Assistant for the Alien Prince by Tammy Walsh
Zai
If we could see them,it meant they could see us.
There would be no use in trying to hide and wait them out.
Someone must have told them where we’d gone, although, in truth, there had been more than enough time for them to track us down while we were… indisposed.
News about the DNA results wouldn’t have hit the news stream yet, and even if it had, the blood-sucking journalists weren’t about to let a story this juicy go now, not when it might turn out to be the biggest item for the entire year.
They would want a comment, would want to explore every part of the sordid tale, right down to the positions we used and whether or not the test results were genuine.
The girl who’d made the accusation would no longer need me to be her celebrity husband—she would become her very own.
I could picture the exclusive interviews now, played endlessly on loop.
The tribe leaders might have had more than a little input into how it rolled out in an effort to undermine my authority.
I wouldn’t return to the palace and hide away.
The journalists would be like wolves baying at the front door and wouldn’t stop until they had extracted their pound of flesh.
In the palace, I was trapped.
But where would I go?
“You’re thinking about running again, aren’t you?” Jessica said.
“I can’t face this,” I said. “Not right now. Not until news of the test results is made public.”
“Do you know anywhere we can hole up for a while?”
“This planetwas meant to be that place,” I growled. “But now they’ve found it.”
Then it hit me…
The journalists wouldn’t stop here, they would explore the area to learn why I had chosen to come here of all places…
And they would discover the Bal family.
I felt sorry for the interruption they would experience at the media’s hands, but it was unavoidable now.
The best thing I could do was get out of there and take the baying media mob with me.
“I need to find somewhere so far out of the way that they will never find me,” I said, wracking my brains for such a place
I came up blank.
“I know somewhere,” Jessica said in a pitifully small voice.
But could I trust her?
I knew the answer to that question before I’d even finished asking it.
Yes, I can trust her completely.
I engaged the engines and pulled up the landing struts.
“Hold on,” I said. “I’m going to have to lose the media before we can make a break for it.”
Jessica strapped herself in.
High above us, the media descended like an enemy armada heading directly for us.
Rather than peeling up and heading for the empty sky, I bolted forward, into the jungle foliage.
I took us into the thick copse, the branches snapping beneath the sheer mass of the ship.
Jessica squealed and held on tight to her armrests, her eyes clenching shut, her body turning rigid.
The one advantage my father’s old shuttlecraft had over the media ships was its small size.
It can go where they cannot.
The media ships lacked weapons but came fully loaded with powerful defensive shields and decoys to ensure their escape in any difficult situations they found themselves in.
They were lovers, not fighters.
The tree branches snapped and gave way to a huge waterfall that coughed up blistering tranches of steam.
I headed directly for it.
Jessica screamed “No!” and threw up her arms over her head as we pierced the dense spray and blasted through to the other side.
I turned sharply, knowing the sheer cave walls would rush up to greet us the moment we entered and the spray had dissipated.
I hit the headlights to knock away the worst of the darkness.
Down here, protected by the thick walls, we would turn invisible to the media’s advanced sensors.
I took off down the endless tunnels, nicking the occasional sharp stalactites that pierced the shuttle’s exterior shell when I came too close.
The media ships might not be able to come down here but their remote-operated drones could.
I needed to leverage a little space between us and our assailants to ensure they couldn’t track us if—and it was a big if—we managed to reach outer space.
Jessica squealed even louder now as we rushed down one tunnel after another, most of it nothing but lucky guesswork on my part.
I’d explored these tunnels with Rer after recovering from my crash landing but we’d traveled on foot and hadn’t gone this deep.
I stuck to the largest caves and hoped they would get us far enough away from our pursuers.
Daylight sprung from points in the distance, sheaves of light that rained down like curtains across the expanse.
I took one up and increased speed.
The pinhole of light was nowhere near large enough to fit the ship through, but we’d come too far to turn back now.
“Hold on!” I yelled.
Jessica whined.
He smashed through the gap, more than tripling its size.
The rocks slid off our hull to the jungle foliage far below.
The media ships would be onto us the moment we emerged into the light.
We’d come up some distance ahead and it would give us a short head start, but it was all the advantage we were going to get.
I headed directly for the open sky.
“Come on, baby!” I said, rubbing the controls as if the ship could feel it. “You can do it.”
The sensors picked up the large media ships rapidly catching up to us.
The sky morphed from blue to black and the stars twinkled playfully.
I hoped we were far enough from the planet to jump.
I punched the hyperspace module.
Time and space shifted in an instant as we crossed into the nether regions of hyperspace travel and experienced the familiar—and not altogether pleasant—twisting and pulling and tugging and squeezing sensation as the forces of the very large met, dwarfed, and then receded from the very small.
The stars streamed on either side of us like lights in an underground tunnel.
“We made it,” I said, smiling over at Jessica, who still had her eyes welded shut in fear. “They can’t track us once we enter hyperspace.”
I reached over to place my hand on her arm.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She started as if she’d fallen asleep.
“We’re okay now,” I said. “We’re going to be all right. Where did you want us to go? Where is this safe place of yours?”
She looked up at me, her face pale and her skin drawn tight.
“I don’t feel so good…” she said. “I think I’m going to be—”
She threw up over the floor.
The acrid smell hit me and made my stomach turn.
I twisted away from her and threw up beside my chair.
We might be vomiting but at least we were sick—and safe—together.
