An Imperfect Princess Read Online Free

We only have enough energy for one
jump!”
    “Does that
really matter?”
    “An unplanned
jump could land us anywhere!”  Aijo’s panic was full blow.  “The heart of a
star, an event horizon—”
    “And much more
likely someplace safer than here.”  One of the ships’ energy beams hit a fin,
causing the artificial gravity to blink for a moment, and Eneria lifted off the
ground for a few seconds before the secondary system took over.  “Again, is
this area clear of dark matter?”
    “Yes,” Aijo
said, only hesitating another moment as she scanned in multiple dimensions
around them.  “A jump here is safe.  But we will be flying blind.”
    “Sounds like the
last few years of my life.  A blind rat.”  Another blast rocked the small ship,
and alarms started blinking madly across the dash.  “It’s now or never!”
    She slammed on
the accelerator and clutch.  The ship lurched for a minute, then blinked out of
existence as the dark matter engine accelerated them away at thousands of times
the speed of light.  It was if it had never even been there.  The Konkastians
and Captain Kordan were left firing at the emptiness of space.
    The nodes,
natural signs in the invisible freeways of dark matter, acted as markers for
travelers going faster than light.  The cold dark matter did not appear on any
spectrums until one exceeded the speed of light, at which point it became a
maze of tunnels, islands, and shortcuts known to many as wormholes.  It was
into one of these tunnels that the two women piloted the ship, knowing that it
was their best chance of escaping alive.
    “There’s a
wormhole close by,” Aijo said, surprised.  Unlike Eneria, she had no need to
rely on the ship’s sensors to read the space around them.
    Eneria put her
goggles back on and joined Aijo in studying the readouts. “Knowing my luck, it’ll
drop us off in the Konkast solar system,” Eneria muttered darkly.
    But the wormhole
had no markers.  No one had passed here before.  Aijo, doing the duty of
Pharinae across the galaxy, added in a marker into the ship’s database in the
maze of dark matter to indicate that she had passed through there, in case any
of her kind were unfortunate enough to travel this way as well.  The Konkast
would probably ignore a Pharinae marker, especially an undated one; their race
had left an untold number of them across the galaxy for millions of years.  If
they ever survived to upload the data into the Pharinae matrix on her home
world of the Seven Sisters, she’d mark the other end where they came out as
well.
    The wormhole was
longer than either of them had expected.  After several hours of traveling, it
ended abruptly, depositing them into an area of dark matter space devoid of any
markers.  Pharinae markers were almost undetectable after several thousand
years, but that didn’t mean no one had ever been here before.  Just not for a
very long time.
    “We can drop out
here,” Aijo said warily, looking at the screen with its non-existent markers
with a frown on her tiny face.  “But I couldn’t begin to tell you where here is.”
    “Worst case
scenario, we’re still in Konkastian space.” Eneria grimaced.  “Anywhere else,
and we have a chance of survival.”
    Calm and
deliberate, Eneria disengaged the dark matter engine.  The tunnels and mazes of
dark matter space disappeared around them as they returned to sub-light speeds.
    The computer
scanned an unfamiliar solar system around them.
    “Woot! We’re in
a solar system!” Aijo said, pleased.  With a sun nearby, she could technically
survive.  But if Eneria died, Aijo was honor-bound to commit suicide, so
keeping her alive was in her vested interest. The thought was somehow not
comforting to Eneria.
    “And it’s not
Konkastian space!”  Eneria’s joyful smile dissipated as she continued to read
the data from the screen.  “It’s not anyone’s space.  Good gods, Aijo, we’re
over a thousand light years away from