Free Teleport This by Christopher M. Daniels

journey and colonization. It’s not necessary to send a lot of people, just a few to run the ship and deal with pirates and such. Teleport stations are part of the initial cargo and once they’re set up you can move in as many folks as you need. Alicia’s ancestors were the head of the investment pool that sent the first ship and bought out most of the other investors during the start-up phase, then put themselves in power as the reigning sovereignty.
    Over the years more ships arrived, setting up hotel chains across the globe until the planet became one of the richest in the known universe. It also has the best swimsuit contests and beach side bars in the galaxy as well as a continuous show on the travel channel.
    “Jon, I need your help”
    It’s never good when one of the richest people in the galaxy asks for your help, thought Jon. “I am always at your service, my dear,” he said, as if he had a choice.
    “It’s complicated,” Alicia said, “and involves a man.”
    When isn’t it, he thought. “Let me guess, you love him, but he doesn’t love you or he loves you, but you don’t love him or you both love each other, but your families don’t approve.”
    “That’s it, the third one. Though it’s mostly his family that doesn’t approve.”
    “Now what could they possibly not like about you?”
    “Oh, pretty much everything. They’re from BB89.”
    “Ahh, the fog lifts. A very hard working group over there. I don’t believe they have words for ‘fun’ or ‘vacation’ or ‘fluffy’ in their vocabulary. The closest they’ve got is ‘job satisfaction’ and ‘sleep’ and ‘flaccid.’ They don’t even have enough imagination to name their own planet, they just stuck with the designation that was being used when they were discovered. How in the world did you two ever meet?”
    “I was traveling with mother and he was on a business trip. We kept bumping into each other in the strangest places. Once he came out of an elevator so fast he crashed into all my shopping bags. Can you imagine?”
    “I don’t have to. I think I saw that movie a hundred times on the late, late, late show.”
    “I need to get off this planet without being followed. I need you to help.”
    “You must realize that I’m on the run myself, that’s why I needed you to sneak me in here.”
    “Of course I know that. Now here’s what you don’t know, I contacted the royal guard and told them who you really are. They’ve surrounded the apartment.”
    “Now that’s no way to get me to help. In fact, that’s the opposite way.”
    “I have a teleport in my apartment.”
    This news didn’t brighten Jon’s day since he had already assumed that as a member of the royal family Alicia would have a teleport in her apartment, but that it would be limited to planetary use only. There are strict rules about going off planet without prior authorization, and sure, you can bribe a guard or two, but in the end there’s no way to do it without being traced and detained on the other end. Sometimes they don’t even accept you and you just bounce right back to the point of origin. If they’re really feeling nasty, they collect you at the other end and then have a ‘system malfunction’ that clears the buffer. The only thing to do after that is for the next of kin to check for old bank accounts.
    “I’ve had it modified to hack into the network and send us off planet,” Alicia continued. “We should be able to get one blast out of it before it’s shut down. After that, it’s set to self-destruct if tampered with. I haven’t used it yet because I don’t fully trust the destination codes I was given. I know you wouldn’t have come here without exit codes you could trust.”
    Jon thought about it. He could see Alicia’s dilemma. It’s very possible to get someone from the criminal element to modify the teleport as she described, but you can’t trust a crook so it’s a good bet that the codes they gave her will send her