DISCLAIMER: I DON’T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I’M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

WARNING: ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains violence, adult themes, sex, and profanity. It is not my usual romantic drama/adventure, and has some very dark, disturbing imagery and themes related to rape. If this is not your thing, don’t read it.

FORWARD: This is a WHAT IF scenario that Toshiba and I discussed initially, and from those conversations grew this dark, dark story. I've been accused, on occasion, of having a very evil imagination. I may have outdone myself here. For all those who enjoy the often-used theme of "Bulma is taken to Vegita-sei as a slave and catches the eye of the Saiyan no Ouji", here's my version of the tale.

EXTRA WARNING: This chapter contains graphically detailed descriptions of rape and large scale terrorism.

 

CHAPTER IV

 

 

For four months, they traveled here and there aimlessly, avoiding contact with other space-faring races. At the end of the third week of meandering, Vegita set his mind to a course of action, and plotted a direct course to their destination. He did not respond to any of his companions' tentative questions as to where they were going. Four months, and they finally reached the outer-most frontier of the Empire...the Empire that was no more.

Of the four other survivors Rikkuum had rescued from Vegita-sei, two took their own lives in the first week after the end---the end of everything. The remaining two, young warriors of an age with Vegita, were made of sturdier stuff.

Vegita ate little and spoke less as they traveled. Bleak, gray day bled into dream-harrowed night, growing in a steady progression of time into weeks, then months. He began to train with Rikkuum for the better part of each waking day out of habit, and to relieve the nervous energy of unaccustomed inactivity. His body was still strong, his reflexes and fighting skills undiminished. If the big warrior did not use his ki in any way during a bout, Vegita could still best him every time. If he didn't use his ki...

"Perhaps it will heal," Rikkuum suggested hopefully, as the four of them fought into the tenth hour of a tag team match. The ship had reached the outer spiral arms a few days ago, the very edge of civilized space. The systems they still carefully skirted were growing less dense, less technologically advanced. "Your head, I mean," the great fool elaborated helpfully, dodging Vegita's furious roundhouse and the flurry and lightning fast blows that followed. "All men say that your people always heal from what does not kill them...and return all the stronger."

Vegita snarled a wordless affirmation. The lunkhead had finally, after several months to think it over, touched on the thing that kept his two Saiyan companions going, when there was nothing else to live for. The hope, distant and fragile, that the centers of their brains that governed ki would heal slowly, given time.

Vegita had taken turns with the other two survivors of the wreck of Vegita-sei, spending one-hour, therapeutic sessions in the ship's on regen tank. They had done this every day since the fall of their homeworld.

Thus far...thus far, it had not helped a wit.

He could feel nothing, touch nothing, sense nothing, of the near god-like power that the Tsiru-jin plague had burned from his brain like a wildfire consuming dry grassland. Nothing...

The medical texts filed in the ship's database, a compiled generalized knowledge from scores of worlds, held nothing that could give him an answer one way or another, and nothing related to this sort of malady where his Saiyan's were concerned. The sons of Vegita-sei did not take ill under any set of natural circumstances.

Hope was a cruel, taunting siren to his companions, he knew. Lying down with them each night, soothing them into troubled sleep---and fleeing at the beginning of each new day. For Vegita, not weighed or baited by hope himself, waking was worst. Rising through the waters of sleep to the phantom scent of dying rose petals and the sweet sound of his woman's voice singing softly...

"Will we stop soon, Ouji-sama?" Coran gasped from where he lay bleeding and perspiring across the width of the ship's hold. He had been Vegita's warm up match and had taken the worst of the Prince's morning battle with despair that only found a voice through his fists. Coran's brother and squad lieutenant Okuda sat silently beside him, waiting his turn to spar with wordless patience, sunken inside his own thoughts. Coran was well-spoken and educated, a nobleman ranked as super Elite---a welcome relief from Rikkuum's loyal but dull-witted retainership on those rare occasions when Vegita felt like conversing at all. His younger brother spoke only when addressed, sometimes not even then. At first, Vegita had merely assumed that this was a sign that the younger warrior would shortly be opting out of a life without power, home or people---as their other two companions had done months ago.

Coran had shook his head at this suggestion. "No. He has always been that way. He never says much."

Okuda had inherited his taciturn nature from their mother. It had taken more than a month before Vegita and the two brothers were sufficiently emerged, each from his private place of shock and grief, to be capable of holding any sort of sustained conversation. More than a month before he learned he was traveling with two of Articha and Turna's three sons. This fact, even though both men were strangers to him, had given Vegita an inexplicable sense of gladness. Coran and Okuda's eldest brother had died early on in the war, in a Maiyosh-jin nuclear strike on the colony he was stationed on as deputy governor. It was only logic, Vegita thought solemnly, that the sons of Articha and Turna should have been too strong in body to be felled by the plague.

"If we run across Okassama and Toussan," Coran had told him several nights past, "We will have to flee them, or risk exposing them to the virus. We may be carriers now. And if they are lured into any port in the Empire before they learn what has befallen our people---"

Vegita made a soft growl of disagreement. "Neither of them is gullible or slow to suspicion when things do not seem right. They will had monitored hyper light transmissions, and be on their guard."

"Okassama told me the full count of girls on their carrier convoy was eleven thousand," Coran murmured. "Another eleven thousand survivors---and that added to the brats in Med Center. We must hope your Lady manages to contact them before they are exposed. She has saved our entire race single-handedly with her vaccine."

Vegita had given both brothers an extremely edited version of his last meeting with Bulma. He had told them she had left him to die with his world at his own insistence. That neither of them had known it was possible to survive the plague. He had told Rikkuum to hold his tongue on pain of his life, though the big man seemed convinced at this point that ‘Bulma-sama’ could not have known Vegita could be saved.

The truth...the truth was between Vegita and his woman alone. The truth held too much pain and sorrow, love and murderous rage, to put any words to. He could barely contemplate what he would do, what he must do, when he saw her again, much less speak of it.

Vegita drove an elbow into Rikkuum's kidney and the giant warrior stumbled, gasping. He finished the bigger man off with a quick, brutal jab to the temple. Rikkuum fell with a reverberating, metallic crash as his armor struck the hold floor. Vegita pulled a towel off one of the wall rails, wiping his face, thinking over Coran's seemingly casual question. The power cells would last a hundred years or more, but life support and provisions would not. They were running dangerously low on water, food and oxygen. There was no longer a choice, but he would prefer not to stop until they reached their ultimate destination. It was time to tell them what he planned.

"We will stop soon. Come."

Moments later, the three of them stood around a holo-projected star chart, while Coran pulled up file after file of information on every system within a week's travel from their present location.

"This one," Coran said decisively, pointing at a binary system with two viable worlds. "It is six hours travel from our co-ordinates and doubles our chances of finding what we need. And...none of these worlds in the outer rim territories will have heard the name Saiyan. They will not attack us on sight."

Okuda did not speak. He simply pulled up an enlargement of a small, singe star system with one habitable satellite. It was eighteen hours travel still...less than a day. Okuda eyed Vegita questioningly, a small quirk at one corner of his mouth making him look very like his mother.

"You knew," Vegita said. "How?"

Okuda shrugged. "It is in our direct line of flight. The Imperial expansion records list it as being purged, but never colonized. Each recorded purge is filed in the database with a short report by the commanding officer, giving cursory details of the battle and mop up. It is a good guess that she would go there---it is the only other world she knows." That was the most Vegita had ever heard the man say in one breath.

Coran sat down heavily. "I am a slow-witted fool. Nine years for the dust to settle, the skies to clear. The vegetation and the sea life will have begun to rebound. It was only a flash fry purge...just enough to destroy the indigenous population, not enough the wreck the world’s biosphere for re-colonization. Yes! Gods, it is a brilliant hiding place for the brats as well! It is months from the center of populated space, and who would think to search for them on a purged world!"

"It is not certain that we will find them there," Vegita said curtly. "But it is my best guess. If I am wrong and we find no one and nothing, there will still be fish, water and air aplenty to restock the ship. In any case, we will be there tomorrow." He was growing tired of talking, tired of even this limited interaction with Rikkuum and Articha's sons. "Do not disturb me until we are approaching orbit."

He made his way to his cabin and closed the door behind him.

Chikyuu...

It was by no means sure that Bulma had hidden her precious cargo there, but, as he had said, it was the best guess possible. He sat down on the narrow bunk, breathing hard, trying to still the shaking of his hands. In less than twenty hours, he might very well be standing face to face with his woman.

And then...

There was no honor left for him among his people. No honor in continuing to live. He should let them think him dead, a heroic martyr of legends, the savior of his people. He should die. But he could not. Not yet. His duty to his people and to her would not allow it. He must find her. He must hold her again. He must speak the three words his people did not say, the words that did no justice to all that she meant to him, to all that lay between them. And then...

And then, by the debt of vengeance and honor she owed him for her crimes against his people, and by the love he owed her as her mate...he would kill her. Quick and painless, as his father had commanded him, implored him to do, time and again. And in that final act of love, he would end the misery of her madness. He would end her life and his own in the same breath. His Ki was gone, but he was still sufficient master of his own body to stop his heart at will.

And perhaps, the gods who had smiled on Bardock and Romayn would let them meet again, love again, under a happier sun.

He lay back on his bunk, pulling his woman's med satchel, the satchel Rikkuum had taken from Med Center, up to his lap. The great, faithful oaf had snatched the entire sack of her personal effects in his hurried pilfery, knowing there was an encapsulated mini troop carrier somewhere inside, though he had no time to rummage for the one pellet that contained what he sought.

Vegita had indulged himself with a solitary pleasure, once every ten days since this journey to nowhere began. Every ten days, he would choose one pellet, one thing that had belonged to her, and open it. It was a game he played, a thing to anticipate, as pathetic as it seemed. But it had kept him alive.

At first, the capsules yielded nothing but medical necessities, but he quickly discovered the internal pouch that contained her personal effects. The first pellet had produced a single red rose, encased in a tiny cryo-stasis orb, frozen in the perfection of full bloom for all time. The second, ten days later, yielded a light blue summer dress that perfectly matched the color of her hair. Even clean and freshly laundered, the garment had carried her scent so strongly Vegita had destroyed it after two days. He kept waking in the night, rising out of sleep for a few blissful seconds of forgetfulness, smelling her, reaching for her...and finding himself alone.

He took one pellet from the satchel and smiled grimly, scanning the encapsulation volume measurement to be sure the contents were not bigger than the ship itself. He had found several that had such an enormous reading he was certain they must be other ships.

He popped the capsule, waiting as the metallic smoke cleared to reveal a small data disc. He turned it over in one hand. Music? She would frequently blast his more sensitive ears to near deafness when she thought herself alone in the villa as she worked in her workshop. She had collected a selection of rhythmic noise pollution from several dozen different cultures and worlds over the last months...

But she also used these discs to record her work and help order her thoughts as she moved through the steps of a medical or mechanical project. It might very well be a disc full of the sound of her voice.

Bulma's voice...

He rammed the disc into the bedside computer and ran a file scan with shaking hands. It was tri-partitioned---one tiny section of audio, followed by a slightly larger section of written text. The last section of the disc went back to audio…strange. He took a deep breath and opened the first file.

His woman’s voice, sweet and so young sounding, began to speak.

 

Raditz gave me this data disc today. He said I could ‘do whatever fool-girl thing I wanted with it.’ Which is his macho, Saiyan way of saying, ‘Here, darling, I brought you a baby shower gift.’ This morning, we finally pulled Karot-chan out of the portable incu-pod Bardock pilfered for us. He opened his eyes, his big blue eyes, and frowned at me. He looks just like his father, except for his eyes…and he has Son-kun’s hair pattern. Raditz picked him up by the scruff of the neck, counted ten fingers, ten toes, and one little brown tail.

Then he smirked and said, "You’ll do just fine, brat!"

He says the baby looks completely Saiyan except for the eyes. Bardock says he can get someone to die the baby’s eyes black permanently when he’s a little older. So, no one will ever know he’s half Chikyuu-jin. Bardock and Romayna-san have both told me at different times that this happens a lot more often than you’d think because of the twenty to one ratio of men to women among Saiyans, and in spite of their inherently violent nature, they are an instinctively monogamous race.

So it’s not common, but it does happen. Warriors developing "foolish affections" for their alien courtesans---which is a pretty way of saying "pleasure slaves."

I asked Raditz if he had developed "foolish affections" for me and he humph-ed angrily and said, "No! But I am careful to appease you because I am afraid of waking with one of your bombs wired to my tail." Which is Saiyan for, "I love you, too."

Why am I recording this? I should explain that, shouldn’t I? At first, I thought it might be a diary for Karot-chan to hear when he’s older, so he can know the part of himself that is me, the Chikyuu-jin part. But now…I think it’s more. So that some history of me, of my world, of who and what I am, will go on. And maybe one day, someone will read this, my son or one of my Saiyan great grandchildren…and maybe they’ll grieve for Chikyuu and all the other purged worlds and peoples that are lost and unremembered.

I looked into Karot-chan’s eyes when Radtiz set him in my arms. I thought…I had been sure he would be the one. But Kami-sama said I would know Son-kun when we meet again. And my baby…isn’t him.

One thing has been worrying at the back of my mind all day today, a sort of tiny dark spot in the middle of a good day. What Kami-sama said…what he said about the "long, dark road" I would have to walk. This isn’t it. My world and everyone I ever knew before Vegita-sei is gone. I am not a free woman. I get desperately lonely when Raditz is gone, even with Noira and her family to talk to, and I have very little to do in the way of work or any sort of project other than my garden. I got so lonely when Raditz left on that ‘mission strike’ on Corsaris that I even taught that fucker Bardock to play chess. But…I’m not as sheltered as Raditz thinks I am. Romayna and the house slaves---Noira, her little girl Dusca, and her husband Hiru---have all told me how bad it could have been, how unbelievably lucky I was to be given to a man like Raditz, who loves me and thinks of me as his wife in everything but law. So, if I’m occasionally lonely and bored, if I still sit and cry some days all day for my family and my world, if I have to let Raditz be the undisputed boss in our relationship, and if I’m still sick at heart because I couldn’t make him understand why I was so cold and angry after the purge of Corsaris---I know it’s not as bad as it could have been. My life has a great deal of happiness as well as grief. And today… The soft, gurgling sigh of a very young child, followed by his woman’s soft, wondering laughter. …today I’m very, very happy.

 

 

Vegita hit the pause control on the computer. After a moment of motionless silence, he began to realize that he had stopped breathing and inhaled slowly.

He would hear it all. From beginning to end without omission. Even if it took every waking hour from this instant to the moment they landed on Chikyuu. Even if this tale cut and gouged his heart like a razor-whip drawn through his innards. Even if he wept like a babe before the end of it. He would hear the story of her life on Vegita-sei in her own words without turning away. He owed her this debt.

He lay back on his bunk and unpaused the disc.

 

If I tell you the story of how I came to Vegita-sei, maybe it’ll explain my flower garden a little better.

There was a chill in the air on the morning of the last day of my world. I had just pulled a jacket out of summer storage in the attic. Momma always packed my clothes away with a potpourri of petals from her own gardens in the pockets. As I went down to breakfast, my boyfriend Yamcha called to me from his room sort of pitifully, asking if I could bring his food up to him after I ate. He had finally decided what he wanted to do with his life a few weeks ago. He had left to go train with Son-kun and Krillan under old Kame Sennin, and then broken both his legs on the first day of training. There were no ripe senzu to be had, so he was having to heal naturally. The boys brought him back to Capsule Corp. I had told him that it served him right. That he was only posing anyway, going to Kame House to train because his friends were doing it, not because he had any great commitment to be a warrior or a hero. I ignored his pleas for food and went downstairs. That was the last time I saw him. The first boy I ever kissed, my handsome, gentle, desert bandit wanna-be. Kami, I was so mean to him, not just then, but all the time. And he just took it, hunkering his shoulders down and looking hurt when I would yell at him. Poppa said once that Yamcha was a good boy, a strong, brave boy…but that he was not strong enough for the kind of woman I would become. The last thing I ever said to him was something snotty and rude. I wish…oh gods, I wish I had treated him better.

I went to my workshop and collected the little ‘project’ I had been working on, then went outside for some target practice. As I passed through the kitchen, Momma asked me to water her petunias while I was outside. I took the watering pot with me, but I forgot to do any watering. I wish I had. Instead, I played in the quad yard with the dogs for a little while as Momma cooked. Poppa passed by me as I began recalibrating the energy wave burst pattern on my ‘project’. He had been in his own workshop all night working on something. He kissed me on the forehead as he passed by, but I was so absorbed in what I was doing I didn’t look up, just mumbled, "Morning, Poppa." I never saw him or Momma again.

The instant the kitchen door closed behind my father, I heard it. The Voice in my head.

Bulma.

"Kami-sama?" I whispered, suddenly very afraid. Not of him, but because, even at seventeen, I knew that god didn’t just strike up a conversation with you for no reason. Even if you had met him in person.

Take your flyer and go alone to Kame Sennin’s island. Go now. Don’t go back in your house or stop to think about it.

I remember thinking that this was the start of another adventure. I remember jumping into my flyer and gunning it into the air. And I remember how the next words he spoke killed all the happy excitement inside me. Listen to me now, child. Time is short. Piccalo Daimo is locked in a battle he will shortly lose, and when he dies, so shall I.

"No!---" I said.

Be still, Bulma! And hear me. Son Gokou is slain and Kame Sennin with him. And all of Chikyuu will soon follow.

I couldn’t even react to the enormity of it for a moment. Then I began to argue with him, almost crashing the flyer as I screamed that he was a liar, that it was impossible. It is happening. Something in his voice, something I can’t describe with words, shut me up. Go to Kame House, he said. Fate will take you into its hands after you arrive. Hear me! Son Gokou’s soul will return to you soon, Bulma. He will be born just as he was before, clothed in a body that is a replica of the one he wore in this life. You will know him when you see him again. My God, the Kai of Kais, has told me this--- and here, his voice became a Voice, and seemed to be doubled. I heard another, greater, Presence speaking through Kami-sama’s soul into mine. The future of this galaxy, this entire universe, will one day rest upon his shoulders. You must guide him to his destiny. But you will walk a long, dark road first, sweet child. I would more than anything that I could take this cup from your lips, but I cannot. Do not give way to hate and vengeance, daughter, or you will fail Son Gokou, and thus, all life everywhere. No matter what befalls you, remember your father’s teachings, remember his good heart, and try to see the good that might be, rather than the evil that is. There is no soul so black that it cannot be shown the way to the light. Do not seek vengeance, Bulma Briefs, or let hate rule over you…or you will fail your charge.

And then he was gone. Just like that. A few minutes later, I came up on Kame House and decapsulated my little ‘project’, something I had dreamed up as a nasty surprise for Piccalo if he ever showed his ugly green face again. I climbed out of the flyer with the rifle in hand, a hand cannon that shot an energy wave which disrupts the brain waves associated with Ki. I walked past the blasted bodies of Roshi and Oolong, past the charred wreckage of Kame House. A gust of hot air whipped my hair. To the east, just past where the sea fell away at the curve of the earth, the clouds scattered out in a ringed pattern around a huge mushroom fireball. And I knew, somehow knew, that Piccalo was dead, and Kami-sama with him.

Everything seemed unreal and overly bright. All I could see was the man bent over Son-kun’s body, stroking his hair, his face set like a stone. I knelt down beside him and touched Son-kun’s face. He was cold. "Little brother," I whispered. Bardock looked up at me and seemed to notice me for the first time.

"Who killed him?" I asked softly.

"I did," he said matter-of-factly, without any expression at all. I didn’t think. I raised the cannon and fired at him, point blank. Then something hit me from behind and knocked me out cold.

I only woke once before we reached Vegita-sei. I was strapped into Bardock’s space pod, sitting across his knees like a little girl on her father’s lap. I looked out the port window, down on Chikyuu from orbit. The world, the whole world, was on fire. I started screaming and he put one hand over my mouth. "Hush, girl." His voice sounded almost kind, and weary to the bone. "It’s all over and done." He punched a hyper wave com link. "Is everybody in formation and prepped for hyper-light?"

Replies of "Hai, Captain!" filtered through the com.

"Initiate cryo-sleep sequence," Bardock said when they’d all sounded off. "Let’s go home." He sounded tired and angry and…I don’t know what else. Then the cryo-gas flooded the pod and….and after what seemed like a long night’s sleep, we were making planetfall on Vegita-sei. I have a woozy memory of the bone-breaking jolt when the pod landed, then nothing until I woke that night in Bardock’s house.

The sounds of a fire burning and of men’s voices, were all around me. I sat up from the giant throw pillow I had been lying on face down, pushing off the heavy fur blanket someone had covered me with. All the conversation around me stopped.

"Damn," one of the men said softly. I stared around at the firelit faces of the men seated around the hearthpit. A woman’s cool voice broke the silence.

"You need to put your eyes back in your head if you want to keep them, Toma-kun."

They all burst into rowdy, good-natured laughter, this band of warriors who had just destroyed my whole world, everyone I’d ever known and loved. Toma flushed bright red. His mate, Celipa, only smiled sweetly and returned to demolishing her leg of cho-deer.

"Eat, girl," Bardock told me. I spat at him and swatted the plate back in his face. That sent the rest of them into another round of laughter. I wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t even really thinking sanely at this point. I jumped up and tried to run for it, but he wrapped his tail around my ankles and pulled my feet out from under me.

"What are you going to do with her, Captain?" A barrel-chested heavy set soldier asked.

Another man snickered. "Romayna’ll have your balls for earbobs if you keep her."

Bardock frowned and seemed to tense up at the mention of Romayna’s name. Toma caught the change in his posture and cleared his throat. "She’d fetch a king’s ransom if you sell her to one of the high class courtesan merchants," he suggested casually. "Even more is you put her up on private auction block for the nobility."

"Auction?!" I screeched. The tail around my ankles tightened painfully and I broke off, gasping.

Bardock shrugged, not even glancing in my direction. "What the hell does a soldier need with money," he said. "I’m giving her to Raditz. I owe him for helping me out so much with the Tsiru-sei expedition."

The talk died down after a while, and one by one the others left for their own homes. Toma hung around until all the others were gone, glancing back from where he stood with Celipa with his hand on the door at Bardock’s solemn, troubled frown. "She will understand, Captain," he said.

"Perhaps in time," Bardock told him softly. "But I must face her tomorrow, and she will…" He shook his head despairingly. "She will grieve as though she had raised him herself."

"Call me in a few days," his friend said quietly. "We will hunt drakets in the mountains."

Bardock didn’t speak or move for a long time after Toma and Celipa left. I just sat their beside him. I didn’t have much of a choice. "Who is Romayna?" I finally asked. He didn’t answer me, just lay down on the great pillow bed we were both sitting on and promptly fell asleep. After a while, I did the same.

I woke just before dawn and sat up very, very slowly, staring down at the man asleep beside me. I reached down and gently unwrapped the tail from around my legs and stood. I might have killed him. It occurred to me that there must be something somewhere in this house that I could drive through his heart. But…his face in sleep looked so much like Son-kun’s, like the man Son-kun would have grown into, I couldn’t do it. Do not give into hate. Kami-sama’s words came to me suddenly. As I stood over him, his eyes shot open, and again, I didn’t think. I brought my foot down on his tail as hard as I could, turned and ran for the door instead as he shrieked behind me, curling up into a ball of agony. I tore the door open, and found myself hauled up, off my feet, by the scruff of the neck like a kitten. The tall, beautiful woman who held me strolled back into the house, carrying me, and stared down at Bardock’s prone form, one corner of her mouth quirking up. She had a deep warm laugh.

"If she’d had a weapon, you’d be dead now," she told him as he sat and stood painfully, facing her. She eyed me, then him, narrowly, raising one eyebrow. "This girl-child reeks of your scent, husband."

"She’s been strapped across my lap in a one man space pod for four months," Bardock grunted. "I thought I might make a gift of her to Raditz."

Romayna set me on my feet and studied me closely. The curl of her lips widened minutely. "She will give him a great deal of trouble. But Raditz was ever one for trouble. He has done nothing but brood and growl since Soi and the rest of his squad were slain. He will certainly find this one diverting."

She turned back to him, her face sobering, an unspoken question in her eyes. She was silent. He didn’t say anything either. Finally, she spoke again. "Where is my second born, Bar-kun? Where is Kakarott?"

"He failed his infant purge," Bardock said. Both their faces might have been made of granite for all the emotion they showed. And I realized that this must be a cultural thing among their race, that the more something was tearing them up inside, the less they let it show on their face.

"The natives slew him?" She asked.

"No," Bardock said heavily. "He was injured, brain-damaged, after crashdown. He lost his infant conditioning and a good portion of his wits, and---"

"And you murdered him!" I screamed. "Your own son! He wasn’t ‘damaged’, you fucking monster, he just grew up thinking he was Chikyuu-jin!"

"Does she speak the truth, beloved?" Romayna asked softly. The deep olive tint of her skin had turned almost white, her hands were clenched at her sides convulsively.

"He wasn’t right in the head, woman!" Bardock said harshly, taking a step toward her, his face cold and hard, his eyes imploring, begging for forgiveness. "I swear it on my soul. He was unusually strong for a cub his age, and would have fought us to his last breath for the purge of his ‘home’. He would have never made a soldier of Vegita-sei, and would have gotten himself killed in less than a day if I’d tried to bring him back!"

"Not under my care!" She said coldly. "What does a soldier’s son need with a full set of brains?! He could have learned our ways. I would have trained him myself, even if you had no use for him. I would have trained him from birth if you had not made the decision for both of us to send him afield!" Her voice was like ice when she spoke the next words. "The son I lay in cryo-stasis after you left for Chikyuu is mine! You shall have nothing of him hereafter. Nor of me!"

He just stood there, like he was frozen in place, and watched her leave. And that was…I think that was when the realization I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the night before as I watched Bardock and his men sit and talk like old, well-loved friends, as I saw their rough affection, their love, for each other for what it was---I think that was when it really struck me. They were Vikings. They were marauding Mongol or Cossack or Hun tribesmen. They were a hundred warlike Chikyuu-jin cultures who practiced land or sea piracy as a matter of custom and

livelihood. Violent, murderous societies and ideologies….populated by people. Not monsters. Just people. And that one realization changed everything for me, I think.

Though it didn’t change what I felt for Bardock and his crew personally. I couldn’t stop hating him, no matter what Kami said. I just couldn’t. I stood there watching him as she left him, watching the way how much he loved her didn’t show on his face, but was so evident nonetheless…and I thought Good! I want you to die inside for what you’ve done, you bastard! Even if you don’t know or care that it was wrong. I want you to hurt and hurt and hurt---right up to the moment I kill you. And I will kill you, Bardock!

I don’t know how long he stood like that, immobile as a stone, but after a long time, he seemed to see me standing there, glaring at him, and he set his mouth in a grim line. "Let’s get you where you’re going, girl," he said.

In the midst of too many things to absorb, none of his statements about his plans for me had really sunk in, let alone the implications of what they meant. The only thing I clearly remembered at that moment was a suggestion one of Bardock’s warriors had made the night before, something about an auction. So, I turned and ran from him, screaming and crying at the same time. He ran me down, cursing irritably under his breath, and put me back to sleep as he took off.

The first thing I thought when I woke was that I was getting really tired a being knocked out. I was in a bedroom, in a new place, a different Saiyan house. This house. I sat up in the big bed. My hair felt damp and clean and my clothes were folded in a neat pile beside me. An ivory-skinned woman with huge, circular shaped black eyes was sitting beside me.

"I’ll stat-bag your clothes for you, child," she said softly.

"Stat-bag?" I whispered.

She took my hand and helped me out of bed. For some reason, I felt a little woozy and disoriented. Too much sleep, I thought. Four months of it, according to Bardock. I stood and looked down at myself. I was wearing a silky white, ankle length dress that flowed around me and clung to my body when I moved. Good thing is isn’t see-through, I thought. Because I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

"It preserves what you seal inside," the pale woman answered. While she spoke, she guided me gently to sit in a chair and began brushing the tangles out of my hair. "When my homeworld, Ansou-sei, was conquered, the Saiyans made most of my people domestic slaves. I preserved everything I was wearing the day

the cargo carrier brought me to Vegita-sei in a stat-bag. If you have your clothes particle analyzed, you can clone a little piece of your homeworld for yourself. Resurrect a plant or and animal your had contact with when you wore those clothes.

I bit my lip to keep from crying. "My…my mother put a potpourri of flower petals in my jacket," I told her. "Made from all the flowers in her garden. My Momma..." I started to cry in earnest then, and she let me and washed my face when I was done.

"We’ll make your mother’s flowers live again," she said gently. "We can start tomorrow. The master will not begrudge you that."

"The master?" I sniffled. Then I remembered some of what Bardock’s men had said the night before. "Am I---is this a ‘courtesan house’? They were talking about selling me to---to---" I was starting to get hysterical.

She shook her head firmly. "Our master is Raditz, son of Bardock. You remember Bardock, I imagine." I nodded numbly. She placed a glass of wine she must have poured even before I woke in my trembling hands. "You’re a slave in the household of Raditz. I doubt you’re kindly disposed toward Bardock-san, child, but he did well by you in this. With that lovely face of yours, he might have sold you to a whorehouse for a small fortune. But he gave to his son’s household instead. If one must be a slave, Raditz-sama is a good, fair-minded master. He is not a cruel or temperamental man, and he does not beat us when we make mistakes. Drink your wine, love, it will calm your nerves." I drank obediently.

"He bought my family---my husband Hiru and my daughter Dusca and myself---four years ago. We are the entire domestic staff."

"I’m Bulma Briefs of…of Chikyuu." Oh gods, I was so innocent, so naïve, to ask the next question. "What….what will I do here as a slave?" At least until I can learn to fly a spaceship and escape, I thought.

Noira’s face went carefully neutral. "Well, for the moment, you have to take dinner with the master. He’ll get to know you a little, then he’ll decide."

I didn’t know…so many things. I didn’t know that Noira was a medic as well as housemaid. I didn’t know that she had been commanded to give me a thorough physical as I slept. To determine bone density and strength. To determine my age and if was even sexually mature for my race. To determine if I were a virgin or not. I didn’t know that this kind-hearted woman who became my friend was sending me through the bedroom door and into the hearthroom to become her master’s pleasure slave.

There was a mountain of food on the dining table, and it all smelled like ambrosia. I hadn’t eaten in…if you count cryo-sleep, it had been four months.

The hearthroom seemed to be deserted, the only sound was the crackling of the fire. I didn’t sit down or use a plate, I just dug into the spread and began to

eat.

"Try the wine," a man’s deep voice said, and I very nearly jumped out of my skin. I saw him sitting in a chair just outside the edge of where the light from the hearthpit shone. He stood slowly and limped toward me, out of silhouette and into the light. I stood there with food in my mouth, gaping at him as he approached me.

He poured us both a glass of table wine and I took it mechanically. He was gorgeous, tall, with a warrior’s full muscled body. He was like a statue carved out of bronze and olive-hued marble, with high cheekbones, and dark, arched Saiyan eyes. He looked, I thought, like a male version of Romayna.

I chugged the entire glass of wine in one gulp. "You’re Bardcok’s son Raditz" I said stupidly.

"I am Raditz," he agreed. He took the empty cup from my hand and filled it again, handing it back to me. I took another sip, wondering what I should do next.

"What is your name, girl?"

"Bulma. Bulma Briefs."

His raised one eyebrow, looking even more like his mother with that half-amused expression on his face. "Is it the custom of your people to stand while eating, Bulma Briefs?"

"Um…no." I sat down, feeling like…like I was somehow on a first date with a man---a grown man---who was far too old and sophisticated for me. He must have eaten already, because he only picked at his food as I wolfed mine down. He seemed surprised when I finished.

"I think Chikyuu-jin stomachs hold a lot less than Saiyan," I told him. In spite of the huge meal I’d just eaten, I felt light-headed and warm inside from all the wine. I don’t remember any of the actual conversation, though I know he told me a little about Vegita-sei and the Empire. And that he emphasized how large the Empire was. At some point, he stopped the small talk and fixed me with those dark, hard eyes. "I know you are thinking already of how you might escape my household and this world. You’d be a spiritless little thing if your thoughts were not turning in that direction." His lips twitched. "And you are anything but spiritless. There is nowhere to run to, girl," he told me flatly. "And an alien woman with you face and form---" He eyed me pointedly. "If you are not someone’s property, not legally under that protection of a strong Saiyan warrior, you can be taken and used by any warrior who desires you. Do you understand what I mean by that?" I nodded, feeling my stomach began to do a slow rolling somersault. "You are neither a fighter nor Saiyan, and you must be owned by someone to have any sort of protection under that law."

"That’s wrong…" I whispered. I was shaking, my eyes burning with helpless anger.

"It is the world as we find it," he said implacably. "I will not shackle you or fit you with a surgically implanted tracer, Bulma. But I warn you of the world that lies beyond this house. If you are wise, you will except the protection I offer."

I didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then I began to cry, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. He seemed completely unsurprised by this reaction.

He put his arms around me and I clung to him as he picked me up and carried me like a child to sit on a down-stuffed animal skin directly before the hearth’s rim. He held me while I cried, running his hands through my hair. And when I’d cried myself out, he listened to me tell him about Chikyuu, about my parents and friends,

about that last day, inexplicably chuckling when I told him how I’d shot his father. I think the enormity of all I had lost hadn’t really hit me yet, and at some point as I sat crying in his lap, some deep, self-preserving part of me pulled back from it. It was too soon, too over-whelming, the wounds too raw to deal with yet. So, my mind just pushed it away. I wiped my eyes as my sobs tapered off slowly, and asked a question so out of the blue it shocked him.

"Are you hurt?" I asked. "You were limping when I first saw you."

He shifted me in his arms and frowned. "I am not wounded. Not truly. My squad was part of a garrison stationed on Shadras. A month ago, a terrorist movement called the Red Demons detonated the energy cells of a grounded troop carrier’s engines. A side effect of the energy wave from such an explosion is that it does great neurological damage to the central nervous system of lifeforms in its path. I was healed of my bodily wounds in a regen tank, but the neural damage is slower to heal. The medics tell me I will be fully well in another month, perhaps two." His voice dropped to a rough whisper. "The rest of my squad…my companions, my lover Soi…Only one other of our number survived and he still hovers between life and death at Med Center in the Capital." He stopped talking, his face drawn and hard. I didn’t know how Saiyan children are grouped into squads, almost from infancy, in a fighting unit that will remain constant throughout their lives. How squad mates are, for that reason, closer than any blood family. But I had a sense of how much they’d meant to him, and how devastating and heart-breaking the loss had been. He took another long draught of wine and raised his cup to my lips to share. His black eyes looked so sad and haunted.

"It makes you feel guilty, doesn’t it?" I asked softly. My head was spinning now. The whole room was listing and my only anchor was his arms around me and those black, intense eyes. "To be the only survivor. I keep thinking ‘Why me?’. Why should I have lived when everyone else is gone?"

His eyes, so close to mine now, widened, and for just a second his face looked young and vulnerable. And that’s when I kissed him.

Bulma’s voice paused for a moment before she sighed softly.

He didn’t hurt me. Not even a little bit. He was so slow and gentle and… I know he didn’t seduce me so gently and sweetly that first time out of the kindness of his heart. He just understood women very well. And it was his personal preference that nothing is so sweet as what is freely given. He knew that if the first time was sweet and slow, it would create a bond of affection inside me that would run deeper that any set of chains. Especially in the highly vulnerable emotional state I was in. Momma always told me that you will always love your first lover a little, no matter where your life take you as you grow older. I remember his big warm hands and his lips being everywhere at once, while I lay back, holding onto him with my head spinning. It’s all a pleasant blur, really.

It didn’t occur to me until sometime the next day what my duties as a slave in his house would be. Gods, I was such a little girl. But after that first night, it was too late to object, even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t object. He was big and warm and strong, and above all, he was something to hold onto. I held on for dear life.

And…once he’d introduced me to a little of what he knew, he opened a floodgate of appetite inside me. Over that first year, he taught me everything, every way he knew that a man and a woman could please each other. And by day…he was kind to me. I don’t think I realized this until a few months ago, but two things changed our relationship into something much more than it might have been. My question and my words about survivor’s guilt struck him a lot deeper than I knew, and, I think, opened up a chink in his emotional armor that a slave and an alien would never have been able to penetrate. And if I was vulnerable, so was he, in his own way. We had both just lost the people closest to us in our lives, and that, coupled with the next two months he spent on medical leave, with no one but me for company, created something much deeper than the off hand affection he might have felt for me otherwise.

After he fully recuperated and went back on active duty, he was around a lot less, flying home between shifts of duty and on his days off. He spoiled me like a father with a favorite child, bringing me gifts from all corners of the Empire. Heh…it sounds strange, but in an odd way, he was sort of a father to me at first. He was more than twenty years my senior, I found out, though he looked to be in his early twenties by Chikyuu-jin standards. So maybe…maybe I didn’t let myself be owned so much as I let him take care of me until I grew up a little more.

That’s what I tell myself anyway.

 

I’ve decided that breast feeding isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when your baby is already demonstrating Saiyan strength when his dinner is about to be pulled away from him before he’s full. You’re going on the bottle, starting today, buster. A high, gurgle was the only reply she received. Where was I in my life’s story when I stopped last time? Oh, I remember. Well…things sort of went into a pattern of his comings and goings, while Noira’s family and I ran the house. She seemed scandalized that I wanted to do any work at all. I gave her a look and told her that sex with a skilled lover wasn’t my idea of hard work, and I needed something to do or I’d go nuts. The one sticking point with Raditz, one he’s never given way on no matter how I cajole or wheedle, is that I can’t have a lab or a workshop to build…well, anything. I’m sure Bardock told him about my

Ki-zapper, but the reality of my abilities didn’t impress itself on him until he actually took a long look at some of the domestic gadgets I threw together in the first couple of months. He shook his head and said, "No more, Bulma."

I pitched something just short of a tantrum until Noira explained to me that if anyone ever saw what I was capable of, I’d be confiscated and put to work in the Capital as a slave engineer for the Crown. "During the day, anyway," she finished darkly. "You have heard enough of Romayna-san’s tales to know that you would not be left alone to do your work. I think you know by now how very lucky you are in Raditz. Do you want to be taken from him and used like a whore by other men?"

I could have argued that no one was going to ever see my machines, because no one ever came to the damn house other than Raditz’ one remaining squad brother and his parents. But I just slumped in defeat and nodded obediently. I wonder if a big part of me, the wild, defiant part of me that always seemed so close to the surface when I was on Chikyuu, sort of…died for a while. That I was sort of a muted version of my real self at first, until I began to recover from the blow of losing so much. Well…it didn’t mute itself with Bardock, that’s for sure.

During my first year on Vegita-sei, I tried in deadly earnest to kill Raditz’ father no less than 13 times. Every single time he came to visit, in other words. He seemed to visit a lot more since Romaya had put him aside, Raditz told me once with a troubled frown. He never said it outright, but his parents’ estrangement bothered him a great deal. He didn’t, however, have any trouble with my multiple attempts on his father’s life. Someone please explain that to me.

I failed every goddam time. Granted, Raditz’ house is rustic and almost bare of technical appliances, but I made do with what I could find. Actually, I think some of the things I came up with were pretty damn ingenious considering what I had to work with. Raditz found the whole thing funny, and in fact, I think I finally gave up on the murder attempts more to keep the whole pack of them from laughing at me. Bardock’s entire squad found the idea of their Captain being wounded by me to be a source of never-ending amuzement.

Romayna-san…she comes by less often that Bardock, but I enjoy her visits. I wasn’t sure of what to make of her when she visited the house the first time and strolled into my garden, still in her armor. She had asked for assignment offworld right after she learned of Son-kun’s death, and was on a two day layover on Vegita-se at the time.

"These are flowers from your world?" She asked me without any sort of introduction.

"Yes," I said, eyeing her curiously. The only other Saiyan woman I’d ever seen was Bardock’s squad sister Celipa, who was small and deceptively delicate looking. Romayna was nearly as tall as Raditz, but she was very feminine

at the same time, and very beautiful. As beautiful as her son was handsome.

"Tell me about my second born, girl," she said softly, sitting down. "Tell me about Kakarott."

I told her everything, all that had happened on that last day, even the things Kami-sama had told me. She shook her head. "I am sure stranger things have happened, but I cannot believe it without more proof. When you believe he has returned to you, I will come to see him and make my own decision."

I learned, as I got to know her, why she was so different from most Saiyan women in her maternal instincts. The people of the Turrasht mountains are a breed apart, more steeped in the truly ancient ways of Vegita-sei than any customs that have sprung up since they became a space faring race.

"The old way," she told me, "was to cast all cubs into the wilderness at six months and let them forage for themselves. If they survived a year on their own, they were taken back into the tribe and trained as warriors by their parents. This weeded out the weak and sickly, and kept out people strong as a race. But this…this pandemic ideology of tossing our children away like rubbish, to be trained by strangers, is a custom of the Great Northern Tribes, who’s strongest son became our first worldwide king after the Tsiru-jin invasion a thousand years ago.

They were a harder people than the tribes of Turrasht, and their customs have overborne all others since the first Vegita came to the throne. We in the South keep our ideas to ourselves for the most part---but we keep them, nonetheless."

And so my life went for the better part of three years. A little better each year, a little more in love with Raditz than in need of him. Until Corsaris. Karrot-can…he was born as a direct result of----no. Let me back up and tell the whole story.

Eleven months ago, Raditz came to me while Noira, Dusca and I were pruning and watering in the garden. He dismissed them with a look and kissed me hard, lifting me off my feet, pressed so tightly against his body I almost couldn’t breathe.

"What---?" I finally managed to gasp.

"I have been granted to right to lead an attack on the primary base world of the Red Demons," he said intently. "Kyouka and I petitioned the Prince himself for the honor because we are the only two survivors of the sneak attack on Shadras. But it will be a hard fight. The Maiyosh-jin rebels are strong. They are not a warrior race by nature, but we have known since the purge of Maiyosh Prime that they can fight like mad dire cats when cornered. If I should fall---"

"You won’t die!" I screamed in his face, and he blinked, truly startled. I had never raised my voice to him, not like this, in all the time he’d owned me. "Don’t say ‘if’. You won’t die!" I was crying now, and he carried me to our bed without another word.

He made love to me all afternoon and into the evening, sometimes sweet and gentle, sometimes almost violently, and we didn’t speak again until dawn. One last time, we moved together and then he---then he put his mark on me, driving his teeth into my shoulder as he came, and for one brief instant I could feel everything he felt for me, how much he loved me, flow inside me with his seed. I knew what it meant that he had done this, and I also knew it was something that was not done, even among third class warriors and their alien mistresses. And Raditz…he had been pigeon-holed as second class at birth, but he’d requested re-evaluation as a young man. He was a first class warrior, the highest rank a man of common birth could ever hope to achieve.

"Raditz…" I whispered. I couldn’t catch my breath as he lay over me, every inch of his huge frame trembling.

"Shhh…" He spoke against my lips. "You have been mine since the day you

came to me, but now I am yours as well. Custom forbids it, but there are no written laws. As long as we are discreet." He kissed me again. "I have asked my father to stay here while I am gone---" He felt me tense against his body. "I have willed you and all my household to my mother in the event of my death, but she is stationed on Arbatzu now. Toussan would care for you until her tour of duty of was over. He will see you are safe, should any ill befalls me," one corner of his mouth curled up, "so try not to kill him while I am gone."

"You’re not going to die!" I whispered fiercely. "It won’t happen."

He’d left me dozens of times, on scores of battle missions, in the past three years, and though he’d never given me any details (and I didn’t want to know them), I knew that the enemies he had fought had never been sufficient to give him

so much as a run for his money. So, I’d never worried about him dying, or what my fate would be in the aftermath of such a catastrophe.

"Peace, beloved," he said softly, and in spite of everything, something leapt inside of me at the sound of that word. Beloved. A Saiyan word, used without exception, only between husband and wife. "I would be a poor protector if I did not make sure of your safety should the worst happen. I cannot tell you where we are going, but our plan of attack is sound. The danger is not great, it is simply…

present."

I waited with my heart in my throat. No word came from the hyper light news feeds, nothing for more than a week. I could see from the grim set of worry on Bardock’s face that this was an ominous sign. I tried to keep busy. Noira and I unpotted the cherry tree saplings I’d kept under my heat lamps all winter and began planting them in what would be my orchard a few dozen meters from the house. Noira and Hiru gaped like baited fish when Bardock offered to help. By that time, I was so frantic with worry, I didn’t even object or remember to be nasty to him whenever we ran into each other around the house. Saiyans have no familial love my ass! I’ll loathe him til the day I die, but those horrible days of not knowing convinced me that Bardock did love his son---his oldest son, anyway.

On the tenth day of this hell of waiting, word came. Bardock dragged me out of bed to come listen to the hyper light wave transmission, a detailed report of the battle. The target had been Corsaris.

Corsaris…

The last seat of parliamentary monarchy and relative freedom in the galaxy. The Lord Regent had held off enslavement beneath the Empire’s heels for thirty years by providing a tithe of its rich grains and water supplies---until Imperial Intelligence discovered that Prince Jeiyce of Maiyosh, old Lord Corsaris’ foster son, was in fact the leader of the Red Demons. Until it was learned that that the docile-seeming world was harbor to some 60 thousand Maiyosh-jin supporters of the "terrorist movement" and their families.

And their families…

Raditz had been right. The Maiyosh-jin fought like cornered dragons when they realized their backs were to the wall. And they discovered, only after drop, that Corsaris had not been home to merely sixty thousand Maiyosh-jin---the numbers were closer to six hundred thousand. All of them righteously pissed. Raditz lost most of his primary assault unit in half and hour and ended up fighting back to back with his squad brother Kyouka for his life. Meanwhile, ships full of refugees packed into anything with the means to achieve orbit were launching all around them. Then, the Saiyan backup force---a twelve pack of giant troop carriers---dropped their legions onto the planet. It was still a pitched battle for a while, but Raditz marshaled an organized attack. After five hours of fighting, the Saiyans won the day.

After that…they didn’t just purge the world. They made an example of it and anyone not lucky enough to escape during the first assault. It’s not…it’s not the nature of Saiyan warriors to do what they did that day on Corsaris. Saiyans kill without mercy or remorse, but they always kill quickly. Jeiyce of Maiyosh was not on Corsaris when the attack came. Raditz later learned that he’d missed the Red Prince’s departure by a matter of two hours. Jeiyce was not there---but his family was.

At some point during the purge, old Lord Corsaris was killed, torn limb from limb with deliberate slowness. At some point, Jeiyce’s little son Jehan was killed, tossed from soldier to soldier, screaming his poor little heart out while they laughed, breaking all his bones before they finally crushed his head against a stone wall. And at some point, Raditz himself drug Jeiyce’s wife Lady Jula out into the midst of the slaughter and gave her to his men. And after she watched them kill her son, they raped her to death.

Raditz was wounded badly during the first part of the battle, though he kept on fighting. Bardock offered to take me to Med Center to see him. I said no. I wondered around in a frozen daze, the field reporter’s words praising "the righteous, fiery vengeance for Arbatsu" ringing in my head over and over. Bardock watched me closely, probably sensing how very, very close I was to bolting.

Then Raditz came home. I saw him fly home from where I stood pouring tree nutrient in the orchard. I didn’t go to meet him.

The…the hardest thing to accept was that he truly did not understand why I was angry. No...not angry. Sick and grief-wracked and half crazy with horror at what he had done. I tried to explain it to him when I finally calmed down enough to speak to him. I knew how much he had loved his squad brothers, all of whom had been killed by Jeiyce and his men. I tried so hard to make him understand.

I wish I could say that my coldness lasted until he saw what he’d done was horrific, until he wept as though his heart would crack for all the innocent people he’d murdered. But he never understood, and considered my anger an insult to his slain squad brothers. It seemed to him I was saying he had no right to avenge them. And my coldness…it only lasted a few months.

He left after that scene in the orchard, cold and angry himself, and hurt more deeply than I realized. He took some sort of assignment in the Capital, until I "got my fool head back on straight" and I didn’t see him for three months. Not until Romayna came to spend her furlow in our house and saw the secret I had been keeping.

"Raditz does not know," she stated simply. She sensed the baby growing inside me instantly. "I..." I put my hands together in a protective pose over my stomach, suddenly terrified. "Romayna-san, please...please!"
She had always been kind to me in her gruff, proud way, had always treated me like a person...but I still backed away from her with a shriek as she advanced on me. I knew the laws. I knew that what I carried was a death sentence for her son as well as me if it ever became known. She gently but firmly held me in place while she lay a hand over my no longer flat stomach, her face unreadable. Then she grinned, a full Saiyan smirk.

"He is strong, your firstborn." Her eyes met mine. "Male to female, our race is nearly thirty to one, girl. This happens more often than you would think. If he looks Saiyan, he may be quietly acknowledged as Raditz's son. It is not common knowledge, but even a DNA scan cannot distinguish between a half-blood and full blood Saiyan. Our blood is so strong it overbears that of other peoples when we mix with them. If he bears your face, his fortunes will be less prosperous and his tail will have to be removed. It is an old law that half breeds must die, but..." She shrugged. "One cannot be called to accounts if a crime is never known." She frowned at me with mild displeasure before going on. "Think well on how you will greet my son when he returns to you. He has given you more than most men in his position would ever consider. Even to the point of letting you, his legal property, turn him out of his own house and bed. Has it never crossed your mind once how lucky you are in him?"

She told Raditz of course. And he came running home, just as she'd known he would. And I...I took him back. I................

I should hate him for the things he did on Corsaris...but oh gods, I can't! Not just because he's a man who loves me and is good to me, not just because of Kami-sama's warning against hatred. But because there wasn't just me to consider now. If my coldness finally managed to turn him against me---it was my baby's life that I was putting at risk as well as my own.

He was ecstatic about the baby. I don't know what Romayna told him, but he came home like a penitent prodigal, as though he had seen the truth in my accusations, and I received him with a warm, "I'm sorry for being so unreasonable" embrace. But it was all a pose, on both our parts. He knew I needed him now, that I had no choice but to open my arms and take the love he offered. The love and the protection. He had me over a barrel and we both knew it.

When he came to our bed that night, he…he took me. Took everything that was his, with a kind of controlled ferocity, again and again. At the end, he collapsed on top of me with a deep, contented sigh. He knew I’d never turn him away again. The baby would keep me obedient and loving and at his side for the rest of my life. He loves me. I don’t doubt that. But…he also means to keep me…and I think, at least initially, the biggest part of his happiness over the baby was knowing that now…now he could keep me forever.

"You are mine, beloved," he whispered, just before he fell asleep.

"Yes," I agreed softly. "I am."

He was too fast asleep to feel me shaking beneath him. I cried the rest of the night.

Contrary to the novels of high romance my mother was so fond of reading, you cannot "mourn in sorrow all your days" over anything. There is too much good, too much joy in simply being alive, in every single day, to dwell constantly on all the things your life isn't. Especially when you're pregnant. Raditz took an extended leave using the clout of his new promotion to field marshal after Corsaris, and hovered over me until he nearly drove me out of my mind. He wasn't used to the day to day rhythms of the house, and at first, he just got underfoot. All six feet ten of him. Noira and Hiru nearly died of shock one morning when they saw him sitting beside me in the garden, awkwardly potting a handful of pansies.

Things between us got easier after a few weeks of having him back. Then they got comfortable. And by my third trimester, it was good again...mostly because I had asserted some level of equality in our relationship by that time. We lived together, except for his increasingly frequent trips to the Capital. We worked on the house and gardens. At night, we sat before the fire and talked, his hand caressing my tummy, feeling in fascination how the life inside me grew stronger every day. It was good, as I said, after things came to a head over Noira and her family around the fifth month of my pregnancy.

He wanted to kill Noira, Hiru and Dusca, at first. I could see the knowledge that they knew about the baby become a tangible, gnawing worry in his eyes as I began to show. I could also see that he had decided, almost as soon as he returned home, that he would take care of the potential threat in a final, permanent, Saiyan fashion. The only question in his mind was whether he would do it before or after the baby's birth, since we would need Noira when it came time to remove the baby and place him in the incu-pod Bardock misappropriated from Med Center for us.

"Don't do it," I told him in a flat cold voice across the dinner table.

He didn't have to ask what I meant. He shook his head very slowly. "They will be a threat to you, the boy and myself as long as they live. They have been good, loyal servants, but---Bulma, think! They could blackmail us, or simply expose us, with a word!"

"They won't," I said. I stood and walked over to his chair, leaning down nose to nose with him. "Listen to me, Raditz," I said, almost in a whisper. "Noira, Hiru and Dusca have been my friends since I came to you. They are good, kind-hearted people and I love them. They won't betray us. If you are nervous about having them around, use some of the fortune in spoils you took from Corsaris and give them a ship and their freedom. I love you, Raditz." I had never said it before, and he looked startled and somewhat unnerved. He ‘humphed’ and looked away uncomfortably, but I took his cheek in one hand and turned his face back to mine. "Do you love me, Raditz?"

"Bulma---" His face had reddened with a mix of anger and embarrassment.

"Just nod your head 'yes' if you do," I said softly, refusing to be cowed by his thunderous expression.

Jaw clenched furiously, he nodded once and looked away again with an angry growl. "Then don't do anything to hurt them. You'll kill everything I feel for you if you do."

He met my eyes for a long, hard moment and I didn’t flinch under that black, intense stare. Then he took my face in his hand and pulled me down to meet his lips. "You," he said softly, "have grown from girl to woman while I was not looking." And he smiled.

Everything was better after that. Noira told me covertly that Raditz had given her a terse command to bone up on medical texts concerning late pregnancy incu-pod transfers and C-section surgery. Nothing more was said of the matter, and the rest of my pregnancy went fairly smoothly.

Raditz began to come and go with a great deal of frequency during my last trimester, never giving me any sort of satisfactory answer when I asked where he had been. Bardock finally told me that Raditz had been formally presented at court by the Prince himself in honor for his "heroics" on Corsaris. That explained why he hadn’t mentioned what was still a touchy, raw subject we never discussed. The Saiyan no Ouji, the Heir to the throne of the Empire, had officially taken Raditz into his circle of Royal Companions, Bardock said. The Crown Prince’s own personal squad.

"It is something unheard of," Bardock said with a frown. "He has said nothing to you because he came to the Prince’s notice in the same way he came into his new wealth and rank---by his victory on Corsaris. But also…" Bardock’s frown deepened.

"What?" I prodded, staring down at the chessboard between us without really seeing it.

"He has risen higher in rank than many highborn warriors deem seemly," Bardock growled. "You remember the news feed reports during the battle, girl! The victory on Corsaris was very nearly a loss. Raditz turned the tide of a pitched battle with cunning, bravery and level headed iron will. It made him a hero. A famous one. It brought him to the notice of the Prince who has now befriended him. He is the son of a back country, common born squad captain. Can you imagine how many enemies his sudden rise in station, not to mention the Heir’s regard, has earned him among the Elites?"

"It is a double-edged sword I am holding," Raditz told me that night, after roundly cursing his father for a tell-all. "I did not seek fame or court life, but I cannot snub it without giving offense. I did not seek Vegita-ouji’s company, but a man cannot refuse a Prince’s offer of friendship." He swore softly. "And now I am trapped. I must come and go as he bids me, fight at his side, laugh at his jokes, and spurn the my true squad brother Kyouka and even my lowborn parents

to keep company with a pack of---" He stopped himself before he said something seditious. "If it were the Prince alone, it would be great fun, but all the others who surround him---it is like a nest of vipers, all vying for his regard."

"And the perverse thing," I said thoughtfully. "Is that he probably gives you more attention because you don’t want anything from him---all the others do. Maybe he wants a friend who doesn’t kiss his ass."

Raditz snickered. "There you are wrong. He likes it kissed well and frequently. He’s of an age with you, but still very much a boy. A boy who must always have his way."

Noira took the baby in a scarless C-section about a month ago. She and Raditz both assured me in no uncertain terms that I would probably not survive a natural birth, and Raditz told me we weren’t going to wait and find out. I’ve spent the last five weeks staring at him through the glass of his pod, watching him sleep and suck his thumb. I was a little sad that I couldn’t see anything of me in his face---until I held him. Until he opened his eyes and stared up at me…his bright blue eyes.

 

There followed a series of seemingly never-ending entries, all revolving around the child, her garden and Raditz---in that order, it seemed. Vegita began to drift off in a light doze, lulled by the sound of her sweet voice---until a note of mild panic in her words brought him back to full wakefulness.

 

We’re having guests tonight. As in right now! Shhh…shhh, sweetie, it’s just a storm… It’s okay. The boy’s warbling cries quieted beneath the sound of distant thunder. The storm’s clearing up already, and they’ll be here any minute. Raditz just called and told us to "get ready". I don’t think he had much choice in the act of "inviting" his guests tonight. There’s no time to move the baby, he said, but there is no reason to worry. No one will see him. He told me to stay out of sight with Kakarott and everything will be fine. Kami…they’re here. I have to go.

 

 

Fighting, blah-blah. Now, that was a great battle, blah-blah. Murder and mayhem, blah-dee-blah-blah. The conversation downstairs has been frightening and dull at the same time. I don’t know why I’m so interested, except they’re the first new people I’ve seen in five years. Their voices have gotten softer and a bit slurred in the last hour. I think they’re all plastered, my dear mate included, but it’s getting interesting now. They’re drunk enough to be honest with each other.

Hmm….the deep, velvety young man’s voice must be the Prince, because they all defer to him. He’s saying something about "no strong enemies left to fight." Like a young Alexander, mourning that there was no more world left to conquer. More like Alexander’s heir, if he’d had one. It must be hard to grow up in the shadow of a father who conquered the whole damn galaxy. Nothing left but punitive subjugation purges and the boring beaurocracy of running an Empire. I wonder if he---Oh, Kami!

 

 

 

Shit. Shitshitshit! I have to remind myself to explain at a more appropriate time the concept of Murphy’s Law. Fuck!!!

I know I closed the window! Somehow, Karot-chan got outside and crawled over the edge of the cliffside on the northern face of the house. I don’t know how it happened. I crawled out after him and found him stuck on a rocky overhang ten meters below the drop-off, crying for Momma to help him. I got halfway down to him and nearly fell myself before Raditz swooped down and picked is both up with an angry curse. He was angrier and more frightened than I’d ever seen him, but he calmed down a little too quickly when I explained what had happened. I think I know why, too. He left the damn window open!

All’s well that ends well, I guess. But there’s one last thing to tell. Something more than a little frightening. Raditz’ guests must have seen him bring us back inside through the garden courtyard, though they didn’t see the baby, thank the gods. As I went back to our rooms through the kitchens, I found Noira and Hiru prepping breakfast for the men in the hearthroom, pulling an all-nighter in case a guest needed the least little thing in the wee hours. Noira saw me and put one finger to her lips. I stopped beside her, just behind the servants’ kitchen entrance, listening. They were talking about me. Like men discussing and admiring a prize winning show dog or a thoroughbred filly. I went to our rooms and crawled into bed with Karot-chan beside me. That’s where I am now.

Kami…I am lucky. So very, very lucky, to have fallen by chance into Raditz’s hands. And not into the hands of one of those men downstairs.

 

 

 

 

Oh Kami…I left Karot-chan with Noira and went downstairs this afternoon like an idiot. Raditz had said they would be gone by daybreak. He was wrong. I didn’t realize I was singing out loud until I heard the hearthroom doors creak behind me and---

A slamming noise cut off her words, the sound of booted heels striding across the floor.

"He put his hands on you!" Raditz voice hissed harshly, sounding muffled, as though his face were buried in her hair.

"I’m okay," she said, but her voice trembled slightly. "I haven’t been pawed since I was in high school, but it’s not fatal. It’s okay…it’s over."

"It is not," Raditz rasped. "He has asked me to sell you to him. Commanded me, more like---Bulma!" She had made some kind of horrified moan. "He will not have you! He will not come for you for a week. There is time to---to think of some plan. I---I can perhaps make him believe you’ve died by some accident or that you have run away. I will think of something! I---" There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of Bulma’s soft sobs. "He…he will not believe me. He will kill me and tear through every friend I have to find you. I know him too well now. There is nothing and no one he will not rend to have what he wishes when he is in this humor. It is my fault! I left the fool window open, thinking the boy could do with some fresh air! I---" The sound, fevered and desperate, of his lips on hers.

And in spite of everything, Vegita felt his hands clench in jealous, black rage. "I will think of something, beloved. He will not have you! He will not!"

 

 

 

Hi. It’s been several days since my last entry and it’s a gross understatement to say that a lot has happened. Raditz came up with a plan all right. We’re leaving Vegita-sei tonight. As soon as Hiru gets back with the full med lab he’s heisting from Med Center in the Capital. As soon as Raditz finishes priming our ship’s engines." A soft, plaintive child’s whimper. "Shh, baby. On top of everything else that’s happening, Karot-chan is teething. Raditz bought the ship from his squad brother, his real squad brother, Kyouka, no questions asked. Noira is putting Dusca to bed in one of the ship’s two cabins, and Raditz is in the engine room, having a minor nervous breakdown. He was a lot worse before Hiru told him he used to be a freighter pilot on Ansou-sei and can plot a hyper light jump. I think Raditz is thinks he can memorize the flight manual in the next hour. We don’t know how long we’ll be traveling. To the edge of Imperial space and beyond, so it’ll probably be months before we stop running.

Raditz hasn’t told his parents what we’re doing so as not to implicate them in his defection, but I’m terrified of what the Prince might do to them out of spite, and Kyouka as well, since he knows the three of them are Raditz’ closest friends.

Raditz says he’ll send a direct communication to his them as soon as we’re away, and they can decide whether to lie low or ride Vegita-ouji’s royal tantrum out and hope for the best. Raditz…gods.

He’s giving up his world, his friends, his family, his rank and wealth---

All to keep me.

All to save me.

I don’t know which of those two desires is stronger in him now, but…I love him for it. I don’t just need him anymore. I love him. A little silence, punctuated by the baby’s soft, drowsy breath. Her voice fell to lighter than a whisper.

I promised absolute honesty in this diary, didn’t I? Yes, I did…

The first thing I thought when I saw the Prince of Vegita-sei standing in my garden, looking me up and down, those cruel black eyes burning over my body with this…this raw, brutal, animal lust…the first thing I thought, even before I thought "Asshole!" was…was "beautiful".

Beautiful.

And wild and dangerous and wicked and--- She broke off and released a trembling little sigh. Absolute honesty, right? When he put his hands on me, I was outraged and terrified…but my whole body seemed to catch fire. And I could imagine him having me in the darkest hour of the night, our sweating bodies moving together toward this super nova of a climax and---

Damn…

He saw it. He felt me react to him. And I think…I think it’s all my fault this is happening.

But this is not a bad thing in the long run, is it? Or even in the short run. My husband---and he really will be my husband after we launch, not just my owner who loves me---is leaving to wholesale murder business forever. My baby won’t be trained to be a cold-blooded killing machine. And I’ll be free. So…so what’s bad about that? Not a damn thing.

After tonight, everything changes. My life begins again.

Come on, Karot-chan. Let’s go outside and watch for Jisan Hiru.

 

The audio file clicked off, and the bedside comp beeped, signaling a change in file format. Of course. The next section would be nothing but text. Nearly a year’s worth of Silenced text. Vegita sat and pulled the terminal screen into his lap with mechanical slowness. He would listen. And he would read. Every word, without omission. It was part and parcel to his blood debt. He hit the execute command and read.

 

 

I will kill him. He’s going to die. I will. I will I

Raditz is dead my baby is dead. My baby is dead my baby baby my abay m

A monster tore him out of my arms and crushed him. He cried when it happened he hurt

my baby hurt

Am I dreaming? I can’t wake up. I dreamed a memory of how Karot-chan kicked when I was carrying him. I’ve been asleep since it happened.

It was like a car wreck. It happened too fast, without any warning or ceremony, the way catastrophe always blindsides you

they caught us

The evil prince and the monster when I was little momma told me princes killed monsters

I never saw wher they came from. The giant grabbed me and lifted me up in the air. He was laughing. Then he pulled Karot-chan away from me and made this noise of disgust when he saw it was a baby. My baby is dead

He killed him like he was slapping a bug and just tossed him away like a piece of garbage. A heard someone shout at him angrily. The giant dropped me when the Prince attacked him. I don’ t know why he attacked him. I could see Raditz lying dead on the the ship’s boarding ramp. I crawled over to Karot-chan and tried to wake him up. After a minute or two I decided he must be sleeping very soundly so I began to sing him his lullaby the song Momma always sang to me. Someone asked me a question and I remember looking up just once to tell the Saiyan no Ouji to hush. Not to wake my baby. Then I went to sleep. I don’t remember closing my eyes.

It’s later. I am on some serious drugs right now.

While I was asleep, the Voice that had spoken to me behind Kami’s voice spoke to me again, He told me to be strong. He told me my long dark road had come for me at last.

I told Him to fuck Himself and give me back my baby.

I came back from catatonia-land screaming. The staff medic gave me a shot so I wouldn’t wreck the place and myself. The house slaves here told me I’m in the Prince’s summer house, somewhere in the Western Sea. I had this diary in the waist pouch I was wearing when they caught us. So, I thought I’d do something besides sit and rock back and forth. The drug has helped that, though it hasn’t impeded my motor reflexes. It’s helped me keep in mind that there’ll be time enough for a complete mental breakdown after I’ve escaped.

Noira and Dusca were still in the ship when we were attacked, and Hiru hadn’t returned yet. I have to find out what happened to them and take them with me when I leave. I’ve only had Hiru’s four day crash course in space ship piloting, but at this point, I don’t give a damn.

But I have something to do first. Prince Vegita will be arriving shortly, the housemaids just told me. I can’t speak. That’s why I’m writing this, or trying to. The medic gave me some kind of vocal muscle relaxant and I can’t make so much as a peep. I asked him why and he lowered his eyes and looked away. I think I can guess why.

I have dismantled several choice machines around the estate while I’ve been waiting for his highness to arrive. I’ve jury rigged a reasonable duplicate of my

Ki-zapper, the same energy wave I used to plug Bardock back on Chikyuu. The energy wave that disrupts the brain centers where a warrior’s Ki resides. Vegita no Ouji is going to get the shock of his life when he arrives. Then he’s going to get his fucking throat slit.

 

 

 

It didn’t work it didn’t kill him he was too strong. He was so strong.

I’m escaping today. I’ll swim to the mainland if I have to. I’ll be gone before he comes back this evening.

I know now why they Silenced me

 

 

 

He caught me in less than an hour he brought me back to his summe hous back to his bedd

 

 

 

M baby is dead Raditz is dead my baby is dead I am dead and this is hell

 

 

 

 

Its been a few days I don’t know how many mor e than 3 I think. I’ll try again to get away today

 

 

 

I can do this! The Ki rupturing theory is sound, I proved that when I shot Bardock. I just need a bigger power source and a narrower energy funnel for a more intensified burst. There’s not shit to work with on this island!

 

 

 

Failed again, but only partially. I took his energy down to the point where I was able to stab halfway through his shoulder with nothing more than a steel fire poker. I’ve made the mistake of not taking into the account inherent Saiyan physical strength. The energy wave has got to be utterly debilitating to work on someone as strong as him. But I’m encouraged. It didn’t stop him, but he finished up a lot sooner and had to stagger off to Scopa before he bled to death. Scopa, gods love him, told him he should spend the rest of the night in the regen tank, which is good, because the murder attempts seem to just turn him on more. Before he left me tonight, he leaned down and kissed me in the Saiyan way, nipping my lip with his teeth.

"Dangerous woman," he said softly.

 

 

 

The housemaids are twin sisters named Batha and Caddi. They’re both Anousei-jin, like Noira and Hiru. Scopa is the staff medic and he’s a Madrani. The twins asked me this morning not to use any more of their culinary appliances. I already fragged their juicer and the smaller micro oven. They’re worried I’ll leave them with nothing to cook with, and Batha finally told me bluntly that if his meals aren’t ready when he arrives in the evening, they can both pretty much kiss their asses goodbye. I won’t take anything else from the kitchens. Besides, there’s still Scopa’s surgery.

 

 

 

Still no success. I had something really promising, but the "test subject" is one fast son of a bitch and I think he realized that the new prototype was an improvement on the one that got him stabbed last time. So, he squashed it. It’s been several days. Scopa says it’s been several days, anyway. I sort of lost count at some point. I haven’t tried a royal execution of an escape in a while. I think I’ve spent the last couple of days sitting and staring. I don’t really remember. I want my baby. I want my momma. I have to focus on killing him and not slip away like that. If I do, I may never come back. But I still fight him. I guess I’ll die fighting him one of these nights.

 

 

 

 

I’ve stopped eating. I can’t keep anything down, so Scopa gave me a sedative laced with some kind of cannabis-like herb that inhibits the regurgitation reflex. He’s not supposed to do that unless my health is in danger, but he says I’ve lost too much weight. The Prince doesn’t want my senses dulled, Batha says. Not while he’s breaking me. Breaking me. I guess like you break a horse to ride.

Wow, this is a good sedative.

Batha and Caddi help Scopa put me in the regen tank every morning. They’re all nice. I told them they should escape with me, that we could all get away together.

The first morning after, the twins held my hands and caressed my face while Scopa set my shoulder, my collar bone, and my ribs and put my hip joint back in its socket. They cleaned me up while Scopa set the bones in my wrists. The tank makes everything, flesh and bone, as good as new, but it can’t set bones. Batha told me she and her sister were garrison whores when they were young girls, used by common squad soldiers, one after the other. They survived. She told me I can survive.

She said I am very lucky as pleasure slaves go, to have only ever had one master at a time. I began laughing hysterically, even though I couldn’t make a sound.

That first night, I kept thinking it wasn’t happening. Right up to the instant he shoved himself inside me. I kept thinking I could make it stop. I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t make it not happen. He was on top of me, and then he was inside me and all over me and I couldn’t get away or even scream for him to stop. And as soon as he finished, he was ready again. It went on all night. And his face…it was never angry or cruel, just excited and really turned on. He was smiling half the time, like a boy with a new toy or pet he had wanted for a long time. That’s worse than if he hated me and meant to torture me. I’m just a pet he’s training to obey. If he hated me, at least I’d be a person to him.

 

 

 

 

Batha told me two days ago to stop fighting him. She said he’s hurting me so badly because he’s trying to break my spirit.

"And it time," she said. "He will. He’ll wear you down until your mind and your will buckles and breaks, child. Then you’ll be his ‘doll’. That’s what we used to call the pleasure slaves who broke completely. A ‘doll’. A Saiyan’s walking talking love slave, who lives to please him. I’ve seen some of them even kill themselves out of heartbreak when their masters were killed in battle or set them aside for a younger girl."

"I can’t!" I signed to her. Batha and her sister had taught me Silence, the signing language of Vegita-sei courtesans. "He killed my baby. He killed Raditz. All to have me! I can’t let him have me! It would be like spitting on my family’s graves!" I had just come out of the tank and I was woozy and light-headed. I always have to sleep an hour after the tank drain out to fully recuperate. She shook her head as she helped me into bed.

"I’m sorry about your baby," she said, tucking me in. "I cannot grieve for the man who butchered Corsaris, but the boy’s death must be hard to bear." She was trying to sound sympathetic, but I could see something in her eyes, something cold and murderous that must have been born inside her during her years as a garrison whore, that told me she would have had no moral problem with strangling a half Saiyan baby in its cradle---just because it was half Saiyan.

"Raditz loved me," I told her, sleepily.

"I suppose he did," she murmured, "though I have never heard of such a thing. I never met a Saiyan warrior who was not a violent beast."

Raditz was a man, I wanted to tell her. But I knew she’d never understand or want to. They’re all just men. It would be easier if they were monsters, but they’re not. They’re just bad people.

She stroked my forehead the way my mother always used to when I was feverish. "If you want revenge, Bulma….submit to him. He is young and you are the first pleasure slave he has ever taken into his household. He has born a great deal of his father’s and his people’s displeasure to have you---which is a sign that he is fairly obsessed with you already. Give in to him. Please him. In a month or two, he will have to move back to the Capital or risk angering his father even more. By that time, girl, you could be manipulating the little bastard to do anything you ask of him. Do you want to kill him, child? Do you want a chance to kill Lord Nappa, the one who killed your son?"

"Yes!" I mouthed. I would have screamed it if I could.

"You will have access to all the tech supplies you need when we return to the Capital," she said softly. "I’ll get them for you if it costs me my life. You can perfect that little weapon that almost gave a girl with no readable Ki at all the means to kill the strongest warrior on this planet. You can use it to kill that great brute Nappa and even the Prince in due time. Fighting him when he comes to you is futile, child. Believe me, I know. But there are other ways of fighting."

I ran.

I could see the logic in her words but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t!

I found the rusted out hull of a sea skiff below the cliffs on the western edge of the island, rewired it, and took off without waiting to see if it was air or sea-worthy. It turned out to be neither. I went into the drink about five minutes toward the mainland, and then remembered why Scopa had warned me not to try swimming. They call them sea shrikes---they’re kind of a cross between a shark and an aquatic wolverine. I remember horror movies when I was little where the camera pov showed the open maw of a killer shark ready to swallow the victim whole. And I thought…I thought, it’s not so bad. Being fish food. It’ll be over quickly.

He showed up in the last second and saved me.

I was shaking all over from adrenaline, from the sensation of having mentally embraced death for those few seconds. Accepted it with a warm smile of welcome. Then having been rudely jerked back into the hell of living.

"Why?" I asked him silently. "Why couldn’t you just let me die?" I was crying a little bit. I hadn’t let him see me cry in a long time.

He touched my face then and smoothed the hair out of my eyes. "I do not want you to die," he said quietly. Then he looked forward, away from me, and snorted angrily.

And oh gods, I recognized that look, that combination of mannerisms. Raditz had always done the same thing when his feelings for me embarrassed him. And I knew Batha had been right when she told me I could be running him in a month or two if I wanted.

It was a way to find Noira and her family, to find out what had happened to Romayna and Kyouka and even Bardock. And I knew I’d never get at Nappa except through the little bastard who was even now sneaking a peek down at my face, trying to read my thoughts.

So…I just collapsed against him. And he smiled down at me, his expression a sickening mix of smug triumph and gentleness. He thought he’d beaten me at last.

When we got back to the summer house, I thought, I’ll just lie back and let him have me. And maybe if I don’t fight, he won’t hurt me so badly. But he wasn’t satisfied with just using my body. He pulled off my clothes slowly, his hands, his mouth, his body working mine against its will. When I realized what was happening, that after all these weeks of brutal rape, he meant to make me feel pleasure, I nearly broke and began fighting him again. But I didn’t. I held still and let him do everything he wanted.

And I discovered that there are much worse things than tearing, bone-splitting rape. There is pleasure under the hands of a man who has murdered my family and savaged me like an animal every night for two months. He took his time.

He was gentle and thorough and skilled and he rang every bell I had to ring. It was just as it had been that first day in my garden. My body caught fire under his touch. And when I locked my legs around his waist and moved with him, when I came that first time with him inside me, I felt my sanity tilt on its axis and nearly fracture into a million pieces. I know he thought he was being kind to me. Giving me pleasure as a reward for "behaving" now that he had what he wanted from me. But…it was worse, much worse, than having him rip me apart night after night.

I woke this morning just before dawn, and for the first time since he took me for his own, I wasn’t a bleeding broken mess. Just a little sore here and there. His arm was looped around me, his body curled behind me in a lover’s embrace. He was smiling in his sleep, a cat-and-canary smile of utter contentment. I dove back down into sleep, away from reality and away from him. And in the dreamscape,

I saw Raditz’ ghost with a hole through his heart, holding Karot-chan’s dead body in his arms. He bared his teeth at me and spoke one sentence.

"Whore!" He said. "It is all you fault!"

He was right. He was right. If I hadn’t given the Prince that flash of heat when he touched me, none of this would have happened and my family would still be alive.

I woke with a jolt and found myself alone. The height of the sun said it was nearly noon. I got up and ran out of the house in nothing but my skin, tearing as fast as I could toward the cliffs on the western face of the island. I would have jumped if Scopa hadn’t tackled me. Batha and Caddi came running up behind us.

"Don’t do it, love!" Scopa told me. He was crying, cradling me in his arms while I struggled and clawed, trying to get away, to the sweet blessed night that

would greet me at the bottom of the cliffs. "Don’t! Don’t let him beat you. There’s life beyond this, I swear there is. You just have to hold on and not let him win. If you give up, he’s beaten you!"

I went limp in his arms a few seconds later after he gave me another forbidden sedative. I could hear them talking around me, but their voices seemed to be coming through a hollow pipe.

"…have to tell her now," Batha was saying angrily.

"It can wait until later," Scopa snapped.

"It can’t wait and you know it," Batha told him in her cold voice. "If nothing else, it’ll give her incentive to stay alive until her mind is stronger. Tell her, boy!"

"Bulma," he said softly. "Can you understand me?" I nodded. "We three---Batha, Caddi and myself---are charged with caring for you while the Prince is away. If you die in our care, for any reason, he will kill us all. And…there is a slave law you should know. If one slave in a given household escapes, all the others are put to death."

The last nails in the coffin of all my hope. I can’t escape. I can’t even die. So, here I lie, waiting for my master to return. I am a whore. I am the Saiyan no Ouji’s obedient whore. My road….my long, dark road….

 

 

 

Fuck despair.

It’s three hours since I wrote last. The twins came into my bedroom a while ago and sat on either side of me. Then they literally gave me a reason to live.

"I want you to hear all that I am about to tell you before you consider what to do next," Batha said. "We want you to build your Ki disrupting weapon. We want you to perfect it. We’ve just received confirmation that if you’ll be given any materials you need as soon as we return to the Capital."

I sat there stunned for a few seconds, then signed one word. "Underground?"

Batha smiled slowly and nodded. "There is a quiet revolution brewing, my dear. You can be part of it if you want. I’m not wrong in thinking you want to join us, am I?"

I began to cry and hugged her, nodding furiously.

"We’ll set things up for you to begin as soon as we return to the Capital," Batha said. "The less you know for the moment, the better. But in the meantime…the Network wishes to ask a more difficult task of you. This is what we were originally commanded to ask of you, before we learned of your technical talents.

I know you wish to kill the Prince and Nappa. Based on what I have seen you achieve with lamps and kitchen appliances, I am willing to say that once back in the Capital, you will be more than capable of achieving both their deaths quickly.

We---our superiors in the Network---wish you to stay your hand. At least where the Prince is concerned. We do not want Vegita-ouji dead. We want him alive and well and sitting on his father’s throne as soon as possible."

"Why?" I mouthed, fascinated in spite of myself. This was starting to sound like a spy movie.

Batha grinned. "Vegita-ou is cold and brilliant and ruthless. He does not make mistakes or take one step in any direction without first thinking it through. As kings go, he’s a great man. He has led his people to conquer the entire explored galaxy. But the boy? He’s young, green, impatient, hot-headed and spoiled rotten.

Now, if Poppa were to have a nasty accident sometime during the next year, and if open, galaxy wide rebellion were to break out at almost the same time---Well, a young prince, no matter how strong, who thinks with his cock and his Ki, is very likely to make stupid mistakes and lead his people to defeat in all out war. So…let him live, my dear. Please him, flatter him, obey him, learn his moods, his habits---wrap him as tightly around your finger as you can manage. You may think that your face and body are a curse, child, but they can be powerful weapons. Learn everything you can about the doings of the Royal Council, especially planned purge strikes. The boy sits on his father’s right hand every day. Or he did until the scandal involving you and Raditz. He will be back in his father’s good graces soon

enough. The old monster dotes on the boy to distraction. If you can let us know about a punitive strike action in advance, you can prevent another Corsaris from happening!"

I said yes. Of course I said yes.

First thing tomorrow, after he leaves to go Ki blast puppies and bunnies, or whatever the hell he does when he trains, I’ll start drawing up a list of materials I’ll need.

"I understand why I can’t begin building seriously until we go back to the Capital," I told the twins, "But I the need some tech journals---no, a pile of tech journals. I want to learn as much as I can about the technologies available to me. Is there any way you could your hands on something like that?" Kami, the learning and sciences of several thousands worlds, the whole damn Empire---I’m salivating, just thinking about it! Batha gave me a generalized technical encyclopedia disc from the Royal College of Engineers’ Library in the Capital.

She said she had lifted it from Scopa’s tiny disc library in his little surgery.

"Just for orientation," she said with a grin at my bright-eyed, eager smile as I almost tore the disc out of her hands. "We’ll get you more when you’re done with this one."

My brain feels flabby. It’s been so long since I read an engineering journal or built anything. This wealth of knowledge, pirated from all the worlds in the Empire, is overwhelming! I’ll finish this disc tomorrow, but I already have some ideas, in addition to the Ki-zapper---I need to think up a more dignified name for it---that could potentially help a people with little or no fighting power, worlds like Chikyuu, stand a fighting chance against a purge strike. The Ki-zapper will give worlds like Corsaris an edge when they finally stand up together and fight for their freedom. But how many worlds will end up purged, or just caught and burned in the cross fire, when the rebellion begins? How many children like Jeiyce of Maiyosh’s son, like my son, will be butchered for their fathers’ deeds before it’s over?

Kami-sama’s words about not giving in to hate came back to me again while I sat in the sun this afternoon, devouring the encyclopedia whole. I think I know what the caution meant now. He was warning me not to let go of my heart. Not to become cold and driven and full of a cause because there’s nothing left in my heart but hate. Like Batha.

Some of the ideas that flitted through my head, just on this first cursory reading of a generalized introduction to all the technology I have at my disposal now…some of the ideas that began to come to me were terrifying. The ideas of things I could build, some of them nightmarish in their sheer simplicity, monstrous creations of mass destruction---they can never, must never, see the light of day.

It’s not just the old Briefs family genius at work here either. The Madrani are the only race who have even touched on the possibilities of machines over fighting power. The entire known galaxy has never even really explored the thought of world crushing machines, of pin-point hyper light compressed lazer cannons that could blow a sun to atoms from light years away, of--- You get the point. This galactic civilization has, for time out of mind, relied almost solely on the fighting power of soldiers to fight battles. So, no one has ever really thought long or hard about the possibilities of using machines to battle for you. But…the Chikyuu-jin mind doesn’t work that way. I could make a machine to collapse a planet from its core outward. I could build a cannon to kill a star from ten light years away.

This has got to be what Kami meant. That I must not let the hate inside me for all that has happened to me drive me to build such machines. I will not be an Oppenheimer. I will remember that Son-kun is coming back and will need me, that the gods themselves entrusted me to care for him when he comes. I will build defensive weapons only.

The Idrali-jin science of light and life force refraction in volume twenty of the disc gave me a great idea though. For a kind of invisibility engine to hide the children and families of the rebels. So no more men like Jeiyce will have to lose what matters most to them in the galaxy as punishment for standing up for what’s right.

Before they left me, Batha told me one more thing. Scopa is not Red Network and can know nothing about any of this. He would not turn them in, but he’s a devout pacifist, and would never join us. And anyone, slave or free, who learns the identity of a Network operative must be killed. No exceptions. Batha said that this sort of ruthless secrecy is the only way the Network can survive. I swore on Karot-chan’s soul to keep the Network’s secrets. I don’t like it, and I would stop them if they tried to kill Scopa, but…they’re the only game in town, so to speak. It didn’t occur to me until after they had left me that the logical progression of that policy of cell secrecy meant that if I had rejected their offer they would have killed me, too.

I will live. I have something to live for again, while I wait for Son-kun to arrive. It’s hard, very hard, not to hate the gods for what they’ve let me suffer.

And I know my dark road is nowhere near at its end. I want to make sure that, in my lifetime, no one will ever again have to suffer the kind of things I’ve suffered.

And I will.

 

 

 

 

It’s been four weeks since my last entry. I’ve been busy. Scopa’s let me download disc after disc from his surgery’s high speed connection to the Imperial Library. I told him I was the daughter of a mastertech trade house on my homeworld, and that the tech manuals and journals are my idea of the epitome of entertainment in reading material. He was so pleased to see me smiling and taking an interest in anything, he said to download whatever I want. Gods, he’s such a sweet trusting man. Batha didn’t believe I was going through the journals so quickly. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’ve got anything else to do all damn day but study.

It’s scary how any situation, no matter how horrific, can settle into a pattern a daily routine. I wake up each morning---sometimes I get woken up for a quickie or two before he flies to the mainland. Scopa comes in as soon as he hears the Prince leave for the day and checks me out, making the necessary repairs when needed. These days, I usually don’t need anything more extensive than a bone sauter for a rib or two, and a tissue knitter for bruises. Most of the time, I don’t even need the bone sauter. I want him to teach me how to use it on myself.

When that’s out of the way, I eat breakfast with Scopa and the twins. Then I sit out on the rocky beach and study until he returns in the evening. Scopa usually comes out and joins me at noon and brings us a little picnic lunch. He can read lips, so I don’t have to type out or sign our conversations. We eat and we talk about a little of everything, our childhoods, our lost homeworlds. Madran was destroyed when he was three years old. He’s been a slave his entire life.

Yesterday, he was supposed to give me a booster injection for the Silencing.

He asked me if I hate him and I was honestly surprised.

"I Silenced you," he said softly. His amber face was twisted up in anguish, and I realized this had been eating him alive inside. "I patched you up every morning so he could have the pleasure of breaking you again that night. I still do. If he had commanded me, I would have had to---to give you a susaji juice aphrodisiac or even---even—" I stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"If you had refused, he would have killed you," I said silently.

"I am a coward," he whispered. "It is no excuse to do evil or abet evil and say, ‘I was commanded to do these things on pain of my life.’ It is no excuse! I have betrayed all I ever held sacred to save my own life. I have spent my entire life in Med Center, Bulma. I was trained as a trauma surgeon. I have never been asked, in all my years as a slave of the Empire, to do anything other than heal the wounded and tend the unborn. When…when the Prince brought you to this island, he commanded medical admin to send him their best physician…"

"And they sent you," I finished for him.

"I thought he wanted me as his personal staff medic…for himself," Scopa said dully. "He has a well known tendency to train dangerously. I felt honored. When I arrived here, he led me to where you sat and I saw that you were in some kind of deep withdrawal shock. He told me to wake you and prep you for---for his use. I gave you a series of gentle shock stims to pull you out of the shock. Then I sedated you after you woke and Silenced you, and…and just left you for him to---to---" His breath caught in a soft sob. "I could not have taken you to safety, because it would have meant Batha and Caddi’s lives, but I should have done something! I should have died before I did as he asked. It was the first true test of whatever moral fiber I have and I was too frightened to do anything!" He was kneeling beside me on the blanket we always used as a picnic spread as he spoke.

Slowly, he put his face and palms to the ground before me in a pose of such utter submission, I choked on tears myself. "I beg you…I beg you, forgive me. I will not compromise what I know to be right again. I will not give you the Silencing injection, even if it means my life."

My hand was shaking a little when I took the hypo from his hand gently and pressed it into my own arm. I took his shoulders and pulled him up slowly to face me. "If it wears off, he will kill you," I said. "And I won’t let you die on my account. I don’t blame you, Scopa. Please don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. All of this is my fault." Something in the way I smiled at him made him pale with worry. For just a second or two, I saw myself through his eyes and recoiled a bit. The fragile, haunted, too-thin girl mirrored in his dark eyes looked like she was stumbling along a precipice of madness. She in no way resembled the woman with a cause I believed I had become. She was in no way as ‘okay’ as I thought I was.

"It is his fault, Bulma!" He said, reaching out and shaking me lightly. "His! Raditz’ death, your son’s death, the way he has used you---it is his fault, not yours!

How are you at fault? Because you are beautiful? That is the ravisher’s excuse since time began and it is a lie!"

I couldn’t tell him about the garden. I couldn’t make him see that I knew I had invited the Prince to take me when he touched me that first time. Some things are too shameful to ever tell another living soul. And if I’d told him the whole truth, Scopa’s gentle heart would have tried to grant me some kind of absolution for my sin. I don’t want any. I know I deserve everything that he’s done to me.

Batha and Caddi are nice to me, but I’ve had time to realize they watched the Prince use me night after night with a kind of cold calculation behind their sympathy and comfort, knowing that if I survived the initial ‘breaking’, their cause would have a loyal, devout new recruit, strategically placed in the Crown Prince’s own bed. Their cause, our cause, is right, but…

Batha is, beneath the kind, smiling mask she showed me as first, ruthless and agate-hearted. Caddi is a study in introversion, silent, never meeting my eyes…but under that stoop-shouldered, broken pose is a woman as dedicated to her purpose as her sister. On some profound level they’ve subverted their hearts and morality to achieve their ends.

Scopa is not a freedom fighter. He’s just a good man trying to live in evil times and do the right thing. And he’s my friend. Oh Kami, it’s so good to have a friend again.

 

 

 

We moved back to the Capital yesterday. He has a surprisingly low key villa in the hills, overlooking the huge city. We loaded up the flyer everyone had somehow kept hidden from me during the weeks of my escape attempts and flew across the sound. As I watched Scopa and the twins load their few personal possessions and the mini-surgery, I could have kicked myself for not thinking of capsulization technology sooner. It had nearly innumerable uses to a hunted rebel force that needed to travel quick and light. I drew up full design plans, the nuts and bolts on up, from memory while we flew and gave the data chip to Batha.

"Give that to your cell leader," I told her. "And after they’ve built it and tested it, tell them there’s a hell of a lot more where that came from. I’ve included a wish list of supplies and materials I’ll need to get started on the Ki-gun. But I’ve got to have some sort of lab to give them anything more complex."

"You’ll get it," she said emphatically.

I spent the next few hours reading out on the stone deck that faced the hill country, listening to the distant roars of ships launching and descending at the space port on the western edge of the Capital along the coast. Leaving

Vegita-sei…

I am trapped. If I leave, I cause the deaths of everyone else in the household. If I die, same thing. If I kill him…

I asked Scopa what would happen if I made it look like an accident. He went pale and shook his head. "No, Bulma. Even if you succeed, you can’t be certain there would be no suspicions. The tiniest suspicion would be enough to get you torn apart by the Inquisitors. And the King would take out his grief on every slave on Vegita-sei."

So, I can’t kill him. I knew that anyway, it’s just a pleasant daydream. Not yet, Batha told me. I understand why he needs to stay alive. Why he’s worth more to the Red Demons alive than dead. So, I’ll bide my time. But Nappa…he’s a different matter altogether.

Last night, the Prince introduced me to susaji juice. Scopa didn’t mix it for him, he brought it home fermented into a bottle of expensive goldberry wine.

It tasted like honey mead on my tongue, and he watched me as I obediently drank the full glass he’s poured me, those black eyes glittering with expectation. I thought it was only wine, his idea of a ‘home-coming’ toast. When I finished the glass, he left me sitting at the dining table and moved over to stoke the embers of the hearthpit, a small smile on his lips. I followed him, wondering what new game this was and what I should do. He sat down after a moment in a big blackwood armchair and I knelt down before him. He smiled again as he ran a hand through my hair, like a man petting a lap dog. I took the hand in mine and drew it down my face, smiling myself, picturing him impaled on a bed of knives while I removed his guts with a dull scalpel. He didn’t say anything or make a move on me. I knew why, or thought I did.

It hadn’t taken him long to start demanding that I do more than just submit and respond to his advances. After a while, he began to want me to make the first move. To do things to him, rather than just lie down and comply. I played dumb in this, pretending that I had very little in the way of advanced skills in this area. He believed it of course, and even made some nasty comment about low class warriors like Raditz having little idea of how to please of woman. I jumped on him and began pummeling him with my bare fists when he said that, screaming soundlessly that Raditz had been twice his size, in every sense of the word, and had never hurt me once. He thought the bare-handed attack was hilarious, but the idea of me rebelling against him because of his slander toward Raditz made him angry.

"You need a reminder of how things were and could be again if you do not behave yourself, woman," he hissed. He hurt me badly that night. He only stopped when he realized he’d broken my spine and I was dying.

But on the whole, he seemed pleased that I appeared to be sexually unsophisticated. He believed he was teaching me as we went along.

I kissed the thin skin over his wrist, imagining it slit open, is life’s blood pouring out. I put both hands on his knees, moving my body between them, sliding my hands up his thighs, preparing to give him a lengthy and thorough blow job. Each moment it took meant another moment he would not be inside me, making me come, making hate myself and all the gods in creation for giving me over to this nightmare. He always makes me come, again and again, but always hurts me, too---he has every night, except that first night when I gave in. He’s skilled in what he does, but at some point, he always loses his control and either cracks a bone or tears me up inside by going too hard and too fast. On a good night, if I’m lucky, he’ll hurt me at the end of the night rather than at the beginning. If it’s at the beginning, I’m SOL, because once he starts, he won’t stop. He may think the writhing in agony under him is me getting off, but in the end, he really doesn’t give a damn. Though he did growl at me angrily once when I stopped moving with him because of the pain.

"Are you getting bored, woman?!" He snarled. Then he increased his pace and strength and hurt me worse for having stopped,

That’s a long way of explaining why blow jobs have become my specialty. I began kissing my way up his thigh, but he stopped me with a gentle push, shaking his head. "You do not want me yet," he said. "Not truly."

No-fucking-duh! I thought. I sat back with my legs tucked beneath me, wondering what the hell he wanted from me now. Then the susaji juice began to kick in. It was like going mad with an insatiable craving in the space of an instant.

It was like starving and smelling roasting beef right in front of you, like dying and coming upon a pool of cold clean icy water. Only what I needed, what I was starving for, was sex. My blood felt like it was boiling, as though every nerve in my body had been teased to the brink of a thunderous climax that has yet to come.

I felt like an addict shrieking for a fix. I leapt on him, ready to tear his clothes off and have him in the most animal way imaginable. There was no sense, no thought, no hate---just need. He pushed me back gently a few more times, smirking now, then got up and strolled leisurely into the bedroom. I followed him, clinging to him, the desire inside me growing to a kind of burning internal pressure. He stripped and lay down on the bed, but he didn’t have me for a long time. Not until I groveled and begged him with silent words and tears. He let me beg for a long time. Finally, he chuckled affectionately and opened his arms to me. I jumped into them, sobbing with relief, and we went at it like wild animals in heat until dawn.

I woke this morning, unhurt. Uninjured. I must have been so pumped up with adrenaline that I was nearly a match for him. If he gives me the juice again, I think---no, I’m sure---that my mind will just snap in half like a twig. I’ll go out to lunch permanently and not come back.

If I have a choice, I’d rather he hurt me every single time. Anything is better than wanting him like I did last night. And the way he made me beg was worse than all the rapes combined.

 

 

 

I have a lab and a workshop. The twins took my capsule plans to whoever they take stuff to, then all the way up the chain of command to the Red Prince himself, who apparently nearly wet himself in excitement over the possibilities of encapsulation technology. They’ve brought me everything I asked for over the last couple of months, smuggling tools and supplies in baskets of laundry and market sacks. Scopa is always up and out of the house my midmorning, as soon as he’s finished patching me up on the days I need it. The Prince gave him permission to work at Med Center during the day, though he’s always on call for me, or if the Prince hurts himself while training---which he does frequently, I’ve learned.

Scopa always returns through the servant’s kitchen entrance well after dark, so he’s never around to have to hide my work from. I don’t know ho

 

 

Sorry about that. He came home for a lunch hour quickie. Damn. I have to be more careful with this journal. The twins sure as hell don’t know about it. They’d destroy it and probably kill me as well. Make it look like I killed myself. It would mean their lives and Scopa’s as well, but since we’ve returned to the Capital, I’ve seen, a little more all the time, just how little they value even their own lives where the Network is concerned. I know it’s absolute madness to keep this diary now. But I need it desperately. It’s a memory of Karot-chan, so it won’t be forgotten that he lived and that I loved him, even when I’m dead. It’s a place I can tell all my secrets, pour out all my pain. I can’t speak, but here I have a voice. Even if I could speak, I might never be able to tell anyone the things I’ve lived through. Here I can. And it’s a release to right down what I’m surviving, even if no one ever reads it. I think in the very real way, this diary is keeping me from coming unglued.

 

 

 

I found out today what happened to Noira and her family. Scopa found Hiru.

He’s working out of Med Center as a ferry ship pilot. He’s alive. Noira and Duska are dead. Vegita blasted the ship to pieces with them inside after he killed Raditz, beat the hell out of Nappa, and knocked me out. I don’t suppose he knew or cared that there was a woman and a little girl inside. Why should he? They were less than nothing to him. I sat and rocked back and forth, wishing I could make myself cry for them all day, a year and a day. But I couldn’t cry. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I cried. Caddi came and sat down beside me with her knitting. She is such a quiet person, letting Batha do all the talking and thinking for both of them…or at least I thought so.

She told me in her whispery voice that Hiru was the one who betrayed us. That Nappa had known or suspected Raditz was planning something and caught Hiru as he left the Capital. They tortured him and he didn’t break, but when Nappa told him he would spare his family’s life if he told…he spilled his guts. Caddi says she’s known this for a while, but that he had begged her not to say anything out of shame. Because he sold out Raditz and myself to save his wife and child. I don’t know how to feel about him, now. Caddi and Scopa both told me Hiru is horribly scarred from whatever Nappa did to him. Physically disfigured and this silent, blank-faced ghost of the soft-voiced, smiling man I knew. How can I hate him? If they’d offered me the same choice, as much as I loved Noira and her family, I would have chosen my family’s lives first. How can I blame him for doing the same? I told her to tell him Scopa had found him for me. That I didn’t hate him. That I grieved for Noira and Duska, and wished him well. She said she would tell him. She also told me that he is "one of us." Hiru’s Red Network now, too.

I can’t write anymore and I can’t work today. I have to be able to smile when he comes home in about an hour. Two more deaths you owe me, Saiyan no Ouji.

I doubt you even remember killing them. But I won’t forget. And I’ll pay you back for them a thousand fold before I’m done.

 

 

 

 

It’s been a while, I know. Too much to do, too many things I have to get finished as quick as I can. Learning about Noira and Duska brought it home to me that every day I take to finish my this project, more people die. It’s winter now, and bitterly, deathly cold. Vegita-sei is such a world of extremes, killing winters and drought-ridden summers. It’s even colder here in the north than the Turrasht winters, and that’s saying a hell of a lot. It’s also Midwinter Festival time, so the bastard is usually out partying until well after midnight---which gives me more time to work. Midwinter is a big thing here, a kind of blood soaked Mardi Gras, where in Turrasht ii only involved inviting your friends to drink and eat and sing old war songs off key at the top of your lungs at your house until you all passed out. Bardock was the only one of the whole tone death pack of them who could carry a tune.

Vegita bought me a fur-lined gown, something I’m actually pleased to have. It’s a welcome exchange from all the gauzy, frippy, see-through crap he’s given me. In addition to all his other faults, he has lousy taste in fashion. I wear all the stuff he gives me once to please him, the toss it in the incinerator if he doesn’t destroy it first when he tears it off of me. I’m getting close to finishing the Ki-gun.

I’ll need to field test it soon. I want to test it on Nappa. I asked Batha about this, and she said she would see what could be arranged. Gods, I can’t wait! The gun has a two-fold setting. The first is the energy wave that fractures the target’s Ki, the second shot is a high concentration mini blaster cannon. In other words, the second shot splatters the target’s brains all over the wall behind him, since he now has no Ki shield to protect him.

I was wrong about the susaju juice. He’s given it to me three times since I wrote last. My mind didn’t snap. I just wished it had.

 

 

 

Four weeks since I wrote last. I’m not being very faithful, but I literally have no time. I threw the invisibility shield together in an hour when I began on the project, but it took longer to figure out how it might be extended to cover an entire planet and to rig it with a morphic hologram camouflage that can also give a ghost image of an utterly unpopulated world on demand. So, it can be used to hide completely from the visible spectrum or to camouflage something to look innocuous, or like something else entirely. Three separate settings. I hit a snag on the Ki-gun and turned to the camp-shield project to let the problems percolate in my head. And I found that the camo-shield was so simple in construction it only took two days to draw up. I gave the plans to Batha yesterday and told her to give them to her superiors to be tested and replicated. I also reminded her of my ‘fee’ for this.

It occurred to me only a couple of days ago that I am an amazing commodity to the Network. That I am in a position to ask for something back. I want off this world. I told her to tell her bosses that this is only a fraction of what I could produce if I were free…on a rebel base somewhere, without the distraction of having to whore for the Saiyan no Ouji.

"If they move you," she said, "that’s it for Caddi and myself."

I gaped at her. "They could take you too," I said, flustered.

"They will not," she said coolly. "Our lives aren’t worth risking exposure for. If we disappear without a trace, there will be questions. Even if something could be worked out, will you abandon Scopa to his fate, Bulma? He is not Red Network and can, under no circumstances, be taken. And if you escape, his life is forfeit."

I told her to give the designs to her boss and tell him I want to meet. I told her I won’t except anything less than the five of us leaving Vegita-sei together. Scopa and Hiru included. She told me stiffly that she thanks me, but that she would stay, perhaps in deep cover…I asked her why. She said she wants to be on Vegita-sei and see them all die when the revolution finally storms the Saiyan homeworld. She wants to be here to see it.

I can’t judge her. I think my hates are just as great, only more centralized, directed at people rather than an entire race. I don’t hate Romayna. I didn’t hate Raditz or Kyouka or Toma and Celipa’s little girl Anyan. Bardock and his squad are another matter, but that's because of what they’ve done, not what they were born.

I didn’t explain about my lab, did I? It’s in the unused, empty guest room.

I decapsulate the whole damn workshop room inside the guest room when I go to work. I go in after he leaves for the day, or after I come out of the tank after a bad night. Batha and Caddi keep watch in case he comes back unexpectedly. If they see him flying in, they beep me, and I encapsulate the whole damn shop. We do a drill for speed almost every day. The thought of building the things I’m creating right under his nose is a very pleasant one.

 

 

 

No word from the twins cell leader yet. It’s been two weeks since I gave them the invisibility technology. It’s been a bad two weeks. A bad month really. Vegita’s people are a people who prize personal honor highly, and the murder of Raditz over something as trivial as a whore has angered a great many of the nobles.

Good for them. They’ve apparently been giving him hell about it in a number of subtle ways at all these parties he’s been attending all winter.

Guess who he takes it out on? Not with beatings, I wouldn’t survive that. He could kill me with one half-hearted punch. He’s just been really rough, using me harder because he’s frustrated and angry. The effect is pretty much the same though. I’m spending almost every morning in the tank. It’s strange, how he’s never actually hit me. You would think he’d be the sort, wouldn’t you? Caddi gave me a long, over-intellectualized explanation for this, and for why the Elites are so angry over the death of a man they were all viciously jealous of a year ago.

They have no laws against murder, because the stronger warrior has every right to kill the weaker. But the murderer must take into account that there will be a settling of accounts with the squad siblings and family of whoever he murders. This is Vegita-sei’s way of instructing their young Prince that you can’t get away with behaving dishonorably and suffer no repercussions.

As for the fact that he’s never slugged me----she said he never will. It’s dishonorable to strike a weakling with your fists as though he or she were a match for you. You only strike another warrior with your fists. You might Ki-blast weaklings or swat them out of your way, but you don’t beat them.

Just as there are no laws against murder, there are no laws against rape either.

Romayna told me that a long time ago. Same attitude toward rape as murder. If you’re strong, it won’t happen to you. If you wish to have another warrior and you’re stronger than her, it’s your right, but you better be sure you’re a match for her friends and family if they come after you. The whole issue of rape is sort of muddled in the Saiyan psyche, Caddi said. Their natural mating instincts and rituals are all violent. The difference is that Saiyan women like being taken violently when they’re in heat---and generally when they’re not in heat. Their culture worships strength so much that being overpowered by your suitor is a turn on to them. When Saiyan’s mix with other races sexually, they know intellectually that what they’re doing is forcible rape, but their instincts and ingrained behavior say other wise.

"Are you making an apology for them?" I asked her coldly.

She shook her head mildly. "Just trying to make you see that they are what they are, child." She looked me straight in the eye, something she hardly ever does to anyone, even her sister. "They are beasts, Bulma-chan. One and all. The sooner you stop thinking of them as individuals with souls and hearts, the better off you’ll be. Your Radtiz killed whole worlds of people, my dear. They can be kind when it suits them, but the truest representation of what they are is the Oozau form. A mad, murderous beast. You are a good-hearted girl, and I do not wish you to fall into the trap of thinking you can change even one of them. They are what they are."

I got up and left the house. I couldn’t think of an argument to her words, though I knew they were wrong. I did something I’ve never done. I went for a walk through the hills behind the house. It was bitterly cold, and my cheeks were still chapped from a morning spent in the regen tank. I don’t know how long I walked, but at some point, I looked up as a tiny speck flying over me, so high in the sky I could barely make it out, wheeled sharply and made a b-line for me.

He landed so hard beside me, he drove the soft earth up in divots under his boots.

"Bardock…" I whispered. I felt faint.

He just stared at me without speaking, taking in the changes in me, the hollow eyes, the flushed pallor of the regen tank’s aftermath. His face was like a blank rock, but his eyes were full of…of so much sorrow. "How is it with you, girl?" He asked me softly.

"Pretty bad," I said. I didn’t know what to say to him.

"I am glad you live," he said after a moment’s silence.

"I’m not," I choked on all the memories the sight of his face, just his presence, were calling up. I sank down to my knees, turning my head away from him, suffocating in a burning wave of shame, that his son and grandson were dead, but I lived and served their murderer as his whore. I could feel the hardy, thick grass beneath my fingers. It was strong to survive such harsh winters here in the north. He was kneeling before me, shaking my shoulders lightly. I looked up at him, still dry-eyed. I had not cried in a long time, not even when I learned about Noira and Duska. I realized with a dull kind of horror that I had stopped crying altogether, months ago.

"I will take you away now," he said harshly. He began to scoop me up in his arms and I screamed for him to stop. "I’ll finish what Raditz started and take you off this world!"

"You can’t," I cried. "If I escape or die, he’ll kill all the other slaves in the household!"

"I don’t give a damn about the other slaves in his household, girl!" Bardock growled.

"I do!" I said implacably. "And can’t, I won’t, live with the shame of having been the reason they died! I can’t---I can’t kill them the way I---I---k-killed Raditz and Karot-chan!" My voice had risen to a scream, and he shook me so hard my teeth rattled. Then he pulled me forward, nose to nose with him, his face so bleak and furious I nearly screamed again.

"Who destroyed Chikyuu?" He snarled softly.

"Y---you," I whispered.

"And who do you hate for the sake of your dead world?"

"You!" I said in a stronger voice.

"Who killed your man and your son?" He asked harshly.

"Vegita," I spat.

"And who is to blame for their deaths? Who slew them, girl?!"

"Vegita!!!" I screamed. "Vegita! Vegita! Vegita!"

"Vegita," he agreed softly. "Not you."

I stared into his face, seeing Chikyuu burning beneath us from his space pod, seeing again how Son-kun’s face had been a mirror of his father’s, remembering how Karot-chan’s hair had flared out in the exact same pattern as his grandfather’s… And I began to cry. All that had been locked up inside me for…months, came pouring out as I wailed against his chest. "I hate you, Bardock…I hate you, I hate you…" But the meaning of what I said had nothing to do with the words.

"I burned their bodies together," he told me when I had finally quieted down. I was so exhausted from the release, I was nearly asleep in his arms. "On the pyre stone atop the highest peek in Turrasht." I sighed softly and began to cry again, softer this time.

"Live," he told me, after another long space of time. "Live if you can. He will tire of you eventually. When he casts you aside, I will take you as mine. I swore to Raditz that I would care for you if he were slain. The oath binds me still. I will free you, or keep you safe on my estate. Whatever you wish. I will give you another son if you wish it." There was nothing remotely sexual in what he meant by that offer. He doesn’t think of me that way. He thinks of me…he thinks of me as his daughter. I hate him. I’ll always hate him. But somewhere along the line, at some point, he became family…grandfather of my flesh and blood. I couldn’t tell him that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Vegita would never let me go. Never. I’ll be free of him one day---of that I have no doubt. But only when one of us, Vegita or myself, has killed the other.

"I have to go back," I told him softly. I stood and he rose from where he’d knelt holding me for what might have been hours. "If anyone sees us, you’ll be killed."

He grunted. "I have precious little to live for these days. If you need me, call. I will come."

"Romayna and Kyouka---?"

He smirked painfully. "The boy is part of my squad now. He is courting Toma’s brat. Romayna is stationed on Arbatsu."

"Good," I said. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that he had just pulled me out of a spiral of dry-eyed madness, healed me in ways I still can’t even measure yet, I was glad that Romayna hadn’t taken him back. That he was still paying for the death of Chikyuu. I stood on tip toes and kissed his mouth chastely.

"You are a bastard and I’ll hate you forever," I told him softly.

"That is good," he said solemnly.

 

 

 

 

Almost done with the Ki-gun. Batha says she hasn’t heard anything yet about my request. She and I had an…altercation a few days ago, and today was the first time we’ve actually spoken since then. She’s furious about my daily morning walks into the hills, telling me we’ll all be killed if Vegita catches me screwing Bardock. I’d like to know how in the name of the gods she knows about that chance meeting last week! I told her that eight days ago was the first and only time I’ve seen Bardock in nearly a year. She didn’t believe me and then…then she said that she’s "never seen a whore with a stronger taste for monkey cock". She said I sure seemed to have really gotten into my job of royal bed warmer in the last month or so. Almost too much to believe that I wasn’t really enjoying it.

I knew what was eating at her. I discovered a while ago that the way to keep him from using the susaji juice was to give him what he was really craving when he drugged me. Enthusiasm. The semblance of passion and affection. I learned that if I literally jump on him as soon as he walks in the door a few times a week, drag him into the bedroom even before he’s eaten his dinner, and screw his brains out a few times, that he won’t use the susaji on me, and he tends to be gentler with me.

I screamed at her that she was the worst sort of stupid, amnesiac bitch to think that I would ever want him, though inside I was shuddering with shame at how he always, always, always gives me pleasure. Caddi and Scopa had to pull me off of her. That was my first girl fight since third grade.

I can’t hate her. I know what she’s been through, and that our scars, mine, Caddi’s and hers, all show in different ways. She is starting to hate me because I love and hate Saiyans as people. Not as a whole.

I am so glad that I met Bardock. I’m so glad I can cry for my son, and all the other people I’ve lost again. If I’d stopped crying forever, I think I would be well on my way to becoming just like Batha. And that’s worse that being dead.

 

 

 

I woke this morning with a soundless shriek of horror, hearing the sound of men’s voices in the hearthroom. One was Vegita’s, the other…the other was horribly familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I got up and bathed, the hackles rising on my neck as I listened to the muted conversation. It was just past dawn. The visitor must have important news to have come to wake Vegita in his own home. I toweled dry and combed out my hair quickly, listening intently while I dressed.

"…have no idea who has been supplying them?" Vegita was saying grimly.

"Mousrom has some suspicions," the deeper, older man’s voice said. I stood shivering in wet hair, and the harsh bass of Vegita’s guest sent another ripple of ice down my spine. "But we cannot move until we are sure. If we strike the wrong target, they will run again and we will be back at the beginning of the hunt once more." Was this the King, maybe? Vegita’s voice sounded…comfortable. Easy.

Not affectionate, by any means, but---

"And there was nothing left when you arrived?" Vegita sounded openly skeptical.

"They could not have had more than a hour’s notice, Ouji-sama," the older man grunted, "Yet we found nothing. They did not even leave their supplies behind."

"I will bathe and follow you to Council," Vegita said shortly.

"I will await you, by your leave, my Prince."

I darted out of the bathing room, still half dressed, before Vegita arrived, and into the kitchens, to find Caddi nearly finished setting up breakfast. Today was Batha’s market day. I could hear Caddi rattling around in the pantry cellar, and I began picking at the food on the platter she was preparing to carry out. The acoustics for hearing what was being said in the hearth room were better in the kitchen. At least for Chikyuu-jin ears. Ansousei-jin are harder of hearing, which meant that Caddi had probably heard nothing of the conversation outside. When I looked up from the fried spor-hog strips I was eating, I was face to face with Nappa.

Nappa.

I was alone with the man who had killed my baby. And my Ki-gun was encapsulated in the twins’ bedroom. He must have smelled the food and come to catch a quick bite before Vegita was ready. Then…I went mad, I guess. I don’t know how my mind went from horror to mindless animal rage in an instant, but it did. His eyes were traveling over my half-clothed body with greedy appraisal.

I flung myself at him,

I don’t know how I did it, but then, I don’t know how I survived the last year either. I drew my nails down his face, drawing blood and he snarled like a rabid dog in anger. He didn’t think about what he was doing, but then he’s famed throughout Vegita-sei for being a brutish moron, even by Saiyan standards. He stepped forward, and pressed me back against the sideboard table, gripping me by the shoulders, lifting me in the air in preparation to smash me against the wall. The instant he touched me I froze absolute terror, the sudden vivid memory of Karot-chan and Raditz’ deaths tearing through my mind’s eye---just as Vegita walked through the swinging doors of the kitchen.

It was like a scene in a movie. He froze, his face going livid, Nappa’s going pale as chalk. Then he tossed the bigger man out the open window of the kitchen and beat the living hell out of him. While I watched. He even "comforted" me afterwards, with a brusque, "No one may touch what is mine!" and a quick nip of my lip before he went outside to kick Nappa back to consciousness.

"He will not kill him for you," Caddi told me from the pantry door quietly.

"He might," I said. "In time."

She moved to stand beside me as I looked out the window to where Vegita was now bending over the big man. "Watch," she said.

I watched. Slowly, Vegita bent down and pulled Nappa to a wobbly sitting position. "Old fool," he said, without any anger in his voice.

The big man chuckled and spat out a mouthful of blood. He touched the side of his face where my nails had raked him and shook his head in amusement. "I ask your pardon, my Prince. She flew at me with those little claws bared and I lost my temper."

"It is well," Vegita snickered. "She is broken, but only enough to obey…barely. You taught me long ago that a bed slave should be completely broken, but I’ve found that a bit of will and spirit make for more interesting bed play." He reached down and took the big man’s hand, pulling him to his feet. "Come, Sensei. My father awaits us."

They launched into the sky, and a gust of the force of their leaving ruffled my hair.

"Nappa was his caregiver from the day of his birth," Caddi shook her head. "He will beat him senseless, beat him to the point of death in a rage, but he will never kill Nappa. As much as their kind are capable of caring for one another, he loves the great brute."

That sounded true, I thought. It felt true, after hearing Vegita’s voice when he spoke to Nappa, after seeing how he had checked himself just before delivering the killing blow. That’s fine with me. I don’t want anyone else to kill Nappa but me.

But it was good to see him beaten. And it will be good to see Vegita’s face when I’ve killed Nappa. He’s never lost anyone he loves, I think. I imagine that short list includes only Nappa and his father. If I had my wish, wished on a set of dark, vengeful dragonballs, I would wish for the Prince of Vegita-sei to suffer everything he’s made me suffer before he dies.

Forgive me, Kami. Forgive me, Kai or Kais. I don’t have the strength or serenity to stop hating him, and I doubt I ever will.

 

 

 

 

I found out why Nappa came to the villa to summon Vegita so urgently a few days ago. Tubol-sei is---was---a base world for the Red Demons. A Saiyan strike force fell on it with everything they had. And they found nothing, but an abandoned pre-fab city and a few garbage compactors. They were warned by someone on the Saiyan troop carrier itself---one of the Madrani engine techs. All the crew was summarily executed, but the base…the base had less than two hours warning and managed to evac completely. Guess how? Capsules are your friends, Jeiyce! He’s apparently putting them to the best use possible, and I feel…Gods, I feel so happy. As though I saved all those people’s lives myself. Which, in a way, I did.

Is this the reason for all the hell I’ve suffered? The grander plan? I keep looking for some kind of reason, something to give this last year of my life meaning. Because if there’s no meaning to what I’ve been through, if I thought that---

I can’t think that.

I won’t.

 

 

 

It’s getting warmer, a little more so every day. It’s still icy cold at night, but the midday sun felt good on my face. And I found something yesterday that had not been there before. Early spring blossoms, a dozen different kinds of indigenous flowers, that unfold in the heat of the day and curl up into protective blooms as the afternoon grows colder. Pink and baby blue and deep violet, they were carpeting the hills around me in color.

I ran back to the villa and brought a spade and a few of Caddi’s clay bread pots. I spent the entire day moving the stone tiles of the deck behind the house and replanting the wildflowers into a garden. It’s small, but it can grow. It smelled like home, like Momma and her garden, and the rich, soft soil under my fingers felt like green growing things. I was so absorbed in my work, I didn’t hear him come home. He stood in the back doorway of the hearthroom that led to my new garden watching me for a long time before he spoke.

"You are filthy," he said softly.

I glanced up, startled, almost not recognizing the sound of his voice. It was so gentle. I eyed him warily from behind my sweet doll-smile of welcome, wondering how he was going to react to my little project. He knelt and cupped my face in one hand with an odd half-grin. "I could scent spring coming in the air today. But you went out and brought it to me…So beautiful." I don’t know if he meant the flowers or me. He brushed a smudge of dirt off my nose…then he frowned, looking puzzled. He seemed almost confused, as if he were trying to sort out a taste or touch he’d never experienced and had no name for. And I suddenly knew, knew, he was trying to define the tender feeling that must have inspired that gentle gesture.

Kami, how pitiful.

He’s beginning to care for me and doesn’t even understand what he’s feeling.

"Come to bath and bed, little mud flower," he said then, and lifted me like a child, carrying me to the bathing room. He bathed me and dried me off and lay me down on the bed. Then he had me, slowly and gently, just once, before nodding off, still inside me. I lay with him in my arms, his head cradled on my breast, feeling stunned.

You could be running him in a few months time, I heard Batha’s voice saying again.

I have been pushing the limits of what I can get him to do, of what I can manipulate him into doing, but…running him isn’t enough. And it’s not the limit of what I can accomplish here. I can make him love me. I never believed that until last night. I never thought it was possible for him to care for anyone other than himself.

I’m going to work very hard to be the most pleasing, perfect, precious thing in his life. I want him to love me. That one chink in his armor last night made me sure it is possible.

I will make him love me. Then Kami have mercy on him. Because I won’t have any.

 

 

 

 

The text file scrolled to an end. Vegita stood unsteadily and moved to the disposal incinerator. He doubled over, emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the bin. How long he had been reading, he was not sure. He was vaguely aware that Coran had come once or twice to tap respectfully on the door.

He had not answered.

"I will hear it all, beloved…I will not turn away."

He lay back on his bunk and set the audio file to play out to the end.

 

 

Hi! This is me, talking again. It nearly wasn’t. He decided about a week ago that he wanted to discontinue the Silencing. The first thing out of my mouth to him---or very nearly the first thing---nearly got me Silenced again. But even that was encouraging in a way. The reason he was so angry is because I made him feel…not guilty, but something distantly related to it. He has a low tolerance for hearing anything that makes him feel the least bit uncomfortable about himself or his actions. He ended up hurting me pretty badly, but I didn’t let him see it. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of making me cry out or even wince. I was the one who made him scream in the end. Several times, in fact. I did what I had never done before, pulled put all the stops and showed him, much to his surprise, that I knew a great deal more about how to work a man’s body than he ever imagined.

I enjoyed it---making him cry out like that when he came. I imagined I was really hurting him, making him shriek in pain instead of pleasure…and the second that fantasy hit my mind, I started to come explosively, the most intense orgasm of my life.

I’m…Kami help me, I think I’m going mad. I could have taken anything else but this. I’m…I’m starting to crave him. To want him. And all he had to do was stop hurting me and go a little slower…How can that be possible?

Of all the things he’s done to me, this is the one that may make me lose my marbles for real. There’s a dark place in the human mind, I think…where, when hate becomes a passion as intense as the hatred I feel for him, it distills into pure passion. And in that black, unnamable pool in the darkest part of the heart, the line between pleasure and pain is razor thin.

It’s also the only way I can take any power, any control, with him. I…

Kami, if I live through this, will I end up sexually twisted for life? End up some kind of power-obsessed, dominatrix freak?

I always loved making love.

But this isn’t making love. It’s a war against an enemy, waged with the only weapons at my disposal.

Batha told me her boss will meet with me as soon as my Ki-gun is complete. I am living in hope every day, breathing in and out in anticipation of being free. They can’t refuse my request to be taken off Vegita-sei! I’ve proven myself too valuable, especially after Tubol-sei. The Ki-gun will be ready in a week. I told Batha to set up a meeting with our cell leader in eight days.

So, maybe my next entry will be from a ship, or maybe from a rebel base. I don’t give a damn. Anywhere will be paradise if I’m free.

But before I go, I want to test my prototype out on a pre-chosen test subject.

I want to kill Nappa myself. The Network can’t deny me that either. I’ve given them technology that can is going to tip the balance of the coming war if they use it well. I want to be paid back in blood. Nappa’s blood.

Even after almost an entire year as the Saiyan no Ouji’s plaything, I’d still rather break Nappa’s little finger than kill Vegita ten times over.

 

 

 

I met our Red Network cell leader today. His name is Zarbon of Rashia-sei. He came to the villa with Caddi, this huge, greenish hulking reptilian man, dressed in the uniform of a maintenance s. His cover was that Caddi needed him to repair the plumbing (which Batha had sabotaged late last night). Vegita threw a verbal tantrum when the bath water sputtered and died this morning and told Caddi to get whoever she needed to fix it today. We sat in the bathing room and talked while he began to undo Batha's damage to the pipes.

"You are the Zarbon who was Vegita's personal chef before...before my time," I said.

The big serpentine face grinned toothily. "Scopa would have told you about me." The greenish tint of his cheeks deepened slightly. I suddenly got the feeling that he and Scopa were a little more than friends who had worked in the same household. "I think," he went on, "Vegita-ouji thought I might find you tempting if I remained in his household." He laughed out loud at my queasy diplomatic smile. Then...he seemed to blur, and he morphed without any warning into a different form. Blue skin, emerald green hair, humanoid male model's features---he was gorgeous. "Or perhaps," he said with a wicked grin, "he thought you might find me tempting." He watched my face redden slowly, then sobered and shook his head. "Rashia-jin have two forms. I rarely use this one, because Saiyans tend toward the irrational prejudice that a man this pretty must be up to no good. So...I bring to you the personal thanks of Jeiyce of Maiyosh, Lady. Your capsules saved the entire base on Tubol. I imagine you know that already. We are still testing and producing the invisibility shield. It doubles as a scouter shield, the techs tell me. Our engineers looked at your initial notes and swore up and down it was impossible. Then, they all went into a collective fit when they began to study the actual designs."

I handed him the data disc of the completed plans for the Ki-gun. "I have some requests."

"I'm sure," he said solemnly. "I've been given authority to grant you supplies and materials. Anything you wish, in fact. So long as you do not ask for the life of Vegita-ouji. Yet."

"I want Nappa," I said softly.

He was silent, regarding me with quiet understanding. "I know you do. I will promise you his head. My word of honor as a soldier in the service of the Red Prince."

I nodded warily and gave him a wish list of supplies. Then I asked the question. The one that had kept me living inside a false haze of hope for...for weeks. "You said anything. I want you to take myself, the twins, Scopa and a man named Hiru of Ansou-sei off world. To one of the Red Prince's bases. Even one of the technologies I've given the rebels should make me valuable enough to be considered worth moving." I held my breath, my heart frozen in my chest. If he said yes, I would be a free woman, perhaps as soon as this afternoon.

"It can be done," he said slowly. "I can get all of you off world tonight, if you wish. But...Bulma-san, there will be consequences. Have you considered what the Prince will do when he finds you gone?"

"I..." I saw what he meant. "He'll go mad when he finds me gone. He'll tear the slave quarter in the Capital apart looking for me, kill dozens, maybe hundreds of people. He'll..." I made a soft little sound of despair, feeling the walls closing in around me, feeling all my hope slide away like sand through my fingers. "I'll never get away from him...never."

"You will!" He said emphatically. I was a little startled when he reached out impulsively and took my hand, but I grasped his hand firmly in mine when he began to withdraw in horror at what he had just done.

"I’m not so damaged I can’t bear to be touched," I told him.

"No, you’re not," he agreed quietly. "Most women I have know in your situation…either crumble inside and die or become hard and lose the ability to feel anything but hate." He cut his eyes behind us involuntarily, back to where Batha stood guard in the front doorway, watching to warn us if Vegita came home.

"You’re still alive," Zarbon said. "Still warm and kind-hearted, I’ve been told."

Told by Scopa? I wondered with an internal smile. "Bulma-san," he said formally,

"I know we do not know each other, but we have a common purpose. I have, over the course of my life, lost as much as you, suffered as greatly. I ask you to trust me without question for a few more months. There is much I can’t tell you, but I will tell you this---before the end of this summer, things will begin to happen very quickly. Everything will change."

I swallowed hard, fighting down tears of disappointment, forcing down an irrational rage at him because he would leave me after this conversation and go wherever he wished. Leaving me in the hands of Vegita as a reward for the gifts I had given his cause.

No…our cause.

I just nodded dully and accepted what he told me as truth. What else could I do? I mumbled a farewell and ran from the bathing room, blind with the tears streaming down my face. I understand the logic of his words. I understand the practical necessity. But, oh gods…

I won’t survive another five months of this, of him, with my sanity intact.

 

 

 

It’s been a couple of days. I started work on something new conceptually. Right now, I’m just doing some preliminary research on Vegita’s uplink to the Royal Library in the little study on the south end of the villa. I’ve sort of made the room my own. I doubt he’s ever read a book cover to cover in his life and I don’t think he even knows it’s here.

Things on the bedroom front are a lot less hellish than they have been. They nobility has gotten over their collective anger at him for Radtiz’ murder, and in turn, he has become a lot easier to manage. I’m learning to manage him rather well, actually. He responds to flattery and affection like a little boy. He says I’m a ‘foolish little weakling’ for half the things I come up with to please and mollify him, but when I ask for something in a winsome, wistful fashion---saying things like "It would be so wonderful if…" or "I wish it were possible to have…", he gets it for me. He even asked me what I needed to build up the garden behind the villa. Everything I asked for was delivered the next day.

I tried a more advanced field test last night. I made him get out of bed and get me a glass of water. He did it before he realized what he was doing, then stood there, frowning at me suspiciously as I drank the water down. He’s not stupid. I have to remember that. He’s actually very intelligent for a Saiyan, maybe even brighter than Bardock. He just rarely stops to think about what he’s doing until after it’s done. I smiled up at him coquettishly after I finished my water, retreating to the defensive position of innocent sweetness. He smirked as he crawled into bed.

"Demanding wench," he chuckled softly in my ear.

It’s a lot easier to be with him, to simply live in the same house with him, now that his overall mood has improved. But it’s also been better since that day he found me building my garden. He seems to be taking more care not to hurt me, to use me more gently. I catch him looking at me from time to time with that same confused look. I can see him trying to work out just what it is he’s feeling for me. He still won’t talk to me, not about anything important that might be useful to the Network. I’ve been through all his personal effects, but he keeps absolutely nothing here relating to royal policy or official secrets. I’m starting to think that he may not be privy to anything the Network could use. Either he’s not interested in what goes on in Council every morning, or his father knows what a loose cannon he is and doesn’t tell him squat.

No word yet from Zarbon on how fast the secret factories are building my machines. There should be no snags. I gave them detailed instructions that a child could follow. For the moment, I’m on hold. But I can almost feel the tension in the air. Some kind of enormous storm is about to break. Before the end of the summer, Zarbon said. It’s the full bloom of spring now. Maybe…maybe by fall, I’ll be free.

I hope.

 

 

 

I woke yesterday with an odd tense kink in the back of my neck. No injuries.

That’s getting to be the rule rather than the exception, these days. The last time he hurt me was a week ago. He cracked one of my ribs while he was asleep. The arm he was holding me with just contracted while he was dreaming and ‘pop’.

I bathed, ate, took my walk, and tended my wild flower garden before spending the rest of the day in the study. All day I felt so strange, so awful. Sick and sluggish, my muscles cramping up, jumping at the slightest noise. I tried to get some work done, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept slipping away into this daydream of nothingness, shaking myself to find it was an hour later. The smell of food cooking finally drew me out of the study. It was late in the afternoon.

There were flowers on the crystalline dining table. There was food piled up, and a selection of wine. Like a celebration of some special---

I sat down at the table, staring at the flowers. Like an anniversary celebration.

It was one year today. One year since my son was murdered. One year since Raditz was murdered. One year since I became the bed slave of the Saiyan no Ouji. My body had remembered, had been grieving all day, even though my mind had forgotten. How did I forget? How could I?

My baby, I thought. My beautiful, sweet, perfect baby. I’m so sorry I killed you.

I sank beneath the surface of the world around me and stopped thinking, stopped seeing, stopped remembering, stopped hurting…stopped kicking to stay afloat and just allowed the dark, cool water beneath me to take me down into nothingness.

I woke to the sight of Vegita’s face, pale and frightened. He must have been trying to wake me for some time. "I almost lost myself again," I mumbled.

He lifted me and…and we were out the window and into the sky before I realized what was happening. Up and up, above the clouds, above everything, on the fiery orange tops of the clouds. The west was ringed in a brilliant halo of the sun sinking below the rim of the world. He crossed his legs and sat, setting me in his lap, my head against his chest. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I couldn’t. I think I told him that it was beautiful and he grunted some kind of response. After a long time, I turned to face him. He had the strangest look on his face. Or maybe it just looked strange on him. He wasn’t frowning or angry, the body against mine was relaxed, not tense.

"Was it my fault?" I asked him. "Was it my fault you wanted me so badly? If I hadn’t reacted to you, would Raditz still be alive? Would my b-b-baby?"

The peaceful expression slid off his face and he looked…I can’t describe it.

Horrified, maybe. I think…I think for one, tiny second he had some distant, fleeting sense of what he’s done to me. Of all he’s done to me. Then, he frowned, visibly pushing that thought away, and seemed to consider the question seriously.

Then, he shook his head. "I think," he said softly at last. "Having laid eyes on you once, I would have burned half the galaxy to have you."

I began to wail. I think I cried until I passed out, or something close to it. Oh gods…oh gods, I know he meant what he said. He is many, many things, almost all of them horrible, but he couldn’t tell a convincing lie to save his life.

It wasn’t my fault.

It’s not my fault.

It’s not my fault.

I fell asleep in his arms, there on top of the clouds. He took me back, and didn’t wake me. Didn’t use me at all last night. He just lay me down beside him and went to sleep himself. I never would have expected to receive absolution or mercy at the hands of my enemy. It’s a jarring inversion of my world to realize that the greatest evil in my life is just a man. An evil man…with tiny, almost infinitesimal sparks of goodness here and there.

 

 

 

 

I woke up today feeling good. The sun through the slatted windows was warm. Scopa tapped lightly on the bedroom door and came in to give me my morning exam. Once he determined nothing was broken or even bruised, he took my hand and pulled me out through the hearthroom and into the garden. I stopped, breathless at what I found there.

I turned to him when I was able to sleep again. "How?---"

"I know what day yesterday was," he said in his soft voice. "I…a few weeks ago, I took my flyer down to Turrasht. I went to your…"

"My house," I said, my eyes beginning to sting.

"The estate was abandoned," he said. "No one has been there since…since you left. Some of the blooms had survived the winter. Most did not, but the roots were still viable to be cloned. I brought back a bit of every sort of flower I could find and grew them in the conservatory greenhouse at Med Center and---and ---" He broke off as I began to cry in earnest, throwing my arms around him, kissing his cheek. "Are---are you pleased?"

"Thank you!" I said, smiling through tears. "Thank you so much!"

He had grown potted copies if everything in my garden---Bearded purple and yellow flag irises, white and deep purple petunias, pansies, red oriental poppies, blue forget-me-nots, soft pink sweet william…and roses. Momma’s roses, pale ivory, gold, baby pink and blood red.

I spent all day working with the stone tiles, clay urns and pre-cut blackwood lumber Vegita had ordered for me last week. I built stone circles, trailing flower umbrella stands and a couple of benches. Tomorrow I’ll use the rest of the blackwood to build a rose trellis.

The one dark speck on the whole day was when Batha called me in for an early supper, her face pinched and disapproving. Whether she disapproved of my garden or the smile on my face, I don’t know. I wonder if I make her sick and angry simply because I’m not deadened to any sort of joy, like she is. I know both the twins think I have it easy compared to the things they’ve lived through.

I don’t have it easy.

But it’s easier that it was.

It wasn’t my fault. The instant he saw me, he "would have burned half the galaxy to have me", he said. And now that I know that, I can live again.

 

 

 

Vegita came home today, excited as a little boy. He grabbed me and lifted off the floor, swinging me around in his arms. "Today is a glad day, woman!" He almost sang. "Tonight my father sends me to face Jeiyce of Maiyosh, the Red Prince! We will take him in his hiding place and I will face him in battle!"

"It will be a glorious victory for you, Ouji-sama," I said sweetly, so excited myself, I could barely speak. He stopped spinning in the air and frowned slightly at the loving smile plastered on my face.

"When I return," he said softly, after watching me thoughtfully for a moment. "I will give you a gift of your choosing. Tell me, woman. What do you truly want? The truth."

"I want only to please you, my---" He put one finger over my lips, his frown deepening.

"Speak to me," he said solemnly, "as Bulma of Chikyuu, not as a slave in my household. Tell me truly. What do you want?"

Gods, what lousy timing for him to develop a taste for the truth! "The truth?" I said hesitantly. "The…the real truth?" I began to have to fight not to squirm in his arms, not to tremble against him in anger. You don’t get to see the real me, you fucker! I thought. You’re not allowed! But…I could tell him just enough of the truth that he wouldn’t smell the lies.

"A few years ago, during my first year on Vegita-sei," I said quietly, "I would have asked you for the head of Bardock on a silver platter. He purged my homeworld, and killed Son-Kun…his own son. Like he was putting a lame colt to sleep."

"That I would give you with great joy, woman," Vegita said, drifting back down to the floor with me. He sat in the great armchair before the window that looked down on the Capital, positioning me in his lap. The warm breeze tugged at my hair, ruffling it lightly. "But you no longer desire that?"

I smiled, turning my face away his, and gave him the pat, simplified explanation of why I hated Bardock, why he was better off alive. He would never understand how complex my feelings for the man really are.

"Cruel woman," he murmured softly, grinning. "So, then…" Vegita said, watching my face closely. "If not Bardock, what?"

"I guess a fast ship and my freedom is out of the question, huh?" I said before I thought better of it. And, thank Kami, he barely reacted at all. "I'm sorry, my prince…I---" He put his hand over my mouth again, speaking gently.

"Do not be. I commanded you to tell me the truth. But I will not lose you. Anything else is yours for the asking."

Anything? I thought coldly.

"Even if I ask you to kill Nappa for me?" I whispered. The hand he had been tracing my face with froze. I watched him, smiling a bit, enjoying this unexpected bit of power over his emotions. "He's your squad lieutenant now, and your aid. But he used to be your governess, didn't he?"

"Governess?"

"Your care-taker when you were a baby."

"Yes…Woman---"

"It's okay," I said softly, before this strange mood left him and he figured out I was deliberately screwing with his head. "I won't ask you for that either. I wouldn't want anyone in the galaxy to kill him except me." His body tensed against mine in real anger now. "So…" I said thoughtfully. "…let me think of a present that doesn't involve anyone killing anyone else. Can I have time to think about it, or do I have to decide right now?"

He considered. "Tell me when I return from Shikaji."

He carried me to bed and used me only once, quick and rough, before he rose and planted once last, nipping kiss on my lips. "I must go see to preparing the strike troops."

"I want to listen to the battle," I told him softly.

He grinned openly. The idea of showing off to me seemed to please him to no end. "Tomorrow at this hour, tune the hyper wave comm in my study to Imperial quadrant 27, channel 134 of the Shikaji trade communications array. You will hear all the transmissions from the strike fleet to Imperial High Command during the battle."

"I’ll be listening," I said with a real, honest smile.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I crawled painfully out of bed and limped to the kitchens. I told the twins everything, that Shikaji was probably the target.

Batha took off like a shot to get word to Zarbon, while Caddi helped me with the bone sauter Scopa had given me and taught me to use a few weeks ago. He doesn’t hurt me the way he used to, hardly ever in fact, but he was really excited and cracked a rib just from holding me too tightly. I lay down, waiting for the residual pain of the re-fused bone to recede, and we waited. I doubt I’ll sleep a wink tonight.

 

 

 

Too much has happened! Oh gods! Batha came back after midnight, with a wide predatory smirk on her face. "The Red Prince will give the Saiyan no Ouji a warm welcome when he arrives on Shikaji."

The three of us pulled a bottle of Vegita’s goldberry wine out of the cellar and toasted his painful, maiming defeat. Scopa came back to the villa unusually late and found the three of us laughing tipsily in the kitchen. Batha was smiling most of the night, something I’d never seen her do.

"This is the beginning of the end for them, Zarbon told me," she said, turning to me with a muzzy frown. "I have not been the friend to you I should have, Bulma. I…I should not have doubted your loyalty or said such awful things to you as I have."

All day long, we waited. We turned on the hyper light comm and programmed it to the proper channel early in the afternoon. We listened to the battle begin, listened to how the Saiyans slowly began to realize that the world had been almost completely evacuated before they arrived---with a great deal of help from my capsules, thank you. The battle seemed to be quickly turning to a rout, and the last evac ships jumped to hyper light speed, cloaked in my camo-shields, while the crews of the troop carriers sat oblivious. And the Saiyans, or more precisely their Prince, didn’t even realize it was happening. Then, the word came, one unknown warrior’s voice screaming through the comm of his scouter.

"The Prince! He is fighting the Red Prince! They are---" Two agonizing minutes of blurred static, and--- "He is down! The Prince is down! I cannot see him through the flames! He---!"

Then, nothing. Nothing for six, long hours, while I waited, while I prayed to the gods of justice and vengeance that he was deaddeaddead!

"We have him, Sire!" came a man’s harsh voice finally, crackling through the hyper light link. "He lives…he…Ou-sama, it is bad!"

The link we were on didn’t let us hear the royal reply.

Let him die. God of gods, let him die. Let me be free of him.

 

 

 

 

It’s three days later. He’s been hovering between life and death for two of those days. The palace physicians gave the King no hope. He called in Scopa. I don’t know how he knew of Scopa or why he asked for him, but…Scopa saved him, when all the others said he was a lost case. My best friend saved my enemy, so he could come back to me and be my master. And keep me as his slave and his whore.

No! I won’t be angry at Scopa for his unconditional decency and goodness! For his complete inability to hate. I’ll be humbled by this quality in my friend…and I’ll try to wish my heart were as generous. Even though it never will be. I can’t write any more tonight. I slept in Scopa’s room, like I have every night since Vegita left and was injured. It’s good not to sleep in that bed or that room. I’ll have to bathe with scented soap and burn these clothes. If I smell like Scopa when Vegita comes back, gay or not, Vegita will kill him.

 

 

 

 

I met the King of Vegita-sei today.

They brought Vegita back, still half dead with pneumonia and shock, to recover in his own bed. Scopa hovered over him as the med techs carried him in and moved him onto the bed, checking this and that, his face tense and focused on his patient. I watched from the corner of the bedroom, staring at Vegita’s still, pale face, so intent on him I didn’t notice the man who had stopped beside me, until he spoke.

"You are sure that taking him from Med Center is not dangerous at all?" His voice was deep, harsh and more than a little threatening.

"He is out of danger, Ou-sama," Scopa said softly.

"You will have your freedom for this, fellow," the King rumbled. "The palace medics on my payroll gave him up for lost. Report to me his condition every three hours. I will be in War Council if there are any changes." He was bigger than Vegita, brawnier. But the resemblance was striking. He seemed to sense me studying him and turned sharply.

He stared at me silently, and…gods, I felt like I was under a microscope. As though those cold, black, accessing eyes could see through my skull and read my thoughts, to see that this was my doing. That I was responsible for his son’s injuries and the loss of so many warriors on Shikaji. He reached out a hard hand and I trembled slightly as he tilted my chin up, studying my face. Then…then he grinned, like a wolf about to feast on a caribou foal. "Now, I see what all the fuss was about."

What a dangerous, dangerous man.

I understand now what Batha meant about killing the father and leaving the hot-headed son on the throne.

 

 

 

It’s been a day since Vegita came home. He woke for a few minutes today, and smiled when he saw my face leaning over him. Scopa hasn’t slept since they called him in to perform surgery on Vegita. He doesn’t trust me to leave me alone with his patient. He thinks I’ll do Vegita a mischief while he’s helpless. Heh. I might, actually. But…no, not while he’s helpless. It’s not right to kill anyone, anyone, while they’re laid out flat on their back, unable to move. But it is rather nice to set and watch him lying there hurt. When I kill Vegita, I want him wide awake and whole.

The King gave Scopa his freedom for saving Vegita’s life. I’m trying very hard not to be jealous. Not to be angry at him for gaining his freedom by ensuring my enslavement.

Vegita woke for a few moments this morning, and sent Scopa out so he could talk to me. He asked me…gods. He asked me what he could do to make me love him.

I was so completely stunned by the question I didn’t know how to respond. I gave him some sort of twisting mix of lies and truth as an answer. Maybe I gave him a lot more truth than I meant to. He keeps telling me to speak the truth. The real truth. I told him…I told him I want him. Kami…Kami…it’s true. I crave him, that nightly battle where I take him and wrap inside the power I have over him, take his mind away and make him cry out as though I’d shoved a knife into his chest. I don’t know if the sex has become so hot and overwhelming for me because the emotions I have for him---the hate beyond hate---are so strong. Whether the emotions are positive or negative, the state of arousal so much feeling creates in me makes for…for this blistering passion that seems to be growing inside me as time goes on. I told him…I told him that making me want him the way I do is the worst thing he’s done to me. He swallowed hard at that, seeming to almost understand how bad that might be.

Then, I lied through my teeth. I told him it might be possible---that one day I might love him.

I left him with the implication that if that’s what he wants from me, he’s going to have to figure out how to be good to me, to stop hurting me altogether. If he takes it to heart, I may have made the rest of my time with him, however long it is, a lot more comfortable.

 

 

I decided what I want as my present. I told him today when he staggered out of bed and nearly passed out in the hearthroom. I want to apprentice under Scopa at Med Center. To learn medicine. Partly to get out of the damned house every day.

Partly to still be able to see Scopa since Vegita put him out of the household after his father freed him. And partly so I can have access to the medical equipment and privacy of Med Center, where I can build this new project I want to begin without Batha or Caddi looking over my shoulder. Also, so I can have direct access to Zarbon without going through the twins. Zarbon is a palace instructor chef who travels around Vegita-sei teaching apprentice culinary slaves how to cook. When he comes to the Capital, he always goes to Med Center. More specifically, to Scopa.

I asked Vegita for this as my ‘present’, and he agreed.

I was right.

He’s going to try to ‘be nice to me’ now, to make me love him. Gods, how can a man with a bright mind be such a fool? How can he think, after everything that he’s done in the last year, that I would ever feel anything but hate for him?

How can he not understand that?

 

 

 

I guess you could say that my first day at Med Center was eventful.

I flew with Scopa in his flyer over the green hills that separate the villa from the Capital, and for the first time, into the heart of the city. Scopa grinned when he saw the look on my face.

"Big, isn't it?" He said.

Med Center is on the southern edge of the Capital, nested in its own little range of rolling ridges. It's a giant half shell domed structure, white and pristine, like all medical facilities seem to be everywhere.

We landed and I followed Scopa through the labyrinth of halls and doorways to the surgery unit. And stopped behind him, gazing around as all the people in the meeting hall suddenly went dead silent, staring. Staring at me. I instinctively straightened my shoulders and held my head a little higher as I suddenly realized not all of the looks being directed my way were friendly.

"I know there's been some restructuring of departments as of this morning," Scopa said with a kind of quiet authority he'd used when the bearers had carried Vegita into the villa after his surgery. "But I've rearranged scheduled half days off and mealtimes so this will be a bit less of an inconvenience to everyone. Department head meetings will be in one hour. We'll sort the last of the kinks out then."

He turned to me. "I'm going to give you a guerrilla orientation of the complex, then turn you over to Nachti, one of my surgeons, for a couple of hours. She'll run you through you're syllabus of med texts and acquaint you with your hands on duties for the first few weeks."

I realized after he left me with Nachti, who gave me a polite but cool greeting, that something was very wrong. The medics seemed to be taking one of two tacts as they were introduced to me---nervous fear or poorly hidden animosity. After the third or forth such uncomfortable introduction, I finally asked Nachti point blank.

"Is there a reason I seem to be persona non grata?"

She stared at me blankly for a moment or two, then her golden Madrani face softened marginally. "The Prince commanded a departmental restructure of the surgical unit yesterday. It throws every other department's staffing off to take up the slack, and removes surgeons and med techs who were posted at Med Center to the Palace staff---my son included. He was only fourteen." She gave me a brittle smile. "The Prince had done this so that Scopa-san's closest staff will be comprised of females, non-hetero oriented males, and beings of genderless species."

I began to feel sick. "Because of me," I said unnecessarily.

"Because of you," she agreed, frowning tensely. "I know that none of this is your doing. I know---everyone knows---your story, Bulma of Chikyuu. But...it is a hard thing to see a spouse or child posted in another part of the Capital with no warning. And because of that I, and many other members of the medical staff, are less than pleased to have you join us. Also..." She paused, eyeing me. "There will be those who will fear you simply because of the power you wield as a royal mistress. A word from you in the Prince's ear would mean their death if they offend you."

"Power," I said softly, bitterly. "I would give anything to be free of that 'power'. I would trade places with anyone here in a heartbeat."

"I believe you," she said, a little more kindly, the muscles in her face working. "I have treated many, many pleasure slaves in my time. I have no illusions as to---" She shook her head. "Give everyone a bit of time, myself included. We are all slaves together, and they will see that you are the same soon."

I nodded and we passed the rest of the orientation session in relative ease, if not comfort. As she guided me through every nook and cranny of Med Center, making a winding path back to meet up with Scopa, I stopped at the supply loading dock, staring at a man who seemed to be moving in slow motion as he methodically geared down his freight flyer, while the porter slaves stood ready to unload his cargo. I watched him climb out of the flyer and turn slowly, saw him freeze as his eyes fell on me.

Then he came to me hesitantly, and I closed the distance between us, embracing him in a storm of tears. I looked up into his scarred, blank, ivory face, his huge black eyes that seemed to carry as much grief and loss as mine when I looked in the mirror.

"Hiru!" I sobbed.

His arms went around me slowly, as though he were sleep walking, then he pushed me back. "I am---Bulma, oh gods, I am s--s--sorry! I---"

"Shhh!" I said softly, touching the mass of scar tissue on his disfigured face, seeing now how he walking with a limp, how his arm was twisted at an odd angle. Kami, what must Nappa have done to him to make him talk? But he hadn't talked, had he? "I don't blame you for anything," I whispered. "We both know who is to blame."

"I am glad you survived," he whispered, cutting his eyes back to where Nachti stood, making sure she had withdrawn far enough from our reunion not to be able to hear his next words. "And...I am glad that you have joined the fight. The Network. We will avenge our children and spouses, Bulma."

"Yes," I said fiercely. "We will."

It made me feel strange when he left, promising to meet me and really talk tomorrow. Zarbon must have approached him and recruited him, and I’m sure he was more than eager, but... It's starting to seem to me that the Network preys on those who have been hurt the most, gives them purpose, a reason to live when they have nothing left to live for---but, there's a calculation in it, a knowing that such people are vulnerable to manipulation and can be easily honed into suicidally loyal weapons for the cause.

I spent he rest of the day, shadowing Scopa as he explained this and that, learning to use some of the more rudimentary med technology. I began to get a little frustrated by the middle of the day, realizing that the curriculum Scopa had planned for me was far too unexcellerated and that I would die of boredom in a couple of days if I went at this pace. I speed read the first of my texts during lunch hour and gave it back to Scopa, asking him to drill me on it. He did. After about an hour of asking me more and more in depth questions on that first text, he sat me down and gave me a pile of data discs.

"Photographic memory and total comprehension of the material," he said with a little grin. "I feel as though I've insulted you. I should have known better than to put you on the normal apprenticeship track. A change, then---your spend the first half of each day reading everything I give you, and the second half shadowing my rounds for hands on learning. Tell me when you finish each text and I'll give you oral comp exams on it at the end of every day." He laughed softly. "At the rate you'll learn, I may be taking orders from you in a year."

Near the end of the day, I followed the sound of hushed conversation from the garden conservatory where Scopa had left me studying, which is a green jungle of plants from a hundred different worlds. What seemed like the entire staff of the complex was gathering at the exit by the emergency landing pads, looking up at the high, spired peek on the mountain on the western edge of the city, Cho-tal. Smoke plumes were funneling up from a ceremonial pyre and the sky was full of warriors, hovering in the air in receding rings around the burning body on the flat apex of the peek.

"What's happening?" I asked someone.

"The King is in attendance at the funeral," a man in front of me said, not looking down from where his eyes were fixed on the sky. "The Prince himself lit the pyre. It's not something you see every day." He dropped his voice and added almost under his breath. "And it is a cause for celebration to many. Lord Nappa was hated and feared, even among his own people."

I stared at him, not registering the words for a moment or two, the world going gray around me. "Lord Nappa is dead?"

"Praise to the goddess that he is dead," a Madrani woman beside me said softly.

I walked through the corridors to Scopa's offices and asked him in a blank, expressionless voice if I was done for the day. He seemed preoccupied, and I came out of my shock just enough to lay one hand on his shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "Zarbon has...dropped out of sight again. One office of the palace admin thinks he's in Subosh city to the west and the offices in Subosh think he's been detained in the Capital for a few days. Which means he’s doing something very, very dangerous...again. I don't ask questions, but I have a pretty good idea of what he's involved in, and..." He sighed heavily. "I worry all the time I will receive word one day that he has been taken by Imperial Intelligence or killed outright." He seemed to shake himself, then looked up at me and smiled ruefully. "He'll turn up. He always does. Go home and rest before the Prince arrives this evening. You have made a wonderful start here today."

I went back to the villa, taking the little flyer Scopa had requisitioned for me, and found the house empty. I didn't wonder were the twins were. I think it really hit me then, that Nappa was dead.

And I started to scream. It was...gods, it was a kind of insane rage, full of all the pain, all the anger, all the hate I had bottled up and swallowed like bile for more than a year...maybe for six years. Ever since the death of Chikyuu. I began to trash the hearthroom, throwing or breaking everything I could get my hands on, and at some point I looked down and saw a huge gout of blood spurting from my wrist from where I'd somehow slammed my hand through the crystalline top of Vegita's ugly, ostentatious dining table. But I couldn't stop screaming and I couldn't stop smashing things. It went on...I guess until I lost so much blood that I began to grow too weak to move around. I ended up collapsing in the window sill, too far gone to even call out or get to a comm to send for help. I sat there, feeling my life pour out of my body with my blood.

Vegita’s face swam into view after a while. I wasn’t sure whether he was real or a hallucination, but I tried to tell him it had been an accident, to beg him not to kill Scopa and the twins. I passed out then and dreamed about Nappa, seeing his giant fist wrapped around my baby’s little body as he crushed his neck and spine, hearing again the way Karot-chan cried out just once, his baby voice full of so full of pain and fear… Her voice wavered into soft sobs, and she did not speak for several minutes. I woke up screaming Karot-chan’s name, and Vegita shook me hard, telling me to shut up. That no amount of wailing would bring back the dead. His words were harsh and cold but his voice broke when he spoke them. His arms were around me, stroking my hair gently…and I realized he was very close to tears himself.

I was right---he’s never lost anyone he gave a damn about and he had no idea what to do with the feelings. He asked me a moment or two later when the pain would stop. He wasn’t talking about my pain…he was asking how long before the pain of losing the man who had raised him would dissipate.

Gods, what a surreal night.

We talked…or I talked and he listened, while I told him about Karot-chan, while I explained how I loved the son so much more than the father…because he was all mine and beautiful and innocent and…He didn’t really understand most of what I told him, but it was good just to talk. He didn’t understand how I could set so much store by someone who couldn’t even talk yet. Saiyans are so frighteningly alien in their ideologies---ideologies that seem so often to go completely against the inborn nature of a people whose emotions run so deep and fierce. Maybe these cruel, unfeeling ways evolved in their culture to shield them from loving so much they died of grief when they lost their mates, their parents, their children, their friends.

I lay all night in the arms of my enemy, taking comfort in the warmth of his body and the silent, solemn way he listened as I told him things I’d never said aloud, never told another person, as I talked about my baby. We lay together, each of us grieving in for a different loss. He loved the monster who killed my baby, I thought distantly. The man who cared for him, who raised him…who made him, more than likely, into the son of a bitch he is today. The conversation between the two men on that day he beat Nappa for touching me came back to me. "You taught me long ago that a bed slave should be completely broken…" Vegita had told him. Gods…every horror in my life can be traced back to Nappa. Even Vegita being the spoiled, vicious bastard that he is.

"Do you hate me as greatly as you did Nappa?" He asked at one point. "Do you dream of killing me still? Tell me truly, woman. I slew Raditz in single combat. My hand did not take the boy's life, but I would have ordered it done just the same, though not before your eyes."

"I would have ordered Nappa's death if I could have," I said carefully. I had no intention of taking his hope of ‘making me love him’ away. "But I didn't. And you would've ordered Karot-chan killed. But you didn't. Might-have-beens aren't the same as deeds done."

"No," he said bluntly. "But the blame is still at my feet, woman."

"Yes, it is," I told him in a cold voice. All the blame, you fucker. A sudden rush of icy hate tore through me and made me throw all caution to the wind and speak plainest truth. "But I wouldn't kill you, Ouji-sama. Ever."

He grinned suddenly, condescendingly. "That is a relief."

I gave him a lengthy, detailed list of all the ways I could kill him, watching his face grow still, feeling his hand tense around my neck.

"You've given this some thought," he said harshly.

"And decided against it," I told him with a wicked smile, trailing my fingers tauntingly down his spine, stopping just about his tail. "When I take revenge on you, I won’t kill you."

"A fate worse than death for me?" He gave me a predatory grin, a low purr beginning to vibrate inside his chest as I dropped my hand a little lower, teasing the base of his tail. "So, how do you plan to torture me, woman?"

I smiled wickedly. "With love. I'm going to make you love me. Real love, Vegita no ouji. Mad and boundless and forever, like the twinned souls of moonbound warriors. I'll make you love me…and when you do, when I'm absolutely sure I have your whole heart, I'll use that love to destroy you."

He laughed out loud. "You have a very elevated opinion of your place in my life, woman."

"Think so?" I kissed him deep and sweet and gripped his tail hard. He growled, his eyes lighting with desire and excitement at the thought of a contest of this sort. "You're half-way there already."

His face froze and then slowly began to turn red with rage…but behind that, I saw a flash of unease. "You…insolent bitch!" He snarled like an angry panther, and his arm tightened angrily, snapping one of my ribs audibly. He raise his hand to belt me…but the blow never fell. He lay frozen above me, his face a mix of confusion and anger and…and dawning horror. He eased his hold on me and poked the fractured bone gingerly.

"Is the tank in Scopa's old surgery still there?" He asked softly. His face had gone dead pale.

"I don’t need a tank for this." I told him. "There's a bone sauter in my wardrobe beside the bed. I can mend it myself. It'll be knitted good as new by the time I go to Med Center." A horrible thought occurred to me. "I can still go to Med Center, can’t I?"

He grunted. "I gave you my word, did I not?"

He watched me silently while I welded the break back together, growing more and more excited as he visibly winced whenever I did. I’ve got you, you bastard! I thought. I don’t know when it happened, maybe it’s been brewing inside him for a while…but he cares for me! No…he loves me! The next step, of course, is to get him to admit it to himself. Then to me. Then…oh Kami, then gods help him!

"It's not that bad." I said softly. "Just a hairline fracture."

"How would you know, woman," he asked irritably, a sympathetic shudder, almost invisible, but there, running through his body as I winced again.

"Vegita…" I said a little coldly. "You've broken my ribs more times than I can count. Just from holding me too tightly. A couple of times while you were asleep. This is the first time you've ever noticed." He swallowed hard, digesting that bit of information…it was something he’d known, but never taken any notice of until now. He looked vaguely nauseous for a moment, and I could see him remembering what it had felt like to be pinned down while Jeiyce crushed his own ribs and drove them like bullets into his lungs.

"It's not as bad as your injuries were," I told him softly.

"Have I ever---?" He stopped the question before he got it out, hissing with fury at himself.

"Never as bad as Jeiyce hurt you," I said.

Then he rebelled against it, against everything he was feeling, and grabbed me hard with a vicious snarl. "Do you think I give a damn about you?! You live and continue to live for my pleasure. You are nothing outside of that! You are my whore until I see fit to have done with you, and nothing more! Nothing more!"

"Which one of us are you trying to convince, Vegita?" I whispered, cold and mocking.

He threw me down, pushing my legs apart "Woman," he growled into my face. "I do not give a damn about you."

But I could see the lie in his eyes, and the fear that this sudden, dawning realization had awakened in him. "Yes, you do." I sneered.

I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deep inside me, and he couldn’t stop. He had to have me, had to obey the raging madness of want I’d lit inside him, but his face was a mask of agony as he battered into me, gasping in empathy each time I cried out as he ground the half-healed bone together with each thrust. He came inside me with a cry that was more pain than pleasure, and knowing that, knowing I’d hurt him in that way, sent me over the edge with him, almost shrieking.

"I will win this game of yours, woman," he said when he could speak again. "I will make you adore me, fawn upon me, give me every piece of yourself that you have held back, until I own you. All of you, body and soul! I will make you---" He

stumbled over the word.

I kissed him softy, smiling up at him. "Love you? You don't know how, Vegita. You can't even make yourself say the word. You don't know how to fight a battle that doesn't involve brute strength and fighting power. I do. You're going to lose this little war, my beautiful Prince. And when you do, you'll be the one who is enslaved."

"We shall see," he said, his eyes gleaming with renewed excitement. I had just declared war, and a Saiyan will always run headlong into any conflict with a song in his heart.

He helped me dress, studying the bruises he put on my body, the inexpressive planes of his features twisting again minutely with dull horror. "My word to you, woman," he said softly. "You will not receive so much as a bruise from my hands hereafter."

 

 

 

 

I went to Med Center this morning. I received a much warmer welcome today than yesterday. Word had gone around the entire complex like wildfire last night. The rumor was that Vegita had brought me in near death after beating me. I’d actually rather have them all think that than know the truth---that I nearly committed accidental suicide in a fit of rage. The result was pretty much the same.

Everyone was kinder and less hostile.

I found Scopa in his offices and went pale when I saw the patient he was treating. Zarbon’s gorgeous blue skin was scorched with angry burns and gashes. Scopa introduced us stiffly, his face pale and angry whenever his eyes met Zarbon’s, and we pretended to exchange first pleasantries. I helped Scopa set his broken forearm in tense silence, until he received a page from the O.R.

"Can you keep him company for a few minutes and give him an infection inoculation, Bulma?"

I nodded, and watched him leave after throwing one last balefully angry glance in his lover’s direction.

"He’s upset with me to put it mildly," Zarbon said ruefully. I stared at him stonily.

"You were at the battle," I said coldly.

He stood and pulled a large, gray, led box out of his duffel beside the patient’s cot. "Yes," he said grimly. "I bring you a gift from my Prince, Bulma. He acquired it especially for you. The first payment for all you have done for the revolution." He opened the lid of the box, and my breath caught when I saw what was inside.

It was Nappa’s head.

"I promised you this," Zarbon said fiercely. "Jeiyce-sama struck the mortal blow, but he and all the other Saiyans who fell on Shikaji are dead because of your warning. Just as all the Maiyosh-jin and other inhabitants of that world are still alive because of you. You have avenged your son, Bulma."

"Close the lid," I said softly.

I began to cry. It didn’t help to know I’d killed Nappa. How could I have thought it would? My baby is dead. Karot-chan is dead and an ocean of vengeance and blood won’t bring him back. Zarbon put his arms around me after an awkward moment and I clung to this man who was a virtual stranger, sobbing so hard I began to have trouble breathing. As the sobs began to taper down, I began to slip away, to lose my sense of what was going on around me.

"…hasn’t done this in a while," Scopa’s voice was saying from far away. I felt a tiny pinch of a hypo on my arm. "Less and less since he stopped hurting her so systematically. But…"

"She seems so frail," Zarbon murmured.

"She’s not," Scopa said softly. "You don’t live through what she’s survived unless you’ve got ardantium in your spine. But…but even ardantium will snap if you put enough pressure on it long enough…"

"She’ll be all right, love," Zarbon said. "I think it’s just…I think she thought Nappa’s death would make her son’s death hurt less."

Scopa made me lie down the rest of the day and study in bed. At the end of the day, I returned to the villa to find the hearthroom lit with candles and a new blackwood dining table set with heaps of food. Vegita greeted me and bowed mockingly.

"Lady," he said, smirking. "Will you dine with me this night?"

So, battle was joined already, was it? One corner of my mouth quirked. "I suppose," I said.

"Lady," he said, moving toward me slowly, his voice dropping to a seductive purr. "Will you share my bed this night?"

I stuck my nose in the air and walked past him to the table. "We’ll see," I sniffed hautily.

 

 

 

 

I’ve been crazy busy for the last few weeks. Vegita’s training like a madman. He found a dock slave, of all people, whose raw strength is about twice his own.

He commandeered the man to be his sparring partner, and has this guy beat the hell out of him every day. I’m training too. Studying and researching to work out the seemingly innumerable kinks in the practical construction of a completely new sort of shield---at least, whenever I can find two spare minutes to rub together. I took my medic’s board exams a week ago, but Scopa wants me to have more than a few weeks of hands on practical experience before he grants me full physician status. So, for now, I’m a lowly intern.

I have a social life! I eat with people every day, talk and gossip while we work. I see Hiru when time allows. Zarbon told me not to tell even Hiru what I’ve built for the rebels---he thinks I spy on the Prince and nothing else. But he did call me "the heroine of Shikaji," and knows it was my warning that saved the people there. I like the sound of that. It’s sad…he was such a vital, happy man in his quiet way, and now all he can seem to think about or talk about is the Network. His eyes were so warm before. Now they’re dead, and only seem to catch life when he talks about the revolution. Nachti’s getting to be a friend, and it’s good to work beside her and Scopa. When was the last time I had friends?

Chikyuu, I guess.

Son-kun and Yamcha and Krillan-kun and…

Every night, I return to the villa and Vegita and I dance our elaborate waltz of mental, verbal and sexual combat. He doesn’t know he’s lost already. He’s determined to win this "game" at any cost. He’s given me free reign to leave the villa whenever I please, to rearrange the house as I wish---I turned his little library into my private medical study. He grits his teeth and lets me say whatever I wish, contradict him, argue him down on any subject you could name. He pretends to be the flattering suitor, playing at seducing me every night---as though I had a choice. He uses me gently now, taking an inordinate amount of care not to hurt me or even bruise me…

I pretend to dote on him, smothering him in sickly sweet words and affection. At the end of the night, we make our way back to the bedroom and I kick out all the stops. I use every little bit of skill I learned from Raditz---who slept with half the known galaxy before he met me, according to his squad brother Kyouka. I’ve done things to him in the last few weeks that would make a Serulian love goddess blush.

A while ago, the first day he gave me back my voice, when he took me gently and made me howl with pleasure, I told him I wished he had just kept on hurting me. In many ways…Kami, in many ways, I still wish that. Because each time we’re together these days, I feel an echo of that abyss of complete madness that came so close to swallowing me the first time I let him have me---the first time he made me come, against my will, against all sanity and reason, after all he had done in the previous months. I want him. I…gods, I cringe at the thought when he’s not with me, but the instant he puts his hands on me, I want him like an addictive drug. All the hate I feel for him is transmuted into passion, effortlessly and horribly leaping the thin line between rage and desire. And because my hate for him is so immeasurable now…so is my desire. I will go stark, raving, frothing at the mouth mad if this goes on much longer.

He actually thinks he can make me love him. That just staggers me. But…I guess when you’ve spent your entire life with no real sense of anyone’s feelings but your own, you could be that obtuse. The moments of actual empathy, like when he made the mental connection between Jeiyce breaking his ribs and all the times he’s done the same to me, are still rare. But he’s been true to his word and hasn’t put one bruise on me since the night after Nappa’s funeral.

It’s strange, but I really enjoy the dinner conversation every night. He’s a lot brighter and better educated than I would have ever given him credit for, and our opinions are so diametrically opposed on almost everything, it makes for good debate. And it’s very freeing to argue with someone when you have absolutely no regard for their feelings at all.

Last night, he came back from training early and found me sitting in my garden.

"What is this?" He asked, sitting beside me on the bench.

"A medical text," I said, raising the book up to cover my face, pretending to ignore him.

"Saiyan Sexuality and the Moon," he read the spine, snickering.

"Saiyan sexuality…heh," I snorted. "I don’t know any other kind."

He pushed the book down, and leaned forward. "Books can only teach so much," he smirked. "You need field research, woman."

I thrust the book up between us again, and peeked around it with a sly smile. "I have a headache, dear."

He frowned. "You are ill?"

"No," I said. "I’m just…not in the mood." He stared at me, his face beginning to go red with suppressed anger. I smiled sweetly. "You’re a loving, kind man who respects my delicate sensibilities, aren’t you, Vegita? I know you are. Because I could never love a man who wasn’t."

He sat there for a full minute, trembling from head to toe with the effort to control himself. Then…then, he crawled off to bed, his tail lashing behind him.

I can’t push that kind of thing too far, and I know I’ll have to make it up to him tomorrow night…but gods, it felt good to turn him down flat. I slept on the little cot in my study and woke up smiling.

 

 

 

 

All the greatest changes in my life always come without warning and nearly instantaneously. Yesterday was one of the "change" days.

The emergency sirens went off at half past noon and the entire trauma team, myself included, ran for the landing pads. Scopa was shouting orders like a drill sergeant, turning to me hurriedly as we went. "Stay with me! You’ve never seen field surgery before and I don’t want to throw you in to swim on your own. You’ll be my pre-op aid. Bring the rad inoculation unit up from the pharmacy, Nachti!"

We hit the ground level to see a full sized troop carrier falling down on us in slow motion. There were warriors all around it, easing it down to the ground. I saw Bardock and Toma among them, but I couldn’t stop if I wanted to keep up with Scopa and hear his instructions.

The whole day was a blur, of sorting the dead, the dying, and the viable wounded. Of passing out rad hypos to the thousands of warriors who showed up to help. The Maiyosh-jin had struck the first blow in the war of revolution. They hit Arbatsu’s ship yards and garrisons with plasma nukes.

Plasma nukes.

A plasma nuke melts you in your bunker, in your ship, in your home. It burns you alive if you’re lucky. The radiation is nasty in that it is fatal, but not quick. Sufficiently high doses will kill you even with an inoculation. It maimed the survivors, one and all. Melted their flesh off their bones, dissolved limbs…It…I don’t want to talk about all it did. Vegita arrived early on and took command of the trooper salvage at Scopa’s request---if they’d let a carrier break up in the atmosphere, it would have irradiated the entire region. I caught Bardock’s arm at one point, as I suddenly remembered that Romayna was stationed on Arbatsu. His face was pale and drawn with terrible worry, but he told me she was strong and clever and would have survived.

It was a terrible, awful, long day, but it didn’t last forever. Vegita, an immortal god in his own mind, didn’t take a rad injection until all the carriers were grounded. Then he passed out, falling out of the sky. Bardock, of all people, caught him and set him down beside the inoculation station I’d set up on the main landing pad.

"I thought you’d just let him fall," I said, turning Vegita over. I pressed the

inoculation hypo into his arm and he shuddered, coughing up blood.

"The little bastard caught a lucky break," Bardock grunted. "Vegita-sei can’t afford to lose her Prince on the eve of war. And…he’s done a man’s job today. He saved a lot of warriors. I can always kill him later."

"I guess I’ll have to wait as well," I said, grinning up at Bardock’s grimy

face. "He’s going to need a tank. He’s got internal tissue breakdown."

Scopa came by and eyed the two of us warily. "I’ll take him from here." He said.

"Can’t imagine why the fellow wouldn’t trust the two of us to care for him," Bardock chuckled humorlessly. "I have to find my woman in all this mess." He got up and strode away.

An hour later, during my twentieth run to the supply storage, I ran into Hiru, sitting on a stack of crated med swabs. "A good day," he told me, smiling.

"What?" I said breathlessly, wondering why he wasn’t above helping out.

"It’s been good to see them burnt," he told me with a horrible flat smile. "And better to see them die."

"Raditz and Karot-chan were them," I said softly, feeling suddenly ill. I hadn’t thought of the war in personal terms, had I?

"Raditz was kind to my family," he agreed. "But he scoured Corsaris to the ground, Bulma. He loved you…and look where it got him. Killed by his own kind because he was less evil than the rest of them."

"Romayna-san was stationed on Arbatsu," I said coldly.

His lifeless, shark smile faltered a bit, but he shook his head. "She was kind to you, but I was just another slave to her---to be used up and put down like an animal when I grew too old or weak to work." His gaze softened at the stricken look on my face, some remnant of the kind man I knew in Turrasht waking inside him. "Romayna-san is the enemy now, Bulma-chan. This is war. You cannot love and weep for both sides, and you shouldn’t try. It’ll just hurt twice as much when the killing really starts."

I swallowed hard, fighting to keep from screaming at him. Or to keep from screaming in general. In spite of everything, there wasn’t enough hate in me to condone the horrors I’d seen today, and I had a horrified suspicion that this was going to be a standard grizzly tactic on the rebels part. And I suddenly began to have trouble breathing as another suspicion hit me like a falling mountain. "How do you think they got the nukes through the sensor nets around Arbatsu?" I asked him.

"I’ve heard Network rumors of new weapons," he said with quiet excitement. "They say Jeiyce has a Madrani mastertech inventing weapons for him to---Bulma!" He caught me as I half-fainted.

I had heard from survivors all day that they had never seen the enemy ships, on the orbital scouters or with their own eyes. And the nukes…oh gods, oh gods…

They capulized them and shot the pellets that were too small to be detected through the sensor nets. They expanded on a delayed timer and detonated…

I killed all those men on Shikaji when I warned Zarbon, but I never saw their faces.

I never smelled their burned flesh of heard their cries of pain. And they…they went to Shikaji to purge it, so to hell with them! I won’t ever feel a shred of guilt about Shikaji.

But these people were killed in their barracks beds, at mess, on the training fields. And they never had the chance to fight back. I killed them. I killed them all with my capsules and the cloaking camo-shields that let the Red Demons get right on top of the planet without any warning.

I didn’t know! Kami, believe me, I didn’t think what could happen, how the technology could be used. Poppa never conceived that capsules could be used as weapons and neither did I.

I stumbled up to post-op, past the hundreds, thousands, of injured, and then into the ward full of the dead and dying. And I…I saw Bardock. He had found her. He had found Romayna. I moved toward her med cot in a dream, feeling my stomach lurch as I saw her face, her beautiful face…or what was left of it.

Half her body was…was just melted away. I choked and began to sob. My fault!

I killed my beloved’s mother. She always treated my like a person…she was my friend. And I killed her. Along with hundreds of thousands of others on Arbatsu.

She looked up when she saw me…and she smiled.

"Do not dishonor her death with tears, daughter," Bardock said softly

"Let her weep," Romayna whispered. "She is neither Saiyan nor a warrior---

though only for want of fighting power. I…knew you would survive when Raditz and the babe were slain." She laughed softly, her rich warm voice now nothing more than a rasp. "Tell me, Bulma…have you bent the Saiyan no Ouji to your will as completely as you did my firstborn?"

"Romayna-san…" I felt like a knife was sawing into my side.

"I think…he will learn that it was folly to make an enemy of you before the last dance is done. All my goods and chattels I bequeath to you, girl. And what lies safe in the incu-ward below us as well…to ease your grief."

"Romayna," Bardock said. "The girl is not her own mistress. All you will to her, you give to the man who slew Raditz."

"Bar-kun…" Her breath was getting weaker by the moment. "Nothing is forgiven, beloved. Not yet. You have not yet earned it. You will know when you have…But I will not look on you as I die. Go." He bent and kissed her burnt bloody mouth, and left, sobbing harshly under his breath.

I stayed with her until she died, watching her strong, vital Saiyan body fight off death until the last. And she told me what she had willed to me and where to find it. "I hear…" she said faintly at the end. "I hear a Voice, daughter."

"What does it say?" I whispered, shivering.

"He says…He says, ‘Do not give way to hate.’ He says…" She choked, her voice drying to a wispy rattle. "He says… ‘The Legendary is come.’ My son…" Then…then she died.

I think I collapsed, because I woke later on a cot bed, covered in a light blanket. I sat up and looked over to my right to where Scopa lay sleeping on another cot, dead to the world.

I took the route she’s told me, following the twists and turns into the bowels of Med Center, into the one part of the enormous complex I had never visited. Scopa had been very careful to never take me here, or even mention the ward in my presence. The incu-ward. I stopped in front of the pod Romayna had guided me to---#13578. I stared in at the sleeping face and sobbed softly, hammering my fist down on the extraction control. The pod door opened and…and I reached inside and pulled out the tiny occupant, sliding down to the floor with him in my arms, my back against the pod. I held him, staring in wonder at the windmills spikes, just like Bardock’s, just like Karot-chan’s…just like…

He opened his eyes and smiled up at me. "Son-kun…" I said, beginning to cry.

"My baby…my beautiful baby."

It was him. I knew him instantly, just as Kami said I would.

Everything else went out the window…Romayna’s death, all the thousands upon thousands of men the Red Demons had killed today with the machines I gave them to defend themselves. I sat and rocked him lost in the simple happiness of having him in my arms.

A harsh voice, speaking softly, sliced through head and I looked up…and screamed. Vegita. I lost my mind with terror. It was Vegita, come to kill my baby again, to take him away from me a second time. I ran, screaming in mindless terror, and he caught me, shaking me, finally shouting to get me to hear his words.

"I will not harm him, woman!" He roared.

I came back to my senses, but only partially. I…I think I was very close to losing it completely when I sank down on my knees before him, begging him for what I knew he would not give. "Please...Please, Vegita...Oh gods, please let me keep him! I'll do anything...Anything! Please don't take him away from me again!"

He stared at me, and whatever he saw in my face made him blanch with worry. "Woman…" He said slowly. "This is not the same boy."

"I don’t care!" I shrieked. "Oh gods, please, Vegita…please."

He was silent, his face shrouded in the dim light of the incu-ward. Then, he spoke slowly. "Keep the brat here," he said. "I will not have the son of Bardock sleeping under my roof. But you may keep him at Med Center. Scopa will attend him at night. Will you not, doctor?"

"With all my heart, Ouji-sama," Scopa whispered.

"You understand that he must go to the children's barracks at four year of age?" Vegita asked sternly. I nodded reluctantly. "It is done then. I am leaving Vegita-sei in the morning to hunt the Red Prince, and to give our enemies an answer to their attack yesterday. It may be months before I return. You will dwell here at Med Center while I am gone. Keep the boy by your side night and day if you wish."

"Vegita..." I wanted to say something, but at that point…gods, I was too emotionally exhausted to think, let alone speak.

He commanded Bardock to watch over me while he’s gone, I remember that. Because he’s apparently made a nasty enemy of Mousrom of Intelligence, the master torturer and thinks the Inquisitor might kill me while he’s gone to spite his Prince. The rest of the evening is a blur. We ended up, for some unknown reason, spending the night in the little apartment Scopa gave me in the residents’ wing. I was in such a state of shock over…over everything, that I don’t remember much of anything else. Except for two things. The first is pushing him down on that little bed and bending down to kiss him, my eyes full of tears, and saying ‘thank you’. Thank you for letting me keep Son-kun. And thank you for going away.

The second is getting up after he had fallen into an exhausted, boneless sleep, and rocking Son-kun in my arms. No…not Son-kun. Romayn. For his mother.

Rom-kun.

For a second or two, I started to sing Karot-chan’s lullaby, but I stopped, frowning. No…he needed his own song. So, I sang the song my Western grandmother taught Momma when she was small. The one about the mockingbird.

 

 

 

It’s morning.

He left. He got up before dawn, and went to hunt Jeiyce across the galaxy. He leaned down and kissed me slowly, for the longest time, making a memory he could take with him while he was at war. Then he brushed the tears out of my eyes, his face going still and then...softening with honest pleasure. He kissed me one more time, wordlessly…and he was gone. Just like that I'm free of him. I guess he was touched in his own rough way that I cried when he left me. I wonder what he'd think if he knew my tears were tears of joy. Joy that I would be free of him for months. Maybe forever.

Kami! Months and months of no Vegita! I'll be at Med Center the whole time, living and working with these good people, and---shit. I'll have to go back to the villa every day though. I can't trust Batha, or even Caddi, to take proper care of my flowers. And I think I'll start a branch division of my Chikyuu garden here at Med Center while I'm at it.

I am happy.

I shouldn’t be, not with Romayna dead, not with an over-flowing post-op and morgue, not on the first day of a galactic war that will be bloody and horrific in ways I’m just barely beginning to understand. But I took a lacta injection first thing this morning, and in two weeks, I’ll be able to nurse Rom-kun.

 

 

It’s evening of the same day.

I spent all day tending the men and women he and Jeiyce butchered with my machines. It was bad, because...at some point, I came out of the shock of so many things happening at once, and it finally hit me what they'd done. And just how ugly and dirty this war was going to be...I was the worst sort of unforgivable fool to think that any war, for any reason, would be anything other than ugly and dirty. I feel so...gods...violated, I guess. Mostly because I was half crazy when I built those machines for the Network, and the twins and Zarbon took full, knowing advantage of that. They think they are doing the right thing, but...
I killed, or helped kill, my new baby's mother...Raditz' mother...my friend. I have to make amends somehow. I have to stop this somehow, some way, before all the images and possibilities that began to prey on my mind today, of all the ways Jeiyce’s armies can and certainly will use my Ki-guns, become reality.

Of the three pieces of technology I gave the rebels, they have taken the two non-violent, defensive creations and made them into tools of war…Kami, what will they do with the Ki-guns?

Maybe I’m wrong and too soft-hearted, or maybe I’m weak, but I can’t help the rebels anymore. Not after seeing what they did, what I unknowingly helped them to do, on Arbatsu. I’ve had all kinds of theories and wild ideas about what Kami meant specifically when he told me not to give in to hate, not to give up on people who can think and reason and hate them all for the deeds of a few people. Now, I know what he meant---that my hate would lead me to creating the machines I gave Jeiyce. Somewhere in my fevered mind, I had to know as I was building those weapons that they could be subverted into deadly aids to mass destruction. Aiding the rebels was never part of my mission, and now…how badly and irreparably have I screwed things up by adding my machines to the mix of a war that was already destined to be brutal and vicious? I have to fix things as much as I am able. To find a way to stop all the killing that’s about to happen.

And I have to bend all my strength now toward my real reason for living, the command the gods laid on me---I have to take care of Rom-kun and make sure he grows up a strong, good man. He will be the center of my world now, and I’ll not fail him.

Gods…those words of prophecy, spoken through the Romayna as her soul hovered over the threshold of this world and the next… "The Legendary is come," she said. Like a---a prophet heralding the birth of a messiah. I won’t ever turn away from my true destiny again.

I won’t hate. Not even Bardock---I watched his heart break into a million pieces yesterday and all I could think of was how much it hurt to lose Karot-chan and Raditz. Time brings in its own revenges, Poppa always said, and every evil you do you will ultimately pay for in your own misery. Bardock’s paying now, just like he did when he lost the son he called his "closest friend". And I don’t rejoice in his pain. I’m crying with him. He took my whole world from me, but he’s lost his whole world now. She was his whole world. I thought I would be so happy to see him hurt so bad, but it was horrible. I won’t become like Hiru and the twins and take pleasure in the suffering to those who’ve done me wrong. I won’t hate Bardock anymore…and somewhere, somehow, I’ll---I’ll try and find a way to hate Vegita less when or if he returns.

Today, I think I found the answer---the answer to freeing all the people who want to be free and keeping the people on this world from being slaughtered in the process. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It’s a new invention. I’m going to work very hard to finish it. I’m going to call it my ‘stalemate shield’. Stalemate as in, no one can get to anyone on either side of the conflict that began yesterday and kill them. I can’t stop the people who’ve been butchered and trampled by the Saiyans from wanting the blood of their oppressors. I can’t change the inborn and ingrained instincts of the Saiyan people. But if you can’t keep people from fighting each other, the next best thing is to separate them. And that’s what this new shield will do.

 

 

 

Zarbon came by Med Center today. I met with him in my own apartment this afternoon. He gave Rom-kun the same wary look several other people had given him as I carried my new baby in a baby sling as I went on rounds. I had a full blown new mother’s pride and nearly belted Batha for the look of utter revulsion she gave both me and my baby this morning. The twins came down from the villa, not having anyone to cook and clean for now that Vegita’s gone, and have been helping out with the added work load of having so many thousands of patients to care for. Scopa knew both of them well enough not to put them in the post-op wards. He assigned them help with all the duties of running the complex that are being neglected since the attack, and let them help with the care of the soldiers who are nearly ready for release.

Batha looked down her nose at Rom-kun, like he was some sort of nasty insect crawling on my arm.

"Did the Saiyan no Ouji finally find your price?" She said venomously.

If I hadn’t been holding the baby, I’d have slugged her. I will never, never, never leave my baby alone with that woman.

When Zarbon came to my rooms, he eyed Rom-kun nervously, then noticed the way my expression must have suddenly shifted from icy to murderous, and only asked mildly. "Where did he come from?"

"His name in Romayn," I said, pulling the baby out of the sling so Zarbon could see how beautiful he was. Rom-kun smiled up at him without the benefit of teeth.

"He’s Raditz’ little brother. His mother, Romayna, died of radiation burns and poisoning. She gave her baby to me to raise. She was…she was my friend and I killed her." I raised my eyes to his and spoke in almost a whisper. "Your Prince had betrayed me. He took what I gave him to help hide and defend his people and used it to butcher two hundred thousand people in their beds."

"Two hundred thousand Saiyans," he said without a shred of remorse, his eyes never flinching from mine. "They are the enemy, Bulma. It is war. The peoples of the "Empire" have had enough. They will die rather than bow to the slave whip another day. Do not tell me they have no right to make themselves free. And do not tell me they that there is any other way to be free of such masters."

"I’m out," I said flatly. I couldn’t argue with the cold logic of his words or the truth I knew he spoke. But…I won’t be part of it anymore. "I won’t build another machine for your Network or help you in any way. I quit."

He was silent. "What will you do when Vegita returns home and tells you that tomorrow he goes to purge of world of two billion people? Will you keep silent and let them die?"

"No," I whispered, beginning to shake. Of course I wouldn’t. I…

"You say you are out, love," he said gently. "But your own moral conscience will draw you back in when it is time to do the right thing. And the baby…"

"What about my baby?" I said tensely.

"Vegita will take him away from you when he returns, or when it suits his whim---he agreed to you keeping the boy, didn’t he? He’ll use the cub to control you, and when the child reaches his forth year, he’ll take him away from you and stick him in the children’s barracks---and the next time you see this little face, he’ll be a hardened killer---"

"Shut up!" I screamed. "Shut up!!!"

"I’m not saying this to hurt you, love," he said gently. "I…I don’t want you to live in this dream world that you will be allowed to keep this child and raise him to manhood as things stand now. I don’t want to see you lose another child and perhaps your mind as well."

"Then take me the hell out of here!" I screamed at him. "Take me with you when you go to Jeiyce! Take my baby where he won’t have to grow up Saiyan, and can just be himself! Jeiyce---"

"Jeiyce will not have you, love," he said softly. "He doesn’t know the name or identity of the ‘mastertech’ who built the things I brought him. I haven’t told him because I doubt he’d have taken so much as a bread crumb from your hand if he knew who you were."

"W—what?"

"Bulma," he said. "You are Raditz’ widow."

I went cold, my stomach roiling into knots. Kami…I had never…never

thought… Raditz, who had murdered Jeiyce’s father, his son, his wife. "And…and that’s why you never took me away, even though it would have been so much easier for me to work in peace somewhere else."

"Jeiyce knows about you," Zarbon said grimly. "But only that you are spying for the Network and that your warning saved Shikaji. He knew the whole story of how Radtiz was betrayed and slain by his Prince, how Raditz tried to leave Vegita-sei for your sake. And that you were taken by the Prince after the deaths of your man and son, to be his whore. Do you know what he said when he heard this tale?

Jeiyce said that this was another debt Vegita owed him, because he would have dearly loved to pay Raditz back in kind for the deaths of his wife and son."

I made a soft moan, shaking from head to toe. There was nowhere to run and there never had been. The man I had seen as…as the heroic revolutionary was an enemy to me, and would have killed me and Karot-chan simply because we were Raditz’ family. Zarbon reached out and took my hand, forcing me to look up at him. "I can’t take you to him. Even now, you wouldn’t be safe. After Shikaji, Jeiyce thinks of you as a victim of both Raditz and Vegita, and a loyal spy of the Network, he still…it would be dangerous to have you near him. And little Romayn’s life would not be worth spit on a rebel base."

"Jeiyce is like…he’s like the twins and Hiru," I murmured faintly.

"He’s not the man he was before Corsaris fell," Zarbon agreed bleakly. "We’re most of us a little mad in the Network. It goes with the territory of having lost everything you ever loved. Sometimes I think I’m the unlucky one, to still be stone cold sane." He paused thoughtfully. "Listen carefully, love. One does not quit the Network under ordinary circumstances. It is not allowed…but you are in an unusual position because of your anonymity as Jeiyce’s weapon builder." I flinched visibly at the term, but he didn’t notice. "I will tell my Prince you are working on something that will take a great deal of time. If need be, I will tell him his secret mastertech has died. As of now, you are on hold as a spy in Vegita’s house. Should he return in one piece---and I will say only that there is in the works a plan to see that he does not---bring me what information you come by that will stop another Corsaris. I will trust your own conscience that you will do so. Otherwise, you are out. The unbendable policy is that no one leaves the Network. So, do not tell the twins, any of the other operatives, or Hiru that you are out. They will kill you if they know…even Hiru. If the twins ask what manner of engine you are working on now, tell them that you are building it in Med Center, and Zarbon has ordered you not to speak of the details to anyone."

"Thank you," I said with effort. I could feel tears pressing at the corners of my eyes.

"You have earned special consideration. You’ve done more for the rebellion that anyone I know of besides Jeiyce himself," he said. "And…and Scopa loves you. I will pray to the gods of justice that when this war is won, you and this child leave Vegita-sei and live long, happy lives."

The last person I saw today, before coming back to my rooms, was Hiru. He told me…he said he was glad about Rom-kun. And not to listen to the twins. They hadn’t known Raditz and would never understand that he, and all his kin, were not like the rest of their kind.

"Raditz would have freed us if he could have." His dead, lifeless black eyes seemed to warm as he looked down at the baby. He reached out tentatively and Rom-kun gripped his finger. "I came upon Bardock-san early this morning as he was taking Romayna-san to burn her in the mountains of Turrasht. His did not see me…he was weeping like a child. Raditz-sama told me once that his parents were mated when they were fourteen or fifteen years. All their lives. I…" His voice had grown thick. "He is not a good man, but he is a man. Not a beast. I--I think I was dead inside, Bulma. Like a husk full of nothing but poison and hate. I think…I think I am coming back to life. I have you and Bardock to thank for that. All those soldiers who died yesterday didn’t bring back our families, did they?"

"No," I said hoarsely. "It didn’t."

"What we’re doing is right," he said. "I believe that. But I won’t take anymore joy in it unless the enemy is my personal enemy. Prince Vegita killed my family and yours. This child did not. And his brother would have freed Noira, Dusca and myself had we escaped. I won’t forget that again." He smiled faintly at Rom-kun who was regarding him with a wide gummy grin. "Look how he smiles. He’s so unlike a normal Saiyan babe. Just like Karot-chan. They favor each other."

"They do," I said softly.

It stuck me like a falling rock. An idea that was so simple and gentle in it’s simplicity. I told him my idea and he swallowed hard and nodded. We crept down to the incu ward to find it utterly deserted because of the need in the trauma wards. There wasn’t a great deal of care needed from the tech attendants. The machines fed and watered the growing fetuses and prepped the viable infants for emergence at what would normally be about one year old. Then they went to the infant barracks to learn how to kill if they were strong, or to the pod seeding unit if they were not. Not that any of them needed to be taught how to kill after a year in the infant conditioning unit. The babies in the incu-pods were left to grow and develop and nothing else, but when they were shifted over to the infant conditioning unit, they were given a constant bombardment of subliminal aggression tapes for a solid year. By the time the babies emerge from that first year of conditioning, they are like tiny, feral wolverines. They bite and claw and will try to tear each other to pieces if you set them down together. They won’t except or give affection. They have what the psychologists on Chikyuu would have called disaccosiative disorder, or something very close to it. After that, they go the first year barracks to have discipline beaten into them, but they do not need to be encouraged or shown how to kill.

I had known this was going on, but had only ever read about it in med texts.

I’d never assisted in it and had told myself that was enough. No more. I’ll be goddammed if I’ll ever stand by again and let something awful happen without raising a hand to try and stop it.

Hiru and I spent the entire night reprogramming the infant conditioning unit in such a way that the tech attendants wouldn’t notice a difference.

"They’ll sure as hell notice it when they pulled this crop of babes out and they don’t get bitten once," Hiru said worriedly. "I hope…Bulma, we may be signing these children’s death warrants by changing their programming."

I shook my head. "It won’t change their inborn will to fight. Saiyan parents have the right to train there own children from viability, if they want. They usually don’t want to, but I wonder how much of that is the fucking infant conditioning shorting out the maternal instinct in the girls. Romayna was trained at home, and so was Raditz. It’s the custom in back country Turrasht. They both went to the children’s barracks at four and made excellent warriors, but…that’s maybe the biggest part of what made them different. And even those children who go through the conditioning program, like Bardock, are capable of love."

"What are you replacing the aggression files with?" He asked nervously.

I smiled. "Songs…and stories about heroes defeating evil witches and monsters. It’s one of Scopa’s data disc of toddler sing-alongs and Madrani fairy tales."

He began to laugh softly. He sounded, for the first time since I’d come to Med Center, like the man who had been my friend in Turrasht.

 

 

 

Hi. It’s…well, it’s been about four and a half months since my last entry.

Let me start where I left off.

Hiru and I left the incu ward and said our goodnights. I went back to my apartment and he went to help with the load in of his freight flyer. He had to take deliver ship components to an assembly plant in the east. I made that last entry in this diary, hid the mike and data disc in the compartment I designed for it in my bedroom, then I crawled into bed with Rom-kun beside me, thinking it was nice to sleep alone. Or to just sleep a full night. As Vegita’s pleasure slave, I had to exist on his sleep schedule of about two to three hour a night---that’s about all he needs, and if he was awake, I sure as hell would be too. I could have slept after he left for the day, but at the villa, I was always busy building, and then when I started to work at Med Center, I was there all day. So, I’ve just learned to exist on less than three hours of sleep most nights.

A couple of hours before dawn, Rom-kun woke for no reason and began to wail. Nothing I could do would quiet him. I fumbled through the mini-cooler beside the bed and found it empty of formula. "Dammit," I said blearily and threw on the clothes I’d worn the night before, hefting Rom-kun on one hip as we stumbled sleepily down the corridors to the kitchens in the residential wing. No luck. There was no food in any of the fridges after the double all nighter almost everyone had pulled since the attack. I had socked away a few bottles in the surgery wing, I remembered then, for when I was in the middle of the working day.

Rom-kun’s wails had not ceased, and I moved a little faster. I hit the surgery wing a few moments later and rummaged through the cooler in Scopa’s offices until I found a my cache of bottles. I stuck one in his screaming mouth and he quieted instantly. I sat down in Scopa’s desk chair and held him as he sucked the liter sized bottle down like a tiny vacuum cleaner, smiling at the huge, contented burp he uttered when he finished. He fell asleep instantly.

The door burst open and Bardock and Scopa came rushing in. "Up, girl!" Bardock said hurriedly. "I have to move you and the boy!"

"Come this way," Scopa said, taking my hand and pulling me up. Rom-kun, startled out of a sound sleep, began to cry. "There’s no time. They’re in the complex looking for you, Bulma! Nachti was coming in from graveyard shift and saw them going into your rooms. When they came back out without you, looking furious, she knew you must be somewhere else".

"No more talk," Bardock said, beginning to drag me out of the room. Scopa led the way through as series of back passages I hadn’t know existed and stopped only once to throw his arms around me in a hurried hug.

"I’ll see you when I see you!" He said and unlocked a giant shield door with his chief surgeon’s pass key. We moved past Nachti, who had been waiting for us, it seemed. She locked and bolted the shield doors behind us as we went into the hanger.

"This way," she whispered.

She took us to a freight flyer scheduled for routine departure and the hatch opened. Hiru’s scarred face leaned out of the cockpit. He smiled grimly at

the look of shocked recognition on Bardock’s face.

"Bardock-san," he said formally, bowing from where he sat in the pilot’s seat.

We flew away in the hold of Hiru’s flyer without incident. Kami, if Rom-kun hadn't woke me, I would be in the hands if Intelligence right now. He flew east, not deviating from his assigned flight path, until we were hundreds of kilometers from the Capital. "This is a good spot," Bardock told him.

Hiru popped the hatch in midair and I kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you."

He smiled sadly. "Be well, Bulma."

Bardock eyed him steadily and nodded. "My thanks as well," he said curtly.

After we jumped, Rom-kun in my arms and Bardock carrying me, Bardock growled irritably, his face pulled into an odd expression.

"What is it?" I asked over the wind whipping by us as he flew.

"That fellow," he said, shaking his head. "He served Raditz like a faithful vassal, and just saved all three of our lives. My scouter reading said the men Mousrom sent tonight were more than enough to have killed my had we been cornered. And I cannot remember his name."

"Hiru," I told him gently. "Hiru of Ansou-sei."

He met my eyes, his face a blank Saiyan mask, and nodded in thanks.

He took me to a hunting lodge, high in the northern crags. It was approaching high summer and there was still a chill in the air. By lodge, I mean a huge cavern in the side of a cliff with a giant hearthpit built in the center. I had no change of clothes, no formula, no diapers, no nothing. Not even a blanket. He stared at me as I sat shivering beside the hearth fire he had just lit. "No one knows of this place. Raditz and I discovered it years ago by chance. Those who built it are long dead…I think it may had been used before Vegita-sei’s space age. We were cave dwellers then."

"Huh," I said.

"You will not survive a fall here," he said after another moment of silence, swearing softly. "We will stay this night, and I will think of where to go from here."

The night was bitterly cold, and he slept beside me, warming me with his higher body heat. He smelled like Raditz. I lay awake long after he fell into a deep, restless sleep, kissing my sleeping baby, wondering what the next day would bring. Then…he shifted against me, and half-sobbed in his sleep.

"Romayna…" he said softly. His voice carried oceans of grief, whole worlds of it. I began to cry, shredding the tears that, for all his heart-broken sobs, he could not and…and I put my arms around him. I don’t know if he ever woke completely, but I held him all night, until he quieted and fell asleep. When I woke, he was gone with no explanation. I sat all day, huddled before the fire, rocking Rom-kun, trying to soothe the pitiful cries and the audible rumbling of his empty stomach.

Bardock returned at dusk with a load of supplies. Blankets and food for the baby and for me. "I cannot move you so soon. I contacted Toma, who has spent the day nosing around places he should not be, and he told me that they are looking for us everywhere. The Inquisitor is in a frothing rage. I called Toma from a city far to the south and warned him and all my squad to lie low. Mousrom will try and wring our whereabouts from them when he learns I am hiding you."

"I’ve heard the horror stories from the other physicians of people they’ve treated after he’s had them," I said with a shiver, popping the top of a tin of pureed red fruit and giving Rom-kun a huge spoonful. His mouth had opened like a baby bird’s the instant he smelled the food. "He was Nappa’s friend, wasn’t he? How did Vegita and he become such enemies?"

Bardock snorted. "The boy has a talent for making enemies."

I grinned wryly. "I hadn’t noticed."

Bardock caught my eye and began to laugh softly. "He knows the Prince dotes on you to excess, and will try to strike at him by killing you in some gruesome way. Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That the Prince is taken with you beyond all reason?"

I smiled coldly. "He loves me."

Bardock eyed me a moment, then shook his head. "I would not step into that boy’s shoes for all the wealth in creation. Gods help him when you are through with him."

"I doubt they’ll help him," I said, still shoving food in Rom-kun’s waiting mouth. "We should stay here, shouldn’t we? This is a pretty desolate hole, but Mousrom won’t find us here in a million years. I can tough it out, Bardock. I’m stronger than I look."

"That I have never doubted," he said with another bark of laughter.

So, we stayed. In the day, he hunted and foraged for food throughout the craggy, barren mountains. I found a trail leading up to the flat, weed and scrub brush ridden plateau above our hideaway, and would spend the heat of the day there in the sun, doing finishing equations and the actual construction specs of the ‘stalemate shield’ with a charroot for a pencil and the flattest stone I could find as my slate. I kept everything in my head. When Bardock brought back dinner, a different type of mystery meat every night, I would spend most of the afternoon smashing the bits into pureed baby food for Rom-kun’s next five meals the following day, with a little wild goldberry juice as a sauce. The thermal blankets were warm, but the furs from the skinned dinner animals were warmer, and after a while, I started cutting them into clothing. The most fortuitous feature of the ancient cave-Saiyan lodge was the hot spring in the inner recesses of the cavern. A huge, hot, steaming bathing pool. Bardock told me that when the northern autumn really began to kick in, I’d have to pretty much spend all my time in the hot spring chamber to keep from freezing or catching my death.

This was hard core, cave family living, and you might think it wore me down after a while, but the effect was the opposite. I got a late summer tan that turned my reflection in the steamy water of the bathing springs a deep, healthy golden brown. I…I think I began to realize after a while, that I would have probably had some sort of post traumatic break down if Bardock had not removed me to this harsh retreat. And that’s what I needed more than anything. A retreat. To rest as I hadn’t rested since Karot-chan and Raditz’ deaths. I simply lived and let my mind and spirit recover from grief and pain as much as it could in so short a time, with no one and nothing to bother me. Only Bardock’s companionable silence and my beautiful baby for company. I got to take care of Rom-kun the way he deserved, giving him all my attention, and all my love, without any distractions.

In the evenings, I carved a crude facsimile of a chess set, and we ended up playing every night when I was done. He turned out to be a sneaky son of a bitch who could turn an almost complete defeat around at the last minute. We talked every night about all kinds of things. And we argued, also about all kinds of things. The bigger Rom-kun grew, the more it seemed to unnerve him how sweet-natured he was, and how much I held him.

"He does not behave normally," he said gruffly, after I put Rom-kun down for the night. "It is because of the way you are always holding and petting him, not just the lack of conditioning. Raditz was never given over to the infant conditioning unit and he was never so---so---"

"Sweet?" I said archly. "Good? Kind? Loving? Tell me something, Bardock.

How did being good and loving become a sin among your people? I’m not being sarcastic. Your race is capable of so much deep feeling, so much love. All your emotions run so strong---why did your ancestors decide to weed out all the good ones, or at least make them something to be ashamed of?"

He was silent, his brows drawn down and together, making him look like Son-kun when he was struggling to work out a confusing idea. "I do not know," he said finally. "You know, as a physician, about the preternatural speed of my people’s evolution. Five thousand years ago, my people were speechless beasts who could barely walk upright. That changed after the great destruction of the meteor which devastated most of the north. The desolation in these mountains around us is result of that impact. Those who survived the seismic turbulence, the volcanic eruptions and darkened skies after the meteor became thinking men in less than a century. We became sentient beings in the space of one generation. We battled each other as we grew more clever, and thus grew stronger and stronger. Every successive generation of Saiyans, throughout our entire history has been stronger and more clever than the one before it. We survived the Tsiru-jin invasion and made another great leap, in power and in technology. We learned space travel after the Super Saiyan defeated Aiysa-sama and led our exodus back to Vegita-sei. The king of the northern tribes, Vegita the Super Saiyan became king of all Vegita-sei and the…the more violent customs of his people over-shadowed all others. The ways of the northern tribes were born because they lived in a hard land that became harder after the meteor impact. They began to fly south and go a-viking for their food and women. To survive, they took on the custom of weeding out the physically weak and the skittish. I do not know when they began to equate all kind feeling with weakness. I was not there."

I sighed sadly. He had given me the history of how it had come to be, but misunderstood the question completely. "If you can think, you can make a choice to be any way you want to be," I murmured.

He closed his eyes. "You sound like Romayna."

That night…I had the first nightmare I’d had since we went into hiding. I was in Vegita’s summer house, pinned beneath him as he tore me up inside, as he broke my bones, his breath harsh in my ear, his teeth drawing my blood---I woke with a choked off cry, thrashing about on the animal skin bed. Beside me, Rom-kun lay snoring, miraculously still asleep. I began to cry softly, rocking back and forth in the darkness, until Bardock’s callused hands stopped me. He lifted me, drawing me into his arms, heedless of my nakedness and his own. And I cried like a child.

"I’ll never get away from him," I managed to choke out softly. "He’ll always be with me!"

He didn’t say anything, just continued to hold me until I had quieted completely. My head was buried in the crook of his shoulder, my arms looped around his bare chest, and it hit me again---his scent, how much he smelled like Raditz. I didn’t decide anything consciously…I just acted. I turned my head a bit and kissed his warm neck, feeling his jerk against me in surprise. My hands began to slide over the hard muscles in his back, one up to the back of his neck…the other down to catch his tail and grip it lightly at the same instant I nipped his lower lip, biting down hard. He made a wordless noise of protest and tried to pull away, but I gripped the base of his tail a little harder and his objection turned to a growl.

He let me push him down on his back, my hands and mouth everywhere on him, his chest beginning to heave with suppressed desire----then he sat up, his arms around me, and shook me hard.

"I am not Raditz, girl," he said with effort.

"I know who you are," I said breathlessly.

"This will not happen," he said, beginning to push me away.

I held on, leaning toward him, my mouth against his. "I know you still love Romayna. I don’t want your heart, Bardock. I want…I want to---to make love.

I w-want to be with a man because I choose to! Not because I’m forced to. I want to make love with you and enjoy you and not be hurt." I had slowly wrapped both legs around him as he sat motionless, as his whole body vibrated with repressed need, watching my tear-streaked face. He slowly reached up one hand and touched my face gently.

"I am oathbound to protect you---even from myself," his said softly.

"Daughter…this is not what you want."

It all sagged out of me and I just went limp in his arms, sobbing until I slept. He held me all night, curled behind me beneath the furs, like the clan who first lived here must have slept. But it wasn't a lover’s embrace. It was like…like Poppa rocking me in his arm chair after a nightmare when I was very small.

That morning, I rose just before dawn and made my way up the little trail to the plateau of the mountain. I touched Bardock lightly before I left, knowing he had woken the second I rose from his arms.

"I need to be alone for a while," I said softly. "Watch Rom-kun for me."

He nodded silently, as though he somehow knew what I had to do.

I stood on the plateau, watching the sun rise over the icy peeks around us, feeling the chill wind tugging at my furs and hair. I threw back my head and screamed. In rage…in sorrow...in hate…in pain…in all the things I had bottled and swallowed like poison for so long they had distilled into something like a living creature inside me, a black, monstrous beast without mercy or light or anything but remorseless hatred and killing rage. I stood up there all morning, into the afternoon, and poured it all out into the sky and cold clean air around me, until my voice was raw, until I was too exhausted to even climb back down. Bardock brought Rom-kun up to me after I had been quiet for a while, and I took the baby from him, holding him to my heart, smiling and almost limp with all I had purged from myself. It wasn’t gone, and I wasn’t free of my hate, not by a long shot. But I had been full to over-flowing, ready to break apart. I felt…gods, I felt peaceful.

It’s strange, but things were not weird between Bardock and myself afterwards. In fact, they were easier. We passed the rest of our exile together in comfortable companionship, until one day in early fall he came back to the cave after dark, his face expressionless. I knew that look on a Saiyan’s face, and the rule of thumb was, the more stone-faced he seemed, the more he was feeling. I waited to hear what he would say.

"We may return to the Capital tomorrow," he said. "The Saiyan on Ouji is lost in battle."

"Dead?" I whispered.

"No…he is merely…lost." Bardock sat down heavily on the ancient hearthrim.

"His last communication said he was in orbit over Avaris, and had gone down to the surface with field marshal Articha in preparation for purge. He carriers and flagship are still orbiting the planet…in pieces. Avaris is deserted. And there is no sign of either Vegita or Articha. Lord Turna, the general’s mate, is her moonbound consort…and he would have felt the blow in his soul had she been slain. He says she lives still."

"The Maiyosh-jin took him alive," I said, beginning to giggle. He watched my face a moment, and as my laughter became more and more hysterical he grabbed me and shook me. The hysteria seemed to ebb away and I stared at him, an unspoken question in my eyes

"What now?" I said calmly.

"We may return to the Capital," he said. "Mousrom will not have time now for such a petty pursuit as seeking your death, and it profits him nothing if the man he wishes to wound with your death is lost. We will wait and see if he is found alive or if he manages to escape…though, if I were a betting man, I would wager we will not see him again. Eventually, his father will have to declare him dead if he is not found. On that day…you may chose as seems best to you. I am bound to you as protector by my oath to the Prince. You may dwell and work in Med Center if you wish, or in my house on the southern plains."

In other words, I would be free. Free…

"What if I wanted to leave Vegita-sei?" I asked steadily. And I would be leaving, with or without Bardock. There was no way in hell I would let my baby be taken from me at four years old.

"I would caution you against it for the boy’s sake," he said. "A Saiyan child would have a very short life expectancy in the open galaxy these days."

"There are plenty of places that have never heard the word Saiyan," I said firmly.

So, here we are. Back in Med Center. The entire surgical unit threw a little party for me. A weird little party, since Bardock and his entire squad showed up as well---minus Panboukin and Toma’s wife Celipa. They were both lost in action since we left. And Totepo…Totepo just dropped out of sight while on a daypass leave. Toma thinks, and Bardock agrees, that Mousrom may have had something to do with is disappearance. That Mousrom took him somewhere and ‘questioned’ him about Bardock’s whereabouts. Toma inducted Panboukin’s huge fifteen year old son Tobaga and his own daughter Anyan into the squad to fill up the empty spaces and recreate the squad minimum of five warriors. With less than five to their number, they might have all been reassigned to other squads, patched together from survivors of other decimated squads, to fight beside strangers.

Bardock, Toma, Kyouka, Anyan and Tobaga. Bardock must have known of the deaths of Celipa and Panboukin from his infrequent communications with Toma, because he didn’t surprised. But since he couldn’t leave me alone or take me out into what was a blisteringly cold and rainy night, they waked their lost brother and sister at Med Center.

They got drunk and began to sing old war songs. Scopa and the other members of the staff got lit and began to dance, trying to coax, cajole and threaten Zarbon to join him. I noticed, much to my overwhelmed joy, that Hiru and Nachti spent most of the night dancing together. I stopped drinking when I was only mildly tipsy and watched everyone else make a fool of themselves. I noticed that Bardock, though he was singing at the top of his lungs and listing drunkenly with one arm around Toma’s shoulder, was not drunk either. He stayed watchful and alert all night.

Zarbon wasn’t imbibing at all, I noticed, as I moved over to sit beside him. He was watching the odd interaction of Scopa and Bardock, as the doctor began to try to teach him a very old Saiyan drinking song he’d learned while serving his medical apprenticeship in the palace. The other members of the squad were listening avidly as Scopa slurred out the extremely obscene lyrics about a drunk northern tribesman’s unnatural love for a spor hog. This was a big hit with them, since all of Bardock’s squad are all southerners from Turrasht. Several members of the surgical staff drifted over to hear the end, and the room erupted in coarse howls of laughter as Scopa finished the song.

"What’s bothering you?" I asked Zarbon softly.

"It’s just strange…seeing the medic slaves and Saiyan warriors drinking together," he shifted uncomfortably. "And it makes me nervous for Scopa. There are several Network members here tonight. And there are Bardock and his company---all of whom will be spending a great deal of time at Med Center in the future because of their captain’s duty as your body guard. In this pile of mismatched explosives, the only two people everyone has in common are yourself and Scopa. The difference is, Scopa is walking through this minefield…and doesn’t know the minefield is there. And I can say nothing to him."

"You’re giving him far too little credit for perceptiveness," I said, holding Rom-kun out before me. "Say hello to Jisan Zarbon, Rom-kun."

Rom-kun made a gurgling noise and laughed delightedly as Zarbon took his finger cautiously. "What did you do to him?" He asked wonderingly. "He hasn’t even tried to bite me."

"He never got his year in the infant conditioning unit," I said. "The rest is just healthy doses of love." I told him what Hiru and I had done to the conditioning unit and he began to laugh softly, and a little sadly.

"If you’d done what you did twenty of thirty years ago, we might not be at war today." And with that, he went to collect his soused lover and pour him into bed. Probably by way of the toilet. Scopa was already beginning to look green.

Tomorrow, I will take the stat bag I had Romayna store in a deposit box here at Med Center years ago, and I’ll do something I meant to do as soon as Karot-chan got old enough to walk. Tomorrow, I’ll introduce Vegita-sei to one Chikyuu-jin golden retriever and one blue tick hound. Every little boy should have a couple of dogs to play with.

 

 

 

 

I only heard a little about all that’s been going on at the party that first night, but I heard enough to know that my ki-guns coupled with the camo-shields have turned the war into a toe to toe face off. Maybe the rebels will win their freedom with my machines, but what will they do with the Saiyans if they win? Kill ‘em all and let the gods sort ‘em out, I’m sure.

There’s no end to vengeance.

Maiyosh Prime stands up to Vegita-sei’s advancing empire and is summarily purged. Jeiyce, the only surviving son of the Maiyosh-jin royal house, begins to wage a war of hit and run attacks seeking revenge for his homeworld and freedom for the remnants of his race. One of their targets is a world where Radtiz is stationed, and Raditz vows terrible vengeance for the people he loved. He purges Coraris in retaliation and kills Jeiyce’s family. Jeiyce then declares war on Vegita-sei and---And there’s no end to it. And no good guy anywhere in the mix.

Somewhere, the attrition has to stop. I can’t stop people from hating or grieving for the people the other side has killed. I can’t stop them from wanting revenge. But…I think I can sort of…separate them. Create a situation where Vegita-sei can’t find them, and they can’t strike at Vegita-sei. So, no one dies. Now that I’m back, I can build my shield and stop this. The one thing that’s confounding me is how I’m going to present it to the King. Maybe through Bardock. He developed the moon baubles, so it’s not a stretch to believe he built this shield.

I have to finish the stalemate shield before we leave Vegita-sei, even if it’s not done when Vegita is finally declared dead. I won’t rejoice in his death, or be happy that he will probably die slowly and in agony. I can’t feel sorry for him, so…I’ll try not to think of him at all.

 

 

 

The Network has made an attempt on the King’s life, according to the news feeds. Someone poisoned his wine. Vegita’s father is lying in Med Center’s most secure ward, surrounded by his Elite Royal Guard. These guys are truly loyal to their lord and no one else, because Mousrom himself came to ‘pay his respects’ on Vegita-ou and they nearly opened fire on him in the ward.

Mousrom has rounded up every single slave in the palace for questioning. Low level warriors are now laboring in the jobs that were mostly filled by Madrani and Ansousei-jin yesterday. Nachti is in hysterics right now, because her son was one of the ones taken. He’s only fourteen.

I asked Zarbon, nearly in a fit of rage after leaving Hiru at Nachti’s bedside where Scopa had to give her tranks to calm her, why they had done this when they knew what the repercussions would be. "Oh," I spat, "Don’t tell me. The means justified the ends!"

"We had no hand in this," he said flatly.

"Then---" I knew suddenly, who stood the most to gain if the King died now Vegita was MIA.

"Mousrom," he said harshly. "You remember we meant to kill Vegita-ou originally. Well…Jeiyce got another bee in his bonnet and decided against it. And now that Vegita’s out of the picture, we can’t kill the King because that would put Mousrom on the throne…and he is the last person in the galaxy we want. He is a tactical and manipulative genius and makes Vegita-ou look like a kind-hearted old grandfather in his dealings with other races."

I took the King his meds on the graveyard shift, walking nervously through the ring of watchful guards. I jumped in surprise as he opened his eyes. "Tell me, girl," he said gruffly. "Is Med Center as riddled with Red Network as Intelligence would have me believe?"

"Med Center," I said softly, "is full of pacifists and healers, Ou-sama." I held my breath when those glittering black eyes fixed on me with the same measuring gaze he’d given me the first time we met

"Who else would you suspect?" Was all he said.

"I do not know, Sire. Whoever had the most to gain psersonally from your death."

"Clever girl," he chuckled mirthlessly. He already knew Mousrom was behind it. Good. Then… "Do not take another lover until I have seen my son’s cold body, girl. I will not give him up for lost until that day."

I leaned forward. "I heard---" I stopped myself.

"Speak, girl." It wasn’t a request.

"I heard that Lord Turna is trying to track them through his moonbond with Lady Articha."

"He would pine and die were she slain," the King nodded, his rough voice growing strained with too much effort. "They are alive…we will find them…Whose cub is that?" He jerked his head at Rom-kun who lay kicking his feet happily in the sling around my chest. He smiled and waved at the King of Vegita-sei, something he’d only started doing a few days ago. The King frowned, looking vaguely unnerved.

"Mine now, Sire" I said. "He’s the son of Bardock and Romayna of

Turrasht---"

"Raditz’ parents," Vegita-ou growled, regarding me balefully. "And my son let you keep him?" I nodded, and he chuckled weakly. "You must have had the boy drawn into your web tighter than I realized for him to have agreed the foster the son of Bardock. I tried to warn him of his danger, but he would not be shed of you."

"He was fond of me," I said diplomatically.

"He was far more than fond, girl," he snapped. "It must give you great pleasure to think of what the enemy must be doing to him right now."

"It doesn’t give me any pleasure, Ou-sama," I said softly. Truthfully.

He snorted. "You’ve gentled that babe with too much affection, girl. He’s strong, I can sense it, but…too gentle..." The meds were beginning to work on him. "My---my son was too gentle at that age, before…’fore Nappa toughened him up." He slept.

Evil old bastard. Before Nappa toughened him up. I wonder…I wonder what sort of man Vegita would have been if he had…had been raised on another world by other people? I’ll die before I let that happen to Rom-kun.

 

 

 

Everything in the Capital is different now. There’s an atmosphere of screaming paranoia and no travel is permitted, unless cleared by Intelligence. If you’re caught out or away from your assigned building or slave quarter without correct papers you will be transported to Kharda City in the north where the Minister of Intelligence keeps his "torturer’s kennels", as Vegita called it. I wish he’d shown his customary lack of self control and just killed the fat bastard in a fit of rage before he left to go to war. It would have been the best thing Vegita ever did in his life for Vegita-sei. I’ve been back in the Capital a week now and there’s no word of Nachti’s son. She’s sick with fear for him. We’ve all heard the rumors of what he’s been doing to Maiyosh-jin captives in his torturer’s city, but he’s only ever arrested suspected Red Network operatives before now, never this mass netting of everybody in the general vicinity of a crime against the state. And that fucking monster of a King is just letting Mousrom have at all those innocent people when he knows that Mousrom is the most likely suspect!

The puppies were born today. I incubated them in an excellerated embryonic growth chamber, and they looked like they were already two weeks old when I took them out. Scopa thinks they’re the cutest things in creation, Hiru is apparently allergic to them, and Zarbon and Bardock say they look delicious.

I let Rom-kun lay his hands on them and feel how soft they are. The blue tick licked his finger and he giggled.

Rom-kun is not quite five months old and he is already trying to say words.

That’s not normal for Saiyan or Chikyuu-jin babies. And that’s not where it stops either. He’s making noises now when he wants me, babbling gurgles mostly, but there’s one sound he’s been making that is strange. "Oh-nee." I didn’t know why that gave me such an odd chill, but the reason finally struck me last night.

Bardock is my shadow and follows me everywhere I go---which is presenting a hell of a problem with the logistics of when and how I’m going to find privacy to work on my new shield. He even sleeps in the living room section of my apartments, so anyone trying to get to me in the night will have to go through him first. Last night, we played chess with the stone chess set we carved in the mountains, while Rom-kun lay in his baby bed, fretting and fighting sleep. He just started doing that since we came back to Med Center. I guess there are so many new things to see here, he’s afraid of missing something when he’s asleep. He began making that sound again. "Oh-nee?" He said. "Ohhhhh-neeeee!"

I turned to see he had half clambered out of the baby bed, and got up to check his diaper. "Leave him be, girl!" Bardock snapped. "He does not need to be cuddled every time he squalls."

"Oh-nee!" Rom-kun said delightedly as I picked him up and saw that he had indeed done something horrible in his diaper.

"Do you want to lie out here and smell baby shit all night?" I asked Bardock tartly, laying Rom-kun on the changing table. Bardock grunted, but said nothing.

"What a good boy!" I told my baby when I was done washing and re-diapering him. He reached up one fat little fist and touched my nose with a giggle.

"Oh-nee!" He said.

I went rigid with shock. Bardock tensed, sensing the change in my posture.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Rom-kun…" I said tremulously. "Are you…are you saying, ‘Oneesan’?"

"Oh-nee!" He crowed, laughing again.

I told Bardock everything last night, everything Kami had told me. He snorted and shook his head in disbelief, but I could see a shadow of worry in his eyes. I realized just now it wasn’t unease at a brush with the supernatural---it was fear for me. Fear that I was speaking madness and had very quietly lost my mind.

"Can you say ‘Momma’, Rom-kun?" I said as I lay him back down to sleep.

Say ‘Ma-ma’."

"Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma," he said sleepily.

He remembers. I know it. He remembers his last life as Son Gokou.

 

 

 

Zarbon is gone again and Scopa came to me crying. He says he knows with the crack downs Zarbon will be taken, and tortured to death. I sat with him all evening, our voices lowered so Bardock wouldn’t hear from his post outside the lab. He and I had it out a couple of says ago about his looming over my every move and how I was going to drug him and shove him in an incu pod just to have some privacy if he didn’t back off just a little bit.

It’s been a couple of weeks, and a lot has happened, most of it bad. Nachti’s little boy is dead. The official cause of death was heart failure. She received a one sheet, blunt print out from Intelligence Central Offices informing her of this, and she began shrieking. Hiru held her, and eventually carried her off to their rooms. They’ve been a couple for three months now, and he is taking care of her---he knows just how she feels. I was sick all day, stumbling around almost blind with the memory of Karot-chan’s death, unable to help her or comfort her at all, reliving the death of my own son over and over in my mind. Heart failure. In other words, they induced so much pain, he went into cardiac arrest at fourteen. I can’t say any more tonight.

 

 

 

 

It’s been a few weeks. I have been so busy and too heart sick to write. Nachti is…Nachti is a little better. She’s not alone, and that can mean the difference between getting through something and letting it kill you.

The puppies are persona non grata in the surgery these days due to their complete incontinence and my apparent inability to housebreak them. They pee with joy, the pee with fright, they pee with excitement. They just pee all the time, whenever and wherever it suits them. I’ve named them the names of my dogs back on Chikyuu, the dogs they were cloned from. The golden retriever is Baka and the blue tick hound is Yaro. Poppa named them in memory of his grandfather Briefs in the West who named his own dog ‘Dammit.’ He would shout, "Come’ere, Dammit!" and the dog would come running. The pups are now confined to the garden conservatory until they learn to control their bladders.

Things continue to grow more tense and everyone more frightened as the reports come in every day. The Red Demons have been striking Saiyan targets for months now, nuking them from orbit, or falling on smaller bases and colonies with ki-guns and camo-shield to make them invisible. All my work. All my fault…

No. No, goddammit! I won’t take the responsibility for all of it. I gave my inventions over as defensive weapons and Jeiyce turned them into engines of war. Even Zarbon didn’t know or decide how the things he brought Jeiyce would be used.

More and more people are being taken to Kharda and the King is sanctioning it all. I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s giving Mousrom freer reign with the slaves to keep the Inquisitor occupied with things other than assassination attempts…and because he is grieving deeply for his son and wants someone to pay.

Bardock says Lord Turna is looking for them, tracking Articha and Vegita through his bond with his mate. Everything Jeiyce must be doing to Vegita, the Prince of Vegita-sei had coming to him, but…it must be awful. I know I didn’t purge myself of the bulk of all my hate on the cold mountaintop of the northern crags. I can feel it sleeping inside me, like a black, poison fanged dragon, but at least…at least I didn’t let it devour me. And make me like the men who have Vegita now.

 

 

Rom-kun is crawling now, and by that I mean, crawling into everything. If I set him down, set scoots away and is out of sight in a couple of seconds, which is a problem since he’s getting huge and carrying him in the sling all day is hurting my back. He’s also decided everything he can pick up is edible. If I bitch at him, Bardock will carry him when I go on rounds, or better yet, keep him occupied, since I don’t want Rom-kun seeing the people I’m treating. Saiyan wounded and…and those who survived Kharda and were released because it was determined that they were innocent. The survivors of the torturer’s city are…Kami.

I don’t want to talk about the kind of shape they’re in. Most of them have suffered mental breakdowns in addition to their physical wounds. It’s…it’s very bad.

I am working for a few hours every day on the shield. It’s getting built one little bit at a time, but I can’t go faster than that and preserve any kind of secrecy. The whole thing is encapsulated when I’m not working on it, and the only one who knows about it is Scopa. I told him my whole plan and he agrees with my idea whole-heartedly. He agreed to keep the secret, even from Zarbon. It would be very bad if Zarbon found out what I’m doing and why.

 

 

 

I met a new member of the surgical team today. His name is Nail. I nearly screamed when Scopa introduced us. He’s…he’s of the same race as Kami and Piccalo Daimo. He tells people he’s Nameksei-jin, and they stare at him, then laugh as though he just made a joke. Scopa had to explain that to me. Namek is a planet of legend all over the civilized galaxy. The mystics of Namek, who forged magic dragonballs that can grant you any wish within the reach of your imagination. I smiled sadly. No one would ever believe it was true, but…Then I nearly collapsed.

Dragonballs…

They could solve everything if his people actually had a set. Hell, I thought, they might have several sets! Maybe without the limitations of Chikyuu’s dragonballs, maybe…maybe they could rewind time, or undo events, or…or bring back people who have been dead more than a year!

"Scopa," I asked in a faint voice, "Could you let Nail and I speak for a moment in private?" Gods bless Scopa, he only nodded and left his offices without a word of question.

I grabbed Nail by his shoulders and began to babble all these questions hysterically. He put one hand on my forehead and said, "Peace, Bulma of Chikyuu." He spoke the words in Chikyuu-jin. He shook his head slowly. "All the arts of making the ancient orbs that had no limits were lost long ago. We could not bring back your people or your child."

"How…what are you doing here?" I asked, feeling as though I already knew part of the answer.

"My god is father and elder to his children and dwells among us," he said. "I am dohshib senshi, a warrior priest. The Kami of Chikyuu and the Kami of Nameksei were brethren and we have been told of your mission." He glanced down at Rom-kun, who I held in my arms. "As you are charged with guiding the boy, I am charged with guarding you. I came to Vegita-sei as a member of the…I think the word is ‘revolution.’ It was the only way to be smuggled onto this planet as things stand now. A fellow named Zarbon gave me safe passage and instructed me to watch over you and the young doctor. As that is my duty within this ‘Network’, I can discharge it in good faith. I am at your service, Lady, when and as you need me. I will take you and the babe back to Nameksei with me, if you wish."

I wished. Oh gods, how I wished! But…I told him everything, my sins of invention and how they were being used. "I have to make it right before I leave," I told him. "And I know a way to do it. But I need a little more time to finish it."

He bowed like a knight to his lady and accepted my wishes as a command.

There are no dragonballs at the moment, he told me. The Eldest had died after giving Nail his instructions to seek me out and help me in any way he could, and the new Kami of Namek has yet to forge a new set. I guess it was too good to be true. I let him hold Rom-kun and he stared back at the smiling little face gazing up at him, his green features glowing with joy and something that was almost religious awe. The last thing I told him before we parted was that he had a rival for position of protector. I wondered if he and Bardock were going to get along?

 

 

 

The other doctors watch every day in awe and more than a little envy as Nail heals patients. He doesn’t practice conventional medicine, he has a special healing

power. He can lay his hands on someone and erase their wounds. Scopa is almost dizzy with joy to have him at Med Center. The only thing that keeps him from being a complete miracle worker is that he’s giving his ki over to heal and it exhausts him after the third or forth patient. But he’s saved a lot of people. No tension between him and Bardock at all. Nail lets Bardock do his shadow thing while he scans for wrongful intent in the minds of the people around me and in the general area. He’s a powerful telepath, and the thought that he will see trouble coming a mile away makes me sleep a lot easier that I did before he arrived.

Bardock came into the surgical staff meeting this morning and laid three names and slave ID’s on the table in front of a stunned Scopa. "There are two med techs and one surgical aide here," he said grimly. "All of whom have mates or children who are being detained in Kharda Walk wary around all of these folk. Mousrom holds a knife to the throat of their kin and that will make them faithful and diligent informants of Intelligence. Mousrom is looking for any reason to commandeer Med Center and centralize his torture facility here." He gazed around the room at the assembled staff, frowning darkly. "Do not give him one by speaking even an off hand word that may be taken as sedition."

Intelligence spies, blackmailed into informing Mousrom of our every move for the ransom of their loved ones’ lives…

 

Zarbon is back. Scopa isn’t speaking to him and made him sleep in one of the guest apartments. He’s been tapped for a ‘morale’ project authored by Lord Turna---Turna came back to Vegita-sei for a week to set all the affairs of his wife’s barony in the hands of one of their sons so he could leave and look for Articha full time. While he was home, he set up this program to boost the morale of the troops all over the Empire. Zarbon’s going to be traveling around the entire Empire, instructing the local chefs the same way he’s done on Vegita-sei for the kitchen staff of the noble houses.

The dogs don’t like him at all. In spite of the blue-skinned pretty form he usually wears these days, I think they smell a great big reptile when they sniff him and they’re afraid he’ll eat them.

 

 

 

 

I came up on a strange conversation in the surgery’s little kitchen today. Bardock’s voice laughing softly. "…was wed for over eighty years, boy. You do not change your mate. You either take them as they are or not at all."

"…just fed up with worrying," Scopa said softly

"It will be well now, I think," Bardock said. "He is assigned to travel throughout the galaxy. It will curb that loose-footed tendency to wander away from his posts and get himself beaten as a runaway."

I backed away, feeling like a terrible eavesdropper.

"Oy, Bulma-san!" Toma was right behind me, and I squeaked, bruising my hand on his armor chest plate when I swatted him. Saiyans couldn’t walk and make noise if their lives depended on it. "Did you overhear anything juicy?" He smirked.

The whole squad has begun to take my body guarding in shifts in the last couple of weeks, because Bardock has been busy doing…stuff. Things like finding out who the Intelligence informants are and letting everyone know. It’s getting very confusing around here.

You have the straight Network operatives. You have people like Nachti and Scopa who are not affiliated with anyone or anything except their calling to save lives. You have the Intelligence informants. There’s Nail, who is ostensibly Red Network, but really only concerned with Rom-kun and myself. There are the Saiyan volunteers who give up their day off passes to help with the steady stream of wounded. Then, there is Bardock and his squad and quite a few others who seem to be of the same mind…I’ll call them the Anti-Mousrom/pro-monarchy crowd. King Vegita’s musketeers opposing Vegita-sei’s ‘Richelieu’ of Intelligence. The King appreciates their loyalty about as much as Louis cared for D’Artagnon and his boys---which is not at all. He’s got his own problems. Mousrom is wedging him into a political and power base corner.

"Don’t sneak up on me like that!" I snapped and stomped past him. Behind him, completely obscured by his huge frame, his daughter Anyan snickered.

I hate for Saiyans to call me Bulma-san! It’s in deference to the fact that I’m still officially a royal mistress. I’d be angrily impatient for the King to just give it up and declare Vegita dead, if it weren’t for the fact that this would tilt the balance of power in Mousrom’s favor even more. I can’t think of anything worse than that sadistic monster on the throne. King Vegita’s an evil bastard, but he has honor and he is, at heart, a ruthless pragmatist. He does what is expedient and what will solve his problems, without regard to anything but the old laws and his own sense of honor. Mousrom…

Mousrom just likes to hurt people.

 

 

 

 

Nachti and Hiru were married today. Scopa and Zarbon stood side by side to my left, hands interlaced, back in good graces with each other. I was so happy I cried, even in the midst of all that’s gone on in the last few weeks. A small plasma nuke was detonated in a Saiyan city in the south. The entire city was flattened. We set up triage in Med Center, on the landing pads, overflowing out into the grassy hills that surround the complex. It was…

I have to stop this…I have to…to make it stop. I never meant for this to happen. My fault…my…

I’ll finish my shield and make it better. If Saiyans and the rest of the galaxy can’t get along, I’ll just have to separate them. I’m almost through with the shield.

Scopa’s been helping me in his off hours, and we let Nail in on our little secret as well. Three sets of hands have been much better than one.

Rom-kun is so big now! He’s saying all kinds of words. I taught him to call Bardock ‘Poppa’, mostly too piss Bardock off. He’s pulling up, trying to stand on his own. I can’t figure out why he did everything else so early, but he’s not precocious where walking is concerned. Probably because he’s so incredibly mobile as a crawler.

I lost him yesterday and found him and the dogs playing in one of the recovery wards. They were putting on quite a show for the wounded soldiers. I could hear the rough chorus of laughter all the way down the hallway. Rom-kun was mimicking the dogs and chasing his tail in circles on all fours until he toppled over dizzily. I was boo-ed when I came in a carried away their entertainment.

 

 

 

We’re back in the mountains, in our old cave lodge.

Last night, there was another attempt on the King’s life. Again, not by the Network. He was brought to Med Center again, under heavy guard. He was returning from the ‘front’, which is on all sides of Vegita-sei these days, when his ship exploded just above the upped atmosphere. Somehow, he miraculously made a power dive into the breathable air below before he lost consciousness. He’ll be fine, he just needs about a day in a tank.

Nail was called in to assist in removing the shrapnel from the King’s body, using Nails’s power to re-knit each open wound as Scopa extracted each hunk of metal. Bardock and I sat in the surgical ward’s kitchen all night after my shift was over, waiting to hear for sure that the King would be well, and we would not wake up tomorrow to the beginning of the reign of Mousrom the First. About five minutes after Scopa called us on the comm to say all was well, Bardock jumped up with a low growl.

"Out the back way through post-op, girl! Move!"

I turned and what I saw behind me sent me completely dumb with horror. Mousrom of Intelligence was walking toward us from post-op. And…oh Kami…he was holding my baby. I vaguely sensed that other soldiers, Intelligence soldiers, were coming through the door in front of us that led to the recovery ward. Mousrom had Rom-kun in one arm and something else in the other…he raised it and fired past me, dropping Bardock in his tracks. It was a ki-gun.

"The weapons of the enemy we’ve gathered have proved very useful," Mousrom said, lumbering toward me. I went mad. I ran at him shrieking Rom-kun’s name…Rom-kun, who was hanging in his huge meaty hand, limp and lifeless, just like…just like…

Two huge soldiers pulled me off of him, holding my arms while he stood there smiling at me, an oily, sickening grin. "The cub is alive, woman. I have no interest in him other than as a useful tool to draw you out of hiding had you proved elusive again." He lay my baby down on the meal table and seemed to forget about him.

"W-why?! Ve---vegita is…" I was hyperventilating, almost dizzy with relief that Rom-kun was alive, only unconscious. "Why?"

"Vegita is lost? Is that what you mean to say? So why bother with you?" He smiled. "I have received convincing evidence that he is alive. Turna is a fool, but a persistent one. He is closing in on their position and it is possible the Prince will be rescued in a matter of weeks, if not days. My intelligence leads me to believe that he will be…in a bad way, when he is found. I wish to give him a home-coming present." He stepped forward, his rancid breath on my face as he leaned down and leered at me. "Your soiled, mutilated body, woman." I could hear Bardock on the floor, cursing weakly, as Mousrom raised one huge hand and gripped one of my breasts with bruising force. "Are you a fighter, girl?" He said thickly. "I will wager you are."

The room exploded. Zarbon was through the door and whirling through the men behind me, tearing them to pieces with a harsh, reptilian roar of rage. Then…everything stopped. It was over just like that. Toma and Kyouka came barreling through the door, almost running down Scopa, Hiru and Nachti had arrived from somewhere, and I ran to pick up Rom-kun’s limp little body and began to wail. He was fine. Not even a bump on the head.

The bodies of Mousrom and his men were lying sprawled on the floor, their eyes open and catatonic---all of them, of course, except for the two who had been holding me. Zarbon had killed them. Toma helped Bardock to a groggy stance, and the room went silent, everyone’s eyes on Nail.

"What the hell did you do to them?" Zarbon asked softly.

"I put them to sleep," he said calmly. "It’s part of my telepathic ability."

"Well…" Toma said slowly. "Let’s see that they never wake up."

"We can’t," Bardock said weakly. He sounded as though the words tasted bad in his mouth. "He is…in the Prince’s absence, he is needed desperately."

"Could we…" Hiru suggested tentatively. "Could we make it look as though he came here to kill the King? We have to do something, Bardock-san. He will kill us all for having crossed him."

"No," said Nail firmly. "I will make them forget they were ever here. We can remove them and leave them elsewhere. They will have no memory of this night’s visit and it will be several hours after they wake before they remember that they meant to come take Bulma-san and did not."

"We can pour wine all over them to explain the memory loss," Zarbon said thoughtfully. "Can you add memories as well as take them, Nail?"

"I can put the suggestion of a…I think the word is ‘bender’, in their minds," Nail said. "The others can help me in this, Bardock-san. Take Bulma-san and the child and go."

I had time to say goodbye to everyone this time, and to pack a lot of things that I’ll need since it’s not yet summer and it would be killing cold in those mountains.

"You’re one strong son of a bitch, Rashia-jin," Toma was saying to Zarbon as we left.

"Don’t let it get out," Zarbon said with a casual wince that was completely counterfeit . "I like being a chef, not some nobleman’s sparring partner. And killing a Saiyan, any Saiyan, is my death sentence."

"I didn’t see a thing," Toma chuckled.

After we arrived at the lodge and settled in for the night, Bardock turned to me with a glowering frown. "He is a dangerous man."

"Zarbon?" I asked, perfectly expressionless. "He killed those men to save---"

"Not the Rashia-jin. I knew he was masking a high fighting power. His kind, what is left of them, are a naturally strong race. The other---Nail." He shook his head. "A man who can go into another’s mind and reorder it at will is to be feared.

He could…he could do almost anything with that power."

"But he doesn’t," I said softly. "He’s a pacifist and a healer. Do you know why he left Mousrom and his men alive? He’s never killed anyone in his life."

And Bardock nodded, satisfied.

I went to sleep, hoping Scopa would take good care of my dogs.

 

 

 

 

It’s two weeks later. They found Vegita. He’s alive. Toma contacted Bardock to tell him. Tomorrow we’re going back to the Capital. I would scream at Bardock and beat him senseless if I thought it would do any good. But he’s oathbound to deliver me to his Prince unharmed. Tomorrow I go back to being a slave. I’ll…Kami, I’ll have to---to leave Rom-kun at Med Center every night from now on, because Vegita said he wouldn’t have the son of Bardock living under his roof. I---I---I’ll kill him before I let him take my baby away from me.

 

 

 

 

All my fear have probably been for nothing.

Scopa and Nail tended Vegita, and Nachti and I…we took care of Articha. I almost lost it once or twice while we were treating her. They…they used her as a garrison whore, weakened by Ki-dampers built into her cell so she couldn’t fight back. I think I was wrong. On the island…I thought it was worse because Vegita had no hate for me personally---he just saw me as a toy, not a person. I saw as I was treating her that it would have been far, far worse to be in the hands of someone who hated me and meant to hurt me for revenge. We treated her for malnutrition and we broke and reset bones that had been shattered and allowed to heal wrong. Turna hovered beside us the entire time, his face pulled into such wrenching horror and grief I couldn’t look at him. Articha looked up at his face, anchored to sanity, I think, by the love she felt flowing through the moonbond that let him track her halfway across the galaxy. Gods…what must he have felt from her?

"I will not die, beloved," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I will not."

"Do not tarry for my sake," he whispered, his voice broken. "If you wish to die, we will enter the Halls of War hand in hand."

"Don’t…" I said softly, meeting her eyes. Mine were full of tears.

She snarled softly and bared her teeth at me in weak rage. If she’d had the strength to sit up, she would have tried the kill me. "You dare pity me, you blubbering little weakling! You know nothing of honor or pride!" She broke off with a sobbing growl, turning her head away. Turna was glaring daggers at me, but he made no move to strike me. Something in the way he looked at me told me he was well aware of who I was, and knew better than to raise a hand to me. "You do not know…" she whispered.

"Yes, I do," I said, just as softly. She slowly turned back to scan my face and I saw recognition dawn in her face. She was not a pretty woman, but she was handsome in a tall, strong-boned way many Saiyan men would find beautiful, even with the old scar that ran down one side of her face. I knew she must be well past a hundred years old, but she looked somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty-five in human terms. And suddenly she looked…like a light had been thrown on in her head. It was the same startled expression Vegita had worn when he made the mental connection between Jeiyce beating him half to death and his hurting me. She looked stunned, that same look of dull, dawning horror playing around her eyes. And I knew that, if she decided to live, Vegita-sei---in particular, the pleasure slave trade---would never look the same to her.

"If you die," I went on, almost in a whisper. "They will have beaten you. Don’t give them that victory."

She stared at me for so long I began to feel as though my eyes were watering. Then she nodded once, a short military snap of her head. "Put me in the tank, girl."

We put her in the tank for the rest of the night and then Turna wrapped her sleeping body in a blanket and flew her back to their country estate to recover.

He gave me a nod that was almost a half bow. "You have my undying thanks…Bulma-san."

Nachti slumped down the wall of the regen tank controller after he left. "I thought we were both dead back there. Was I hallucinating, or did the one of the highest peers in the Empire just call you ‘Bulma-san’? If you had balls, I’d tell you they were made of ardantium."

And if neither Articha or Turna had recognized me, I think Turna would have killed us both to keep word of what was done to his wife from getting beyond the treatment room. Both Vegita and Articha were brought into Med Center in such a state of heightened security and secrecy, no one other than the four of us who treated them was allowed into the surgical section of the complex. I think the King would have killed both Scopa and Nail as well, except he knew how greatly Med Center needed Scopa and was mildly awed as he watched Nail lay hands on Vegita and heal the bulk of his injuries with a touch.

Nachti went to join Hiru in their apartment. He hadn’t slept a wink, waiting up for her all night. I went back to my rooms, and waited up with Bardock for word about Vegita. And hour later, Scopa beeped me to come to the special recovery unit. Bardock trailed along behind me, silent and in a posture of military attention, refusing to stay.

Scopa met us outside the door of post op. "I need your help with him, Bulma."

"Why," I said softly, coldly, "would you even ask me, Scopa?"

"Because you took the physician’s oath," he said, his face hardening. "Because it is the decent thing to do. Because his father dubbed me a miracle worker when I saved the Prince after Shikaji, and I cannot do this without your help." And Scopa’s life depended on his success.

"Tell me," I said.

Scopa told me. Jeiyce has had him for six months. Six months. They did one hell of a job on him. For half a year, they tortured Vegita in an atmosphere of complete sleep deprivation, and in the end…Jeiyce broke him. Broke his will and broke his mind. When his father found him in that black cell on Avani Trice, Vegita was mad. Mad. He woke twice while they were treating him and began to cry for Nappa Sensei and his father to make them stop hurting him. Then he saw the hypo in Scopa’s hand and shrieked in terror like a child until they sedated him.

The King fixed both of us with a baleful, murderous look as we entered the little post-op. Vegita was lying unconscious on a pallet, covered in thermal blankets. He seemed to be thrashing restlessly, muttering and half-sobbing in his sleep.

"What is this low born bastard doing here, girl?!" The King growled ominously.

"I am oathbound to Vegita-ouji to be her guard wheresoever she goes, Ou-sama," Bardock said, his back rigid. He bowed low, down on one knee. "I cannot leave her side or I break my honor, Sire."

The King glared at him, then nodded grimly. "As I remember, soldier, your honor is a thing other men might envy." I wondered when these two men had ever had contact for the King to speak so highly of Bardock’s sense of integrity. "Swear on your honor, Bardock son of Radu, that you will keep the crown’s secrets in this matter."

"I swear, Ou-sama."

The King grunted an acknowledgment and turned back to me. "No one will see him other than the three of you. I have let it be known only that he and Articha were near death when we found them. The three of you, Turna and myself alone know the full truth." He sighed, a rumbling sound of utter exhaustion and mourning.. "He will either return to his senses or he will not. Do not leave his side, girl. I have some idea of how overly attached he was to you. Your presence may help to bring him out of this---this---"

"I won't leave him. Ou-sama," I said softly. And from his pallet, Vegita stirred and moaned, one hand struggling from beneath the thermal blankets to reach weakly in my direction. Scopa gave me a look and I moved to Vegita’s side. I took his hand, kissing his forehead lightly. "Shh," I said.

He sighed, and seemed to relax bonelessly.

The King glanced at Scopa and nodded curtly. "It is as you said. Between the two of you, perhaps…perhaps he will be whole again. Let me know his condition when he wakes, whether he is mad, raving or coherent. I will give him a month to come back to us. If he does not..." A long pause. "If he does not, I will put him down myself." He passed one rough hand through his son’s still damp hair, his face like stone.

 

 

 

 

We took him to Bardock’s house in the plains just north of the Turrasht mountains. No one, and I mean no one, knows we’re here except the King. The King, as a matter of fact, suggested we come to this house. Which means he knew it and had possibly been here before. I really have to corner Bardock and make him tell me what the story is with him and Vegita-ou---I bet it’s an interesting one.

We packed up before dawn, without saying goodbye to anyone, and left in Scopa’s flyer, taking Rom-kun, the dogs, all my encapsulated shield pieces and notes, half of Scopa’s medical library, and a whole host of assorted odds and ends.

I’m rocking Rom-kun on the porch that faces the mountains, Bardock is brooding inside, and Scopa is watching Vegita. He hasn’t woken yet. So, we wait.

 

 

 

He woke this morning during my watch.

Gods, I could have handled anything other than this. If he had been catatonic or raving or incoherent in his madness I could have felt nothing. No sympathy…and no guilt that Jeiyce used my invisibility shields and ki-guns to capture him. I could have remained completely aloof and told myself that was just too damn bad for him.

But this morning, he opened his eyes just as the sun light began the stream through the open window…and he smiled at me. "It is good to sleep," he said. Kami, his voice sounded completely different. Higher and soft. Like…like a little boy’s.

"Yes, it is," I agreed, leaning over to feel his forehead. He had run a low fever all night, a mild allergic reaction to one of the nutrition supplement injections Scopa had given him. He still, miraculously, had good muscle tone, the fruits of a lifetime of training, but he had lost a lot of weight. And he was scarred, permanently so, from his neck to his ankles, with whip lash stripes where they must have beaten him like an animal again and again. "How do you feel?" I asked softly.

"Well." He regarded me silently, confusion washing over his face. "Who are you?"

I took a deep breath. "My name is Bulma."

He smiled again, warm and drowsy, looking so much like Rom-kun when I put him down for the night I shivered. "You are very beautiful…" He closed his eyes and slept again. He slept the rest of the day.

This evening, Scopa rested his chin in one hand, the other lightly stroking Baka, while Bardock turned a cho-deer on the spit over the hearthpit. "He will sleep as long as his body deems fit. He’s been without it for half a year…goddess. Can you imagine?"

"I’d rather not," Bardock grunted.

"It’s a very good sign that he was rational,’ Scopa went on. "The amnesia is to be expected at first after so much mental and emotional trauma. The King is pleased."

"Which means we all get to keep our heads," Bardock muttered.

Scopa frowned at him irritably. "You are an ornery, pessimistic man."

The Saiyan laughed out loud at that. His laughter stopped abruptly and I turned, following his gaze to see Vegita standing in the southern bedroom’s doorway, looking at all of us uncertainly. He was buck naked. "I smelled food," he said softly. "May I…may I eat, Bulma-san?"

"Close your mouth, Bardock," I said. Neither of the men were prepared for the change in him, despite what I’d said. "We’re just about to eat, Vegita. We need to get you dressed first."

He smiled. "I need clothes. There were no clothes in the bedroom."

I took him by the hand, led him back to the bedroom and brought him some of Bardock’s things. They were too big for him, but at least he wasn’t stark naked. He’d just have to go barefoot for a while. Or maybe Scopa’s things would fit him better, shoes included. We had remembered everything except his clothes! As he followed me back into the silent hearthroom, Yaro loped up and licked one of his hands. He recoiled a step or two.

"What is that?"

"It’s a dog, Vegita," I told him. "This is Yaro and the one beside Scopa is Baka."

"Will they bite me?" He asked, tentatively sticking his hands out to the animal once more.

"No…they’re both very nice." To prove that, Yaro slobbered all over his hand.

Vegita laughed delightedly. "Don’t feed them from the table," I told him as I sat him down, while Bardock carved off a slab of cho-deer, looking unnerved. He ate like a starving man, no---like a starved Saiyan. I guess he had been fed just enough to keep him alive in captivity. He finally finished and I introduced Bardock and Scopa, once his attention was no longer focused unswervingly on his meal.

"And I am…Vegita…yes?" He looked at me solemnly. "Is that my name?"

"Do you remember that?" Scopa asked quietly. "Can you remember anything before you woke this morning?"

He frowned with effort. "I…no. That is not a good thing, is it?"

"No," Scopa agreed. "You have been hurt very badly, and you are just now starting to recover. It may be a little while before your memory returns. But it will come back to you. So, do not worry over it. All right?"

Vegita nodded obediently and then seemed to lose interest in the subject, smiling down at the dogs. He spent the rest of the evening playing with them in the floor, after nodding seriously at my stern instructions to be very gentle with them because they were much more delicate than they looked. At one point though, he crawled over to where I sat watching him in mild but profound shock, dragging Baka behind him, who was play growling, pulling at Vegita’s pants leg.

"Is he your baby?" He asked curiously, gesturing at Rom-kun, who I had just gotten to sleep. Rom-kun started awake at the sound of his voice and grinned at him. Vegita grinned back.

"Yes…" I said, feeling my body tense up like a coiled spring.

"Can I hold him?"

I sat frozen until Rom-kun broke my paralysis by reaching out to Vegita, pushing away from me with his little feet. And I…I handed Rom-kun over slowly, all the tension inexplicably draining out of me. The man in front of me would no more hurt Rom-kun than I would. "Hold him very gently," I said softly. Vegita held him up a little awkwardly, examining him from feet to the top of his head, utterly fascinated.

"He is so tiny," he said, laying his own hand against Rom-kun’s.

He began to yawn around midnight, almost falling asleep in the hearthroom before Scopa and I got him into bed. I followed Scopa back into the hearthroom where Bardock sat, staring into the fire. "I have wished a thousand torments and painful deaths on that boy," he said. "But I…I would not have had this happen to him for my life’s sake."

"It’s not as bad as you think," Scopa said.

"His mind is gone, Scopa!" Bardock snapped. "He has no more wit than a babe Romayn’s age."

"His mind isn’t gone," Scopa said implacably. "It’s just…resting. Going back to a time when there was no pain in his life. I don’t question your judgment of fighting skill. Have faith in my judgment as a doctor."

 

 

 

It’s two day’s since he woke.

He follows me everywhere and blushes like a young boy whenever I meet his eyes. Kami…he’s got a crush on me. Even with total amnesia he’s still obsessed with me. He’s also beginning to bug the hell out of me. He wouldn’t leave me alone to get any work done today. I tried to be patient, but he kept getting in my way, trying to hand me tools and things, and I finally snapped at him. He left with his head hung and…and I heard him begin to cry in the next room. The side storage room I’ve converted into a workshop is adjacent to his bedroom. At first, I thought I was imagining things. It didn’t seem possible to me. But as I listened, I began to cringe at the thought of having lashed out at someone so completely devastated. How much of my irritation was from my complete inability to hate him as he is now? At this moment, he bears as much resemblance to the man I called enemy as Rom-kun does. It’s very wrong of me to…to be angry at him because I’ve lost the devil in my pantheon. Because my devil has been transmuted into an innocent little boy.

I opened his bedroom door and sat down on the floor beside him. He was crying softly, sitting beside his bed, hugging Baka, his face buried in the dog’s warm fur. "I am sorry I made you angry," he said tremulously.

"No," I said, touching his hair tentatively. "I’m the one who should be sorry. I was mean to you. I won’t do it again." And I put my arms around him and held him.

I think…Vegita is dead.

I think the man I hated is dead and I pray to the gods he never comes back. It’s as though Jeiyce of Maiyosh killed him and shoved another soul in his body.

There’s a plan, an idea so wonderful, playing in the back of my mind, that I won’t say it out loud until I’m sure it is true.

 

 

 

Six days since he woke up now.

He had a…a spell last night. Brought on by a tiny scrap of memory.

Scopa has taken to telling Rom-kun a bedtime story every night. He is something of a scholar in both Madrani and Saiyan mythology and fairy tales.

Last night, we sat in the hearthroom, the increasingly warm winds of oncoming summer wisping in through the open windows, while Scopa told a story from the age of legends, about a young boy who learned to fly. The legend of Sereru, the first Saiyan to fly. Scopa had barely finished the story when I noticed Vegita rubbing both temples, his face drawn into a frown of concentration.

"I know this tale," he said. "Did you…did you tell it once before, Scopa-san? I remember…I---" He doubled over, clutching his head and began to scream. Rom-kun woke with a wail, the dogs set up a howl…and Vegita fell onto his side, spasming in agony until Scopa sedated him heavily.

Scopa sat down at the dining table and took the glass of goldberry wine Bardock had wordlessly offered him. "This is bad. Jeiyce’s torturers have laid mental trip wires in his subconscious. That one flash of memory sent him into a sense memory seizure of…of whatever hellish things they did to him."

"Mental land mines," I said, feeling ill. "Like the survivor’s of Mousrom’s Inquisition." I had a vivid memory of a female patient who had tripped one such mine in her mind and tried to bash her own brains out against a wall. Bardock had begun pacing about the room like a caged panther, swearing softly, murderously. He’s completely unnerved by the changes in Vegita and avoids him whenever possible. But I’d not known there was something more to Bardock’s discomfort, something touching on his Saiyan honor. He turned back to us with a low growl.

"I hated the man personally---but he was my Prince. Our mightiest son. The Red Prince has tarnished the honor of my entire race by destroying Vegita in this way!"

"He isn’t destroyed!" Scopa said angrily. "I was reticent about his chances at first, but he’s improving every day at an amazing rate. His first two days, he couldn’t even put a jigsaw puzzle together, and now he’s solving the cube puzzles I give him to work with every morning as fast as I do. He’s started to read the books in my library with adult comprehension. The only reason he seems so childlike still is because of the amnesia---everything is new to him. He will recover fully. In truth, he already has. But…"

"But?" Bardock prodded.

Scopa frowned. "Whether he ever recovers his memories is another thing entirely. He may lose his entire life up this point. He may have to relearn everything he ever knew. Partly because that trip wire he overturned tonight is linked directly to his memory of his past and who he is, and partly because the amnesia itself was his mind’s natural defense against complete mental collapse. A half year without sleep, my friend. Tortured without cease. Lady Articha gave the King a written report of exactly what they did to him. They never let up on him, took his torment in shifts. He may not be capable of remembering that without truly going mad."

"The King will not see irreversible amnesia as a recovery," Bardock muttered.

"Scopa," I said softly, trying to rock Rom-kun back to sleep. He had cried for a long time after being startled out of sleep by Vegita’s screams. "What was the memory you triggered with that story? He said you had told him that story before…"

"Goddess, I don’t know how he remembered that," Scopa said. "I was apprenticed as a child to old Duriru, the chief physician of the palace. The first time I ever saw Vegita-ouji, he was about a year older than Rom-kun. I was about twelve years old. Duriru had been called in to treat him for burn wounds. The Prince had tried to grab the fire in the hearth because he thought the flame was pretty, and burned his hand. Duriru bandaged his hand down in regen swabs. I remember he kept grabbing my hand and saying, "Gold!" He’s never seen an alien before or anyone with my skin color. He was…" He frowned sadly. "He was a lot like he is now. He smiled and laughed and talked to us happily. We were commanded to stay with him ---while the Royal Guard looked on, of course--- until Lord Nappa returned for him. That ended up being all night, because the King beat Nappa to a giant mass of jelly for letting the baby burn himself. So, we put him to bed and I told him a story. The story of Sereru." He lowered his eyes. "The next time I saw him he was four years old, I think. He was…a younger version of the man he grew to become. He did not smile at me."

I went to bed by way of Vegita’s room and leaned over his sleeping form, kissing him lightly on the forehead. "Stay just like you are," I whispered. "It’s who you should have been all along."

I have a ki-powered, improved ki-gun encapsulated in my workshop. I’ll commit my first regicide if the King decides to ‘put his son down.’

 

 

 

Ten days since Vegita woke. Last night he had a nightmare. He didn’t scream like a damned soul in Hell the way he did before, just gasped harshly and cried out once softly. I was awake, sitting up reading, feeling irrationally snubbed and hurt.

Rom-kun, who is speaking more and more words every day, took his first real steps while I was out of the room. Vegita’s taken to doing this thing where he has Rom-kun grip his fingers while he walks behind him, steadying him. Today he let go, while I was in the kitchen. Rom-kun walked five whole steps on his own and I didn’t get to see it! Then he decided to conk out for the night on the fur rug that covers the floor in Scopa’s bedroom and cried when I tried to take him to bed with me. He said, "Copa! Doggies! Copa! Doggies!" Which translates, I want to spend the night with Jisan Scopa and the dogs. He’s never slept away from me once, and I was fighting not to cry, mostly because it would make me feel silly.

I rose up and went into his room, finding him curled up in a ball, biting back the sobs. I sat on the bed, soothing him like I do Rom-kun when he’s restless or weepy. He turned over, reaching up to touch my face…and he inhaled sharply.

"I remember..."

"What?" I asked softly.

"You." Even in the dim light, I could see his cheeks reddening. "Were we...Are you my mate?" He seemed almost afraid to hear the answer.

I slowly shook my head, not knowing what to say. "No...we were...we.."

"Lovers then?" It had to have been some kind of physical memory of having been with me. He was blushing furiously now. I nodded in answer to his question. I sure wasn’t going to tell him the truth.

"Will you stay with me?" He whispered.

I didn’t say anything, thinking the request over. This was not the same man I had hated so passionately. What was he asking me? To sleep beside him and hold him like a child, or…

I know it seems like madness on my part. I had a choice to say no, and I didn’t. I had to know. I had to know if this was really a different person altogether, and this was the surest test imaginable. I pulled my nightgown over my head, and he uttered another little intake of breath when I crawled into bed with him, my arms around him, my naked skin warm against his. I kissed him, and he trembled all over, then went still, staring into my face, eyes searching mine. And for the first time I saw a man behind those gentle dark eyes, not a child. I could feel his heart beginning to hammer against mine, just as I could feel my own pulse begin to race, and a kind of…terrifying heat rising inside me. This was not attraction. Not desire. This was…I don’t have a name for it. All I know is whenever I think of it now, I begin to shake like a leaf with the memory of its intensity. He seemed to be poised on the edge of a decision, then he shuddered lightly…and kissed me back, soft and sweet.

"Thank you," he said softly. And we slept.

The King is coming tonight to see Vegita for himself. I will kill the old monster if he hurts this son he will almost surely see as weak.

 

 

 

"If he can remember nothing, he is as good as mad!" The King of Vegita-sei snarled at us after Scopa gave him his update report. "He is useless to me as he is now! And I will not have his people learn that he was broken so completely as to lose himself." The rant tapered down into a tired growl.

"He is already remembering things, Ou-sama," I told the King. He glared at me, but I went on, refusing to be cowed. "It will all come back in time." Though not if I can help it, I thought.

"Time is something I do not have, girl!" The King snapped. "Has he even taken you to bed since he woke?"

"Last night was the first time, Sire." Not that anything had happened.

Vegita-ou snorted. "Well, at least he’s not so much a child that he’s forgotten how to fuck!" I reddened angrily at the coarse words, cursing my fair skin when the King chuckled. "Still as much the spitting hellcat as you were the first day you set foot on Vegita-sei, aren’t you, girl?"

"Hai, Sire," Bardock said, "I’ll testify to that."

"And now you’ve grown protective of the boy, have you?" The King said darkly. "Or perhaps you prefer him this way." Goddammed perceptive old man.

I said nothing, knowing nothing I said would help or hinder me while he stood there, thinking seriously about killing me, just as he had done when Vegita was injured on Shikaji. He had taken one look at me and known I was well on my way to winning is son’s heart…and that I meant to tear that heart to bloody shreds once it was mine. The only thing stopping him now was the fact that he knew it would wreck Vegita’s chances for recovery.

"Will you honor my house and take supper here, Ou-sama," Bardock said formally, trying to pull the King’s attention away from me. It worked.

"The King of Vegita-sei," Vegita-ou said dangerously, "does not sup with whores, freedmen, or common soldiers."

"We don’t mind, Ou-sama," I said sweetly.

Bardock and Scopa both went speechless with shock, and the King rounded on me again. Then…then he began to laugh, a full, deep sound of genuine amusement.

"Perhaps I will stay," he said. "Show me my son, girl."

I left Bardock and Scopa to get the meal ready.

Vegita had to be introduced to his own father. They sat together on the porch that faced the Turrasht range and talked for a long time. About what, I don’t know. The part of the conversation I did hear was Vegita asking his father questions he had yet to ask any of us in the new soft voice he uses. Why can I not remember? Who am I exactly? What happened to me? And the King’s deep gruff voice answering each question in turn.

I taught the King to play chess after dinner and the old bastard beat me at my own game! He says he’ll come back every four or five days to check on Vegita’s progress.

 

 

I’m almost done with the prototype of the stalemate shield. I’ve made incredible progress with all this time on my hands to work unhindered. Vegita has helped out a lot in that, because he keeps Rom-kun occupied for me while I’m working. He will play with him for hours on the other side of my little workshop and I can concentrate all my attention on the task at hand and not have to have Rom-kun out of my sight.

Bardock is getting steadily pissier about that the bigger his son gets. He’s told me yesterday I’m ruining the boy for any sort of normal life among his people. That making him soft and gentle lowers his chances of living to manhood enormously. I threw laser spanners and my pulse drill at him, and screamed at him. I don’t even remember what I said, probably something horrible. I just lost it when he suggested that Rom-kun wouldn’t live to see adulthood.

Vegita has begun reading everything he can get his hands on. There’s a restlessness brewing inside him, a sense of his fighting power sort of twisting and fidgeting within him because he’s grown healthy again and needs that release of physical and psychic activity. He paces sometimes while he reads, an old style bound book from Scopa’s library in one hand and Rom-kun cradled in the crook of his other arm. He can’t sit still for more than a few minutes, but I think the reading helps focus his mind and relieves a great deal of the nervous energy. He’s working his way through the complete accord of Saiyan history, from the oral traditions of pre-space age Vegita-sei, to the age of literacy that began after the Tsiru-jin invasion, all the way to the present day. He told me he’s not enjoying the read. He’s about half way through and the histories get progressively bloody and brutal as you go toward present day.

"Read something else if you don’t like it," I told him.

"I must read it all," he said solemnly. "I am the Prince with no memory of his people."

All the little boy mannerisms have gradually drifted away. He doesn’t act or behave like a boy anymore. Just…like a different man. That idea, a seditious, treasonous plot, keeps worrying at my mind more and more. He hasn’t remembered a thing, except for little flashes here and there. The last time he had a small recollection of any kind, he ended up screaming his heart out again, again until Scopa gave him something to knock him out.

At night, he reads Rom-kun stories from Scopa’s books of Legends, both Saiyan and Madrani, the dogs lolling at his feet. The dogs adore him as much as Rom-kun does.

 

 

 

Vegita…

I wish I could call him by some other name. Then I could completely disassociate the man I hated with this new man who was born here in Bardock’s house. That cruelly handsome face I hated more than Hell itself is unrecognizable now, in the same the way some great actors are unrecognizable from role to role because they rearrange their features and postures so completely as to appear to be another person.

The old Vegita’s face was always pulled into an angry frown---sometimes tense, sometimes threatening, sometimes enraged or lustful, sometimes amused---but his eyes always flickered with barely banked rage at…at everything. His face was cruel and vicious and arrogant and evil, like Lucifer after his fall, wicked and beautiful. He carried himself in a pose and hunched tension, head lowered, shoulders drawn up, like a too-tightly wound coil ready to spring. Every move carried the threat of violence and death, like a tiger crouched to pounce. Every gesture was sharp and cobra quick, and he seemed to radiate rage.

I’m watching the man who we call Vegita right now, from my workshop window. He’s sitting with Rom-kun in his lap, tossing a ball for the dogs to retrieve, laughing softly. His back is straight, his shoulders loose, the cut and shift of his muscles beneath Bardock’s too-large tunic is relaxed. He walks with that lithe, feline Saiyan grace, but easily, as though he’s completely unconscious of his body and comfortable in his own skin. He hasn’t noticed the scars they cut into his body, a horrible web of criss-crossed stripes. His face…he’s smiling, his eyes alight and full of pleasure in simply being alive. His features are relaxed, though he frowns quite a bit as he’s reading the last few tomes of the Saiyan histories. He doesn’t like them. I know why, though he hasn’t said anything aloud about it. His face is beautiful when he smiles. It’s strange, but in some ways, this new person is very similar to Son-kun, except for the fact that he has a quick, sharp mind. He’s busy filling it up, too, with everything Scopa can give him to read or study, educating himself in an eclectic, round about way on everything that interests

him---and that’s everything. The whole world is new to him…

I said it before, but this is who he should have been. Just as Rom-kun doesn’t

bite and snarl because he’s never had infant aggression conditioning, Vegita isn’t a vicious, violent, raping, murdering bastard because he doesn’t have the lifetime of conditioning and training that made him that way.

It’s like Enma-sama took an evil soul and washed it’s memories clean for reincarnation…then returned that soul to the same body.

 

 

 

It’s forty days tomorrow. The end of the month Vegita-ou gave us to bring Vegita back to ‘normal’. I sewed a special pocket into my dress and lay my

ki-gun inside it. If he makes so much as a suspicious gesture in Vegita’s direction, or makes a move to kill the rest of us---which he certainly will if he concludes that Vegita is a lost cause---I’ll shoot him.

I…I won’t kill him. This new ki-gun is an improved design on what I gave Zarbon. It has no lethal setting, but it takes the target’s ki down to nothing and the duration is several days. It’ll stun the old bastard while we pack and fly back to Med Center. Weeks ago, I found a broken heap of a small troop carrier in the freight dock hanger scheduled for scrap destruction. I fixed it in my spare time, and Hiru did some creative accounting for transpo admin to make them think it had been scrapped. It’s in my personal effects locker in the surgery…encapsulated. It can carry everyone in this house, and anyone at Med Center who wants to come with us. Nail can mind tweak the space traffic control to let us launch and clear the system. Bardock will…I think his oath to Vegita to protect me will force him to come with us. I don’t know about his squad, but they sure as hell won’t rat us out. Hiru and Nachti…I…they will come, I think. They won’t like the company, but they’ll both jump at the chance to be free. Scopa will want to stay and do his duty as chief surgeon in time of war, but he’ll have no choice since Vegita-ou will order his death for failing to put Vegita ‘back to rights’. Zarbon…if we can find him, I think he’ll come. If it’s a choice between Scopa and his loyalty to Jeiyce, I know damn well who he’ll pick. Vegita will come. If he refuses, I’ll zap him with my ki-gun and drag him into the ship. If he stays, he’ll sit and watch his father with wide trusting eyes as the King delivers the death blow to ‘put him out of his misery’. It’s so strange and surreal…but I feel the same sort of protectivness toward him I feel for Rom-kun.

I meant to stay and finish my stalemate shield and…and try to put the war on indefinite hold with this invention. But if the King forces my hand, there’s nothing I can do. I won’t kill him and leave Vegita-sei to the mercy of Mousrom. He’ll wake after the initial stun wears off to find himself temporarily without fighting power and with no means of communication from Bardock’s house. So, the old bastard will have to walk if he wants to leave the plains. By the time he recovers his power, or someone finds him, we’ll be long gone. To Namek-sei.

It’s on the other side of the galaxy, Nail says. A planet of legend to most of the peoples in the Empire, and no one knows where it is. They’ll never find us if they search a million years.

 

 

 

The King arrived last night and a tangible aura of tension came with him. He ate mostly in silence, watching Vegita closely, asking him questions now and then, listening carefully to the answers. The rest of us didn’t speak all through the meal.

I finally beat the King of Vegita-sei at chess. He’s pretty much massacred me every time we’ve played in the last month, but last night I finally won. It was a tense game in more ways than one. We stalked each other around the board, while we sparred verbally. I think…no, I know, he’s figured out it must have been me

who tipped of the rebels about the attack on Shikaji. And for a moment or two, I wondered if he didn’t have some half-formed suspicions about my identity as Jeiyce’s mastertech.

He looked like I’d suddenly kicked him in the groin when I claimed checkmate. Then he laughed like hell. And Vegita…he chose that moment to remember something. For the first time, it was a memory that didn’t leave him wailing in agony. Somehow, there was no mental land mine attached to it. It was…a memory of his father and himself, from when he was very young. Probably before Nappa ‘toughened him up’. For a second, just a sentence or two, he spoke as though he remembered everything, telling me his father would be pestering me for a game every time he visited now because there were only two or three people in the Empire who could match him in a game of strategy. Vegita’s voice sounded…different. Again. Not like it is now and not like before either. Not a constant growl behind every word…but a man’s deep, confident, soft-spoken voice.

The King looked into his eyes closely, tried to get him to remember more. And then sighed tiredly. He rose and left the house without a word, leaving Vegita behind staring after, with a look that said he was wondering what he had done wrong. Scopa, Bardock and I followed him silently, and I closed the door behind us.

Vegita-ou stalked back and forth upon the blackwood porch that faces the mountains, his face drawn in tension and internalized rage. Though not at the three of us. He was nearly smoking with suppressed hate at the man who had taken the son he knew from him and replaced him with this stranger.

"Your time is up, Madrani," the King said, staring out at the black peaks of Tussasht in the distance. "You will all be spared your lives. I cannot lose two trauma surgeons or even one strong soldier at this juncture in the war."

"It is coming, Ou-sama!" Scopa told his father tensely. "A little at a time. He will come back to himself completely if he has enough time. But he will need longer than a month."

The King spat out a rumbling snarl of impotent fury and slammed one fist into his hand. "I sent a strong, fierce son to war. The strongest our race has seen in a thousand years. That gentle boy in there cannot follow me to the throne. And I will not see him live to be shamed and mocked by his own people!"

"He is making progress, Ou-sama," I said calmly. And my hand was on the trigger of the ki-gun, the barrel aimed, through the fabric of my pocket, straight at his cold, murdering heart.

"It is as I said from the first, Sire," Scopa added. "When it comes, it will most likely come all at once."

The King stood there poised on the edge of decision, tail lashing, his face an inexpressive mask of agony. And…I saw in the dim light of the porch the deep, new lines that were etched into his face, the sleepless circles around his eyes, the gray that had not been there when I first met him after Shikaji. The very thought of killing his son was eating him alive inside. I stepped forward and spoke gently, softly.

"Don’t give up on him, Sire."

His eyes narrowed in anger…then in confusion. "Why do you give a damn, girl?" When I didn’t reply, having no answer to give him, he shook his head and seemed to growl out a sigh, almost inaudibly. "What is your best estimate, Madrani?"

"Less than six months, Ou-sama," Scopa said. I knew for a fact that he had just that instant pulled that number out of the air. He had told me in a quiet, worried voice just two days before, that he was becoming less and less optimistic about Vegita’s chances of ever remembering his life before Avaris. I told Scopa that this was just fine with me. And not to worry about the King killing Vegita. I didn’t give him details, but I told him in no uncertain terms that if would not happen tonight. That if he tried, I would stop him. Scopa didn’t ask any questions, but he nodded slowly. He believed every word I said.

"Six months, then," Vegita-ou growled. "The equal measure of the time they held him captive." He blasted off from the porch without a word of farewell.

I closed the door to the hearthroom to keep Vegita from hearing our conversation outside, but…he overheard it anyway. Or most of it. I don’t think he caught the fact that his father had been seriously ready to kill him. I went into the kitchens and began to wash up, feeling shaky and relieved…and disappointed in a guilty way. It would have felt good the shoot the King. I would have carried the look of surprise on his face with me to keep me smiling for the rest of my life.

And all this…all the mess and horror of this war would have been behind us. We would have been on our way to of place where we could have lived out our lives in peace, and…

We still may be if, or rather when, Vegita still doesn’t remember anything in five months. I think, this way, I can give Bardock the stalemate shield to present to Vegita-ou as his own invention. This way, I’ll have time to finish it, to stop this war, and still escape with everyone before the end of the six months is up.

I finished the washing and went back into the hearthroom to find Vegita reading with Rom-kun in his lap. He looked up as I approached, kneeling to pull the baby out of his arms. His face was…he looked close to tears.

"He is ashamed of me," Vegita said softly. "That I was so weak. That I let them break me."

I shook my head, speaking gentle lies. "He's just afraid you'll never remember who you were."

"I think I dreamed of you while they were torturing me," he whispered. "Waking dreams. Your face was like a light in a hell of darkness." He was struggling to keep his voice steady and losing the fight. His shoulders began to shake. "I---I want to tell Ottoussama that I could have stayed strong. I could have...no matter what they did to me. If they'd only let me s-sleep..." And he began to cry. It wasn’t the pitiful sobs he had wept when he first woke, that time I hurt his feelings in my workshop. It was the deep, wrenching sob of a man who had been hurt so badly his mind and spirit had come near to crumbling and dying.

This was what I had wanted. To see him humbled. To see him utterly devastated and stripped of his pride. To see him hurt as bad as he had hurt me. But…He wasn’t the same man. We are who we are, but our experiences and teaching shape how we think and behave, and all he’s ever know is myself, Bardock, Scopa and Rom-kun. There are no sins on his head as he is now.

I put my arms around him and held him as he cried. "There's no shame in it."

I whispered against his cheek. "Everyone has a breaking point, where their strength and will just gives out. We're all just flesh and blood...not gods."

He drew back, searching my face. "Am I such a fool now? Is that why you don't want me? Because I am...not as I was. Not whole?"

Of course he wouldn’t understand why…but something in him had seen the way I was still shy about any casual physical contact with him since that one night I had spent in his bed. I still can’t think of the memory of how I wanted him and not tremble.

"I do want you, Vegita," I said softly, kissing him. But he pushed me back gently. His eyes were dark and damp, but clear and…I saw something in them, a flicker of his father’s almost unnatural perceptiveness.

"No...You---your body wants me. But...you don't. Or you wish you didn't. I do not understand it."

Now, he was holding me as I began to shake, as my eyes began to fill. He had seen it, that over-powering…feeling I had felt the night I slept beside him, when my bare skin had met his. He had seen it and put a name to it, and given me an explanation I hadn’t been able to find inside myself. It was the conflict of the opposing emotions, churning in my mind and heart like water and pure magnesium. Some part of me had sensed at that first touch that reaction of mixing so much hate and…and any kind of emotion other than platonic would tear me to pieces from the inside. I had only purged the surface of my rage for the man he had been when I stood and screamed my throat raw on that mountaintop in the north. What lay beneath…oh gods, the pitiless, sunless, merciless hate that lay in the dark, submerged depths of my heart would turn inward and eat me alive like cancer if I began to care for him in this way. He knew, he could sense, that the fault lay with him. He was right, but for the wrong reasons.

"You're not a fool. And you are whole. You're just...you. As you would have been left to follow your own nature. You're the good man you might have been, if you hadn't been raised to be a---Oh Kami! I wish I had met you first! I think I could have loved you more than my own life if you had been like you are now." I broke down completely then, realizing that…that it was too late. Too late for him. Too late for me. Too late for anything to ever be made right between us. And…oh Kami, too late to stop the feeling that had been germinating inside me. I already cared for this man with no past and no sins and no unkindness anywhere in his soul. And I was…this was going to drive me mad before this long, twisting tragedy was done.

"I was unkind to you?" He looked terrified to hear the answer.

"You..." I had to think of how to phrase a truthful answer. "You were as good as you knew how to be."

He knew I had shaved unpleasant details out of that reply, though he had no idea how unpleasant. He frowned, began to speak---then he shuddered, crying out softly, bending double, is hands flying over his eyes as though he were trying to block out images.

"Where is Articha?" He asked tremulously, his eyes squeezed tight. I suddenly knew what he was seeing and the blood fell from my face. "She is dead," he answered his own question bleakly. "It would have been almost impossible to survive---to survive what they did to her."

"It is possible." I had gone cold all over, body, mind and heart, and he flinched away from the look on my face. It must have been terrible. Slowly, after a moment or two, that black, swirling place in my mind subsided, and slept again. But oh gods, it was still there. I raised one hand and caressed his face, feeling it shift inside me like a black, coiled living thing. "Turna took her to one of their country estates to recover. She won't die. She says she won't give them the satisfaction of having destroyed her. She's a very strong woman."

He nodded solemnly. "I dream sometimes of fighting and killing. Of enjoying it. Even now, when I think of those memories, the thrill of battle seems to sing inside me. I think violence and love of battle must be bred into my blood and bones. I understand them. But I do not understand how a man could use a woman so."

That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I began to feel like two titanic storm fronts were clashing in my head, wheeling into a tornado that was threatening to sweep me away. Then…I began to cry. The one act of healing that will wash away pain and rage and hate, or at least ease it. He carried me to his bed, laying my sleeping baby between us, holding me all night.

I woke this morning at dawn, and went to the window, while he and Rom-kun

still slept. In one way Vegita’s body is still recovering---he tends to sleep about nine solid hours every night. That’s about twice as much as a normal Saiyan needs.

There is no soul so black that it cannot be shown the way to the light, Kami’s voice whispered to me on the light summer breeze.

This is what he meant. I’ve had all kinds of theories, but this is the truth of it. I didn’t heed his warning against hatred and taking vengeance. And I set the galaxy on fire with good intentions. I won’t doubt his words again.

I took a deep breath…and reached inside my own soul, building a prison, a black, unbreachable storage for the black, monstrous hate that was conceived the day Chikyuu died, that slept all the days of Karot-chan’s life, and was born the day he died. That grew, fed by the Prince of Vegita-sei, into an obsidian poisonous thing that sat coiled in the dark places of my soul like an evil dragon. I built, block by block, an inpentitrable cell inside my own mind---and I shoved the night creature inside, bolting the door behind me. I don’t know if I was awake or asleep when I did this, if a ever physically left the bed.

But when I woke…I felt…new. And clean. And well. The little prison I’d dreamed I built was there. I could feel it, like a cold stone sitting in my heart and mind---but it was buried in a deep pit with all my guilt and doubts, my angers and bad feelings. It was separated from every other part of me, and I was free of its poison. I have to be free of it or it’ll kill me one piece at a time. I have to be free of it to go forward with the plan that has brewed in the back of my head since Vegita woke. I have to be free of it to live and not go mad.

 

 

Here is my plan.

What if…

What if this new man sat on the throne of Vegita-sei and ruled as a good king?

What if it were possible to change Vegita-sei from the inside?

I wasn’t sure it was possible until today. I had to know, so I suggested to Bardock that he spar with Vegita. Scopa readily agreed, saying he’s coming to a point where physical exertion is necessary to keep Vegita’s health moving toward betterment. He’s still not one hundred percent recovered, though he’s gained back most of the weight he lost. The over-sleeping is bothering Scopa a little. He says it may be psychosomatic rather than actual physical need. I had to test the thought that occurred to me out of the blue last night just before I fell asleep.

They went out onto the rolling hills and moors north of the house and sparred. I followed to watch, Rom-kun toddling along beside me, holding my hand. He’s wanting to walk everywhere now, and having learned to walk, he’s wanting to run.

Bardock and Vegita sparred. For exactly ten seconds. Vegita, grinning excitedly, his body falling into a martial ready pose of its own accord, launched himself at Bardock and laid him out with one punch.

"POW!" Crowed Rom-kun. He began to laugh and jump up and down. "Edeeta pow-ed Poppa!"

"Disloyal brat," Bardock muttered, sitting up and wiping the blood from his mouth.

Vegita stood several feet away, motionless, his face pale. Slowly, he walked over to where Bardock sat and knelt beside him, biting his lip. "I---I am sorry, Bardock-san."

"I was a fool not to consider how strong you must be now," Bardock said with a wry smirk.

"I hurt you…" Vegita swallowed hard.

"You split my lip, boy," Bardock snorted, frowning at the look on Vegita’s face. "Do not apologize for besting another man in battle. And do not hold back on me!" He stood and crouched in a more serious ready stance. "Again, Ouji-sama!"

Bardock attacked again and again, and Vegita seemed to get into it and the fierce joy of the fight for its own sake, grinning as they clashed each time, tossing Bardock across the length of the meadow all afternoon. Rom-kun was in hysterics of joyous excitement, shouting, "Me too! Me too, Momma!" Heh…he’s Son-kun reborn all right.

"I lied to him," Vegita told me as we lay together before sleep last night. He’s still making no move to---to be with me, though I can feel how much he wants me.

We lie beside each other most nights, and never go beyond a goodnight kiss.

But, he talks, we talk, sometimes for an hour or more, about everything imaginable. He wants to hear me talk, to learn about me, to hear about Chikyuu and my parents and---and everything. I haven’t told him it was Bardock who destroyed Chikyuu. I’m not sure how he would react if he knew.

"How did you lie?" I asked softly.

"I did hold back," he said. "I would have hurt him badly had I not pulled the force of my blows."

"Bardock’s a smart man," I murmured. "He figured it out."

Bardock had figured it out and come to the same conclusion, his mind beginning to turn over the very same scheme I had in mind.

"No one can kill that boy," Bardock said flatly after they were through. He sat down at the dining table while I set it for supper, looking thoroughly exhausted and pleased. "His father will not put him down if he does not remember at the end of six months. He was the strongest warrior alive before they took him and now…Gods! He must be stronger than I would have imagined any mortal could become." He looked straight at me, his eyes suddenly sharp. "You had me test him for you."

"I had you confirm what I already knew." I said. "The Saiyan healing factor

has raised his power level up to some kind of mythic proportion. He’s safe from his father and so are we. No one’s going to kill him. A thousand warrior’s couldn’t kill him."

"He does not like to hurt me," Bardock said uncomfortably. "That is not good or healthy."

My face hardened. "There’s nothing wrong with taking no pleasure in hurting someone for no fucking reason, Bardock! The important thing is he won’t let himself be hurt."

If a good king sat on the throne of Vegita-sei, he might be torn down by his own people. But…if that good king were literally the strongest man alive, that would be another matter entirely. Saiyans worship strength. They’ll follow him. And perhaps he can save them in spite of themselves.

 

 

 

The war is going very, very badly. Vegita has begun to listen to the hyper light news feed with Bardock every evening, to the endless stream of battles reports and descriptions of skirmish victories here and there…and massive losses. Jeiyce is steadily beating the King into a corner, beginning to purge strike Saiyan worlds in the heart of the Empire. Closer and closer to Vegita-sei every day.

Scopa disappeared for the day after receiving a call on the encrypted comm I built for him. He’s done that several times in the last few weeks, and only shaken his head when I ask him where he’s been. He won’t tell me anything about what’s going on at Med Center, though he says most of the people there have been unaffected by the most recent changes. Mousrom has either rotated offworld or taken into custody every slave on Vegita-sei. It is an ‘emergency measure’ to keep terrorism down to a minimum, the news feeds say. Third class warriors are doing everything from running agro-farms to cooking in their own barracks mess, to serving as domestics in the houses of the Elites.

The only exception to this mass extinguishing of the entire slave population is Med Center. They need us to heal the wounded. I asked him if everyone in Med Center was all right. He said yes. I didn’t believe him.

Scopa’s a lousy liar.

 

 

 

Bardock and I had it out again over Rom-kun. He’s determined to ‘toughen the brat up’. I went ballistic when he used that phrase, remembering the King using the same words to describe how Nappa made Vegita into a---a---

"You are warping him against the bent of his own nature, girl!" Bardock said last night at supper. "How will I make a warrior of him after you've had four solid years to coddle him the way you're doing? He can barely speak, and he is already what the drill instructors in the children's barracks will deem abnormal!"

"That's because I pulled him out of his incubator before they shifted him to the infant conditioning unit, and then to the infant barracks!" I grated out, stabbing the roast boar with my carving knife. "This is what a Saiyan child is like naturally, when he hasn't had his head pumped full of subliminal aggression tapes for the first fucking year of his life!"

"Bulma..." Bardock said finally. "If, at four years of age, his drill instructors decide that he is defective mentally, or that he lacks the normal will to fight, they will put him down."

I nearly flew across the table at him, knife in hand. "Then train him yourself," I said coldly. "It's your right as his father. Any Saiyan parent can assume his offspring's training personally if he wants, right? It's just that most warriors don't want to be bothered."

Vegita and Scopa kept wisely silent during these arguments, but we actually reached some kind of detante last night. Bardock’s going to start training him, and I’m going to…I’m going to try and be less over-protective and huggy. I can’t help it.

"It’s just that if anything happened to him, I would---I---" I stopped trying to get the words out as I sat beside the hearth late that night. Rom-kun was nestled in Vegita’s lap and I was sort of half-leaning, half-lying on him. His free hand was threading through my hair with slow, soothing gentleness.

"Bardock would give his life for the boy," Vegita said in his soft deep voice. I wish I could call him by a different name. "He loves him greatly, but he is shy to show it. I do not know why."

"It’s a Saiyan thing," I said sleepily.

"Hmm," he murmured. "That is why my father does not wish me to touch him. Would it be disloyal to say that some Saiyan ways are foolish?" I smiled. "Bulma…"

"Huh?" I had almost drifted off to sleep when he spoke.

"How is it that you do not hate my people for having purged your world?" He drew back a little, peering into my face intently. I thought about the question for a along time.

. "I would have hated you all if I hadn't seen something almost immediately," I said. "A truth that most of your enemies don't want to think about. That you're not monsters. You're just men. Very, very strong, and so entrenched in your violent warrior culture that you can't see beyond the end of your own noses most of the time, but…The men who came and destroyed my world…they were friends. They loved each other like brothers, even though they'd never admit it in a million years. They loved their mates, and their children once they got to know them. They were…just people. Raised in a violent, murderous society, trained from the cradle to kill anything not Saiyan without turning a hair. But beneath all that, they were all like Rom-kun. Or like you."

"I am not a child," he said softly. There was a heat building in his eyes, an echo of the heat that seemed to be gathering inside me. The absence of the hate I had locked away did not bank this fire, but it gave it a different flavor and color. It was bright and warm inside me like the sun, not a half-mad twisted passion born of hate. It was stronger and clean and---and---

"No. You're not a child," I said, leaning toward him, my mouth tasting his. But the night thing, the black hate dragon, shifted in its prison deep inside me and I shivered against him. He sensed it…and he pushed me back gently. "I want you," he said simply. "For all that I have forgotten, I have not forgotten that. But…I will wait. For a day when you want me, and that wanting does not bring you grief.

I slept in my room alone, lying awake for hours. Thinking and feeling too many things to speak in a year.

 

 

 

It’s done. The stalemate shield it done. All the plans, all the design glitches, and the expansion and generator specs and power needs. Everything.

Bardock came to me today while I sat in the sun on the green slopes just north of the house and watched Vegita and Scopa play a game of toss the baby. Rom-kun was squealing with laughter as they passed him back and forth, the dogs yipping each time he did so.

Bardock watched my face for a minute, than spoke in a low voice. "You and he share a bed these days more often than not. Have you been together as man and woman yet?"

I stared up at him, and shook my head slowly. "He can sense there’s something wrong, but I haven’t told him why. I won’t tell him why. He…he won’t touch me until I he knows I want him too."

"Daughter," he said, softer, his eyes shadowed with dark worry. "Do not go down that road. It will be the death of you."

"I’m already on it," I said softly, tremulously.

"If he remembers and returns to being the man he was, you will---"

"He won’t!" I snapped, feeling my chest begin to tighten.

Bardock sighed. "I will take the brat flying tomorrow. He must grow accustomed to heights and the sense of the air."

I nodded wordlessly in agreement. But I knew letting Rom-kun out of my sight for an entire day would be easier said than done. Vegita and Rom-kun went right off to sleep the way they always do…the sleep of the innocent.

I’m awake.

 

 

 

Too many things happened. Why…Kami, why can’t anything in my life come slowly or a little at a time. I’m tired…weary to the bone of constant, sweeping, jarring and complete changes in my life that take place in the space of an hour or two.

I’m so tired of it.

Bardock took Rom-kun away from me at dawn. I smiled and waved bye-bye, and he said, "Bye-bye, Momma! Bye-bye!" Then he shrieked with joy as his father launched into the sky. I stood there crying like an idiot for about half and hour.

I went into the solace of my workshop and hammered on the servo-bots I’d brought from Med Center. They had started developing glitches a month after they went online, I think because the lines of transport code I wrote for the servos were incompatible with the Med Center computers frame type. They worked very well, but they had to be used on their own little network. I encapsulated them and stored them away after a while. The Saiyan wounded were absolutely terrified of being tended by an automaton and broke them whenever they got close. How can a space faring race be such technophobes?

I stripped them down, repaired the ones that had been thumped by unnerved Saiyan patients, and encapsulated all but one. This one, for some unknown reason I could never ferret out, had always locked up and crashed. Poppa always said that there was a mystical gremlin of engineering that made some individual machines lemons for no reason at all. I went to work on it with a will, but I think I was so distracted thinking about Rom-kun I did more damage than repair. I was muttering under my breath about not being an over-protective mother when Vegita came into the shop and watched my silently for a while. I began to tell him why I was upset, my voice growing more and more teary as I spoke and he listened solemnly without comment.

"You should not stay in here," he said thoughtfully.

"Yeah?" I sniffled. "Why not?"

"You will destroy your…thing," he motioned to the servo. I saw with surprise I had been gutting it while I spoke to him. "Come with me. Outside for the day."

It was a perfect sunny day, warm but not hot, and the wind was lightly tugging on the moors, tossing everything back and forth gently. The pale green grasslands were littered with red blossoms. They only bloomed in moon years, Bardock had told me. The moon, my first moon on Vegita-sei, would come this fall, in just a few short months.

We walked across the moors aimlessly, talking about this and that, mostly his perceptions of the Tsiru-jin historical tome he had finished last night. He seemed to be asking more and more questions about the parliamentary monarchy structure of Chikyuu and how it had actually functioned. By the time we stooped to rest in the early afternoon, my mind was miles away from my worry about Rom-kun. We lay back on a small hillside and drowsed side by side. I felt…good. Peaceful. So easy in his company it was unreal. I didn’t think I could enjoy any one friend’s companionship more than Scopa’s. Scopa had even made the joking comment that he was beginning to feel ousted as my best friend. But behind his smile had been the same apprehensive worry I’d seen in Bardock’s eyes when he watched me with Vegita in the last few weeks.

"The sky is the same color as your eyes," he said softly, lying on his back beside me, his arms folded behind his head.

"Chikyuu’s skies were this color," I murmured sleepily. "Is it my imagination, or has the sky’s color deepened in its blue in the last couple of weeks?"

"Bardock said it is the moon’s approach," he replied. "He said by fall the sky will be the color of blood. I like the color of your eyes better." He frowned curiously. "How…"

"How what?"

"It is nothing."

"Don't start a question and not finish it, Vegita," I said a little peevishly. He rolled over on his side to face me, propped up on one elbow, grinning faintly.

"How did you breed the dogs if your world is gone?" His face fell as mine tensed with memory of things and people lost forever.

I told him about the stat bags, about my dogs on Chikyuu and my flowers, all the things I brought back to life from the tiny fragments of the things I’d had with me when I came to Vegita-sei. I began to talk about Poppa and my eyes began to burn, though my voice remained soft and steady.

"You loved him greatly?" He asked.

"Yes..." I smiled sadly. "I loved him very much..."

"Bardock told me," he said with a kind of distant sadness in his own voice, "that I should never say such a thing to my father." He sounded almost envious of me, of how I spoke of Poppa. I knew he had realized quite a while ago that his father was not a good man, though he hadn’t spoken of it to me.

"That you love him?" I finished. The King was coming to check on his son less and less often. The last time had been three weeks ago. I knew it was because the war was going very badly for Vegita-sei now, but I wondered if Vegita thought it was because his father was too ashamed of him. "Don't tell him," I said. I cringed at how his father would react to such a statement. "It's against Saiyan custom to say it aloud, or even openly admit to it. And it would only upset him if you said it."

He seemed to inhale slowly and spoke his next words in a rush. "You are not Saiyan. Would it upset you if I said it to you?"

I stared at him open-mouthed, my mouth going dry. I had known this was coming, but I was still unprepared and shaken and…and, I can’t even describe how I felt. There was a rush of warmth from the pit of my stomach, a wild surge of sweet feeling, like when Rom-kun said he loved me the first time. And there was the other, stirring in its midnight prison in the basement of my soul, shifting angrily in its reptilian coils, the force of its insane hate radiating even through the walls if its cell like cold fire. And above all this was Bardock’s face, glowering down at me with worry, asking me what would I do if he remembered and became the monster he had been. I opened my mouth the answer him with no idea of what I would say until I said it.

"I---I could love the man you are right now. Kami...I think I already do. But---but you won't stay this way! You'll go back to---to the way you were before!"

"I do not think that is possible," he said, caressing my face, smoothing away the tears that had begun to leak out of my eyes. "I believe there is no way back to my memory of before Avaris except through Avaris---through J-Jey--," he stooped trying to say Jeiyce’s name, keeping his eyes fixed on mine.. "When I do remember, as Scopa says I shall---if I remember---when I have passed through that hell....Bulma, a man could not emerge from such a thing unchanged." His arms had slowly wrapped themselves around me, pulling my body gently against his. "I think I must have been a prideful, selfish lover to you. That I must have hurt you greatly. I am sorry for that. I must have been the basest sort of fool to have taken your love for granted." He kissed me.

And he kissed me, again and again. We lay side by side in each other’s arms, our bodies melting together with our clothes on, like two children making out, for nearly an hour. Heat began to kindle and grow inside me like a slow burning hearthfire after a long freezing day. He didn’t push me or pull me or ask anything of me…he just gave. His every touch was light and gentle, his lips like warm silk on mine. And when I drew back and stared into his face, there was no resemblance to my enemy, none at all, and his eyes were standing full of tears from the simple joy of having me in his arms.

The slow burn erupted like a gentle explosion rumbling through me and I almost sobbed his name, want singing inside me like the warm winds over the moors. I began pulling his clothes of, and he helped me pull my dress over my head, and then there was skin on skin, warm and good and clean of anything bad or twisted or hateful or coerced. He was gentle and awkward, as though it was his first time. But then, it was his first time, I thought with a smile as I pushed him down on his back, moving over him, hands and mouth touching and tasting everywhere.

"Do you want this?" He whispered as I moved above him, our bodies burning against each other, his hardness to my softness, ready to meld into a perfect fit. I froze, choking on a sob.

No one has ever asked me that question. No one. Not Raditz, who took my virginity so gently and skillfully I didn’t realize there was no option to say no. Not the evil Prince, who took everything so brutally and Silenced my lips against the word no. Not even sweet Yamcha, so many years dead now, who always tried to sneak and wheedle his way past third base, but never once asked.

"Yes…" I sobbed, shaking against him. "Yes." My legs were around him, my mouth against his---and we both cried out softly as I slid down over him, taking him inside me, the first lover of my life who was ever my choice to take. I was crying as I moved above him, rocking slowly, and he sat up with both arms wrapped around me, kissing my face, moving with me, his words soft against my lips.

"Don't cry," He whispered, "I want you to be happy…I want to make you happy…I…" He gasped like a drowning man as I quickened out pace.

"I am," I breathed. I could feel the end coming and I knew it would be like nothing I’d ever known. I threw back my head, trying to say his name, trying to tell him that he was beautiful and good and---and the end struck us both in the same instant. We collapsed against each other, shaking in the aftermath, unable to speak for a long time.

"Bulma…" He raised his eyes to meet mine. I knew the words were coming, and that they were the name and declaration of the wordless well of feeling that was filling me up to overflowing. "I love you," he whispered, taking my face between his hands, kissing me gently. "I love you…"

From such a high, precarious pinnacle…there is so far to fall. So far…

He went stiff in my arms, the words still hanging in the air between us. His entire body spasmed in agony and he screamed. I rolled him on his side, my heart in my mouth. He had hit another memory trip wire, and oh gods, we were miles and miles from the house, miles from the tranks that he would need now to keep him from shrieking until he passed out, or worse, asphyxiated. He went on screaming and screaming, while I held him, keeping him pressed onto his side so wouldn’t choke on his tongue. Slowly, the wails receded and he went limp, weeping like a child who has lost everything good in his life. He couldn’t seem to stop, shuddering apart in wave after wave of tearing sobs. Then he raised his head, looking into my eyes, and his own went wide with horror and grief. He pulled away from me, falling onto his face on the grass, his entire body wracking as he cried. But it was different this time. It wasn’t pain that seemed to be ripping him apart, it was sorrow and horror and regret. I took him in my arms again, stroking him, turning him gently onto his back. I reached down and brushed the tears from his face.

"What did you remember?" I asked softly.

"Everything..." He said in a shaking whisper.

The sun seemed to flicker off and fall above us…the whole world spun around and went dark for an instant, and I went cold, all the warmth inside me snuffed out with that one word. He was…no. He was dead. He was gone. And here beside me lay a monster, a hated, bestial monster, who had risen from the dead to steal back the body of this man I had been helpless to love.

"Do you..." I was shaking all over, pale as a dead woman, trying to cling to any pitiful spar of hope. "Do you know who you are?"

"No," he said softly. And my heart leapt with a kind of piteous hope because his voice was still so soft, still the voice of the man he had been a moment ago. Had he only remembered everything they had done to him, all their tortures? Was everything that came before Avaris still lost to him? "I am Vegita who went to war to annihilate the Empire's enemies," he said in that soft voice, and I moaned softly, beginning to cry. "I am Vegita who lay six months in a Maiyosh-jin dungeon tortured day and night until...until I was no one at all. I am Vegita who dwelt with you in the house of Bardock these three months. I am...I am all three men...and one. But I do not know who that man is."

I pushed away from him, doubling into a knot of agony, of grief for the man I had loved, who was dead now. Of hurt and horror as the barbs of the black hate dragon’s spurs tore through walls of its cell and gouged my soul, drawing blood. Then…his arms were there around me, pulling me up out of that pose of torment, easing the pain with just the gentle touch of another living being . I held onto him, crying as I had when Karot-chan died, when Chikyuu died, when I first saw Son-kun lying still and cold in his father’s arms.

But…you can’t cry forever…

At some point, you have to stop and wipe your face and try to keep on living. And maybe…maybe find a way to stop the hurt. Neither of us said anything for a long time, while the sun began dipping into the west and the wind and sky continued perfect and beautiful, heedless of us and out little problems.

"You win, Bulma," he said at long last.

I turned in his arms, startled and shaken by how soft his tone still sounded.

"Win?"

"The fool's 'game' we began before I went to war," he said hollowly, his every intonation of each syllable echoing all the sorrow inside me. "When we each vowed to enslave the other's heart. You are the victor. You will not hear me give it voice again, but...I meant the---the words I spoke. I still do. And I know that should we both live until the sun above us burns cold and dies, you will never feel the same. I did not understand that before, or even why. I do now."

"And I swore I'd use your love to destroy you," I said, closing my eyes, trying to think. I looked up at him again, meeting those dark tear-filled eyes---and I saw that he had not wanted to remember himself. And, oh Kami, he still wished he hadn’t. Everything in his posture, his eyes, his face, was the man I had loved an hour ago. It was as though…as though the one from before and the man who began life in Bardock’s house had somehow…merged together.

"I wonder..." I whispered, "if the man I made that promise to isn't destroyed already. You're right. You aren't the same now." And if the man I had loved was still somehow alive inside this new, third incarnation of Vegita, then…then…

"The man I was two hours ago had your heart, did he not?" He whispered.

"Yes..." I said just as softly. "But he's gone now."

"And now..." He shook his head, tears still leaking from his eyes. He brushed them away heedlessly, with a soft growl of despair. "You could no more care for me than I could take the Red Prince as my sworn brother. There is no road back from that launch pad where Raditz and your son died. And no road away from that island in the Western Sea where we began."

Is he still the monster with memories of having been a good man for a few months? I wondered. I felt as though my heart were falling apart in two halves, one full of loved, the other withered and full of the hate dragon’s poison. Is he the good man I love with memories of having been a monster in a former life? Was I grasping at straws like a drowning fool? What could I do? How could I reconcile so much hate with the love I felt for the man I had known here in Bardock’s house?

Could this new person who was both sun and shadow, my enemy and my sweet love, ever make me forgive and forget all that lay between us?

"Maybe there is," I said hesitantly.

"Tell me," he said, his deep voice full of the same muted, desperate hope as mine.

Maybe…maybe there was a way. A way for the man to make amends for the monster’s sins. "Give me back everything you took from me," I said steadily. "If you can understand what it was you took, if you can overcome your pride enough to give it back...then...then maybe I'll be able to see the man I loved this morning inside the man you are now."

He closed his eyes, seeming to convulse with relief, with the shred of hope I had given him, given us both. Then he raised his eyes to mine again, taking my hands in his, bringing them to his lips.

I jerked in surprise as Rom-kun’s voice, happy and excited, came drifting over the rolling rises of the moors. We pulled our clothes hurriedly, just before my son came barreling over the crest of the hilltop behind us. Bardock was sauntering behind him, a dead cho-deer slung over one shoulder.

"Mommma! Edeeeta!" Rom-kun swerved at the last minute in his course toward me and leapt into Vegita’s arms. I froze in horror, my heart faltering to a stop and Vegita’s brows pulled down into a hard frown---then he went motionless, staring down at Rom-kun, his face startled and thoughtful. Vegita slowly lifted my baby up and held him up in both hands, studying him silently as Rom-kun continued to tell him all about his day’s adventures. The hard set of Vegita’s features seemed to be shifting from one emotion to another in a confused mix as his feelings for the baby in his arms warred with all of Nappa’s hateful lessons. Then, his face softened, and very slowly, he sat the baby in the crook of one arm, and turned back to me.

"Sleep in Med Center when you wish," he said in the deep, quiet voice of the man I loved, "or in my bed when it pleases you. Bring the boy to my house when you come. I will not have my foster son sleep alone at Med Center with only that Madrani Scopa to attend him." His eyes met mine, reflecting my hope back at me, and his lips twitched as he spoke the next words. "The brat might be permanently damaged by such company and grow to become a physician."

We packed up everything, dogs, baby, personal effects, and ourselves, and left for the Capital within the hour. Scopa and I in the flyer, with Rom-kun in my lap, and Vegita and Bardock flying along beside us. We were back before it was fully dark. Just like that. I had wanted to cry for the way Bardock and especially Scopa’s manner changed when they learned he had recovered himself. Scopa is all formal and professional with him again, his eyes humbly downcast as befits a freedman addressing Saiyan nobility. Yesterday the two of them were laughing together like teenage boys as they passed Rom-kun back and forth like a football.

He stopped at the threshold of the house, the cut of his back tense and almost unsure. Then he squared his shoulders and strode through with the easy feline grace that had marked his every move in Bardock’s house. That hair-triggered tension and that had always been present before he went to war, that had given him an almost hunched appearance as it seized his shoulders up in knots, was not there.

His voice was still deep, even and calm. Scopa muttered softly beside me under his breath what I know he must have been thinking all evening as we flew.

"Who is he?" He asked me.

"I don’t know," I replied softly. "I don’t think he does either."

"Bulma…" He said hesitantly. "There are some things I must tell you about---about what has been happening here in the Capital while we were gone. When you come back to Med Center, if you come tomorrow or the next day, come to me first."

"How bad is it?" I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer.

Scopa shook his head. "Not tonight. I will tell you tomorrow. You have enough to adjust to this evening."

The dogs whipped past him into the hearthroom and he sat in his blackwood armchair, easing into it. He told the dogs in a threatening growl that they would be on the menu tonight if they peed inside the house. But there was no anger in his voice…and no threat. He said in a gruff, almost embarrassed way that they could live here and run wild through the hills like they did at Bardock’s. I smiled and took Rom-kun to try and figure out where he would sleep tonight.

I passed through the hearthroom doors and into the bedroom, the men’s lowered voices a low burr behind me---and I froze. The bedroom, Vegita’s bedroom, was just as it had been. I hadn’t slept here since he had left to go to war…and now…

A thousand memories of this room and that bed left me shaking and nauseous, hearing the clink of the imprisoned night thing’s scales against my heart.

"Momma?" Rom-kun said, biting his lip.

I looked down at his upturned face and somehow mustered a smile. "We won’t sleep here, baby," I told him. "This is a bad room." I nearly ran through the bedchamber to the sitting room…and into the large study I had used to do research. It was just adjacent to the little library, and had a smaller window nook that was almost its own little room. I decapsulated Rom-kun’s bed and set it by the window, checking to make sure the casement was locked, then marched back into the study. I popped the bed capsule, the dresser and wardrobe I’d used at Bardock’s house, moving things around until they seemed right. I wondered why this seemed so eerily familiar, then I realized it was almost the same configuration of furniture as my---my room at Capsule Corp. How strange… The study has its own entrance from the circular house center that is the hearthroom, so there would be no need to go through that room, the bedroom from before, ever again.

Through the ring hallway that circles the hearthroom, I saw could hear Caddi and Scopa talking softly in the kitchen. Batha was not speaking, which was very odd. Both the twins had almost passed out when Vegita strode through the front door, seemingly whole and recovered.

I stood and listened to Bardock tell Vegita how bad things had gotten, how much power Mousrom had now, possibly more than the King at this point. Then I listened in shock as Bardock and then Scopa both swore themselves, each in his own way, into Vegita’s service. Of the three of us, neither Bardock, Scopa nor myself had spoken our thoughts aloud to the other, but we had all come to the same conclusion on our own. That Mousrom would be Vegita-sei’s death…and that a good King, the strongest King Vegita-sei has ever known, could turn this world and this war out of its spiral tailspin and give it a better future. Bardock’s idea of ‘a good king’ is probably a bit different than mine and Scopa’s, but we all seem to be working toward the same goal.

I took a long, steamy bath, washing the smell of flyer fuel off myself and Rom-kun. By the time I came back into the hearthroom, both Bardock and Scopa had left and the twins were setting the table.

We ate. And again, I felt the unreality of this day wash all over me, as he and I talked, one corner of his mouth curling up into a half grin as he watched Rom-kun make a pudding of his meat pie and shove so much of what he didn’t drop to the dogs in his mouth he looked like a chipmunk before each swallow. We sat and ate dinner like…Kami, like a family. The one dark spot on this whole scene was when Batha leaned down and gave my baby a smile that looked like a shark baring its teeth.

"Would little master like some more meat pie?" She said. I caught her eye and she caught mine. You could have frozen bromide with the looks we exchanged. There was no time to settle anything tonight, but tomorrow we would talk. There was no way in hell I was going to have this hate-filled bitch living in the same house where my baby slept.

I led Vegita through his old bedroom, through the sitting room divider, and into the new bedroom I’d created, opening the south window wide, saying as casually as I could that this room was much cooler in the summer with the breezes from the south blowing in. He didn’t reply as I lay Rom-kun down on his baby bed, smiling and kissing my baby goodnight. I didn’t realize he had left the room until I heard the explosion. I ran back through the adjoining room to find him putting out the smoking wreck of his bedroom with a rush of his ki.

"I will not lie beside you in that bed or that room ever again," he said hoarsely.

His eyes were squeezed shut tightly, his hands rising to both sides of his head, every inch of his body trembling. But it wasn’t a mental grenade he’d tripped, it was true memory. The memories of everything he’d done to me in this room, seen through new eyes. There was no absolution here either. I didn’t have any to give him. He built the wall between us stone by stone, labored on it every day for over a year with all his might. It’s his to tear down, just as the guilt is his to live with for the rest of his life.

I didn’t offer any words of comfort, but I pulled his clothes off and lay him down on the bed. He jerked in surprise as and I saw he had just noticed, for the first time, the network of scars they’d lain all over his body.

"Try and sleep," I said. "Tomorrow's going to be a hard day." I kissed him lightly and he stared back at me, swallowing hard.

We didn’t sleep, not for a long time. We lay awake talking, the trembling of his body against mine never subsiding. I had to explain to him what was wrong with his emotions, what he was feeling, and that the guilt was his to make peace and reparation for. Gods…gods…he is, in many ways, still as new to everything as when he woke for the first time in Bardock’s house.

"It is cho-gugol," Vegita whispered. "Debt of blood and honor. A warrior can only pay such a debt with his life's blood."

"Death is an easy out," I said coldly. "You big, strong warriors always talk about dying nobly to absolve your sins. Bullshit! It's harder, more noble, to live with the evil things you've done and try to make up for them. You're right, Vegita. You do owe me this cho-gugol. But I've told you how to be free of it."

He seemed to except that with a stoic Saiyan nod, a thing of honor that must be satisfied. "Thank you," I said softly.

"What have I done to warrant your thanks?" He asked, banked heat brimming behind his dark eyes. I could feel, sense in all my nerve endings, how much he wanted me at this moment…and that he would make no move to have me. I wondered if I wanted him to or not. I was still reeling, still in such shock at another massive change that had fallen on me with no warning.

"For telling Bardock and Scopa to take Rom-kun an myself to safety if anything happens to you."

"Eavesdropper," he growled, with a faint, poorly hidden echo of his old sweet smile. I don’t remember the turn and twist of the rest of the night’s conversation, I was so tired, almost falling asleep as I spoke. I remember he asked me how it came to be that I no longer hated Bardock, and I told him a long rambling story of my relationship with the man who had killed my world, the man who thought of me as daughter. "You're wondering if I still hate you," I said, and he nodded.

I told him the honest truth, the way I had seen the evil Prince as dead, the way everything I saw in him now, this synthesis of new and old, seemed to say that my enemy was still dead. But…I didn’t lie and tell him it would be like it had been in that flowering field this afternoon. But maybe…maybe it could be something different. Something good.

He was silent, and he seemed to be choking for a second or two before he spoke the next words. "You are free," he whispered, his voice strained and raw. "I will give you a---a ship if you---" He was rapidly losing his ability to speak as he gave me the choice to stay or go. Not knowing I’d had the means to leave for a while now if a had chosen to do so. But the act of letting me go, as he saw it, of setting free what he so desperately wanted to keep because he loved me and wanted what would make me happy was…It was honest and unfeigned. He really thought that I would take the offer and leave tomorrow, maybe even tonight, and was willing to let me do so.

"I will stay," I said softly.

"You..." Now, he really was speechless.

"Will stay," I said again. "Partly because of Rom-kun, but also because of what's going on in the Capital and on Vegita-sei now. I won't run away with my own freedom and leave all the other slaves in the Empire to that monster Mousrom. If I can do anything to help stop him, I will. And don't think he'll stop with non-Saiyan's, Vegita. He's about two seconds away from petitioning your father to allow him to interrogate Saiyans as well."

"That will not happen," Vegita said firmly.

"Tell me that after you've been to Council tomorrow," I said grimly. "I can help you stop him, Vegita. The same way Scopa's going to help you. And...I can help with other things too. Give me tomorrow to get some things ready and I'll show you what I mean." I lay my head on his shoulder, staring into the dark, haunted eyes that held no childish rage and thoughtless cruelty, just mild wonder, as he listened to me speak. "And I'll stay because of you," I added, softer. "Because...I think you're as different from the man who went to war a year ago as if you’d died and been reborn. And because of that, I think you might become a king the likes of which Vegita-sei has never seen. A king who might hold an Empire together because it wants to be held together---not just out of brute force. I'll stay...for the hope of what you might become."

He kissed me and wound his arms around me, gentle and strong as they had been in Bardock’s house. Just before he fell asleep, he murmured the word that would be our mantra in all the things that would come after tonight.

"Hope…" he breathed softly.

 

 

 

The ship rolled sharply to the side and inverted and a great shuddering roar filled his ears.

"Ouji-sama!" Coran’s voice crackled through the comm. "You…come…hit by…"

Vegita leapt up unsteadily, tearing the data chip out of the mini comp. He tore around the room, peeling out the security crash safe, and shoving the disc inside. It would hold it in safe keeping, even if they were destroying in the depths of space. And one day, perhaps, someone would happen upon it and hear her story. And she and her people would not be forgotten as she had feared. He left the cabin and ran to the bridge to find the blue green world of Chikyuu looming before them, blocking all of the forward view screen. It was growing ever larger by the second.

The ship was sinking into the atmosphere, spinning wildly out of control.

"Ouji-sama!" Coran barked out. "They are here! But they do not recognize us, they are firing from the surface!"

"They will think it is some trick of Jeiyce’s armies that we come in a Saiyan ship," Vegita muttered. "They believe all of our kind are dead except---"

The world exploded in red sparks and gray metal shards as the ship broke up around them. He was falling through open blue in a rush of clean, sweet-smelling wind. An instant before he lost consciousness, he felt Rikkuum’s great fist lock around his arm.

 

 

 

There was shouting all around, men and women’s voice raised in anger, and Rikkuum’s great, thundering voice crying out once, followed by a loud crash.

A boot dug into his side, sending lancing pain through the horrible pressure that seemed to be compressing his chest.

"Wake up, you monkey-tailed bastard!" A man said harshly. "Wake up so I can look you in the eye when I kill you!"

"Don’t! Kill them now!" Someone else was almost moaning. "Oh Kami, kill them before they wake up and finish the job they started!"

"Kill them! Kill them!" The voices were rising, like pack animals in full

cry. Another kick, this rammed into his collar bone with an audible crack.

"Son, if you kick him like that again I’m going to stun you instead of him," said a mild voice, an older man. "Can one of you youngsters clear everyone out of here that doesn’t need to be here? I can’t here myself think with all this hollering and commotion."

Vegita swam in and out of waking as the room or prison or wherever it was they were being held grew quiet. He slowly raised his head from the floor, and bared his teeth at his captors, spitting blood as he focused on the man, a man of his own years with a long, dark mane of hair and the build of a warrior. The one who had just broken his bones as he lay half conscious and unable to rise or fight.

"Cowardly weakling," he hissed softly. The dark man leapt at him and landed another blow, sending his head spinning. Then another young man, smaller and bald, moved to stay him.

"Stop it, Yamcha!" The smaller warrior barked. "You don’t kick a man when he’s down, and if you beat him to death, we won’t learn how many more of them might be on the way. So, cool it!"

Coran had somehow managed to heave himself up to one knee, his weaving, unsteady body between the man Yamcha and Vegita, and snarl at their captives---some worthless second string column of Jeiyce’s legions, no doubt. "Your squad brother is right," he said coldly. "You have no honor to beat another warrior who may not stand and fight you. You will not touch my Prince!"

"I have no honor?" Yamcha said softly. "How much of a chance did your friends give Chikyuu when they killed almost every living thing on this world nine years ago?!"

"When…" Coran jerked with surprise, and glanced around the large room at all the faces, his own going still. Vegita’s mind was reeling as he tried to draw enough breath to breathe, to speak. But he could only roll onto his back and stare, coughing weakly as each breath grew more difficult in this position. There was something terribly wrong somewhere inside his body, but for the moment it was of less importance than the fact that both he and Coran had just realized.

"You are not Jeiyce’s men," Coran whispered. "You---you are Chikyuu-jin! How is it that there are any of you left alive?"

"We had a big bunker," the third Chikyuu-jin, the old man with the soft voice, spoke. He was regarding both Vegita and Coran without hate or even animosity, his blue eyes bright with curiosity. For some reason, he put Vegita in mind of an old Scopa. "Or I had a bunker. We knew they were coming this way, fanning out to do as much damage as they could, so I crammed as many people from our city as I could fit into the underground complex of my research facility." He sighed sadly, and shook his head. "We only saved about…ten thousand. And that was hard going, especially until the skies cleared. I had a kind of special shield around the place that kept them from finding us with those nifty little ki–scouting gadgets of theirs. We hunkered down for about two years, ate the emergency stores I had encapsulated down there, then went topside and re-seeded the planet with every plant we had samples of. Everything grew back really nice for having been burned so badly. But I guess you can understand why we’d be less than happy about seeing your people about to land on Chikyuu a second time." He frowned at Coran, then at Vegita. "Why did you come back, young man? Are there going to be more of you?"

"…are no more…" Vegita croaked.

"There was a war," Coran said grimly. "Our world and our people are destroyed. There remain only a few thousand of our kind living, now. We came here seeking them."

The old man studied Vegita a second longer, then knelt down, with a hand raised to keep Coran from springing. He lay one practiced hand and Vegita’s shoulder, then undid the straps of what remained of his armor, pulling it off lightly with Coran’s help. The old man stared down at Vegita, his mouth turned down thoughtfully, his hand moving with practiced ease. "…doctor?" Vegita managed to force the word out.

"Among other things," the old man said easily. He glanced up at Coran. "Your Prince has a hunk of metal imbedded in his chest. We need to take it out or he’ll die."

Coran studied him hard, trying to assess what the old man’s intentions might be. Then he nodded slowly.

"Sir---" Yamcha began.

"Yamcha," the old medic said, "there’s been too much death and killing on Chikyuu already. These three boys and that big fellow you KO-ed didn’t burn our world. Sounds like they know just how it feels to have that happen, now." He pulled some kind of primitive stat stabilizer out of one of the many pockets on his workman’s apron and Vegita felt a flow of slow streaming stasis-trank particles, slowing his heart, washing away the pain and sense of terrible pressure on his chest. The old man’s smiled at the weazing sigh of relief from Vegita as he gently pulled a small clean-lined metal rod from his left pectoral. It must have been pressing on his heart. "His breastbone’s cracked and he needs a lot more extensive treatment, but he’ll be fine. What are you called, young man?"

"I am Coran," Articha’s son said slowly. "The other of my blood who is still unconscious is my brother Okuda, the big fellow is Rikkuum. And the man you have just saved is our Prince---our King, now." Coran’s perfectly blank face was at odds with the almost imperceptible break in his voice.

"Why did you come here looking for your people?" The smaller bald

Chikyuu-jin warrior asked, frowning curiously. "Why would they come to Chikyuu?"

"My Prince’s Lady, his royal concubine, was born of this world," Coran said, glancing down at Vegita. "She was taken to Vegita-sei as captive nine years ago. Our world, all our people, were felled by an engineered virus. She was chief engine wright and chief physician of the our Capital’s medical center, and saved tens of thousands of our children in quarantine there when the plague struck us down. She launched the Med Center into space and escaped with the babes and the few warriors and medics inside. We were left behind, as it was thought that no one could survive the contagion. Now, we search for the last of our kind. My Prince had thought his Lady might return home."

"A girl from Chikyuu?" Yamcha said, his brow furrowing. "How many captives did the warriors who attacked Chikyuu take?"

"Just the one," Coran said. "I have never met Bulma-san myself, but---"

The old man had dropped the med scanner and leaned to one side, paling. The two younger warriors were instantly on either side of him, supporting him.

"Bulma…" The old man murmured.

"Blue hair?" The bald man said. "She would be about twenty-six by now, smart as a whip and knock out gorgeous? Bulma Briefs?! Holy Shit!!!"

"It is her," Coran said, looking mildly stunned. "You knew her?"

"She’s alive…" The old man was still trying to recover himself.

"And she was…" Yamcha’s frown deepened harshly. "You said she was his…’concubine’? What the hell do you mean by that?!"

"She came to Vegita-sei as a slave and, in the end, saved our race from utter destruction," Coran said, his posture tensing again, watching the way the dark-haired Chikyuu-jin’s hands clenched angrily. "She rose to become physician, and weapons builder and concubine to the Crown Prince of our Empire. She would have risen higher still, my mother has told me, had the Prince been free to take an alien to wife."

"Wife…" Vegita whispered, closing his eyes and seeing the blue of her crystalline gaze staring back at him, endless seas of sadness in that azure blaze.

"…not concubine…my wife…" And to his eternal shame, he sobbed softly in the view of these strangers, his teeth clamped together as tears began leaking down either side of his face. Oh God of gods, what he had done to her! All the sins he could never account for---

Her people…

And as the old man spoke his next words, Vegita’s breath caught in his throat as the force of renewed hope came crashing down on him, and with it, a spark of hope. "True courage," she had told him once angrily, "is to face your sins and make amends." Any fool could die for shame and honor. It took a stronger man to live and make it right.

Here, on what should have been a dead world, he had stumbled upon the one thing in the universe that might help heal the wounds in her heart and mind. The one thing that might bring her out of the well of madness she had been lost in when she left him to die in her rose garden. Her people…and her kin. He would not

die---not until he saw her reunited with these people.

"Bulma is your wife?" The old eyes, blue as his woman’s and as alight with inner fire and intelligence, were sparking with tears as well. "Then I’m pleased to meet you, young man," he said softly. "I’m Trunks Briefs. Bulma’s father."

 

* * * * *

(Coming Soon: Chapter V--- Vegita and the last survivors of Chikyuu search for Bulma’s hiding place, while Jeiyce’s forces are on the hunt as well. The reunion, for good or ill, of Bulma and Vegita, and the rest of Bulma’s diary up to the fall of Vegita-sei…and beyond.)

Table of Contents
Chapter 3
Chapter 5