between women or didn't agree with the practice. Either way, it left her a good route to orbit without raising any questions from underlings.
She had no idea what was expected of her aboard ship but that was of little concern to her now. After the warship left the system, she planned on shedding her commoner clothes and resuming her role as Empress. There would be no way the Imperial Security Forces could come after her then.
Her foot tapped nervously against the seat back in front of her. It seemed to be taking forever to take off. She looked down the isle to where the cockpit was and watched Verrad and the pilot discussing something. Verrad looked back at her after finishing his conversation and winked. No man had ever dared flirt with her publicly like that. No man save for Ketar. Reminded again of her lover's absence, her face clouded in anger.
The shuttle started to vibrate as the main engines fired and minutes later they were ascending over the mountains that surrounded the castle. Looking out the porthole she saw the castle slip away under the constant planetary cloud cover. With nothing to occupy her out the porthole, she returned her attention to the cockpit. The cabin hatch had been pulled shut and she could no longer see Verrad or the pilot.
Alone in the main cabin, she grabbed the nearest handhold as the ride became bumpy. The bouncing and swaying eventually stopped as the tiny shuttle burst free of the lower atmosphere and sped into the inky blackness of space. She looked back out the cold porthole and saw the blue and white world she had grown up on move away out of her field of vision. The stars were so bright. She had never really seen them from the ground before. Once, when she was younger her mother had taken her to the top of mount Karnak for a Circle of Honor ceremony. It had been dark then and occasionally the thick clouds had parted and she caught a glimpse of a star or two.
But this was completely different. Space was so tightly packed with stars, she couldn't really see black, just a dark gray pattern of dim stars reaching out to infinity. It was beautiful and stark.
The starfield shifted again and she could feel the shuttle's engines throttle back as it approached Verrad's warship, the
VCF Creavor
a large destroyer. Nykostra wanted to see it as they approached but her view was too limited. Instead she sat back and held onto her armrests.
There was a deep scratching sound that gave way to sudden lurch forward and sounds of metal cracking as the shuttle came to a stop. All she could see out her porthole was the gray metal walls of the bay.
The hatch opened and Captain Verrad came out and down the isle. He stopped at her row and looked down at her. She could tell he was nervous about smuggling her aboard his ship by the nervous tapping of his finger on her seat back. His face remained stoic and calm. The shuttle's hatch opened and he quickly stepped off.
She heard a flurry of activity as crewmen acknowledged his return and others scurried around the shuttle to secure it. A ground crewman came aboard and walked right past her. She was not used to being ignored by everyone. Part of her wanted to call him out for his impertinence but she remained quiet. The pilot exited first, she caught him staring at her and immediately she became nervous. Lowering her eyes she pretended not to notice him.
He stopped at her row and spoke to her. "The Captain has fine tastes in xulsh."
Xulsh was a rude term for concubines. Little more than sanctioned whores. Nykostra did not respond and eventually he scoffed and moved off the shuttle. She waited a few more minutes before venturing off.
Verrad had told her directions to his quarters but she still struggled to find the exit to the bay. She watched the activity of the men around her and followed them. Most of them didn't look twice at her until she was in the ship's interior corridors. Then she began to feel their suffocating stares. Many of them had not seen a