toward Joe as he perched on his speeder overlooking the salt flats, taking potshots with a practice gun at cheap plastic hoverdiscs he’d launched out into the white expanse. Joe heard the little machine before he saw it, whuffling and wheezing on sand-clogged gears and grunting in metallic alarm every few seconds. It was homing right in on him.
Wary, Joe clambered down off the nose of his hoverspeeder, the stocky little bot rolling insistently toward him on all-terrain treads. Its display lights were arranged such that it appeared to have dark, wide-set, sad eyes, and its small transceiver dish rotated at a steady but hurried pace on top of its carapace. When Joe came near, it let out a high tonal whine and zoomed up, bumping full-tilt into Joe’s shin.
“Ow!” he griped, frowning down at the bot in concern. He looked around for a human chasing after it, but there was no one. A little utility bot like this couldn’t have come very far on its own; he wondered if it was malfunctioning. Certainly headbutting a person’s legs was abnormal behavior for them.
“Where’d you come from, little guy?” he asked it, then remembered that utility bots couldn’t talk. The bot bleated at him, a sound almost like a human blowing a raspberry, and proceeded to whir itself around in tight circles and then rocket off back the way it had come, motors whining again.
“Hey, wait!” Joe cried, starting to run after it, then skidding to a stop, turning around, and jumping into his speeder to give chase instead. He’d never seen a bot like that move so fast; whatever its current running program, it must’ve been very urgent. He revved his vehicle and went after it, catching it up after a few minutes and slowing alongside it to follow it up a large sand dune.
He hadn’t dreamed about the bot, he was pretty sure. And he was very sure he hadn’t dreamed this. He would’ve remembered a starship. Especially if it had been half-buried in the dune as Joe crested it, neatly blocking the only road back into town.
“Um,” Joe said to himself in consternation, kneeling up on the seat of his slowing speeder and peeking over the windscreen, concerned. There were still smoke trails curling off the battered-looking hull of the smallish craft, which might once have been pretty stylish but now most nearly resembled charcoal. It was probably irradiated, Joe thought suddenly, and he already had radiation sickness and was mutating and would end up with a horrible fifth limb. He hoped it was a prehensile tail. That would lessen the sting of radiation-induced mutation considerably.
He hadn’t even heard the ship crash.
“Hello?” he called at the wreckage, though he would have been scared pantsless if he’d actually heard a voice answering. It was probably good that he did not. He bit his lip, wondering what to do. Did he go get the security guys at the outpost? Did he check for survivors? Was there a protocol here?
Luckily (or perhaps unluckily, it was a bit early to tell, what with him not remembering his Dream), Joe just then heard a noise from inside the ship.
He yelped - a manly kind of yelp! - and ducked back down behind the pockmarked windscreen of his vehicle. He wished mightily that he’d thought to bring along his plasma rifle, or, in fact, even just a worthy two-by-four, by way of defense; as it was, he could only watch, wide-eyed, as the frantic, squat little bot raced toward the wreck, whining at the top of its register, transceiver spinning wildly.
“Uhhh,” Joe said again, with much more trepidation. “Good boy?” he offered faintly. The bot did not acknowledge him.
Suddenly there was a frantic, faint pounding sound from the inside of the ship, and the landing lights on the hull flashed rapidly. The bot whined again, louder, and started going around again, this time in even tighter circles. Joe rubbed nervously at his cheek, unsure, but eventually curiosity won out (and he did not yet feel any mutating going on, so he figured it was safe-ish). He slipped over the edge of his hoverspeeder and crept toward the smoking ship.
“Hello?” he called again. The lights flashed more crazily, which Joe took to be a greeting. “Um. Um. Okay.” He flailed a bit at the ship. “Just a second!” he yelled, and dove back into his speeder to fish out his toolbox, upending it on the backseat.
He found a rusty crowbar in the mess of tools and padded back over to the ship, muttering to himself. “There had better not be something nasty inside here...I’m too young to die. Also, my hair is too good.” Jamming the point of the crowbar into the gap where the hatch was partially separated from the hull, Joe put all his weight on it, groaning with the effort of levering it open. Suddenly there was a hiss of pressure equalizing and the hatch popped open, and Joe flew back with another (manly) yelp, grunting as he hit the sand and struggled up again.
From inside the ship emerged a slender figure dressed all in white, stepping daintily out onto the sand and squinting in the overbearing midday desert sun. Joe’s eyes widened as he took in full lips, glossy brown hair, and clever brown eyes. Instantly his heart started racing and his stomach filled with butterflies. He was in love.
“My name is Prince Nicholas,” the boy in white said, drawing himself up to his full height and looking down his straight nose at Joe lying in the sand. “You may call me Your Highness. And you will lead me to the nearest spaceport right this moment.”
*
“But, Your Highness,” Joe said for the fifteenth time, half-tumbling out of the speeder as he tried to keep up with the Prince, who was striding down the street as if he owned it. (Hell, he’d never actually said what he was prince of. Maybe he did own it. Although, by the dirty looks he was getting from vendors and passers-by as he swept officiously through, Joe didn’t think he did.) “You can’t just hire someone to fly you around, we don’t have any money--”
“And, as I told you twenty minutes ago, I am lousy with spare cash,” the Prince replied haughtily, and Joe winced and, noticing the dirty looks around him turn suddenly interested, he wished fervently that Prince Nicholas would keep his voice down. “I shan’t have any trouble commissioning a ship, if we can just find a willing captain.” He paused for a moment to look back and cluck encouragingly at his fat little bot, trundling at a much less breakneck pace behind them now, almost leisurely. With the Prince rescued from his charred ship, the little guy was much calmer, the dish on his head going around in lazy circles and its display lights half-shuttered, making him - Joe couldn’t help but think of it as a him, with its gruff mechanical vocal range - look almost sleepy. The Prince seemed fond of him, too, waiting until the little thing caught up and bumped softly into Joe’s heels before continuing at his fast, striding pace. Joe smiled down at the bot, not watching where he was going when he returned to the conversation.
“But--” He tripped on a crack in the pavement and nearly took a nosedive into the cement. Nicholas, with reflexes which were nearly startlingly fast, caught his arm with an iron grip and steadied him. Joe’s heart galloped around behind his ribcage again; Prince Nicholas was very strong.
“Are you always this clumsy?” Nicholas asked, with a scowl that insinuated he thought Joe somewhat of a liability for being such a klutz. Joe quickly dusted himself off, mumbling something noncommittal, not wanting the Prince to send him away so quickly for being a hazard to life and limb. He stood still and tried to appear graceful. Nicholas smirked. “Or is it my charismatic presence distracting you.”
Joe rolled his eyes and hoped the Prince would think his blush was just a bit of sunburn. The calculating look in his shrewd eyes suggested Joe was fooling no one. Joe heaved a very put-upon sigh. “Look, what I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t ‘just find a willing captain.’ All spacers are under Government commission, you can’t hire them. They’re regulated! And all the ports are regulated. You’ve got, like, three weeks of red tape just to get off the planet!”
Nicholas scoffed. “Like the galaxy isn’t crawling with free spacers.”
Joe blinked at him. “It isn’t.”
“Says you, and who are you?” Nicholas gave Joe a long, disdainful look up and down, spoiled somewhat by the fact that it turned, somehow, into blatantly checking Joe out about halfway through. The Prince looked as stunned and embarrassed by this as Joe was, both of them blushing and ducking their eyes away. Nicholas recovered first. “A mechanic. On a little backwater world I’ve never even heard of.”
“I’m a farmer, technically,” Joe said, mostly to be contrary, because it was far from a point of pride for him. “But I also know ships, and spacing. I’ve had my pilot’s license since I was twelve, and I follow all the shipping news, and I’m telling you you may as well just get in line like everybody else. If you need a ship, you have to go register in the port for passage on one. When it leaves. In, like, a month.” His tone and face softened a little with hope. “You can stay with me, while you wait!”
The Prince clearly would have liked very much to look dismissive at that suggestion, but there was too much in his face that gave away how much he was actually considering it for the half-second it took for him to come back to his senses. He visibly shook himself and scowled again, and Joe tried not to think about how the Prince was beautiful even when he was scowling.
“I am not going to stay anywhere. I need to get to the Capitol right away. I’m on a very important mission!” He looked aggrieved, as if he’d been trying to get this through to Joe for some time, and was yet to be successful. To be fair, he had been trying to get this through to Joe since about five seconds after he climbed out of the ship.
Joe looked crestfallen, shook his head. “Oh. Your...Your Highness, there’s just no way to get to the Capitol right now. They’ve blocked all the shipping lanes from here to there for the next six months, while the insurgents are on trial. The only ways even open still are the official political travel lanes...well, I mean, unless you count all the old star corridors, but no one’s used those in--”
“You said you could fly, right?” Nicholas asked him suddenly, wheeling around on him suddenly and nearly causing Joe to run into him. Joe swallowed thickly, more from being so unexpectedly close to Nicholas than because of the Prince’s suddenly-zealous tone.
“Uhhhh...” Joe offered blankly, then blinked and frowned. “I...yeah.”
Nicholas’ face lit up in a triumphant smile that nearly made Joe whimper. “Then you can fly us!”
Joe felt a little like he’d been slapped with a cold fish. “Uh. No. I have no ship. All I have is my license. I don’t have clearance to fly anything bigger than a hoverspeeder. Your Highness,” he added quickly, as the Prince’s face grew stormy again. Nicholas huffed a sharp and aggravated-sounding sigh through his nose.
“I’ve managed to land on the most worthless planet in the whole galaxy, and out of everyone I could’ve met, I meet the most worthless pilot on this rock.”
Joe frowned. “Hey!”
“Just--” The Prince was visibly restraining himself. “Take me to the nearest dock. I’ll pay you well for your trouble.”
Joe just looked at him a moment, hurt, then turned and walked off through the crowd, murmuring to himself, “Don’t want any payment at all.”
*
It wasn’t every day one met royalty, even if it was royalty one had never heard of. Nicholas was, Joe supposed, exactly like a prince would be, if Joe knew any princes personally. Although, he supposed, he did now. Nicholas was bossy and easily perturbed, and he ordered people around with the sort of tone used by those who are used to being obeyed, no matter how silly their demands.
They finally made it to the nearest public port, Nicholas striding ahead with both Joe and his little robot trailing in his wake. The bot was puffing and grunting irritably as they went, and Joe knew a bit how he felt. The crowds ahead of them parted as the Prince went through, eyeing him distrustfully, and Joe even more so. Joe gave them sheepishly apologetic looks and hurried after Nicholas as he slipped into the small waystation at one side of the big open port, all the bays open to the punishing hot sun with the ships gleaming inside.
Inside it was dusty, muted, and dim. It was basically just a big waiting room for people idling away until their ships departed, or people who were there to get clearance to fly from the port authority. There were tables and chairs and a long desk manned by a very disinterested-looking young man who took clearance applications and stamped them twenty times and then put them in a tray to be sent away for more stamps. It was lazy and slow in here, and Joe felt out of place when everyone looked up at them as they came in. The little bot bleated unhappily and puffed sand out of its gears, making a sound that for all the world was exactly like a person spitting something nasty out of their mouths.
"I wish to purchase passage aboard an intragalactic ship," the Prince said to the authority guy behind the counter, without preamble. The young man blinked as if he'd just been napping with his eyes open, and Nicholas was a rude awakening. Joe tried not to think about how it might be nice, actually, to wake up to Nicholas every day...
"Do you...have boarding permissions?" the young man asked unsurely, as if not totally convinced he'd heard Nicholas correctly. Nicholas waved an irritated hand and Joe got a really horrible feeling this was going to go poorly.
"I'm a well-respected dignitary," the Prince said firmly. "My name is Nicholas Jonas, and I am a Prince of the galaxy. You'll know my name from the news reports, I expect."
Joe pressed his face into the palm of his hand and knew that his horrible feeling had underestimated the situation.
The boy behind the counter did not look amused. "Nnno. I'm afraid not. I'll have to see some identification."
Nicholas looked first surprised, and then like he wanted very much for the attendant to feel extremely silly about himself for asking for something so pedestrian. The boy was unfazed; he just met Nicholas' look with a bland expression of his own. Finally, grudgingly, the Prince muttered, "I...don't have any. I...my transport here was. Incapacitated. And I lost my security clearances."
"Well, sir, I'm sorry, but without identification or flight permissions, you won't be able to board a commercial flight."
"But...you don't understand, this is an emergency! I have to get to--"
"Sir, I don't care if you have to get to the other side of the galaxy because your wife's having a baby," the boy said, his tone becoming snippy. The way he eyed Joe, standing behind the Prince, was speaking; Joe went hot as he realized that the authority officer thought the likelihood of Nicholas having a wife very slim indeed. Joe's stomach did a funny little samba.
Nicholas was not at all pleased with the boy’s tone, though Joe thought he saw a hint of red on the tips of his pale ears. That was most certainly not sunburn; Joe had the impression that the sun would not dare try to burn Prince Nicholas’ ears, or face his wrath.
“I don’t think you really understand the severity of the--” His Highness began, and Joe saw the moment the attendant went from “disinterested kid making a living” to “righteous official of the government.” It almost made a noise when it happened, too. Kind of a low, ominous twang.
“I don’t think,” the young man said, standing from his seat, “that you really understand how much higher I am on the totem pole than you here.” Suddenly, as if they’d emerged from the walls, two very burly men in security uniforms peeled away from their unseen posts in the corners and boxed in Joe, the Prince, and the Prince’s robot, which let out a little whining growl somewhere between plaintive and defensive. Apparently even he didn’t feel good about their chances. Joe sympathized deeply. “You seem to think you have some power. You have exactly shit, here, especially without identification. And within the next hour, your picture will be in every spaceport in the city and you’ll be tagged as a disturber of the peace, because I don’t like you very much, all of a sudden. So good luck getting off-planet anytime in the next month.” He shot a steely look at the security officers, who seized Nicholas’ arm on one side and Joe’s on the other. The fat little bot was already beating a hasty retreat to the door. “You’d better pray you don’t see me the next time you come in here, and I work every day of the week. Good day, gentlemen.”
Joe’d been thrown out of some places in his life, but never from someplace as boring as the port authority, and never had he actually physically been tossed out on his ass by a man who looked like he might’ve been part-giant. He wasn’t sure, as he got to his feet and dusted off his ass, offering Nicholas a hand he refused, whether that made this particular incident more or less disgraceful.
You know, his dreams could stand to be a lot more specific. They might’ve avoided whatever it was that just happened.
“What just happened?” he opined to Nicholas, who looked like any minute he might erupt like a volcano and go up in a glorious conflagration. Hells. He was even sexy when he was hopping mad. “What were you thinking? I told you that wouldn’t work.”
“Well I sure couldn’t have counted on you to do anything worthwhile,” Nicholas gritted back at him, which Joe felt completely unfair. “All you’ve done all day is make excuses! I have to get to the Capitol. If I don’t, the whole galaxy is at risk!”
“And all you’ve done today is talk in your crazy Prince-code about the galaxy being in trouble and you needing to get to the Capitol, and make demands when I’ve told you like a billion times that--”
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” a voice drawled from behind them, “that you two boys are a little bit stuck.”
Nicholas bristled and Joe wheeled around, paranoid after all the dirty looks they’d been getting from the portfolk all day long. Joe really wished he was armed right now. But as it turned out, there was no plasmagun pointed at them, or even a threatening knife. There was only a tall, broad-shouldered, shady-looking character whose good looks somehow only added to the impression that he was breaking laws just by standing there, his hands tucked into the pockets of his duster. He was wearing a bandolier. Who in their right mind actually wears a bandolier like it’s a fashion statement?
“Who are you?” Joe and Nicholas asked at the same time, both of them stealing a glance at each other when they heard their words in stereo. The dark-haired stranger just smirked a little harder at them; that angle of smirk must hurt, Joe thought.
The stranger shrugged in an eloquent way. “That depends, really.”
“On what?” the Prince asked suspiciously, in an arrogant tone that for once Joe thought was probably rightly placed.
“On what exactly you guys are looking for.” Suddenly a knot of men in Government uniforms - municipal security - walked by, and the stranger in the black duster eyed them sidelong. He gestured to Joe and Nicholas, beckoning.
“Come on. Follow me.”
Joe and the Prince traded a look, again, but they did follow, at a distance. The man ducked into a shadowy doorway, out of site of the guards and anyone else who might pass by.
“You said you need passage to the Capitol,” the stranger said, and Nicholas visibly perked up.
“Immediate passage, yes,” the Prince replied. This seemed to please the newcomer, whose smirk returned in full force.
“Good. It just so happens I was planning to leave immediately. Can you pay?”
“What are you asking?” Joe butted in, interrupting the Prince, who had opened his mouth to reply.
The stranger shrugged again, this time visibly more guarded. “What can you offer?”
“A million marks, when we’ve arrived safely in the Capitol,” the Prince replied, which Joe knew immediately would produce exactly the response it got.
The stranger snorted. “Yeah, right. I don’t operate on promises. I need something solid.”
“Just...wait a minute,” Joe said, bristling a little. “Who are you, anyway? How do we know you’re really a pilot?”
The young man narrowed his dark eyes and then pulled a little projector bubble from his bandolier. He held it in his palm and it produced a bright monochrome image on one of the dark walls of their alcove: an electronic pilot’s license, with the name David Henrie at the top. Joe scanned it; a veteran spacer already at the age of twenty-three, no older than Joe himself, and supposedly the captain of a light freighter, named...the Centurion Honeybee?
“That enough convincing for ya?” David Henrie asked in a drawl that was half-amused, half-annoyed. He snapped the bubble shut and pinned it back in its place. “Fastest ship in this arm of the Galaxy, with a few...modifications the Government need not know about. Including a complete map of all the star corridors, including the ones no longer in use.”
Nicholas practically lit up, leaning in closer instinctively, like he was being drawn toward a flame. Joe felt an instantaneous pull of jealousy, and he frowned, bitter that he hadn’t been able to make the Prince smile like that. Or at all, really. David glanced at him, seemed to recognize his frown for what it was. He grinned roguishly and Joe felt almost like pulling Nicholas back, farther away from him. Clearly this guy was not trustworthy. He...smirked too much.
“So you could get us to the Capitol without having to stop at any checkpoints?” Nicholas asked, openly gleeful.
“It’ll cost you,” David reminded him. “Secrecy always costs a little extra.”
Joe scoffed. “We don’t even know if your ship,” his voice conveyed his profound mistrust in the very existence of it, “can fly. It’s probably a glorified tugboat...”
David blinked, a flush of righteous offense rising in his face. “A tugboat? A--” He huffed a furious breath through his nose, sounding like an annoyed animal. “Listen here, kid--”
“I was born the same year as you,” Joe told him, perhaps a little snottily.
“--I know you probably think you’re hot shit and all, but you wouldn’t know a good ship if you fried up in its afterburners. So I don’t expect you to have a grasp on just exactly what I mean when I say that the Bee is the best and most kickass machine in this Galaxy or any other, and I’m the finest pilot you’ll find on this rock. So if you two morons would like to get off the rock sometime in the next half-decade and don’t fancy having to blow that pimple-faced port authority douche anytime soon, I suggest you--”
“I promise you’ll be paid,” Nicholas interjected suddenly, a determined look in his eyes. “I’m a Galactic prince, and as soon as I’m in the Capitol, I’ll have access to my bank accounts again.”
David’s face set in an even more determined expression than Nicholas’. He shook his head. “No can do, Your Worship,” he said, sounding somehow genuinely regretful even as he sounded simultaneously completely unapologetic. “I need something cold and hard in advance. Something.”
Prince Nicholas opened his mouth as if to say something else scathing, then seemed to think better of it and set his jaw, instead, grimly. He looked, for the first time since he’d climbed out of that disaster of a wreck, a little crestfallen. A little desperate. The expression passed quickly, glossed over with his cool facade, but Joe saw it for the moment it was there, and he felt suddenly terrible for all the stonewalling he’d been doing all day, even if it had been necessary and logical. He should’ve been more helpful.
“How’s three thousand sound?” he suddenly blurted, before he’d really put any more thought into that sentiment. It wasn’t in his nature to overthink things once he’d decided they were right to do.
Both David and Nicholas turned to look at him surprise. Joe bit his lip and drew himself up to his full height. “Well?” he pressed David, who visibly shook himself and shrugged.
“That’d get us off the ground,” he drawled, seeming a little skeptical. His neatly-groomed eyebrows drew together. “Do you actually have it?”
“Do you actually have a ship?” Joe snarked back. “I’ve got it.”
“Alright,” David said, putting his hands up in front of himself defensively. He worried at his lip, then grinned. “Alright!” he repeated, more enthusiastically. He put out his hand and aggressively shook Nicholas’; the Prince looked a little bit scandalized, but the lines of tension in his face were easing away. He looked over at Joe, really looked at him, and Joe could feel his ears going pink.
“Let’s see this Honeybee of yours,” the Prince said evenly, and finally stopped staring at Joe as if he could see straight through him. Joe backed out of the alcove in relief and, with the Prince’s wheezy little robot, trailed somewhat despondently behind the Prince and the spacer.
*
“...this is your ship.”
David was visibly offended by the tone of Nicholas’ voice, which was ironic, because Nicholas was visibly offended by everything about David’s ship.
Joe was pretty unsuccessfully trying to swallow a laugh; he choked on it and drew a purse-mouthed glare from their reticent pilot.
“She’s...faster than she looks,” he grumbled. The Prince gave him an incredulous look.
“So a part flies off of her every five minutes, instead of every half-hour, then?”
“Look, do you want a ride or not? Because, to be honest, I’m not sure three thousand is quite going to cover verbal abuse.”
“...alright. As long as it flies, I guess.”
“Famous last words,” Joe muttered, and imagined he saw the corner of Nicholas’ lip curl up. “Look,” he said at conversational level. “I just have to...” He made a complicated gesture that made David tick up an eyebrow. But Nicholas seemed to understand, and he nodded. He moved closer to Joe, obviously to say something meant only for Joe to hear, and David took that as a sign he should go prep the Bee for takeoff.
Nicholas lowered his voice, and he was looking at Joe in that knowing way, again, like Joe was utterly transparent. It made him blush and focus on Nicholas’ mouth instead of his eyes. But that was no help at all, and only made him blush more.
“Thank you,” the Prince said sincerely. “You didn’t...you don’t have to do this. Are you sure you can--”
“I can,” Joe said immediately, meaning it. “I want to. I want to help. Not every day a guy gets to loan money to a handsome prince, right?”
Nicholas blinked at being called handsome, and Joe knew it’d probably been foolish of him to do it, but he couldn’t care. Once he gave David the money, there would really be no reason to stay; Joe wasn’t going to the Capitol, after all. He couldn’t, he had a job, here, and...and an apartment, and a life, and the Prince was just passing through, desperate to get to somewhere else. Joe would certainly never see him again. So what harm was there in calling him handsome? It was only true, anyway.
After the momentary surprise, Nicholas’ face softened, and he smiled, and Joe’s heart stuttered in his chest. “Thank you, Joe. It really...you’ve been so helpful.”
Joe laughed, shrugged. “Not so helpful. But I’m glad I helped. A little.” He rubbed at his right arm, just barely stopping himself from shuffling his feet. He was fidgeting. He didn’t want to have to go get his money yet, wanted to stay and draw out the impossible circumstance of meeting a Prince - meeting someone so stunningly attractive - who had fallen from space.
He realized at the same moment Nicholas did that they were just kind of staring at each other; they both laughed awkwardly. Joe nodded and made a stuttering kind of sound that roughly meant “be right back.” But as he turned to go, he paused, flicking his eyes up at David, then back to Nicholas.
“You gonna...be alright with him for a few minutes?” he asked, wary. David looked at Nicholas, and Joe did not approve of that. (From anybody but himself.)
Nicholas seemed surprised by the question, following Joe’s eyes to David, and then smiling and nodding.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Win2’s got some tricks, if I need help.”
Joe was puzzled for a second. The Prince gestured to his little robot, now going slowly about the landing gear of the Honeybee, scanning it with a series of interested-sounding grunts. “My bot. WIN2-STON2.” He winked at Joe, which made Joe’s stomach flutter. “You’d be surprised the weaponry you can fit in a little bot these days.”
Joe blinked in shock, then eyed the little guy sidelong and wondered just how much weaponry you could fit into a little bot these days.
When he returned from the bank kiosk five minutes later, Joe saw Nicholas and David embroiled in a passionate conversation in the middle of the hangar, David gesticulating and Nicholas glaring. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, and he never did. Just as he was opening his mouth to ask what the problem was, he heard a sudden shout, amplified with a voice booster. “STOP RIGHT THERE. ALL OF YOU, HANDS IN THE AIR, NOW!”
Joe jumped nearly a foot in the air, spinning around and nearly dropping the wad of money in his hands. There were municipal security guards flooding into the hangar, and Joe felt his eyes widen in alarm. They were holding plasma rifles, and they were training them on the three of them.
“Whoa!” David said sharply, and Win2, who had frozen in his tracks next to one of the Honeybee’s support struts, started winding tight circles, whining in alarm, red lights flashing on his sensor array. “What the fuck?”
“I SAID HANDS UP!” yelled the guard with the bullhorn, and the masked-and-uniformed officials raised their guns. Joe gasped, heart stuttering in fear, and staggered backward as he realized they were going to be shot!
Suddenly, with a loud grinding squeal that sounded like a growl, Win2 zipped away from Joe and David, barreling straight for the officers (as much as a ten-pound little bot could barrel, anyway). Nobody in the entire hangar seemed to know what to do about this situation, the guards bemused and Joe, Nicholas, and David alarmed, until suddenly Win2 yipped loudly and a shockwave of energy burst out around him, knocking everyone backward as it expanded. The guards opened fire on the plucky little bot, but their plasma bolts sizzled as they hit the wall of energy and were swallowed up.
Realizing they were being shielded, David hollered incoherently and scrambled up from where he’d fallen on the ground. “What the fuck?” he shouted at the Prince, who was trying to get up and slipping on some loose gravel scattered on the hangar floor.
“Just get in the ship!” Nicholas shouted back, diving for the gangplank. He swung around and beckoned frantically at Joe while David disappeared into the belly of the Bee. Glancing between Nicholas and Win2, Joe just froze for a moment, terrified the brave bot would get hurt.
“Win2!” he yelled; the bot turned toward him, his little transceiver dish turning so fast it was almost a blur, and whined. “Come on! C’mon boy!” He motioned him to follow as he backed toward the hatch of the ship. On the other side of the hangar, the officers were frantically talking and one of them was waving several of them around to the other side of the space, trying to get around Win2’s shield.
Win2 was too smart for that, though. He zoomed back toward the ship and Joe calling his name, his shield following him as he went. He only switched it off at the last moment before zipping up the gangplank and up into Joe’s ankles. Joe swore in pain but he was grinning as he scooped up the bot and ran inside. Nicholas, right behind him, punched the door controls and the confused guards only got off one last harmless round of shots before the hatch sealed.
In Joe’s arms, the bot was growling and whining, still all pent-up from his excitement, and Joe laughed a little hysterically as he and Nicholas ran to the cockpit, where David was already hitting buttons and throwing switches. The sound of the engines revving was like the loud hum of insects beneath their feet; suddenly Honeybee didn’t seem such a ridiculous name for the ship.
“Everyone alive?” David growled in a way that seemed to suggest he wasn’t responsible for it if anyone wasn’t. Joe rolled his eyes.
“Yes, we’re alive, just get us out of here!”
“The fuck does it look like I’m doing, kid?” David snapped, and the sound of the engines deepened and swelled. Outside the viewscreen, Joe could see the security guards going nuts, talking into their headsets and rushing around the area. “We gotta fly before they get up an EMP net...do either of you know anything about ships?”
“I do,” Joe said, suddenly tentative. And he did, he’d worked on dozens and dozens of them, just for fun and extra money, but never had he worked with one as big as this. He knew the model, though, had read about it in magazines, so he thought he could help, somehow.
“Great, get over here and work the cartograph while I get us off the planet.”
“Uhhh...”
“...what?”
“This is probably not the best time to mention I flunked stellar cartography.”
Nicholas was gaping at him and David looked like he wanted to punch him in the face. Joe quickly backpedalled. “I mean...I flunked it the first time! I...I got a passing grade in it the second time, but...I know we’re in a hurry and I don’t know if I can...I can pilot instead!!” he added desperately. David was looking more and more like he’d like to hit him.
“Have you ever piloted a Class 7 before?” he asked Joe tersely.
“Well...well no, but--”
“Then like hell am I letting you put my ship through the side of the hangar bay. I’ll do it mys--”
Just then there was a spray of plasma across the viewscreen, like static on a video. It had fizzled off the anodized surface of the viewscreen, but it wasn’t from a plain old rifle. Joe peered down and saw a guard manning one of the near-dilapidated port plasma cannons; they hadn’t been used in decades, but they apparently still worked just fine. And they were plenty big enough to do some damage to a ship the size of the Bee.
“Fucking--alright, alright, here, you just...just get us out of the hangar without hitting any of the walls,” David snarled, crawling out of the pilot’s seat and into the cramped little alcove that housed the navigational port. Joe’s heart leaped into his throat in excitement and he carefully set Win2 down to go take David’s place, the bot immediately retreating under Joe’s vacated seat.
Joe’s nerves flared really badly as he sat down in the cavernous pilot’s seat, but as soon as he set his hands on the controls, he went blissfully, completely calm. He’d never piloted a ship like this before, no. But he knew how it should be done. He didn’t even know how he knew; sure he’d read schematics, technical specifications. He knew all about the ship. But that didn’t mean he could pilot it, or that he even knew what half the buttons did.
That didn’t seem to matter, somehow. Joe knew he could do it, just as surely as he knew he could tie his boots. The feeling of his Foreboding Dream came back to him like misplaced déjà vu; he realized this was what his dream had been telling him about, this was what he’d been waiting for: the chance to actually pilot a full-sized ship, to actually make it into space.
Following nothing but instinct, Joe pulled up the landing gear and fired up the atmospheric engines, hearingfeelingsensing the change in the engines as they revved. It was easy, easier than anything Joe had ever done, to lift the Bee out of the hangar, navigate past the command towers, take them into the sky, up and up and--
“Whoa,” David said, seemingly from miles away, faint in Joe’s ears. He blinked and realized he was in a cockpit, not just flying, all by himself, up through the layers of atmosphere and into the deepening sky. It was like coming back into his body. Disorienting.
“Fuck, you’re one of those naturals, aren’t you,” David said, sounding aggrieved. “Or were you bullshitting me about not having flown a Class 7 before?”
“No,” Joe answered faintly, then realized his hands were moving over the controls practically without his say-so. He didn’t even know everything that he was doing, but at the same time, it all made sense. It was like playing a big instrument that he’d once known well, and since forgotten. It honestly felt more like remembering than learning. Joe shook himself again. “What? No, I...I haven’t, I just...” He grinned. “I told you I could pilot!” He turned and looked back at the viewscreen. David reached over in front of him and flipped a switch; suddenly the cockpit was alive with radio chatter, the frantic tones of the port authority traffic controller high above the rest.
“--just flew out of West Dock 36, hangar bay two. Repeat, we have unauthorized takeoff from West Dock 36, hangar bay two, under injunction from port authority. Request immediate orbital craft scramble, target is entering upper atmosphere and is estimated to be in FTL zone in three minutes. Target is a Class 7 commercial freight liner with significant body modification, ID number four zero zero--”
“Whoops,” David murmured, a smile tugging up at his lips, and Joe’s eyes went wide.
“You didn’t have launch clearance?” he demanded shrilly. David smiled wickedly.
“Clearance, schmearance, if they didn’t want people skipping the red tape, they should tighten their hangar security.”
“I thought when you offered to fly us, it was because you already had permission to--”
“Yeah, well, you should’ve clarified. Besides, I don’t think I’m the only one with an authority problem,” David replied, his tone sharpening. He looked shrewdly between Joe and Nicholas, who was wearing a stony expression but not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Either of you care to explain why the guvvies were up our asses before we were even on board the ship? ‘Cause that cute little firepower demonstration sure as hell wasn’t my fault.”
Joe just blinked at him cluelessly. He and David both turned to look at Nicholas. The Prince’s cheeks had gone bright pink.
“Uh-huh,” David said, his tongue stuck in his jaw. He glared at Nicholas. “So, what. You’re not actually a prince? You’re a con artist.”
“What? No!” Nicholas said in scathing tones. “Of course I’m a prince, who do you think you--”
“You’re not answering the question.”
Nicholas turned away, fury in his face solidifying into something simultaneously cooler and more vulnerable. “I...I’m actually...” He sighed, sounding both young and officious. “There’s a warrant out for my arrest,” he admitted in a low voice.
David’s eyebrows went up, and Joe’s knit together in confusion. “But...you’d just crash-landed, and you were with me the whole time. How could you possibly have an arrest warrant?”
“Not...not on that planet,” Nicholas bit out. “A...a galactic injunction. A Government warrant. I’m wanted everywhere.”
Now Joe’s eyebrows went up, and he was suddenly glad he was staring at the viewscreen, because he wasn’t sure what his face was doing and he didn’t want to make the Prince angry. “You’re what?” he asked, only a bit panicked.
“And you didn’t think to mention this before?” David interjected, tense.
“Would you have agreed to take us if I had?” Nicholas shot back. “I notice you didn’t scruple much to tell us you were unauthorized to even fly us off that rock!”
“Guys!” Joe said, distressed. “Look, we’re off the rock now, okay? Let’s just...focus on not getting shot down.” He looked at Nicholas, now suddenly a bit frightened of him. “What...what are you wanted for?”
The Prince did not look at him when he quietly responded, “Murder.”
Ominously, the comm burst with static at right that second, new voices chattering frantically to each other: pilots of the quick orbital security cruisers coordinating an interception. In another minute they’d have hyperspace mines deployed and if Joe tried to engage the FTL drive they would blow up the Bee - with them in it - spectacularly.
The cartograph was due to return its coordinates in fifty-four seconds.
“Murder?” Joe said weakly, turned entirely around in the pilot’s seat, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be...well, piloting.
“Hey!!” David said, snapping at him frantically, and Joe, pale as the atmosphere trails clinging to the viewscreen, wheeled back around and locked his hands on the throttle and control lever. It was only his preternatural instinct that kept them on trajectory.
David was boring holes into Nicholas with his eyes; the Prince very stolidly did not notice. Finally, after a long several seconds during which the security forces chasing them were the only voices in the cockpit, verbalizing the noose tightening around their necks, David reached out, muted the comm with a serious-sounding click. In the resounding quiet, he asked, simply, “Did you have to do it?”
Nicholas looked up at him while Joe, still as a mouse at the controls, watched the last numbers slot into the navigation sequence like lock tumblers in his display.
“I believe that I did,” Nicholas said, voice somehow vulnerable and imperative at once, as if he simultaneously wished someone would challenge him on his response, and dared them to try.
David nodded once, looking back to his monitor, fingers flying over a last few commands. “Well alright, then.”
Just then, the cartograph returned the final coordinate triangulating the Honeybee’s place in the universe, and Joe, ignoring the sudden scream of alarms signaling the encroachment of a flotilla of hyperspace mines, throttled up the engines to faster-than-light speed. The ship’s insectoid hum rose to an almost angry pitch, and every panel of the hull around them trembled with a rattle of half-rusted rivets. Then realspace dropped away from the viewscreen and all the cabin’s alarms were silent.
*
Joe wet the old rag in his hand with another shot of astringent and set the little canister of it aside, bending over Win2’s little form huddled in the V of Joe’s legs, the bot humming contemplatively to himself. He wasn’t paying Joe’s nervous and habitual chatter any mind whatsoever.
“...didn’t think you’d got this dinged up, little guy,” he was saying in an undertone as he took the cleaning rag to Win2’s molded-polymer casing, scrubbing away several dark score-marks, battle scars left from the little bot’s epic battle with hangar security. “Who knew you had such a big shield in you, anyway? Probably Nicholas knew, huh?”
“What did I know?”
Joe jumped and dropped his cleaning rag onto Win2’s little antenna, making the bot grumble softly at him. “Oh,” Joe said softly, looking up wide-eyed at the Prince where he leaned in the doorway. “Um. Just...that Win2 had an energy shield emitter in him,” he said, a little wary and trying not to be. He’d felt jumpy since they’d taken off, not quite getting past the adrenaline rush, somehow. “He doesn’t look...well. He doesn’t look like the kind of bot that would have a shield hidden in him.”
Nicholas made a kind of full-body shrug without actually shrugging and came into the small bunk room, warm from proximity to the engines but well-muffled from their noise.
“Like I said,” the Prince said breezily, “you’d be surprised what you can get into a small bot. He’s my personal assistant.” Nicholas perched on the edge of one of the narrow, hard-looking bunks that were built into the bulkhead on either side of the cramped space. Joe sat between them on the floor, and he was very aware of how Nicholas had seemed to fill up the room when he’d entered it. “He’s equipped to handle lots of situations that might arise with an intergalactic political figure.”
It was on the tip of Joe’s tongue to quip something about Win2 being equipped to handle political assassinations, but he rescued himself from that major mistake just in time, averting his eyes back to Win2 and continuing to clean the burn marks off his carapace. Even so, the space where he’d been about to speak kind of hung empty and accusing behind him, and Nicholas soon heaved an aggravated sigh.
“What? Joe...don’t be like that.” His voice was still bossy, still commanding, but he seemed a little on-edge, too, a little genuinely upset.
“Like what?” Joe asked unnecessarily, rubbing at a spot long after the spot had disappeared.
“Like this, all...afraid of me.” The Prince’s bluster sort of ran out with every word, until his voice just trailed off. Joe finally stopped scrubbing at Win2, then, and looked up at Nicholas, who had found the stitching on his pants suddenly fascinating. “You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
“You’re wanted for murder,” Joe blurted out before he could stop himself, this time. His face heated immediately, but he didn’t back down. “What am I supposed to think?”
“I told you,” Nicholas said, exasperated, as if Joe was stupid and had somehow misinterpreted the hurried explanation he and David had received earlier. “I’m part of a resistance group against--”
“--the Government, I get it. And you’re trying to take down the Queen. And the only way to do that is to get to her subordinates first.” Joe was starting to get a little impatient himself, and Win2 whined in an unsettled way, seeming to sense the tension in the room. “I heard all of this the first time!”
“So why are you acting like I’m going to turn on you and stab you with a screwdriver? I don’t kill people, Joe. I helped kill a man who’d killed thousands of people. A killer, working for a dictator, who needs to step down or be taken down. That doesn’t mean I’m a murdering psychopath--”
“Well I’m sorry,” Joe bit out, throwing his rag on the floor with an unsatisfying thwap. “It’s my first time being on a strange ship in the middle of space with a murdering non-psychopath who may or may not have screwdriver on him to stab me with.”
Nicholas looked at him incredulously, then, much to Joe’s annoyance, he burst out laughing. He had a really nice laugh, full and high, almost helpless-sounding, like he just couldn’t stop himself. Joe found his lips twitching into a smile before he could stop himself, and then he was laughing, too, trying not to feel too much like an idiot.
The Prince grinned at him, eyes squinted up, and held out his empty hands. “No screwdriver, see?” he said. “I promise.”
Joe rubbed his eyes, picked his rag back up, and worked out a last couple of scorch-marks from Win2’s side, shaking his head. “Sorry, your Highness,” he said genuinely, blushing a little. “Guess I’m just not cut out for this, really.”
Nicholas was quiet a moment while Joe fished around in the toolbox he’d found for a tube of filling compound, putting some on a new rag and starting to buff away the actual damage he’d revealed under the burn marks on Win2. Finally the Prince said, “You were actually amazing, earlier. Flying the ship, I mean. I think you’re handling this all pretty well, honestly.”
Joe’s blush deepened, and he couldn’t stop a smile creeping back over his face. Win2 hummed softly between his knees, almost like a little snoring sound, and his antenna was still as Joe buffed him. Quietly, he replied, “I don’t really even know how I did it. It was like...I touched the controls and I knew how to do it. I’ve never flown a ship like this before.”
Nicholas ticked up an eyebrow. “C’mon. Really? That wasn’t just you screwing with David?”
Joe shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve seen the blueprints for this kind of ship before and all, but never...never flown one.” He shrugged one-shouldered, rubbed little circles with the patching compound until another scratch disappeared. “I love piloting. I’ve always wanted to fly a ship like this?”
The Prince frowned, cocked his head. “You have your license, so why haven’t you?”
“Too expensive. Flying anywhere, on anything bigger than a hovercar, you’d think you’d asked permission into the Queen’s bedchamber...”
Nicholas made an exasperated hand motion, but, glancing up, Joe could see it wasn’t directed at him. “See?! Do you see? Even on such an far-away backwater little world, you feel all these restrictions and laws, these pointless means of keeping you under their thumb! It’s all so pointless, all so designed to keep you wrapped up constantly worrying about red tape and the tiniest little infractions, to make you afraid...”
He continued talking, impassioned, but Joe got really distracted by the color blooming, warm and agitated, in Nicholas’ cheeks the more and more excited he got. He was so fervent, so enthusiastic about his cause; he really believed what he was talking about, which was a sentiment more than a little strange to someone who’d come from a place and a life where apathy was a basic survival skill. Joe couldn’t even be offended by the Prince slighting his homeworld when he seemed so truly aggrieved by all the things which made it offending that he was willing to pontificate prettily on it for five minutes straight. Joe only became aware he had got utterly caught up staring at Nicholas’ mouth when he realized the Prince had, at some point, stopped talking, and he hadn’t noticed. Even then, it took a second for Joe to tear his eyes away from the bow of those pink lips. Nicholas blinked at him, and his flush deepened a bit, changing just subtly.
“Uh,” Joe said stupidly, emerging slowly from his haze. “You. Seem to know a lot about it,” he offered, ears hot. Nicholas huffed a soft, incredulous sound.
“Did you mean what you said?” he asked softly, his eyelashes flickering as his gaze darted down to...was he looking at Joe’s lips now?
Hushed, barely moving his mouth, Joe asked, “What did I say?”
“About...me being a handsome prince.”
Joe swallowed reflexively. “I...yeah. Of course. You are.” He licked his lips and was more than shocked to see Nick’s color rise again. Win2 suddenly rumbled a tinny little whining sound, startling the both of them, and buzzed around in a little circle in the space between Joe’s legs. Grinning, Joe reached out and rubbed at the rough spot on his casing that he’d been neglecting the last few minutes, finishing working the compound into the scar, and then he plucked a little sander out of the toolbox and shined the rough patch back up. “See?” he said, grinning and blushing. “Even Win2 thinks so.”
Joe didn’t look up, but he knew the Prince was watching him; he could feel his eyes hot on the back of his neck, like the sun shining there. “Well,” he said, sounding amused and maybe a little breathless. “As long as he thinks so.”
PART II