Chandler's Secret Princess: Holy Christian Empire 2405

By Al Philipson

10-year-old Princess Barbara Stewart is in space when her parents, the King and Queen of New Britain, her brothers, and sister are brutally slaughtered by her Uncle Tyler, who wants the throne for himself.

Now Tyler is looking for her -- to finish the job and secure his throne.

She has to live long enough to grow up and figure out how to get her father's throne back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Al Philipson
• Release date: Jun 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463677803

Al Philipson

Al Philipson was born somewhere around 1995 or later in the fevered imagination of a nerdish geek and sometimes technical writer who wants to remain anonymous when he writes fiction (including his tax return). Being a private person, he was afraid that his adoring fans (all three of them) would mob him both publicly and privately once his books caught on. Unlike his nerdy creator, Philipson suffers from none of the weaknesses of "ordinary" humans. His body puts Mr. Universe to shame. He can bench press a Kenworth, he's more intelligent than Einstein, and knock-down-gorgeous women find him irresistible.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Your father’s dead! So are your brothers and sister! Tyler murdered them all and he’ll be here in just seconds. Run! Hide! Don’t tell me where you’re going. I love you! Her mother’s image and voice blasted through the Instacom and through her heart.

Before she could answer, she heard the crashing of a door off camera, the whine of a blaster, and its discharge, followed by her mother’s scream and a view of her tortured eyes. Her scream faded to a gurgle as her flesh charred. The last sound she heard from her mother was that of a body hitting the floor. The last sight she had of her was her charred body lying on the floor of her parent’s bedroom.

She almost joined her voice to her mother’s scream, but caught herself. The Instacom was still open and whoever was in the room would hear her voice. She shut off the microphone and the camera on her ′com and then uttered one anguished scream of her own. Mooommmmy!

The sound of footsteps came through the speaker as a man she didn’t recognize came into the camera’s view, carrying a blaster. He had a rough voice. No one else here. Where’s the other brat?

Not anywhere in the upper rooms. You shouldn’t have killed her, you fool. We could have tortured the location of the girl out of her. Her Uncle Tyler’s unmistakable voice sent cold chills down her spine as he came into the camera’s field of view. Unlike his normal, foppish choice in clothes, he was wearing white coveralls with some definite bloodstains on them. Let’s check the lower rooms. She liked to play in the servant’s areas as well as the storage rooms. The two men turned toward the door, walked out of view, and the sound of their footsteps faded. And then there was silence, except for her own whimpers accompanied by a flood of tears that streamed down her face and onto her shipsuit.

Ten-year-old Barbara Stewart curled into a ball and screamed out her grief.

No one heard.

She was alone and —

Sound doesn’t travel in space.

Chapter 2

An eternity later, she dried her eyes and blew her nose with a tissue from the dispenser attached to the pilot’s console. Her mother had told her to run and hide. The only reason she, herself, wasn’t dead was because she was on a solo training flight in one of her father’s family yachts. It was one her family used on occasion to visit friends on other continents, other planets, and space stations. When on official business, her father traveled in a Navy ship, but when they didn’t want to be recognized, they used one of several disguised personal craft.

This particular yacht was large enough to handle her entire family of the king, queen, her two brothers, her sister, herself, and three other people. It even had stasis pods in case of emergencies or for interstellar jumps. Alone, she more or less rattled around in its spacious, well-appointed, interior.

She was still in New Britain space. It was only a matter of time before Uncle Tyler figured out that she wasn’t on the planet and for him to start looking for her off planet. She needed to be somewhere else.

She looked at the ship’s Instacom again and noticed that it was in record mode. She resisted the urge to replay it just to hear her mother’s voice once more.

Barbara blew her nose again and, with a huge effort, put aside her grieving for later. She couldn’t survive on her own, no matter how intelligent she might be. At ten Earth Standard years, no adult would take her seriously and most would probably try to find her parents or turn her over to a cop for the task. For the time being, Tyler didn’t control much of anything, but he’d probably secure his place on the throne and then draw as much power to himself as he could — as quickly as he could.

She had to hide with people who would take care of her until she was old enough to survive on her own. But who?

Her father’s elder brother, passed over for the throne by her grandfather, had just murdered her parents. How many other relatives cared more about power than they did about her well-being? Her mother’s sister? No, Aunt Adrianna didn’t have the guts to stand up to Uncle Tyler. In fact, she might be next on his hit list, if not already dead.

Most of her friends and their families were on New Britain and known to enough people that Tyler would probably look them up to find her.

There was, however, one family that might not be known to Tyler. They lived on another planet in the kingdom and she and their daughter, Susan, had only visited each other twice: once on New Britain when Barbara was just five, and once on their planet just last year. In fact, Barbara and her family had traveled there in this very ship, so the data for the voyage was already in the ship’s Artificial Intelligence, along with the relative motion of both star systems and the planet’s orbit around its primary.

Susan and Barbara had kept in touch via an Instacom pair in between visits and had formed a close friendship. Also, Susan’s parents were both tough and compassionate.

She crossed her fingers, activated the Instacom on her wrist computer, and selected Susan’s particle chip. She heard the feedback as it rang at the other end.

Susan’s face popped into view. From the background, it looked like she was in her bedroom. Barbara! I was just thinking of you. You’ll never guess what happened —

Susan! Barbara interrupted her friend. Are you alone?

Well — yes.

"I’m in big trouble. I need to talk to your parents."

Trouble? What trouble? Susan’s face was filled with concern.

You can listen in, but please find your parents now.

She could hear Susan’s shoes on the floor as she ran to a door (it was her bedroom, Barbara recognized one of Susan’s school art projects on the inside of the door), threw it open, and went clattering down the stairs to the main floor.

Mom! Dad! Where are you? Susan’s troubled voice could be heard on the comm. The picture was a bit upsetting because Susan’s arm was swinging back and forth as she ran.

A woman’s voice, obviously from another room, answered, We’re in the living room, dear. What’s wrong?

Susan ran from the marble-floored hall into their spacious, carpeted living room. From glimpses, she made out her parents on a white couch with a small floral pattern in front of their fireplace, which didn’t have a fire in it at the moment.

"I’ve got Barbara on my ′com. She’s in trouble and needs to speak to you.

Barbara, I’ll put you on speaker.

There was a click.

Barbara, dear. What’s the matter? It was Susan’s mother, Mary Beth, who peered into view.

She couldn’t hold it back any more. Uncle Tyler just murdered my family. She choked, swallowed hard, and continued through a cascade of tears. I’m in one of dad’s yachts and Mom told me to run and hide just before they killed her. She couldn’t continue. The tears increased and she resumed her crying.

There was a stunned silence at the other end, followed by Susan’s father as he leaned into the picture. The king is dead? Joshua was obviously stunned and Susan’s mouth was hanging open. Then Joshua’s face turned into a terrible mask. What an appalling deed! He seemed to get control of himself and back to the immediate problem. Honey? Barbara? Can you get here or do we need to pick you up?

Barbara finally got her emotions under control again, wiped away some more tears and blew her nose. Can I hide with you? Her voice was small but with a spark of hope.

Of course, dear. That was Mary Beth’s voice, now out of range of Susan’s camera, which was echoed at the same time by Susan’s father. Definitely.

Joshua continued, Now, where are you, so I can pick you up?

I’m still in New Britain space, but I can navigate to you. Dad — She choked. "— taught me how. I can’t stay around here. Uncle Tyler will find me, so I have to get out of here fast. Once I’m in hyperspace he won’t be able to track this ship. It will take three Earth months, but I’ll make the trip in a stasis pod.

Can I use your private port?

Joshua’s smiled. "Smart girl! That would be best. Then we can hide your yacht in our hangar.

First thing, though, is to turn your ship’s identity transponder off.

Oh! I didn’t think of that. She turned aside. Ship. Transponder off.

The ship beeped its compliance. Now it would be harder for any of Tyler’s goons to identify her yacht if they knew that it belonged to the royal family.

Susan was whimpering quietly, tears cascading down her face, sharing Barbara’s grief. Susan had always been a compassionate friend. One of the many reasons Barbara loved her.

Joshua continued. "We’ll figure out some way for you to blend into the family so there won’t be any embarrassing questions as to who you are.

What owner is your ship registered to?

Let me look. She opened a console where her father kept the ship’s papers, found the registration, and scanned it.

Henry Peterson, on New Britain. It’s an address in Timberland. She paused. I never heard of him. She held it up and turned her camera to it so Joshua could take an image of it.

Got it. Probably a fake identity. I’ll check it out and see if it will hold up. Were all of your private yachts registered in the same name?

Oh, no. Dad … she choked up … told me that each one was different. He was somewhat paranoid about traveling in disguise.

"Great! It will make my job easier if Henry Peterson’s identity can stand up to scrutiny.

Give us a call before you come out of hyperspace so we can fill you in with the information you’ll need to clear traffic control, which is fairly tight here.

Susan sniffed and wiped away a tear. Babs, I’m sooo sorry about your parents. She was blubbering almost as much as Barbara was. They were sooo nice. I just loooved them. Susan often talked in superlatives, especially when she got emotional about something. Are you suuure you’ll be able to make the trip?

Susan was an Earth year older than Barbara and tended to treat her like a little sister.

No problem, Sue. Dad … she swallowed, "… taught me everything I need to know.

Now, I’d better get the course set into the AI and get out of here before someone spots me. I’ll leave my ′com open until I go into stasis.

She grabbed another tissue to wipe more tears out of her eyes, blew her nose yet again, brought up the course menu, chose the course to Susan’s home, and told the AI to update it for current conditions.

Course laid in. The AI’s voice was mechanical, but clear. A military ship is turning toward us and hailing.

Barbara’s heart started beating faster. Ignore hail. Course correction. Lay in initial jump random thirty-five degrees off true course, then correct three minutes after entering hyperspace. Execute now.

Her yacht turned toward a false course and jumped into hyperspace. It took five seconds.

She breathed deeply to still her fear. It might have just been a routine investigation by the military ship, especially since she wasn’t showing a transponder identification, but Tyler could have directed it. She couldn’t take the chance.

Joshua leaned back into the picture. "Clever move, Barbara! You did well.

"I suggest you wait for your course correction to take place before entering stasis. And grab a snack so you aren’t hungry when you come out at the other end. That way, you won’t be distracted by hunger or thirst when you have to absorb new information and handle your landing.

Let us know exactly when you’ll be out of stasis and we’ll make sure we’re all together with Susan’s ′com and the information you’ll need.

Thank you so much! I’ll do that.

She went to the galley and fixed a lunch, although she was far from hungry. The course correction happened right on time while she was making her sandwich. She only nibbled on it and finally threw half of it into the recycler. Then she went to the head to answer nature’s call, with the com’s mike and picture turned off, before going to the stasis compartment behind the ship’s lounge.

I’m programming my pod to wake me up an hour before I pop out of hyperspace. That will be … She pulled up a calculator on her wrist computer and did some quick calculations, then entered the results into the brain of a stasis pod. … 91 days, 2 hours, and 17 minutes Earth Time, from — now. She punched the enter button on the stasis pod.

We’ve got it. It was Susan, talking between sobs. Be safe.

I’m entering the pod now, so I’ll ring off. Love you.

Love you, from all three.

She disconnected the call, but didn’t enter the pod right away. Instead, she let her defenses down and all her grief and terror came cascading out.

It took a while to get to the point where she was only whimpering. She went back to the head to clean up, visited the bridge to make sure the recorder was still on for her mom’s Instacom, in case someone would say something important in that room, then walked back to the pod room, stepped into the stasis pod she’d programmed, and pulled the lid shut to stop time.

With its only passenger safely tucked away in the notime of stasis, the yacht made its way through hyperspace at 1200 times the speed of light compared to normal space. Destination: Camelot, a relative new, sparsely-settled world, and the home of Joshua Chandler, direct descendent of Rockwell Chandler, Earl of Gallia, and his family.

Chapter 3

After Barbara signed off, I sat back to absorb everything that had happened. My stomach had a lead cannonball in it. My dear friend, Harold, was dead along with his beautiful wife, Janice. Worse, Barbara’s two brothers and her sister were also gone. Her elder sister had been the heir apparent, although no one except a very few close friends of Harold’s knew it. Chantilly had been a sharp girl with more wisdom than was usual for her fourteen standard years. Barbara and her brothers were equally intelligent with a fair amount of wisdom, but her elder sister was a little bit more suited to be a monarch. In my opinion, Harold had made a wise choice.

Harold had given Gallia, and its 110% gravity, to me as a royal grant, just seven Earth years after the Navy discovered Camelot (a silly name for a planet, if you ask me) and made me an earl, a title I would have inherited from my father eventually. We’d moved here just fifteen Earth years ago, along with Duke Charles Hampton, who ran the entire planet, a few other nobles, and a few thousand hard-working settlers, with more arriving regularly after that. We’d adjusted the calendar so that January 1st would be on the Winter Equinox, so today was June 6, 0022 Camelot time.

This was more than a personal tragedy. I’d met Tyler once and immediately disliked him. I could see why their father, King Thomas II, had passed over him for his successor, in favor of Harold, who though rather weak, was fair and well disposed to his subjects. I’d felt that Tyler had an evil streak in him and this crime confirmed it. The kingdom was in trouble.

The only bright spot was that if Tyler could even link Barbara’s disappearance with the unidentified yacht, he’d go mad trying to figure out her destination. I wasn’t sure where her yacht’s A.I. had aimed for when it altered course, but there were four planets in the kingdom and a couple hundred other inhabited planets in our quadrant of the Milky Way. Plus who-knows-how-many others that we didn’t know about. The diaspora from Earth, before and after the disastrous war between China and North America, had scattered various groups and peoples all through this arm of the Milky Way – and possibly some in neighboring arms, if someone managed to find some habitable planets there. New settlers from Earth would show up from time to time, either to join existing occupied planets or to settle uninhabited planets of their own as they were discovered. Some groups had split off from existing settlements to found new ones when they became available.

Susan was still crying, sitting in her mother’s lap, with Mary Beth’s arms wrapped around her. MB always seemed to know what was emotionally the best thing to do in a crisis — and she probably needed some comforting herself, so I walked over and put my arm around her shoulders. She was the rock of our family and smart as could be — like her parents, Richard and Ana Peterson who still lived on New Britain. I hoped they were safe from Tyler.

Hon. I waited for MB to look up and almost got lost in her troubled, blue eyes. Why don’t you call your folks to make sure they’re okay? It’s late afternoon there. Don’t tell them what’s going on — we shouldn’t know it. But it would be nice to know that Tyler isn’t targeting them. I’ll call my folks after you’re done.

MB had inherited her mother’s narrow eyes, probably a gift from Ana’s father who had Slovenian background in his family.

She nodded her head and, one arm still wrapped around our quietly sobbing daughter, reached around with her other arm and touched her wrist computer to bring