Free The Royal Scam (The Martian Alliance) by Gini Koch Page B

were inside, shimmered and jumped to hyperspace right as the shot “hit” the counterfeit ship. Myriad pieces of destroyed spaceship were my last visions of Andromeda’s solar space.
    The next few moments were spent feeling compressed. There was nothing to see but blackness. If the calibrations were wrong, this would be the last thing any of us would know—suffocating blackness.
    A few moments more of the feeling of suspended death, then my stomach turned inside out and back again, proving we’d made a successful jump.
    The windshield blacked out to prevent anyone from being able to see what we were flying past. In the olden days they’d lost many a spacer to blindness or madness, before some unsung genius thought to ensure the “no peeking” rule be built in automatically for every space-worthy ship.
    We were all quiet for a few long moments. The serene woman opened her eyes. “All clear. It’s a sad day on Andromeda—Princess Olivia is dead.”

    I breathed a sigh of relief. “So, can I relax?”
    “Yes.” Ciarissa smiled at me. “You can go back to being you.”
    “In a second,” Roy said as he hit some more buttons, flipped switches back, spun dials, and checked calibrations. My stomach did another set of flips, meaning we were out of hyperspace. The windshield becoming clear again was also a clue.
    “Ciarissa, are we still clear?” Roy asked as he took the ship off of the hyperspace automatics and put it fully under his and Doven’s control again.
    She closed her eyes again. “Yes. Doven made us disappear at the perfect moment. All witnesses believe that our ship moved erratically into the line of fire and so was destroyed by a Diamante shot. I find no doubting minds. No one on Andromeda or Diamante doubts that Princess Olivia and the crew who were trying to help her escape are dead.”
    “Are any more mind readers searching for Princess Olivia?” I asked.
    “No.” Ciarissa smiled at me as she opened her eyes. “Welcome back, DeeDee. Nice job. No one seems clear on who the captain and crew were, Roy.”
    He nodded. “I have the best crew in any galaxy. Doven, can you handle flying solo for a bit?”
    Doven ruffled his feathers. “Of course.”
    “I’ll keep him company,” Ciarissa said. Doven looked pleased.
    Roy and I left the cockpit and I heaved a sigh. “What’s your pleasure?”
    He grinned. “I like the real you.”
    I raised my eyebrow. “You’re sure?”
    “Well, if the real you is my little voluptuous redhead, yeah.”
    “Not so sure about the voluptuous part, but the little and redheaded is indeed me.”
    Roy grinned. “Trust me on the voluptuous.”
    I shifted and heaved a sigh of relief. I’d been Princess Olivia for three months, which was a long time to play pretend. It was an even longer time to be away from Roy.
    He put his arm around me. “So, want to tell me about it?”
    “Not yet.” I still had to rearrange my mind back to my own. I’d liked Princess Olivia a lot, meaning it was harder than normal to leave her behind. Almost as hard as pretending I didn’t know who Roy and the others were when I was in character.
    Good shape shifters were, at our cores, the best method actors in the galaxy. We not only shifted mind and body, but the best of us could, once shifted, maintain that indefinitely, even while sleeping. Basically, if we believed we were whoever, or whatever, we were imitating, so did the rest of the galaxy.
    One of the easiest ways to trap a Shifter involved catching them “knowing” someone the person they were impersonating wouldn’t or couldn’t. In addition to giving the Shifter away to someone paying attention, it affected their overall control as well. Our history was littered with Shifters who’d made one small mistake that proved fatal. I had no intention of joining their ranks.
    Because of this ability and the risks of being found out when shifted, we learned to keep the real us hidden, deep inside, under different mental, physical,