Ice Drag Queen Wedding Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  About The Author

  Copyright

  Ice Drag Queen Wedding

  By Tami Veldura

  Chapter One

  Hendrix Kelly gripped the flight stick of his Kingship Shale and pressed forward. He toggled a pedal under his left foot, sending the ship spinning. Kingship Shale danced through space under his direction, dodging drones, and weaving past simulated projectiles. Hendrix grinned as he pulled the ship to the right and blasted past one of Aplite’s forty drones, too fast for the smaller machine to fire on him.

  The massive HUD screen in front of him rotated the battlefield into view as Kingship Shale and its drones fought a contest match against Kingship Aplite far above the unnamed icy moon known as Neta 2, the second moon discovered orbiting the quiet gas giant planet Neta in this far reach of known space. Down below, far too small to see with the naked eye, thousands of Speir-family citizens were building a festival ground for Midwinter: an ice maze, sculpture gardens, an entire parade route with ice bleachers. In two days, Hendrix and his squad would be in that parade, celebrating their victory.

  On the edges of his view, several floating arrows of various orange shades indicated Aplite’s drones—any one of which could spin and fire on Hendrix and knock his squad out of the games. But his own team of drones, stated in faint grays, kept them busy, leaving Kingship Aplite the only real threat. Well, the Kingship and any tactics its squad came up with to score that first hit.

  The HUD screen continued to rotate, spinning Neta 2 out of view and bringing Queenship Artio into the background of the skirmish. Artio loomed tens of thousands of meters distant, beyond Neta 2’s minor gravitational pull, and yet her sheer size dwarfed anything else in the sky. Her crystal-metal exterior glinted in silver and white, Speir family colors, and her long, narrow shape gave every family on board a space-view window. Over a million souls called Artio home, and most of them had never left her, not even for Midwinter.

  Kingship Shale was a speck in the sky beside her, a single-compartment ship designed to be a mobile command unit out in the field. Shale was ovoid in shape, with a few crystal-metal struts to support its power ring and various actuated thrusters. Internally, it could hold eight bodies with no standing room available. Each seat, semi-isolated up to the chest in case of emergency ejection, and the only thing between Hendrix's eyes and that of his crew were the light-HUDs on display.

  An orange arrow swelled and became red at the edge of Hendrix’s HUD. He yanked back on the flight stick, toggling pedals with his feet to dodge a strafing run from one drone. Simulated lasers dotted across his screen, just missing Shale’s bow.

  In front of him, seated in the crew U beyond the glare of his HUD, Hendrix’s second, Isobel Rose, glanced in his direction. He jerked his eyes back to the screen, chastised. He needed to keep his head in the game. Kingship Aplite was no pushover.

  Shale had room for a crew of seven plus pilot, but Hendrix had narrowed his team down to five plus himself. Convincing Queenship Artio to modify her king for him had taken paperwork, letters of recommendation, and a full year of waiting for the crystal-metal interior to be re-grown. Aside from his second, he’d selected a munitions expert, an engineer, a navigator, and a statistician. Each crew member filled a specific and critical role in his team, and Hendrix had done his best to tie everyone together. They ran simulated drills aboard the Queenship until specific directions had become shorthand and shorthand had become glances and grunts. Hendrix was proud of his team and what they could accomplish together.

  They even wore the new flight suits Hendrix had commissioned. Speir wasn’t as nationalist as some of the other big families, and they didn’t require branded uniforms in the cockpit. There were some fit and function requirements, but nothing formally designed. Hendrix wanted his team to feel more unified, though, and they all wore skin-tight white and silver, a stretchy, breathable fabric that slipped easily under emergency suits and sculpted to fit each of his squad mates. There were no zippers that might catch or cause burns in an emergency. No seams at all that might chafe. They each sported kingship Shale’s logo on the breast with individual roles listed below. Each of them singular, bonded together through Hendrix. Now they just had to prove they were the best. Today with Aplite, then tomorrow with Kingship Basalt.

  Hendrix frowned. Basalt’s pilot was a complication he hadn’t figured out yet. One equal parts infuriating and attractive. A possible bump in the road to winning the games.

  And he didn’t have time to dwell on it now. An indicator blinked wildly on screen and Hendrix pushed Shale into a dive, twisting his kingship out of range once more. His distraction had put the team on the defensive, and Aplite saw the opening. A spinning line of drones pursued Shale and Hendrix dodged through skirmishing pairs to shake the tail. His HUD spun and whirled. The first time he’d sat down to pilot in a simulation, that spinning screen had sent him immediately to a trash can. Now he knew how to let the zooming background fade from his attention and allow the highlighted information to sink into his subconscious.

  The kingship itself supplied vast amounts of data to the HUD, but Hendrix saw a modified collection thanks to Tristan, his statistician. A kingship pilot couldn’t handle the ship and all forty drones, up to one hundred in a proper fight, with all of their guns flying in three-dimensional space. The statistician broke up that information, giving drone control to the engineer and the navigator, munitions expert Pippa handled Shale’s rear-facing guns, while Isobel kept her eye on the prize: Kingship Aplite.

  A bright yellow arrow showed Aplite on Hendrix’s HUD, tracked thanks to the kingship’s sensors and the slaved drones. A narrowing circle at the center of his screen indicated the drones still pursued behind him. The closer they got, the smaller the circle. There was only so close a drone could get and still miss their shot.

  Queenship Artio hosted the fight herself, sending simulation information to each of the players on the field. When a drone took a laser hit, Artio pulled them out of the fight and sent them back to dock, which meant the kingships had a dwindling supply of drones. Hendrix twisted Shale to the left and down, back up through the battlefield where he just skimmed through a pair of circling drones. A simulated laser struck a drone following Hendrix and it fell out of line.

  In the bottom corner of his HUD, Hendrix glanced at the drone count. Shale still controlled thirty-six to Aplite’s thirty-seven, down by only one, but a gap that could widen in the blink of an eye.

  “Aplite is moving,” Isobel said, her voice level.

  Everyone was moving, but in that terse message Isobel conveyed far more information. Artio’s pilot had decided it was time to end the fight, and a single shot could finish this.

  In a straight line, a kingship could out fly a drone, but even a kingship couldn’t outrun a laser beam. In close quarters like this dogfight, the drones held the advantage of maneuverability. Without the extra mass that a kingship carried, or the fragile humans inside, a drone could spin on one thruster and take an impossible shot that would kill a pilot to pull off.

  And with Shale down by one drone, Aplite knew now was the time.

  Hendrix scanned the icons on his screen and let his gut make the call. “Shield dive,” he said, trusting in his team to execute the attack pattern they’d practiced for weeks. He yanked back on the flight stick. Shale darted through space at Hendrix’s command, spinning upside down until Aplite came into view. Drones from e
very corner of the battlefield swarmed to Shale, and when Hendrix thrust Shale directly at Aplite, his navigator, Logan, kept the drones in their new formation: a living crystal shield pointed right at their target. His team’s intense focus crystalized in the very air, as if they could bring the victory through force of will alone. Hendrix wouldn’t bet against it.

  Aplite committed to their attack despite Hendrix’s response, firing on the drone shield. Hendrix pressed Shale into the dive, trusting Logan to catch the intercepting beams. The number of drones at his call fell away under the assault, but it only took one hit…

  At close quarters, time slowed. Every twitch of the drones and shift of his opponent drew Hendrix’s eye. He’d studied Aplite’s crew, its pilot, their strategies for weeks. Hendrix knew down in his gut how Aplite would move under pressure, how the pilot would rotate their ship to expose the smallest side—the smallest target—and then drop away with a shield of drones to protect their escape.

  The rotation began. Hendrix saw the tiny maneuvering thrusters fire, and they ignited his own nerves, sending signals into his fingers to adjust his aim. Shale’s calculations put a pair of crosshairs on the screen where the kingship predicted Aplite would be. Hendrix shifted inward. His drone shield parted before him.

  He fired.

  Time rushed forward as if trying to catch up to itself. Aplite spun away as Hendrix predicted, but his aim was true and a green laser burst fireworked across his display. All at once, the drones fell away from both kingships like a swarm of bees on a new target. Queenship Artio had called them all home. Aplite stabilized in space and rotated to face Artio.

  The Queenship’s gender-neutral voice spoke into Shale’s cockpit speakers. “Congratulations, Kingship Shale wins the bracket.”

  Hendrix clapped his hands and pumped his fist. “Yes!”

  Pippa and Tristan shared high fives. Logan put both fists in the air and whooped. Daniella, Shale’s engineer, leaned back and put her hands on her head as she blew a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god,” she said.

  Isobel traded a look and a nod with Hendrix. It was satisfying to see the small smile on his Second’s face. Their hard work had paid off. Hendrix knew how to push his team, but Isobel took their results personally. She deserved as much credit for the win as he did.

  Hendrix sighed happily. “Shale, bring us back to Artio.”

  The kingship acknowledged with an icon on Hendrix’s display and the minor intelligence in the ship took over flight controls. It turned them in space and headed for home.

  Hendrix's view turned in space to face Artio. The massive ship was more than a way to sail the galaxy to those who lived on her. She was home, the only home her family ever knew going back generations. When the first queenship awoke and called herself Gaia, there were historians of the period that named her a generation ship—a space-worthy vessel capable of sustaining life, food, water, air over several lifetimes. But Gaia had been small compared to today’s queenships, and the term generation ship didn’t compare. They were living, growing, traveling worlds of their own.

  People packed the landing deck, shoulder to shoulder along every wall, surface, and guyline, a sea of silver and white—Queenship Artio’s official colors—dotted with dark faces and dark hair, descendants of the once grand Southern National Union that made up Artio’s majority population. Before the first queenship had come online. When nations separated the Earth and not families. Artio’s people were proud of their heritage and any of them could trace their ancestors back to Earth, more so than any other family in space, Artio’s people knew where they came from. Anyone from Tsui would claim they were daughters of the stars, severing their history with Earth in order to find enlightenment, but Artio’s people knew that a person was built by what came before them, and a history only gave them all strength. It didn’t hold anyone back.

  Shale came to rest in Artio’s belly. Docking clamps clicked into place, their hold echoing through the kingship as living crystal grew over the joints and connected Shale to its mother ship both physically and mentally. The kingship took power and direction from its queen, and Artio held her sons tight. Hendrix only served as a pilot at Artio’s pleasure, and only when Shale flew free of its queen.

  Hendrix unbuckled himself as Shale’s roof-top rippled open with the delicate tinkling of living crystal. He watched his team push themselves out of their seats, always the first one to enter and the last one to leave. Even this they practiced, the order and method of team entry and exit. In a real fight half a second mattered, even getting in and out had to be smooth and automatic. So well practiced that the muscles knew what to do on their own.

  But no amount of practice prepared him for the wave of cheers that erupted from their waiting family. Two hundred voices, all packed into this wing of the ship, hooting and hollering and celebrating the squad’s victory. Hendrix followed his team down a guyline, pulling himself along in zero-g, unable to stop the grin that spread across his face.

  With Aplite out of the running, Shale would move onto the finals and face off against Basalt.

  Hendrix scanned the crowd, but the number of people piled in made it difficult to find anyone specific. If Kane was here to watch their next opponent, Hendrix couldn’t find him. Basalt’s pilot was an intense competitor. Even if he wasn’t here, he already knew that Shale—that Hendrix—had won the bracket and tomorrow they would go head to head.

  Kane Carter had been born and bred for Artio’s military service. He lived, breathed, ate, and slept piloting Kingship Basalt. And he was a poor loser. He and Hendrix had been butting heads like old rams contesting territory for ten years, ever since they’d graduated out of the general pool and selected as pilots. Hendrix liked to think he was an easy-going guy, but Kane knew every way to get under Hendrix's skin until they were both shouting blue in the face, nose to nose, ready to throw down. Hendrix had always valued his superior outfit over punching Kane’s nose into his ruggedly handsome face, but one day they’d get into a tangle and there would be blood, of that Hendrix had no doubt.

  Isobel put a hand on Hendrix’s forearm and he smiled at the knowing gleam in her green eyes, not at all abashed at being caught with his attention on Kane. Again. “He’s with his squad running simulations of us already,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s been simulating Shale for a week.”

  The games had only started four days ago. Hendrix laughed. “That’s because he knows we’re the only competition he has.”

  Isobel looked over her nose at him. “More like he’s as obsessed with you as you are with him.”

  Hendrix put a hand to his chest in mock-outrage. “I’ll have you know that my social standing is far superior.”

  “Oh, that’s why his parents throw all the parties, I see.” She stuck her knuckles into his ribs. “I know you’d fuck him if it wouldn’t get you punched, just wait until after we kick his ass tomorrow in the finals.”

  “My lady, I wouldn’t dare jeopardize our chances by fraternizing with the enemy.”

  Isobel tsked. “He likes to play head games, Hendrix. Don’t let him get you riled up.”

  Hendrix held up his right hand and swore, “I won’t even talk to him until after the finals.”

  “If you do, you owe me a Midwinter coat. A fuzzy one.” Isobel gestured past her waist. “Down to my knees.”

  Hendrix laughed. “Midwinter is only three days away, I don’t have time to design something!”

  “Then you better not break your promise!” She wagged her finger at him. Isobel barked at the squad before the awaiting fans could swallow them whole. “Hey! Shale squad! Huddle up.”

  The six of them came together on the same handhold on the guyline, knees pressed gently in the middle to keep the group stable. So much of space required cooperation and teamwork. Hendrix was proud that his squad could move as a unit, each member supporting the others. The six of them were in sync and at peak fitness, a single mind in six bodies. They were unstoppable. Kane wouldn’t know what hit him tomo
rrow.

  Pippa hooked her fingers into a silver loop on Tristan’s flight-suit as Tristan used both hands to undo his waist-length black hair from the thick braid-and-bun that kept the dreds under control during flight. They floated free only long enough for Tristan to re-braid over his shoulder.

  Logan and Daniella faced off, rapidly cycling through three rounds of rock-paper-scissors to decide which of them would talk to Kane’s Navigator Jamie first: Daniella, Jamie’s twin, or Logan, Jamie’s boyfriend. Talking to Jamie meant getting through Kane, and no one wanted to get on Kane’s radar.

  Except Hendrix.

  Logan lost the challenge and groaned. Daniella shook her head, blowing a sigh, and offered tentative advice, “Maybe don’t mention the finals tomorrow.”

  Logan looked at Hendrix, his expression serious. “If I don’t show up at pre-check, it’s because I’ve become a Kane-stain on the workout room floor. Tell my mother I love her.”

  Hendrix snorted and pushed Logan’s head away. “Listen, you all did monumental work today.” He looked each of them in the eye around the circle. “I’m proud of all of you, personally and professionally.”

  “Pippa, you’ve been doing so much emotional work to rise above what your father did to you. I’ve seen you grow into an amazing munitions tech and I will fight tooth and nail to keep you on this team.” Pippa blushed and nodded, but when Tristan threw his arm over her petite shoulders, she took the chance to hide her face against his chest. Isobel squeezed Pippa’s hand and Pippa squeezed back. Years of communication in that single touch.

  “Logan. They assigned you to this team as a punishment, and I’m proud to call you navigator. Kane doesn’t know what he lost and you deserve all the credit for growing into your role rather than resenting it.”

  Logan shrugged one shoulder. “It was rocky at first.”

  “And you made it through,” Hendrix nodded. He squeezed Logan’s shoulder. “You belong here.”

  Hendrix looked across the circle to Tristan, and they bumped fists. “Tristan, you never let dyscalculia hold you back and you’ve always known what you’re worth. You’re the best statistician on this queenship.”