The voices came and went, sometimes hushed, sometimes raised in anger. He had a sense of time passing, of days and weeks going by like water passing him at a river’s edge. He knew he had been injured badly, perhaps mortally. Had the Chikyuu-jin denied him treatment as payment in kind for all their slain millions? He sank in and out of consciousness, drifting some days in a sea of blessed forgetfulness, and sometimes in a hell of delirious nightmares…

"…should have recovered by now," Coran’s quiet, deep voice came to him distantly.

"We’ve given him the best treatment we have," Briefs replied, sounding grim and frustrated. "Unfortunately, what we have isn’t much. And…I think the staff and secondary infections he contracted after the surgery I performed are a direct result of the virus the three of you survived. It may have permanently damaged your immune system as well as the centers of your brain that channel your ki. Though…even that wouldn’t account for the way his body has just refused to bounce back. Or the fact that he’s not really regained consciousness once in all this time." A sigh. "But I think he’s finally out of the woods. I’d hate to find my Bulma-chan only to have to tell her that her husband had died in my care."

"Have you made your decision then, Briefs-san?" Coran asked carefully, as though this was a subject he had discussed with the old man many times.

"They won’t be here for another few weeks," the old man replied evasively. "It’s not as cut and dried a decision as you might think, son. There are a lot of people who simply won’t leave. We’ve worked so damn hard to bring this world back from the edge of oblivion---"

"And you have only the word of three men who are of the same race which burned this world," Coran finished curtly. "I understand. But I say to you again, on my honor as a warrior of Vegita-sei, that these communications from the "New Alliance of Worlds" are not what they seem. They fought my people for their freedom, but the belief that races who have no fighting power to speak of should be slaves of those who do is nearly a galaxy wide conceit. They will see this world---its vast seas and rich, ore-laden mountains, it’s potential to house game and grow enough grain to feed a dozen worlds---and they will find a reason to take it from you. In truth, they have an excuse already. They know this is Bulma-san’s homeworld. They search for the escape ship, for your daughter and the children who are in her care. They mean to kill them all."

"I’d say they came to the same conclusion your Prince did," Briefs said. "That she would take them home. Or at least it was enough of a possibility to check it out. And…you believe they’ll use the fact that Bulma-chan was their enemy as an excuse to either purge Chikyuu all over again or take this world and enslave us all." A little silence. "I’m not the King of my people, Coran. I believe you, but we’ve discussed this time and time again among ourselves, and nearly everyone else wants to wait for this delegation to arrive and see what they have to say. They’ve suffered so much loss at Saiyan hands, a lot of them wouldn’t believe you if you said the sky is blue. They think if these New Alliance people were the Saiyans’ enemies they must be our friends." Vegita shifted anxiously, fighting his way upward toward consciousness. This would not happen! He would not see his woman’s one chance to regain her self killed by Jeiyce’s minions---very probably out of nothing more than malice that these trusting fools were Bulma’s kin.

"Did he speak?" Rikkuum’s deep voice, a rumble of childlike hope. "Ouji-sama! Wake up!" Something jostled him none too gently.

"Settle down, Rikkuum," the old man said with a note of command in the soft words. "Don’t shake him like that, it’s not good for him."

The world slipped away again. After what seemed like a moment or two, though it was certainly longer, he heard Rikkuum’s voice speak again. "She told me I was free, that I could do as I please now," the big man said, as close to pensive as Vegita ever remembered hearing him. "But I have always been owned by someone. There are many men who would die a dozen terrible deaths rather than call another master. I am not one of them. I told her I did not wish to be free. Bulma-sama said she had been a slave and could never own another person, even if that person wanted to be owned."

"A slave…" The smaller, bald Chikyuu-jin warrior Krillan. "Man, that must have been hard on her."

"Taking orders from other people," Briefs murmured. "Building and designing someone else’s work maybe. She could barely stand to work on a project with me, let alone be told what to do."

"What do you know about her time on Vegita-sei, Rikkuum?" Yamcha’s voice, tense and full of quiet anger. "She was kidnapped by the men who burned Chikyuu, we know that."

"Yamcha---" Krillan began. The smaller man seemed to sense the anger and the true meaning of his squad brother’s question.

"What happened to her after they took her to Vegita-sei?" Yamcha asked harshly.

"Captain Bardock-san brought her to Vegita-sei rather than see her slain with all the others on this world," Rikkuum replied. "He---Toma-san told me once while we drank together that she touched his heart when he saw her weeping over his son, Kakarott. He let her live because she had been as a sister to his son. And because she was beautiful."

The old man made a soft, wordless noise of grief in the sudden silence that followed his words.

No one spoke for a moment, then Krillan said a word, softly, angrily. "You insensitive bastard." He was not speaking to Rikkuum.

"Tell me it’s not something we’ve all wondered since we found out they didn’t kill her, Krillan!" Yamcha rapped out.

"Has it occurred to you that it wasn’t something Briefs-san had wondered?" Krillan said angrily.

"I---" Yamcha finally found the wisdom to shut his fool mouth.

"He did not harm her," Rikkuum said slowly. "Bardock-san could have sold her to a great courtesan house for a fortune, but he was not so cruel. He gave her to his son."

"As a…a technical slave?" Briefs asked, seeming to swallow hard as he spoke.

"No," Rikkuum went on uncertainly. "She was his…she was Raditz-san’s pleasure slave."

Again silence. "Bulma-chan…" The old man said after a moment. He seemed to gather himself. "I’m all right, boys. Rikkuum…When did the Prince meet her?"

"I was not yet in my Prince’s service," the giant warrior replied. "But…I have heard he was a guest in the house of Raditz when he first met her. It is said that he laid eyes on her and fell under her spell in the same instant. He took her from Raditz, who had been her master for more than five years. They fought, and Vegita-ouji slew Raditz with one blow."

"Good for him," Krillan said, a grim smile in his voice.

"It was a scandal that the Prince should have slain a man under his command for the sake of a bed slave. His father, the King, commanded that he set her aside more than once. Prince Vegita would not. He defied his father and custom and all the Elite on Vegita-sei to keep her and see her safe. He gave her a son, the youngest son of Bardock, to raise as her own. He set her free, and set her to build machines, shields to keep the enemy from attaching Vegita-sei. Many of the noble Elites feared her influence, believing that he would set an alien woman on the throne beside him as queen when he took the throne."

"Did she love him?" The old man asked, just above a whisper.

"I heard her say the words," Rikkuum replied in his slow way. "And I heard my Prince reply in kind, though it is against Saiyan custom to say such things aloud. When I saw them together, her eyes seemed to shine. I am not a quick man, but even I could see it between them."

Vegita wanted to scream aloud that the great idiot had it wrong, that the tale was twisted through the pretty lens of big man’s hero worship. That he had been the villain, the monster, the ravaging beast. Not Raditz. But he could not speak a word to protest.

He tossed and moaned all that last day, tearing his way through to consciousness as the last warm shafts of the setting sun cut through the open window of the room, the scent of summer blooms drifting in, filling his eyes with helpless, weakling’s tears as he recognized the scent.

"Roses…" He croaked. His voice was raw with disuse.

Briefs leaned over his bed, smiling sadly. "Yes. How do you know that, son?"

"She…she kept a garden. Of flowers cloned from dead petals sewn into the clothes she wore the day she came to Vegita-sei. The Chikyuu-jin roses were precious to her." Vegita turned his face away from the older man, in shame that he had wept again like a babe Romayn’s age, in shame over so many things…

The old man nodded, his eyes distant with old losses, old pain, that would never fade with the passage of time. "Her mother kept a gorgeous garden, full of every flower you can imagine."

"There are things I must tell you…Briefs-san," Vegita began.

"I know some of what you are going to say, young man," Briefs said. "Save your strength for later. You’re going to need it, I think. We all are.

You’ve been unconscious a long time, and there’s a great dealing happening."

"You cannot trust the New Alliance," Vegita said, trying and failing to sit in his bed. "You must leave, with as many of your people as you may bring, before they reach this world! Force them if they will not go! They will be angry, but they will be alive. You do not understand---"

"It’s too late," Briefs said, pushing him back down. "They’re already here."

"Fool!" Vegita spat furiously, but the words sounded despairing as they reached his ears. "They will butcher you all! They will---"

"They may try," Briefs said. "But we’re not entirely helpless. We shot your ship out of the sky and we can do the same to them if they force us to. I’d prefer that no one get hurt, but as a poet of my younger days once said, ‘You can’t always get what you want.’" He shook his head, frowning in his mild way. It made him look very like his daughter. "We couldn’t just pack up and leave. We didn’t have anything to leave in."

Vegita swore softly. Of course, they could not leave. They were at bare bones subsistancy after the purge ten years ago, and, in any case, had not been a space-faring race to begin with. A thought occurred to him. "My ship---it is in pieces, but there might be enough left of it to patch back together."

"That’s been the plan," Briefs agreed. "And the gods smiled on us in a big way when they brought the three of you to us---your friend Okuda is a engineer. He specializes in ship design. The big problem wasn’t knowing what to do, it was getting the raw materials. To make the ‘ardantium’ alloy he said we needed for the frame and bones of a new ship, we had to find the metals, then mine them, transport them and smelt them---all without the infrastructure of an industrialized society. To build the engines, we had to find eight diamonds the size of a T-rex’s head, then we had to cut them to specifications within a hundred-thousandth of a centimeter---you get the point. Added to that, most of my people haven’t lifted a hand to help us. Our nightly ‘town meetings’ have turned into shouting matches. There are a lot of folks who think we should welcome the New Alliance with open arms, and maybe even give you and your friends over to them as a sign of our good faith." The blue eyes narrowed in an expression he knew well---he had bequeathed to his daughter. It was a look of utter implacability. "We’re a democracy in most things, but I told them that’s not going to happen. They think the New Alliance sounds like the best idea since the wheel. So, that’s a long way of saying that we’ve had precious little help building our ark, and we still won’t be finished for another few months." Vegita tensed reflexively when the older man laid a kindly hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down onto his bed. No one, no man at any rate, had ever touched him so casually, without a trace of fear. No one except his own father.

"Don’t worry yourself about it, Vegita. I’ll take care of things if these people get out of hand. I’ve got Coran, Okuda and Rikkuum cooling their heels in the next room, and I’ve got a master dining room full of New Alliance types downstairs eating up half our stores for this winter. So, you and I will talk later. Okuda will fix you all up if you want to come downstairs and help out if Prince Jeiyce’s boys decide to become unpleasant."

He left Vegita’s bedside and tapped lightly on the door of the adjacent suite. Coran burst into the room with Rikkuum and Okuda at his back.

"How long?" Vegita asked Coran curtly when Bulma’s father had left them.

Coran looked uneasy. "I know it has been more than a few weeks," Vegita prodded. "I was aware at times, though I could not move or wake."

"Five months," Okuda answered without expression. "They do not know why, but their medicine is relatively primitive."

Five months unconscious. Vegita had an idea as to the why of it. He somehow knew without any evidence to have led him to this conclusion that his long coma had been somehow a product of the too-deep bond with Bulma. He had been well enough while he was hale and strong in body, but when he had been weakened by his injury during the crash, that tie must have…have pulled him down into the silent stillness of her madness.

Bulma…Beloved…

He wrenched his mind away from that grief, forcing it to the emergency at hand. "How many of them are there?"

"Perhaps six thousand," Coran said grimly. "They arrived in a large Maiyosh-jin troop carrier. They must have had a real hope of finding the children here to have sent so large a fighting force. Jeiyce’s pet Aquir-jin, Dodoria, leads them."

Vegita’s blood thinned to ice.

Crawl for me, you little Saiyan shit! Great booming laughter and the white-hot agony of a razor-barbed whip falling again and again and again. Beg me to stop, boy. Beg me, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll let you sleep a bit…And the unrecognizable sound of his own voice, pleading, wailing like the broken, mad child he had become---

He was growling low in his throat like froth-mad animal. "Dodoria." He heaved himself out of the bed and stood on unsteady legs. Another half year spent lying on his fucking back! Another long road back to strength, back to health. Okuda reached out a steadying hand as the room began to tilt sharply to one side. "I will kill him!" Vegita hissed. "I will---"

"My Prince!" Okuda gripped him hard around the shoulders, braving the actual act of physically restraining his sovereign that the other two had not dared. "Hear me! We may fight if it comes to it, but if we are lucky it will not come to a fight. The force Dodoria has brought is a full compliment of fighting men. These Chikyuu-jin have no more ki than a pack of Madrani.

We are outnumbered, and we are no match for even one of them as we are now!" Vegita froze, and even Rikkuum seemed to sense the red haze of blood rage building inside his Prince, for the big man drew back a few steps.

"Nissan---" Coran began. But Okuda was not finished.

The younger man’s face was hard, cold, without so much as a flicker of emotion, as he spoke the next words. "We cannot win with strength, so we must be cold and clever. And your Lady would not thank you if her father were killed while he is under your protection, Ouji-sama."

He could sense the others holding their collective breath, while he closed his eyes, trying to steady his own breath, trying to force down the insane rage at having been spoken to thusly by his own servant long enough to think. To think. What had his woman told him once? Something about counting from one to ten. He tried that, still trembling with anger that Articha’s son had dared to lay hands on him, had spoken to him as though he were an addled-mind child. Your Lady would not thank you if her father were killed while he is under your protection, Ouji-sama.

He took one more deep breath. Nothing Okuda had just said was anything other than a hard truth. They were outnumbered. They had no fighting power. They had no ship. He must see the old man back to his woman safely. So…so, they must be clever. He opened his eyes and fixed Articha’s youngest son with a black angry stare

"Take your hands off me, soldier," he said harshly.

He and the other man were still nose to nose as Okuda slowly released him. The younger man’s face was mild, without anger or apology, as though they had just been discussing the weather. "My father once told me," Vegita

said coldly, "that your mother was the kind of woman who always would tell him the truth as she saw it. Even if speaking that truth meant her own life. He said, ‘Such a vassal is to be valued, boy. So, try not to kill her when she tells you what you do not wish to hear.’"

One corner of Okuda’s mouth quirked minutely. "My life is yours to take or to command, Ouji-sama. But you should wait to kill me until after we have dealt with Jeiyce’s lackeys."

Vegita stepped back and stood straight. "I will think on it. Perhaps I will only beat you bloody."

"Do they still mean to fight, Coran-san?" Rikkuum asked a moment later, his heavy features twisted in confusion. His frown deepened when the three Saiyans burst into a bark of short, growling laughter.

"This is Briefs-san’s bit of cleverness," Coran stepped forward. He held what looked to be a small holo-projector in his hand. "Dodoria and his warriors are all equipped with scouters, but we---we will not register on them." He seemed to swallow before going on. "That is an advantage, in a sense, as we will be all but invisible to them. These holo-projectors will project an image that will rearrange our features and mask our tails and hair. Jeiyce’s men will think we are Chikyuu-jin senshi. We are still strong in close quarters, strong enough to put a fist through the heart of most of the men Dodoria has brought with him."

Vegita strapped the holograph around one wrist, and nodded grimly. "We will watch and look for a way to take them at unawares, but if they attack, I command you to guard the old man with your lives." He did not add that he would have cheerfully given the rest of his woman’s suicidally gullible race to Dodoria’s tender mercies.

No. They were not gullible, only ignorant. They had been purged by Saiyan hands. Why should they trust a Saiyan’s word that Jeiyce’s men would betray them to death or slavery?

The corridor outside of Vegita’s bedchamber led them to a mezzanine that looked down on a great hall. It was improbably huge, almost as large as the King’s Hall on Vegita-sei though had been, and at the moment, seemed to be accommodating the entirety of the surviving populace of this world, and the bulk of Dodoria’s men. Which put the tally of heads below them at something approaching 16,000 warm bodies.

"He took this hall from one capsule," Okuda said softly. Vegita could hear the quiet awe in the other man’s voice. "He told me he built it years ago for some great party, and nearly forgot about it until a week ago. He set in off in the center of their main dwelling complex and the rest of the building simply expanded to accommodate the change. I cannot follow the mathematics behind how it was done."

They walked slowly down the great staircase that curled upward into the upper levels of the household like a giant serpent. The landing found them dead center of the crowd of happily mingling Chikyuu-jin and their ‘visitors’.

"…and your coming is like an answer to a prayer," a smiling yellow-haired woman was telling a Maiyosh-jin soldier as they brushed past. She drew one finger tentatively down her companion’s exposed forearm. "So, tell me…are you that color all over?"

Coran snickered audibly beside him, then paused, his body tensing. Vegita followed his gaze and bit down on his own tongue in effort to keep from leaping across the throng like a howling madman.

Dodoria was less than twenty meters away, seated at a circle-shaped high table that stood upon a raised dais half again the height of a man, and thus removed from the general crowd. The Aquir-jin was feasting like a starving Saiyan, his bloated pinkish face pulled into an obscene parody of a smile.

And on his left hand, sat Bulma’s father. Vegita could hear Briefs speaking animatedly, as he and the others drew near, pushing their way through the press of bodies a little too fast to seem like men casually crossing the hall. The old man gave the appearance of a man on the drunken side of tipsy as he ambled from one subject to the next in a charming, friendly, almost dotty-seeming fashion, that Dodoria had apparently taken at face value. But as Briefs caught Vegita’s eye as the Saiyans approached and slowly climbed the little stair to the top of the dais, Vegita did not mistake the look of cold, sober warning.

"Oh, look here!" Briefs exclaimed happily. "Dodoria-san, you haven’t met my son yet." The old man motioned vaguely for Vegita and the others to sit down in one of the empty chairs to his left. A few seats over, the Chikyuu-jin warriors, Krillan and Yamcha, had tensed visibly. Vegita did not sit. He could barely breath with the effort it took to keep any semblance of calm. "This is Trunks," Briefs beamed proudly. "He’s got a bit of a temper, but he’s a good boy all the same. Are you and your friends keeping out of trouble tonight, son?"

"As best we can, Ottousan," Vegita said with deadly softness, not taking his eyes from the Aquir-jin’s face. Dodoria was regarding him with amused condescension. He could see his own false reflection in the small twin mirrors of the ‘Vice Chancellor’s’ eyes. Blue eyes beneath a soft fall of lavender that was the same shade as Briefs own faded hair. "I wished to meet our guests."

"Well, let me make introductions all the way around," Briefs began. "You know Yamcha and Krillan, and all the others from here in West Capital. This is Satan-san from New World City in the south ---did I get your city’s name right, Satan-san? I’m terrible at names. We’ve not had any real contact with them since we discovered that other people had survived in the old king’s deep fallout shelters built during the cold war with the Red Ribbon Army. They just contacted us three or four months ago."

Satan was a barrel-chested, burly man, with heavy, frowning brows under a matted swath of tightly curling black hair. Apparently, life had been harder in the south since the purge. He and his small entourage looked like half-starved pack carnivores. Without the benefit of Briefs’ sheltering bunker, his encapsulated stores of food and clothing, they had most likely spent the last decade surviving on rodents, insects, and the carcasses of their own dead. And the animal skins they wore, the lean look of their hard, dirty faces, said that they had yet to accept the charity of their neighbors.

"I have no interest in pleasantries, Briefs," Satan’s deep voice was not quiet rude, but it held no note of friendliness. "I am here to see that you don’t speak for all of Chikyuu and turn down what may be our only hope of survival."

"He was a lot friendlier two months ago when came begging for penicillin to treat his daughter’s fever, wasn’t he, Jissan?" Yamcha said darkly.

Satan rounded on him, but Briefs held up a quelling hand. "Gentlemen. We’re getting off topic here. And Yamcha-kun---if you can’t be polite to our guests, I’m going to have to send you away from the table like I did when you were a boy."

Yamcha said something under his breath in Chikyuu-jin that sounded like ‘gomen’, and crossed his arms.

"Now, what was I saying?" Briefs frowned. "Oh yes, introductions. Trunks-kun, this is Dodoria-san, Vice-Chancellor of the New Alliance of Worlds. He’s just been telling us that Chikyuu falls directly inside the galactic quadrant of his new governorship. How does this new government work, Dodoria-san? Were we supposed to vote on our terms of membership, or is it just automatic?"

Dodoria gave him an oily grin. "Annexation is automatic for all worlds who have yet to develop space travel. The new senate has decreed that all worlds and peoples who have neither the technology nor fighting power to defend themselves against aggressors be taken under the protective wing of the regional governors for their own safety...if they prove themselves loyal to the Alliance."

"You’ve talked all night between helpings of our food about how it would be in our best interest to agree to the annexation of Chikyuu," a Chikyuu-jin woman of middle years with skin the color of polished blackwood said. "But the gist of what you’ve saying, Dodoria-san, is that we are yours to do with as you see fit. What do we gain if we agree to be your obedient satellite world?"

"More importantly, what will you do if we refuse? Krillan asked quietly.

Dodoria put down the plate he had been eating out of as though it were a trough, and motioned to motioned to the small group of Maiyosh-jin warriors who stood on the edge of the dais. They drifted over with a sense of casual danger implicit in their every move, taking up standing positions all around the table. A scar-faced warrior with the fiery claw insignia of the Red Demons burned into the breast of his armor took a place at Dodoria’s right shoulder, half a meter from where Briefs sat. Far too close. Vegita had a sudden mental image, as clear as a waking dream, of the Maiyosh-jin reaching out and casually breaking the old man’s neck, of Dodoria’s rumbling, malicious laughter. "Something very like that," the dream Dodoria chuckled.

Vegita stepped forward and took up a place behind Briefs, giving the Maiyosh-jin a warning stare that had turned lesser men’s bowels to water in the past. The Maiyosh-jin only sneered, unafraid. Why should he fear, Vegita thought bitterly. The red bastard could sense no fighting power in him. None at all.

But Dodoria made no move to command the warrior at his shoulder. His squinting, piggish gaze was fixed on Vegita. "Your son seems to mistrust us, Briefs-san," he snickered. "Well, now…first, let me say that I’ve not had a meal like this in many a year. I’ve a mind to offer your chef employment on my private staff before I leave. On the matter of what-ifs---well, I prefer to keep unpleasant possibilities in the realm of maybe unless someone forces my hand. I wish Chikyuu well. I truly do. But this world is in a very touchy situation, politically speaking. Tell me, Briefs-san," Dodoria leaned forward, leering pleasantly at the older man beside him. "What became of the three Saiyans you shot out of the sky five months ago?"

"Well," Briefs said without missing a beat, "one of the young men died of his injuries shortly after they crashed. The other three…" He looked pained.

"There was a mob," Yamcha said bluntly. "We recognized them by their tails as the same race that purged our world, and our people went nuts. They drug them out of their holding cell and burned them alive. That’s how most of our families died, you know, during the purge. They were burned alive. I’d say that was pretty just in the long run. They died the way they killed."

"We have heard that two survived," the Red Demon at Dodoria’s shoulder said.

"I don’t know who would have said something like that," Briefs looked innocently perplexed.

"I did!" Satan snapped. "I heard it from your own people. They said you’ve been real sneaky about it, kept the bastards out of sight for the most part, but that you kept at least one of them alive for sure. They described the one they saw to a tee! Said he had black, spiked hair and a tail, and that he could fly like a goddamn bird." Satan nodded to Dodoria. "Your man Tresha here told me you wanted a sign of loyalty, that we’d have a cache of your medicines and foods the moment you took us on as a protectorate." He jerked his head at Briefs. "To hell with this old fool! I speak for my people and we are ready to live like civilized men again. We’ll give you whatever fealty you want, Dodoria-sama. A little freedom is a small price to pay to keep our children from starving this winter."

"The ‘Saiyan’ your spy saw was me, you stupid son of a bitch," Yamcha said, his voice dripping with disgust. "I have black spiky hair and I’m as Chikyuu-jin as you are! The ‘tail’ your friend saw was the end of my gi sash!" He stood, pushing his chair back with a clatter and rose two meters into the air, hovering, before he levitated back down into his seat. "Most Chikyuu-jin can’t fly, can’t harness their own ki to so much as light a match. But I can."

"So you can," Dodoria remarked.

Behind him, Tresha tapped the advanced setting on his scouter. "He’s got a very high reading, first string warrior status. But the pattern of his ki signature is consistent with the other natives. He’s Chikyuu-jin." The Maiyosh-jin shrugged. "You see this a lot of times in species that are on the evolutionary brink of ki sensitivity. He’s just precocious for his kind." Tresha eyed Satan and shook his head in disgust. "I think this Chikyuu-jin Satan is a fool who wouldn’t know a Saiyan from his own anus."

The smaller Chikyuu-jin warrior, Krillan, made a noise that sounded like muffled laughter. Satan only sputtered indignantly, though he said nothing in his own defense. He had just enough intelligence to sense that these smiling invaders would think nothing of killing him. Less than nothing.

"He is a fool to offer any man his unconditional service," Vegita said. He had not taken his eyes from the Maiyosh-jin, Tresha. "Only a coward would sell himself and his kin into slavery for a the luxury of a full stomach."

Satan’s chest puffed up belligerently. "I won’t be lectured about a full stomach by some spoiled rich man’s son! You have no idea---"

"Close your mouth, you ki-less animal," Tresha said coldly. Satan’s mouth gaped. Then he did as he was told. If nothing else, the man had good survival instincts. But then, the threat in the Maiyosh-jin’s flat, almost off-hand command was hard to mistake.

"Is that what we are to you?" The bald warrior, Krillan, asked quietly. "Animals? My fighting power is as high as Yamcha’s. Am I still an animal, or is it just Satan-san and all the other members of my race who can’t manipulate their own ki?" He sounded earnest, not angry. But there was an odd note of pity in his voice.

The Maiyosh-jin shrugged, and incredibly, seemed a little uncomfortable under the bald Chikyuu-jin’s steady gaze. "It’s just an expression."

"You just fought a war to free your people from the Saiyans," the smaller man went on. "I bet the Saiyans thought of your people as animals, didn’t they? How can you turn right around and do the same to someone else?"

The Maiyosh-jin’s expression flickered with a ghost of shame for a brief instant, then he set his jaw. "I meant that man in particular, not all your race. We are not enslaving you, however you chose to see it. If you are not in league with the enemy, we will offer you our protection and guidance."

"Can I ask another question?" Krillan said politely, glancing between Dodoria and the Red Demon. "You came here looking for Saiyan survivors of your manufactured plague. Have you found any up until now? And what did you do with them when you caught them?"

"We have found quite a few who survived the contagion," Tresha said with an unpleasant smile. "Several hundred, initially. The plague burned out the ki centers of their brains, so they aren’t much of a threat to anyone. But you Chikyuu-jin, who have suffered a Saiyan purge like so many other peoples throughout the galaxy, will be happy to know that we did not kill them. We have gathered the bulk of the survivors in a great circus on a world called Shikaji. People come from all over the galaxy to…participate. To have a bit of sport with them. They have to be restrained at all times from taking their own lives, and most of the adults have simply pined and died after a few months of this sort of attention. So, we are always looking for more."

"What do you do to them?" Okuda’s voice was so soft it was barely audible."

"Everything we can think of," Dodoria chuckled, shoving another ladelful of food into his pink maw. "We have served them all as they served us for many a decade. The males and the little ones stay in the main arena, and we’ve built a brothel for the surviving females. Tresha and his men discovered a while back, when we had one of their high ranking female soldiers as our guest for a short while, that their women make fine whores."

A soft sound of breath forced out through clenched teeth behind him. Okuda had driven an elbow hard into his elder brother’s gut to keep him from flying across the table in a shrieking blood rage. Yamcha had bent down beside Coran, was speaking softly and intently to him.

"Well, friends?" Briefs said quietly, turning a suddenly stone cold sober gaze on each member of the assembled Chikyuu-jin elders seated around the table. "Has everybody heard enough?"

"So," Dodoria murmured. He drew a cloth across his mouth, wiping it clean, and pushed back his plate. "There’ll be no live Saiyan prizes to take home to Jeiyce and his lads. It was probably foolishness on our part to think that a people purged by the monkeys would have harbored them for any reason. Ah, well. We’ll move on to the next order of business. Briefs, my good man, tell me…Have you heard from your lovely daughter recently?"

The old man’s face showed only a vague mix of surprise and confusion. He could have set a son of the old Trade Houses to school in the way he schooled his expressions to mislead, Vegita thought as he stepped forward, now nearly breast to breast with the Maiyosh-jin. He turned his cold glare from Tresha to the Aquir-jin.

"Briefs-san’s daughter and wife died in the purge." Yamcha nearly spat across the table at Dodoria. "Is this some strange alien idea of a joke!?"

"They tell me her name was ‘Bulma’," Dodoria leered. "An unusual name. And the surname ‘Briefs’, is it also uncommon on this world?" His smiled widened, baring the needle-sharp teeth that gave him the look of a grinning sea shrike. "Play time is over, children. I think some of you know very well that Bulma of Briefs House, Bulma of Chikyuu, Bulma the Mastertech and whore to the Saiyan no Ouji, and Bulma traitor to the Red Network is alive and well and on the run from the New Alliance. I think you, old man, may even know where she is. Now, I have several choices to offer you fine people. If one of you knows the location of Briefs’ errant daughter, and tells me, and this information proves to be true---I will consider it an act of good faith and take this world under the benevolent wing of my governorship. Trust me in this---I will find out what you know and how much. Now, it may be that no one here knows a damned thing about what your world’s most infamous daughter has been up to these last ten years. If, when I have questioned all of you and a suitable number of your folk, I am convinced that this world has had no contact with the ‘Saiyan no Ojo’, and knows nothing---well then, I will still extend the hand of charity to your foundering people. On the condition that Master Briefs here accompanies us back to Shikaji." He smiled into the stricken faces of the Chikyuu-jin around the table, his piggy gaze halting on Briefs. "I am betting your pretty daughter, wherever she may be hiding, is monitoring hyperlight transmissions constantly for information on what is going on in the rest of the galaxy. If we advertise that you are our guest, I think she may just come to Shikaji to save her dear father from execution."

"You’re probably right," Briefs said, not a trace of good humor left in his face. He turned his gaze on the other Chikyuu-jin seated around the table. "Are we agreed, then?" One by one, they all nodded silently. "Satan-san?"

The burly man bowed his head, inclining the upper half of his body forward in a formal bow. "I have been a fool, Briefs-sama," the man said with a chagrined humility that Vegita would never have believed possible from such a worthless blowhard.

"A fool couldn’t have kept his people alive for the last ten years, Satan-san," Briefs said kindly. A small alarm, the shrill beep of a pager, sounded. Briefs raised his forearm, checking the message readout on the tiny comm link around his wrist. "My goodness. That kind of perfect timing almost never happens in real life." He turned back to Dodoria and smiled. "I think we’re all agreed to reject your offer, Dodoria-san."

A cool blue light lanced through the width and breadth of the great hall, and the sound of hundreds of clattering thuds ricocheted off the walls as every armored soldier in sight collapsed unceremoniously. Dodoria’s head had fallen forward into the pudding a whirring servo-bot had placed in front of him a moment before. Tresha was lying on his back, out cold. Gods…they were all out cold! Every man Dodoria had brought with him.

Every man except Tresha.

The Maiyosh-jin met his eyes, shock already bleeding away into anger, and sprang to his feet. He began to raise his hand in reaction, a needlepoint blast aimed at Briefs’ heart. Vegita closed the distance between them in half a second, both arms gripping the man in a bear hug, clamping the Maiyosh-jin’s arms down to his sides. In the next half-instant, he staggered them sideways, off the edge of the dais and onto the floor. Away from Briefs. A burning knife of pain shot through his stomach, but he did not let go. Another second later a cry of rage from Rikkuum and Articha’s sons, and Tresha was hauled up by his neck and shaken like a rodent in a predator’s mouth. Rikkuum dealt the Maiyosh-jin a ringing blast that made Vegita’s ears ring, collapsing the Red Demon’s ki shield. And the same instant, Coran slashed Tresha’s throat with the edge of one of the table knives.

"Dammit, boys!" Briefs was saying angrily, somewhere close by. "I said no killing!"

"It is cho-gugol, Briefs-san," Coran said thickly. "It is cho-gugol!"

"Ouji-sama!" Rikkuum was leaning over him now, blocking out the sight of everything except his own great frame. The pain in his stomach was white hot and deep.

"Move back and let me look at him, Rikkuum," Briefs gently pushed the giant man back and peered down at Vegita’s would. "Well…he didn’t get a good shot at you or there’d be nothing left. But you’re going back on the operating table. That was very brave and very foolish, son."

"I am not so weak, even now," Vegita rasped. "That I cannot protect my own kinsman."

"Weak is not a word I’d ever associate with you, Vegita," the old man said grinning. The sound of a trank hypo and Vegita felt his body relaxing, falling downward into sleep, the sounds of screaming mixed with cheers and running feet all around him.

He woke to the sound of great engines revving in the still of early dawn.

"If you keep this up, I’m worried I may not get you back to my daughter in one piece, son."

He was in a ship’s med bay on a standard full sized troop carrier. The triage port was wide open, letting in the sound and damp heat of the night outside. Chikyuu-jin were running in and out, loading supplies in a rush of hurried activity.

"Those holo-bands I gave you and your friends shielded you against my knockout ray," Briefs said. "It was keyed to any brainwaves it didn’t recognize as human. I think you must have been standing so close to Tresha when the blast hit that your wristband shielded him as well. We had to wait until several of our young ladies managed to get Dodoria’s soldiers to invite them on board the ship during the party. I was waiting for their call, letting me know they’d blasted the soldiers manning the ship with the knockout ray. And long enough for Dodoria to show his true colors in front of everyone. All the pro-New Alliance sentiment among our people sort of vanished after that last little speech of his."

"You are…" Vegita coughed, wincing at the tightness of newly healed skin across his abdomen. "You are a devious old man."

"That’s not really a nice thing to say," Briefs grinned slyly, the corners of his eyes crinkling in suppressed mirth. "My father always told me that it’s better to show people they’re being foolish rather than shout it at them. I wish your friends hadn’t killed Tresha, but they explained why. Their poor mother."

"Never call her that to her face if you wish to live," Vegita croaked. "You are refitting this troop carrier as your transport?"

"It’s taken a couple of days, but we’ll be ready to leave this evening," Briefs said. "We’ve got Dodoria and his friends sedated so heavily they may not wake up for a week." He eyed Vegita’s bared teeth and frowned at the low growl issuing from his son-in-law. "He gave you those scars, didn’t he? I don’t know how I knew that, I just did."

Vegita glanced down at his bared chest, at the network of lash stripes the Aquir-jin had gouged into his body. He was shaking with fury. "You will not take my revenge from me," he said.

"I’m not being as kind to them as you think. We’re leaving him and his people here," Briefs said flatly. "Marooned, without supplies or a getaway ship. And I’m encapsulating Capsule Corp’s main structural complex and taking it with us, so they won’t even have proper shelter when they wake."

They would starve before a rescue ship arrived. Vegita sank back down

onto his bed, willing the tension and rage to subside. Let it be then. Let Dodoria die a death as honorless as the life he had lived.

Briefs shook his head. "Bulma-chan must have had her hands full with you and that temper." He stared at Vegita in silence for a moment, then seemed to force himself to ask his question. "Is she all right? Was she all right the last time you saw her?"

"No," Vegita whispered. He didn’t turn from that steady, clear blue gaze.

"How did you know?"

"You talked a lot while you were unconscious this time. You were telling her you were sorry over and over. Begging for her forgiveness." A little silence. "What did you do, son?"

He owed this man blood debt that he could only pay with his own life. If he told the truth, the entire truth, Briefs would more than likely kill him or abandon him here on Chikyuu with Dodoria. Either way, the man would never take help from Vegita’s hands, and that would not do. Vegita must see his woman’s father and people safely to wherever it was the last of the Saiyans had made their new home. He would tell the whole truth in time, and accept whatever punishment her kin deemed just. But for the moment…

"I will give you the shorter of two answers," Vegita said softly. "She had lost her family, her world, everything she ever knew. I did not truly understand what a hard thing that was for her to bear until these last few months. I think the wound never healed. But she grew strong again, mostly because of the child she bore to Raditz. Because she had something to care for again." He took a deep breath. "The night I took her from Radtiz, while I fought him, my squad lieutenant…he killed the babe in the struggle. Before her eyes. I punished him, but the deed was done, and she nearly lost her mind."

"She blamed herself…" Briefs said softly. "Probably thought if she’d just stayed put, minded that bastard she was slave to and never fallen for you, that the baby would have lived." Vegita clenched his teeth in a grinding wave of shame. But he could not rid the man of his misconceptions. Not now. Perhaps not ever. It came to him suddenly that to tell the entire tale would be like driving a knife into the old man’s heart. Gaining Briefs hatred, letting himself suffer the brunt of the punishment he so richly deserved would only serve to assuage his own sense of shame and regret. But the truth of how it had been, of what she had suffered, might kill this old man.

"She forgave me the blame of it," Vegita whispered. "And yet, she did not. It was always there between us. Raditz’ mother was killed in the war and she willed her infant son to Bulma. And it seemed to ease her grief. Her entire world revolved around the boy, and I thought all was well. She was happy. We were…it was good. Better than I thought life could ever be. On the night we wed, I put her with child. It was the end of the war, the beginning of a season of madness, when we cloister all our children and those unable to fight against the coming of Vegita-sei’s moon. I told her…I told her it could not be. That a half blood heir to the throne would divide the Empire. My people would have killed such a child and her with him. I was a fool. It broke her mind, Briefs-san. And when she found me in the aftermath of the plague, I saw that she was mad. That I had destroyed her trying to save her life. She left me to die, telling me she could not love me any longer and live. So…so, I will bring you to her. It will heal her mind and heart to see that you and the others live. I will see her whole, even if she hates me to her dying day."

Briefs did not speak, though tears were rolling down his cheeks. He slowly took a small papery cylinder from his pocket and lit one end, drawing the herb’s smoke into his lungs at the other. "She doesn’t hate you, Vegita. She was just very angry and hurt…and probably very sick. You screwed up, I won’t lie to you. You should have found a way to rescue her from this Raditz that didn’t put my grandson in the crossfire. You should have known what having an abortion would do to her after losing her first child that way. But I know you meant to keep her safe. I know you love her. Gods…It’s…it’s a big, messy tragedy, son. I can’t tell you what she’ll do when you see her again, but the child I raised had a good, strong heart. And a strong mind. I believe you when you say she had some kind of breakdown, but…she’ll get better. Has she got people around her who love her?"

"Bardock would die for her," Vegita said. "He calls her ‘daughter’."

"The same Bardock who led the purging squad that burned Chikyuu?" Briefs’ expression turned a bit cold.

"The same. He took her as a kind of replacement for his son, the one she called ‘Son-kun’. He had always cared for her as thought she were his own kin."

"I’d think better of him if he hadn’t given her to his son as a…a…"

"I will be frank with you, if only to ease your mind," Vegita said. "Raditz never took her by force. She was very young and alone and he was a man women find pleasing to look on. He seduced her, he did not hurt her. She was his slave, unfree to leave, unfree to refuse him or order her own life…but he was not unkind to her."

The older man seemed to wilt with relief, shaking with the false belief that she had never been…been used like an animal. "This Bardock fellow will take care of her, and she’s surrounded by doctors," Briefs said after a moment. "And she has the little boy she adopted, Bardock’s son. She’ll get better, Vegita. She’s a very strong girl. We’ll have to believe that. And in the mean time, you and I will do everything we can to find her. All right?" He sighed and took another long draft of his burning herb. "I’ve done everything to get the ship ready and Okuda’s priming the engines. I’m going to go outside and walk for a while on my world. I’m going to miss it something awful."

"The boy lives," Vegita said hoarsely. "She did not abort him. He will have been born by now. And when she left me, I saw his name in her mind.

Trunks…for her father."

Briefs smiled, the blue of his old eyes overly bright, and left him without another word.

Vegita woke again, hours later, to find Rikkuum beside him, waiting patient and loyal as Baka or Yaro. "Are we away?"

"We are in space, Ouji-sama." Rikkuum lay something in his hand. Vegita felt his heart skip a beat when he saw what it was. The data disc of Bulma’s journal.

"How---?"

"I found it as we looked for new spaceship parts in the wreckage of our ship, Ouji-sama." Rikkuum said. "I listened to the first minute and heard your Lady’s voice. I knew it was yours and that you would wish to have it when you woke."

"You did well," Vegita said fervently and the giant beamed with happiness. "Go rest, Rikkuum. I need no guard now that I am awake."

He waited until the big man left to palm the disc into the bed’s mini-comp.

Bulma: Vegita-sei

I woke when Vegita moved out of my arms at dawn. He kissed me once, soft on the lips, and left to go and surprise his father and the High Council.

"It will be all right," I whispered, sitting beside the bathing pool as he bathed, his face distant and worried. All his emotions are still evident in every flicked of expression on his face, just as they were yesterday and the day before. I suddenly realized that he knew this. His father and the

Council would see it too, and that was the problem. He was so changed, he was almost unrecognizable now, and they would distrust any difference they saw in him at this point, and fear it was a new shading of his madness. He's the sorriest liar I've ever known, and I think he knew he wouldn't be able to pretend he was the same as before. How would his father react to this---this fusion of the "gentle boy" and the violent son he had raised to manhood?

"I am strong," he said, meeting my eyes as he levitated out of bath, drying his body with his ki. He hadn't asked me to join him, and I hadn't offered. He understood without being told that bathing together was somewhere just past the invisible threshold I didn't want to cross right now. Not until I figured out just what the hell I felt for him now. Not until I had time to get a grip on everything that had happened yesterday. "They will not throw me down easily. Whatever happens today or tomorrow, I will see that you and the boy are safe." He finished pulling on his battlesuit and armor, and bent to kiss me. He pressed a data disc into the palm of my hand. "This is a royal requisition seal," he said softly. "Take any one of the space worthy ships docked in Med Center's hanger for yourself. If I am thrown down, today or in the future, take the boy and go." I stared into his black solemn eyes, wordless. "Take Scopa and as many others as you wish," he added shortly. We regarded each other silently for a moment, neither of us knowing what to say or how to be today, now that everything was so different. Then he kissed me once more, gently, in the Chikyuu-jin way before leaving to reclaim his seat at his father's right hand.

I sat and stared into the steaming water for a while, thinking that there were far too many conflicting emotions doing somersaults inside me to have any interest in breakfast. A low duet of canine growls and the sound of Rom-kun's voice begging the dogs to be good got me moving again. What I found in our new bedroom sent my stomach lurching up into my throat.

Batha was backed up against the wall, while Baka and Yaro snarled at her, low and threatening, their backs arched, their teeth bared. Rom-kun was sitting up on his pallet bed looking afraid and unhappy.

"Don't hurt her, doggies!" He said, biting his lip, on the verge of tears.

She didn't appear terribly afraid of the dogs, but she had let them back her up to the wall with a healthy respect for what they might do if they pounced. She cut her eyes to me venomously. "Call these filthy beasts off, Bulma!"

"They aren't trained to obey that way," I said coldly. "I want you and your sister out of this house today." The words hung there while I went to Rom-kun and lifted him up, checking him for any sort of mark or injury. Oh gods, that woman had come into the room where my baby was sleeping! This cold, heart-dead bitch who would kill a Saiyan child with as little hesitation or remorse as she would feel when stepping on a bug...

"So..." She sneered, looking me up and down like an elderly matron repulsed by a streetwalker. "You have become his 'doll' after all."

"We do not know that she has betrayed us, sister," Caddi said quietly from behind me. She was standing in the doorway, her ivory skin gray with pinched tension.

"I haven't betrayed anyone," I said evenly. "But I know you. Both of you. And I don't want you in the same room or even the same house as my baby."

"That Saiyan is not your baby, you poor, broken little fool!" Batha hissed.

"I won't argue with you about it," I snapped. "Think what you want."

I stood coldly and watched as they packed up their few belongings, Caddi directing pitying glances in my direction, Batha glaring black murder at me.

"I'll see you both are officially rotated to Med Center," I told them when they were done. "You'll be safe there from the inquisition until Zarbon can assign you new Network posts."

"I heard you last night, whore," Batha said venomously. "Lying in your master’s arms, telling him you would help him save his people."

"Sister!" Caddi hissed. "We should go. Now! Bulma-chan has told the Prince sweet lies a thousand times before. Why should last night be any different? You saw him! He is like a shadow of himself. Great goddess, sister, if he is a weak wreck now, totally in her power...isn't that what we wanted all along? And..." Her shoulders were shaking, but her stooped posture was drawing up straight. I had never once heard her contradict her sister until this moment. "And she is right to fear for the boy, Batha. You...you should not dwell in the same house with him. He would not be safe alone with you..." She bowed her head, her glance falling away from her sister's stunned face. "Or with me. The Network sustains us. It is all we need or hope for. This child is what sustains her. Bulma-chan has done great things for the cause, sister. I think she will do greater things still...but this Saiyan baby is the thing she needs to keep living."

This seemed to mollify Batha as much as she was capable of being mollified. I watched them leave, holding Rom-kun in a tight embrace. I hadn't put him down once while they were packing. I stood thinking hard of what to do next, until Rom-kun's voice jarred me out of the dark thoughts rolling through my head.

"Mommaaaa!" He piped, when I still didn't move. "I'm hungry!" I was thinking, worrying about what they might do now. And about what they would say to Zarbon. I needed to talk to him soon, today. I wanted the twins away from Med Center as soon as possible, before Batha began to snoop, before she began to suspect what I was going to be doing for the next few weeks. At some point, I thought with a chill of unease as I fed Rom-kun his meat pie, very soon, there would be no hiding my new 'project' from them...or Zarbon. Zarbon, I truly believed I could talk around to my way of thinking, at least in part. But Batha...she would lose her mind when it became known, and Caddi would see it as proof that her sister had been right about me all along.

They would try to kill me.

And in making an attempt on my life, they might hurt Rom-kun. They would think nothing of killing him.

I stopped, motionless and horrified, as I was throwing my med satchel in the flyer. My gods, I had been beyond considering it. I had begun sifting through possible methods as I strapped baby and dogs into their seats, ways to kill the twins that could not be traced back to me. There had to be a way to keep them from coming after me. I wouldn't let there be no other way. Because if they did---God of gods, I will kill them without hesitating to keep my baby safe.

I trailed into Med Center, Rom-kun on my hip, so deep in thought I nearly ran into Scopa.

"There's a lot you need to hear," he said grimly. "Most of it's bad."

Mousrom has commandeered half the surgery's trauma specialists. He has them working for his inquisition center in Kharda City.

Nachti was taken. My friend is in the Inquisitor's half acre of Hell, being forced to use her skills as a physician to keep Mousrom's victims alive as long as possible, so they can last longer under torture. Hiru had a breakdown after they took her. He's better now that he and Scopa are receiving regular communications from her, but he can't seem to concentrate on anything for long periods of time and breaks down into tears over the smallest things. Scopa had him taken off flight transpo duty indefinitely and assigned as an orderly directly under Nail so he can have constant care.

How much emotional trauma can someone take and still get back up again? The med texts say it depends on the person. I spent the first half of the morning just sitting and talking with him, holding his hand, listening to him cry. He asks me what he had done to deserve this. I didn't have an answer for him. All I know is that we have to get her back soon, not just for her sake. If she's gone much longer, we'll lose Hiru.

"I would have thought that the uncontrolled tears were a bad sign," Scopa told me as he closed the door to his offices after leaving Hiru sleeping in his quarters. "But I'm not a psychologist. Nail says they are healthy."

I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of Rom-kun tearing around and over the gurneys in the next room and the dogs' deep happy 'woofs'. "It's when the tears stop that you have to worry," I said softly.

"I was sure I wouldn't need to come to the villa this morning and see to you," he said hesitantly. "Please tell me I was right."

"You were right," I said. "He didn't hurt me. I don't think he'll ever hurt me again."

Scopa sighed heavily with relief and seemed to search for the right words. "His body posture, his gestures, the way his emotions show on his face...that soft voice he speaks in---those are all 'our' Vegita, not the one from before. It's as though the Vegita before and the Vegita we knew at Bardock's house---"

"Have merged together," I finished, nodding. "Externally, he seems harder, more Saiyan, now. He remembers it all, Scopa. All of our time at Bardock's, all that the Maiyosh-jin did to him...all that he did to me." I made a soft wordless noise that did no justice to the confusion and conflict raging inside me.

"You loved him as he was in Bardock's house," Scopa said, studying me closely. "Goddess...you still love him, don't you?" He swallowed hard. "Bulma. That could be very bad for you."

"Yeah," I said with a mirthless little laugh. "That's occurred to me." I looked him in the eyes, the only person in all the galaxy I could tell the whole truth to, the only person I knew who wouldn't judge me or despise me. "I can't stop loving him. I think it will probably tear me apart before this is all over, but I don't know what to do about it. We lay awake all last night talking about what he wants to do now. About what I want now. He freed me, Scopa. We...we didn't have sex. We..." I shook myself and spoke again before he could think of anything to say. I couldn't think about that right now. I couldn't waste time crying today. There was too much to do.

A light tap on the door and Nail's smiling face appeared, nudging a barking dogs back through the half-open door with one foot. He surprised me with a hug. He had told me months ago that he avoided physical contact with unshielded non-telepaths because touch always gave him unwilling broadcasts of their thoughts. I was so intent on the Namek-jin that I didn't notice at first that he hadn't come alone. I could hear Rom-kun talking to someone behind him, telling the unseen person all about flying with his Poppa, how he wanted to make big booms like Poppa and Edeeta, and how he had a brand new house that was all his own, and Momma and Edeeta and the dogs lived there too. I peeked around Nail's broad frame to see Zarbon leaning down, listening with mild wonder to my son's cheerful chatter. I could see him counting the months since Rom-kun's birth, see his hidden unease that so young a child was carrying on a conversation that would have been precocious for someone four years his senior.

Rom-kun had worked his way around to the story of how his doggies had almost bitten two ladies this morning. "Momma was mad," Rom-kun's voice dropped confidentially. "She told 'em to go away, cause they didn't like me. When Poppa and Edeeta come home tonight, the bots will make lots of meat pies. That's my favorite. Do you like meat pie? Momma said Scopa has to take care of hurt people tonight and can't come, but you can come. After supper, Scopa and Edeeta play toss with me. You can play, too."

"What do you toss?" Zarbon asked solemnly.

"Me," Rom-kun chirped. "Sometimes Scopa drops me and Momma yells at him, but Edeeta threw me too high one time and she yelled at him too. He's a Piss." Zarbon grinned widely.

"He means Prince," I said blandly.

"I like Piss better," Zarbon said, trying to smother a wide smirk.

"Do you know Edeeta and Poppa?" Rom-kun asked brightly

"I know your father," Zarbon said, hesitating an instant before responding to the boy's up-stretched arms and picking him up. "I've never met the Prince in person."

"He was hurt, but he's better now," Rom-kun said.

"So I hear."

I moved forward a little too quickly and took Rom-kun from him. The mild hurt in his eyes made me sorry I had done it an instant later. Zarbon would never hurt my baby.

"We've been getting reacquainted," Zarbon told me, offering me a chaste kiss on the cheek. "I told Rom-kun the last time I saw him he couldn't talk. He speaks very, very well for a child his age."

"Yes, he does," I said quietly.

I knew Scopa and Nail could feel the tension between us in the little silence that followed, but they said nothing. "I'm glad that the three of you are here," I finally said. "There's a lot we need to discuss."

Zarbon folded his arms, his beautiful face giving away nothing. The gods knew what Batha had told him. "We're listening."

"We all know there are two forces working against each other in this war. Out in space, on Vegita-sei, and in Med Center itself," I said. "I have a proposition: that we become a third force, dedicated to saving everyone on both sides in spite of themselves. Well...everyone except Mousrom. I am sick of death everywhere, all around me, and of being powerless to stop the killing."

"Bulma---" Zarbon began.

"Here me out," I said. "Do that much for me. Then each of you can make your own decision." I waited until Zarbon nodded tensely. "I think I can stop this war. I have a technical solution and a fairly straightforward three-step plan. Step one is a no brainer: Get rid of Mousrom."

"I'll help you do that with all my heart, love," Zarbon murmured.

"We have quite a few allies in this portion of the plan," I said. "Bardock and his whole crew are in on it, but you probably know he's been working at cross purposes to Mousrom for quite sometime."

"I know," Zarbon gave me a veiled half grin. "I've actually helped him out on one or two anti-Mousrom ventures."

"My sole concern is yourself and Rom-kun, Bulma-san," Nail said. "But I have seen things done to the people who have survived Kharda that I cannot turn away from. I will help."

"If you give me your permission," I said. "I'll bring your names to Vegita's attention and he'll give you both freedman's insignia and royal courier seals so you can be more effective and move around with greater ease."

"He is granting freedom to anyone who aids him against Mousrom," Scopa told Zarbon, his eyes shining. "You'll be free."

"Okay," I said and set my jaw. This next bit wasn't going to go down as smoothly. "Step two is the implementation of my 'stalemate shield' on every inhabited planet in the galactic community."

"What does this new machine of yours do?" Zarbon already seemed wary.

"It is an impenetrable planet-encasing shield," I said flatly. "I will stop the war by the oldest precept of schoolyard politics. If you can't stop two kids from fighting, separate them. The Red Demons won't be able to bomb any more worlds. The Saiyans won't be able to purge anymore worlds. I'm going to mass produce the shield throughout the Saiyan Empire first, then I'm going to find a way to leak the technology to the Rebel worlds as well. And that will be it. For a time, they'll keep trying to attack each other, but I'm not exaggerating when I say the shield is impenetrable---and having the technology yourself won't help you breach someone else's shield. After a while, even the most stubborn warhawks will give up. Stalemate."

"Goddess," Scopa whispered after a moment. "It might really work."

Zarbon was silent, staring at me closely the way people do when they think you might have gone around the proverbial bend for the last time.

"You haven't yet said what will become of us and all the millions of other non-Saiyans who will be trapped inside these shields on Imperial worlds, never to be freed. Or any uncharted worlds the Saiyans will fall upon and enslave or purge in the future. What is your plan for them?"

"That's step three," I said.

"What is step three?" He asked softly.

I took a deep breath. "Put a new king on the throne."

He sucked in a slow, steady lungfull of air. Trying to calm himself. "A new king? I hope to the gods you mean Bardock. I might actually be able to swallow that. The prince killed your family, love. And Hiru's. And countless, countless others. Have you...is she mad, Scopa?"

"You haven't seen him yet," Scopa told him. "The prince is different."

"You mean he's...what?" A small vicious smile played around his mouth. "I hear tell he may have become feeble-minded after his stay on Avaris. Is it true, Bulma?"

"He...He's just not the same." Scopa had taken several steps toward his lover. It took me a moment or two to realize he had placed himself directly between Zarbon and myself. "Imagine if you broke something ill-made, and a good person put it back together again. Perhaps the way it always should have been."

"Who put him back together, love?" Zarbon was so still he could have been made of stone. "Yourself and Bulma?"

"Yes."

"I can stop the war, Zarbon," I said, wishing I could pour all I believed to be true into the words to make him see how it could be.

"What if no more Saiyans or Red Network or Rebels or innocents caught in the crossfire had to die?" Scopa asked him. He had taken his lover's hands, was holding them so tightly I could see the blue of Zarbon's fingers pinched to white. "What if no more planets had to be purged, no more children of any race had to die screaming in the flames of their burning worlds? I know they destroyed your world, just as they destroyed Madran. I know you are...are sympathetic to the rebels. But wouldn't that be worth letting the Saiyans live on?" I saw the horror and sadness in Scopa's face that Zarbon even had to think about it, had to weigh the cold joy of revenge against billions of lives. "No one else has to die. Isn't that what you want, Zarbon?" Scopa's voice was pleading. Pleading that the honest answer was yes. "What do you want, Zarbon-kun? The Red Prince's warriors...The things I hear that they have done...I think some of them have killed so many people there's no difference between them and the Saiyans who purged their worlds and enslaved them. I would...I would never want to see that happen to anyone I loved." Zarbon made a soft sound and bent his head forward, his forehead touching Scopa's. "You told me once that what you wanted most in the galaxy was for us to live on some peaceful green world where you could open a chef's school, where the only injuries I treated would be the skinned knees of children who fell out of trees. Do you still want that?"

"Trust me, Zarbon," I begged softly. "You know better than anyone that I can build what I say I can."

"Okay..." He breathed. "Okay. If the two of you have some galactic peace engine in one hand and the Saiyan no Ouji in the other, I will believe anything you say. But the Red Demons, and Jeiyce, will never give up their fight, Bulma. They will never stop."

"If you bang your head up against a brick wall long enough," I said. "Eventually you get a headache and give up. And I've designed the mother of all brick walls."

I went on rounds, taking a great deal of pleasure in the surprised and pleased hugs and words of greeting from almost everyone I knew. I felt better and happier and more full of hope than I could remember since I was a young girl.

At noon, we went out to watch the show. Vegita had decided to show the entire Capital in a very sensational way just how weak he isn't. He was fighting more than a dozen warriors at a time, pounding them to a pulp and throwing their unconscious bodies down onto the city like cannonballs.

Scopa leaned over and grinned down at me. "He's tossing them into the main offices of Central Intelligence."

I grinned back.

Zarbon found me alone just before I left Med Center for the day. He looked like a man whose entire world is on the verge of over-turning, who had just made a decision that he sorely hoped he wouldn't live to regret.

"I took care of the twins," he said shortly.

I tensed. "Took care of?"

"I reassigned them to a port city in the south to count troops being shipped offworld," he said. "You realize I am betraying my prince, Bulma."

"He won't see it that way when I send you to him with the plans for the stalemate shield," I said. "He'll never know you did anything other than steal the plans when the moment was right. Even without the twins around to snoop on me, the Netwrok will find out I'm the one who designed the shield as soon as it goes into production, I know that. I don't give a damn. Let them write me down in their histories as a traitorous bitch from Hell, as long of they and their families and all the Rebels worlds are alive and well to hate me for the rest of their long, happy lives!"

"I told the twins they were not mistaken when they told me the Prince

might still be mad," he said grimly. "I have told the other Network operatives in Med Center and the Capital the same thing. That the Saiyan no Ouji is no longer himself. That he is still mad and is completely under your thumb, and thus Jeiyce's, and the machines you will be building for the Prince in the next few weeks will see an early end to this war. That will keep them from coming after you when it becomes known what you are doing for the Prince."

"Thank you," I said softly.

"Don't fail, Bulma," he replied a thread of terror and anger under the quiet baritone of his voice. "All out lives are in your hands."

"I won't," I whispered.

It was almost night when I got back to the villa. I had decapsulated the servo bots before I left and remote activated them to start dinner an hour ago. The smell of roasting meat and grilled vegetables was mouth watering and the sound of the bots' busy whirring in the kitchen sounded like...like home. Like Momma's kitchen. I went to my little workshop and decapsulated my small stalemate shield prototype, tinkering with the last little kinks until I heard the sound of mens' growling laughter in the hearthroom. I joined them by way of the kitchen, making sure the bots were working properly. I could hear Vegita giving Rom-kun serious instruction on how to keep the dogs from drowning him in canine saliva, but there was an undercurrent in the hard tones his voice that was the same soft gentleness he had used to read my baby a story every night for the last... I stopped and sighed heavily, fighting back the sting of tears, grieving for the man he had been yesterday. Would he ever read Rom-kun a story again? There were so many things that I couldn't even let myself hope for. I had to treat all my personal hopes as though they had been dashed irreparably. There was too much about this new man I didn't know, too many things that might have reverted back to...to before.

I grabbed up a tankard of goldberry wine from the cooler and three glasses, and stepped through the swinging kitchen doors. Rom-kun was wrestling Baka to the floor, cheering his own victory.

"Gotcha!" Romayn bawled.

"Should he be speaking at this age?" Vegita was sitting back in his favorite blackwood hearthside chair. I had a sudden, cold image of myself sitting beside that chair at his feet like an obedient dog, sipping the susaji-laced goldberry wine he gave me. I wondered faintly as I forced the memory down into the cold pit of night that was the hate dragon's prison, if he would mind if I destroyed that chair. Maybe with an axe.

"The child development texts in the incu-ward say no." I told them in a remarkably cheerful voice. Both men were happily bloody and bruised. They drank down the glasses of wine I poured them in one gulp. "Not in whole sentences anyway," I went on, pouring both of them another glass. "I think it's just inherent Saiyan preciousness and an uncommon amount of early mental stimulation that---what?" Both men had frozen, gazing at the bots setting the dining table behind me as though they were some kind of tentacled monsters. I fought not to roll my eyes.

"Have neither of you seen a servo-bot before?"

"Momma made 'em," Rom-kun said.

"They can do everything a humanoid slave can do, they don't need to sleep or eat, and they tend to make fewer mistakes. Try them this one time. If they still give you the creeps, we can have Batha and Caddi, or someone else replace them." I scooped Rom-kun up under one arm. It would be a cold day in Hell before I let Batha or Caddi back in this house. "Are you hungry, Rom-kun? Or did you fill up on dog hair?"

"I'm hungry!" He cried, wiggling out of my arms. I set him on his feet, feeling a little sad that he was getting so big. He was going to be too big to carry soon. I let them all eat their fill, then dropped both bombs on them. The capsule technology I had 'cracked', and the stalemate shield. Rom-kun made a soft sound of wonder when I ordered Bardock to try and blast my little shield. He always stared in envious wonder every time he saw someone level a ki blast these days. His Saiyan nature was nowhere near as banked and 'gentled' as Bardock seemed to think.

"You---you---" It was more gratifying than I would have ever imagined to see Vegita sputtering and all but speechless in the aftermath of the first little demo of my shield. Whatever he had expected, it sure as hell hadn't been anything of this magnitude. "Woman, you---"

"We had a technology very, very similar to the Red Demons' miniaturization science on Chikyuu," I told him. "I started out with pieces of the puzzle no one else knew. But the safety shield is all my own. I'm pretty proud of how well it turned out."

He still looked dazed, but he was recovering fast, the wheels in his mind beginning to turn, beginning to see the full impact of what I had just given him. "Woman...this will give us the breathing room we need from their cloaked sneak attacks!"

An hour later, the King, Turna and Articha all crowded around the dining table for a second demonstration of the capsules and my shield. When Bardock performed the test for the royal audience a second time, Rom-kun was ready this time, leaping up with a tiny crow of delight and catching the silvery globe as it flew off the blackwood dining table. Articha chuckled and plucked him out of the air, passing him back to me like a small football. I caught Vegita's eyes, saw the poorly hidden smirk, and smiled back.

The King was silent for a long time, glaring daggers at me under those heavy brows. Partly because he had just seen the look his son and I had exchanged and marked it as another sign of the changes in Vegita. Partly because I think he was inches from making the connection, from realizing I was the Mastertech. I could also see him turning over each and every implication of such a defensive technology in his mind. Slowly his mouth curled into a grin. Then he burst unexpectedly into a loud, hearty chuckle.

"I have seldom been so glad as I am at this moment to have spared someone's life, girl!" He said at last.

I had just handed his sorry ass the key to the salvation of his race and this was all he could think of to say to me? I lowered my eyes to keep from glaring at him.

"Though," he went on darkly, drilling into me with that x-ray stare of his, "I think you are too dangerous to run loose in my Empire."

You're welcome, you old bastard, I nearly said aloud.

Vegita-ou and Turna went into an organizational frenzy, Vegita went off into the back of the house for something, and Articha and I were left staring at each other in silence. She gave me with an unflinching Saiyan gaze that gave nothing away. I stared back, not knowing what I should say. Asking how she had been would be a bad idea. I knew how she had been. Not good. I wondered if she had let herself cry. I wanted to tell her that if you don't cry for what they took from you that you run the risk of dying inside. But...there was no way to broach the subject that would not give mortal insult to her warrior's pride. The pride they had not managed to crush or bow in six months of...of...

There were so many ways we could help each other if we could only talk about it.

And that would never happen.

She finally broke the silence. "He is strong," she murmured. "Bardock's son. He will be flying before the summer is out."

"His brother, Raditz, flew at three years," I said quietly. "I think it's a family trait."

She nodded soberly, frowning at the mention of Raditz name. "The sons of the Turrasht tribes are good soldiers to have at your back. My father forbade me to wed Turna at first because his mother was Turrashti and of common birth." She snorted. "He was a fool. Anyone who is semi-literate and has read the histories of our people knows that Turrasht is a well spring of royal blood from days when Vegita the Super Saiyan, our first true king, still lived. The first Vegita-ou had seven sons, six of whom went south to the mountains of Turrasht and carved out their own baronies. You can see the marks of it to this day. Raditz' hair grew in the widow's peak pattern that is only found in the royal house. Turna's hair is the same. That offends many Northerners."

"Seeing poor, back country warriors," I said, " whose bloodline is a direct line of descent from the Legendary and who can claim blood kinship with the throne, must eat some of the Northern Elites alive with jealously."

She chuckled softly at this, but the smile slipped away after only a second or two. "The Prince must take care to seem harder, girl, or the nobles will think him weak, however strong he is in body."

"I know," I said. "He knows."

"How is it with him truly?"

I held her eyes, and decided on the truth. "For...for a long time, he couldn't remember who he was or anything of his past. In the space of maybe a few weeks, it was as though he...grew up all over again, from little boy to man."

She studied me closely and as she did, a kind of harsh tension seemed to ebb out of her. "And you reared him from the second childhood in the same gentle fashion you are raising Bardock's son. I understand now."

"I was kind to him," I said, wondering what fear, or maybe what regret, my answer had put to rest for her. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

"I was his mother's friend," she told me. "And for that, Nappa always hated me as he hated anyone who took even the least of her affections. So, he kept me distant from the babe as he grew. I could have prevailed on the King, as my house is older, my line stronger, than Nappa's. I might have fostered the Prince with my own sons on my own estates in the north. I did not. I was a fool, but I blamed the babe and his sire for the death of my friend and wanted no part of him."

I closed my eyes, because I could see in my mind the sort of man this woman would have raised Vegita to become. So many, many things might have been different if she had.

"I can see in him now the man he might have been had someone other than that great imbecile reared him," she said, speaking my thoughts aloud. "I was not sure of him when he came to Council this morning. I needed to be sure of what manner of man he is now. And to see how you are fairing with him." She bared her teeth in suppressed emotion, and you could have frozen a sun with her voice alone. "I am different now, as well. And I could not now serve the man he once was."

I didn't reply. There was nothing that needed to be said. She picked up Rom-kun, who had been sitting silently on the floor between us, and held him up for inspection. "How long can you keep your feet off the ground before you must touch down again, boy?"

She listened to his explanation of how his hovering skills were being seriously hampered by the dogs' habit of grabbing his feet and pulling him back to the ground.

"They'd be sad if I flew away and left them," he told her. "Can doggies fly, Momma?"

"I don't think so, sweetie."

"Do not soften your Prince's heart too greatly, girl," she said over Rom-kun's head. "They will kill him for it."

"How?" I asked. She stared at me in confusion. "He was the strongest warrior born to your race in centuries," I went on. "What do you think his ki reading is now, after being tortured like that for months on end?"

"Gods...my gods, girl." But her shock was quickly being replaced with a small, relieved half-grin.

"I don't think a thousand warriors, or ten thousand, could kill him now," I said, wondering why no one other than myself, Bardock and Scopa had realized that.

Vegita came back into the hearthroom, the dogs padding behind him. He dropped a bound text in my lap and pointed. "Can you build this, with a few modifications? As an added feature of your shield?"

It was a Zapria-jin rad plasma stabilizer for converting heavier elements into a lower energy solidity. Added to my shield, it would provide an added layer of safety. It would turn a plasma nuke into a huge hunk of metal and coal in seconds.

I smiled up at him. "Yes. I can build it."

He left to find his father and Turna. I began working on adding the stabilizer to the full sized shield specs. Articha stayed and we talked late into the night while I worked. I like her.

She and Turna are coming to dinner tomorrow night.

He came back to the villa a little after dawn with Turna in tow. Vegita came back into my workroom after they were gone and stood watching me for a moment. I knew Bardock and Rom-kun were bedded down in the library with the dogs.

"Almost done," I said as he walked up behind me, looking down over my shoulder at what I'd spent all night bringing to life on my drafting table.

"You had this workroom in here all along," he murmured with a frown. I craned my neck around, all the relaxed pleasure of having spent hours working over the addition to the shield gone in an instant. But there was no suspicion in his eyes, no hint of what I knew his father suspected.

"It's what I do," I said, slowly relaxing again. "What I was raised to be and what I love. It kept me sane until Rom-kun came."

He nodded soberly. "Your eyes are heavy," he said. He took my hand and I let him lead me back to bed. He lay down beside me on his side, not touching, just gazing at me with the dark, gentle eyes of the man I had loved until yesterday. It was the first time he had ever noticed I was underslept or tired. No...he had noticed that lots of times in Bardock's house, hadn't he? They were both the same man...I shoved it all aside before it began to give me a headache.

I thought about it, about what I wanted right now. The dragon only grumbled and shifted once in her dark cell before lapsing into silence. Maybe she was sleepy, too. I took his arm and drew it around me, curling into his embrace, and his eyes said it was much more than he had expected. I kissed him once chastely and was asleep in seconds.

The dogs have developed bad habits in Turrasht. I took them to work and they made a b-line for the garden conservatory in the center of the main medical complex. They promptly relieved themselves everywhere they could think of, marking this new territory---I guess they didn't remember having been puppies here---as their own. Then, they began to dig up my flowers. I have to think of a solution to this while my secondary garden is still salvageable. Zarbon told me he had a couple of ideas and that the dogs still look delicious. They hate him, which is strange because Saiyans are more carnivores by nature than Rashia-jin, and I think he decided to dislike them out of hurt feelings more than anything else.

It's been a couple of weeks since I wrote last. Gods, where do I start catching up?

I've been dividing my time between helping prep Med Center to cloister roughly thirty thousand onworld children for the month preceding Moontime. The moon won't rise until this fall, still weeks and weeks away, but there's a lot to do. The other half of my time is spent working on the shield factories, and making copies of servo-bots designed for security mode, a mode that will detect movement and air temperature change even if it's ocular sensors detect nothing in the visual spectrum. This will keep Jeiyce's men from taking out the factories, or shield generators later on, while cloaked in invisibility shields. I could design a spectrum particle beam that would break down the cloaking shields' light refraction all together, but...I learned the hard way not to give anyone any sort of technology that can be used to kill. A particle beam that destroyed the Rebels invisibility shields would end up being used to massacre whole Rebel worlds. So, no. I have to think through everything I build from now on, and dole it out with a spoon even then.

Zarbon and Bardock have developed this wary sort of friendship as they began working side by side on 'step one', doing countless sneaky things all over the Capital in the name of ruining Mousrom. It took me a while to figure out where all the tension between them was coming from. I knew Bardock knew about Zarbon's wandering feet and tendency to leave his assigned posts whenever the mood struck him. He had no suspicions as to Zarbon's true activity and had written it off to the fact that some people where too clever and independent to take well to having their lives ordered by another. It’s strange, so strange, that Bardock sees this, understands it, and yet sees nothing really wrong with slavery in general.

They haven't let me in on any of the covert things they do for Vegita, and that bugs the hell out of me. I've taken to sort of eavesdropping on them out of nothing more than a childish feeling of being left out, but up til today they've been very good at finding secret places to talk. Vegita won't tell me shit either. He only grunted when I asked him and told me the less I know the better. Which means what Zarbon and Bardock are doing is very dangerous.

Early this morning, I went down into the bottom level of storage to hunt for a hundred or so outmoded incu-pods someone sort of mislaid ten years ago, pods we'll need desperately in a few weeks. I had been rooting around among the giant crates and dust bunnies in one dark corner of the tech supply section for about ten minutes when Zarbon's disembodied voice brought me up short.

"He won't be working as a lure for Mousrom ever again," Zarbon said grimly. "I made sure of that."

"You realize if you're caught with Saiyan blood on your hands, there's nothing I or even the Prince himself can do to stop your death," Bardock said shortly.

"I knew that going in," Zarbon told him. "Besides...you're just miffed I killed him and you didn't."

"He lured Bardock-san's squad brother into Mousrom's hands." I jumped when I recognized Hiru's voice. They must all be on the other side of the wall in the o.b. supply warehouse. "Of course Bardock-san begrudges you the kill."

"I begrudge him nothing," Bardock snapped. "But if he'd had the presence of mind to keep the bastard alive, we could have taken him before the King himself as proof that Mousrom is torturing Saiyans. And that, Rashia-jin, could have been the Inquisitor's downfall."

"There were too many people around," Zarbon muttered. "I couldn't have overpowered him and brought him out of Kharda alive. As it stands now, Mousrom will think he left Kharda and met with misfortune in the Capital. Nachti shoved all that was left of him in the incinerator, and that is the best we could do."

"If he'd disappeared from there," Hiru's voice trembled, "Nachti and all the other Med Center conscripts would have been dead before the night was through. Zarbon did what was right, Bardock-san."

"And Mousrom was well pleased with the meal I cooked," Zarbon added blandly. "I will be requisitioned to Kharda again. So, there will be another chance soon to pilfer the records we want. If you don't trust my instincts as amateur spy, trust them as a chef who knows the quickest way to a fat man's heart." There was a little silence. "Are we done here? I've got a long letter disc from Nachti, Hiru."

Hiru made some wordless noise of joy. He sounded more alive and alert than he had been since we returned from Bardock's house. Since Nachti had been taken to Kharda. "Thank you, Zarbon!" he said softly.

"We are done here," Bardock replied. "Go and find your mate, Zarbon. He will not sleep until he knows you still live."

Zarbon made a noise that sounded like uncomfortable agreement, and I suddenly realized that Bardock had taken an almost paternal stance toward a certain young Madrani doctor where Zarbon was concerned---and he wasn't completely sure Zarbon was good enough for Scopa.

I raised one fist and pounded on the wall. "Psst!" I said.

Cold, frightened silence.

"It's me---Bulma, dammit!" I said louder, not wanting to be shot through the wall. "I just thought you covert ops guys ought to know I can hear every word you're saying from the tech supply rooms next door."

No one answered me. But I think the silence that greeted me this time seemed distinctly embarrassed. Huh. So much for their boys only spy club.

It's late evening of the same day. They all gave me sheepish looks when we met up in the surgery.

"The Prince didn't want you involved in what we are doing," Bardock told me. "You are at risk as it is to be taken by Mousrom because you are his enemy's concubine. We will not give him a valid reason."

I frowned, feeling childish and rebellious about that, at having been so summarily excluded from this by a conspiracy of all the men in my life, when I had set our whole little 'end the war party' in motion to begin with. Even Scopa had been in on it.

"Don't get in a snit, girl," Bardock had been watching the play of thoughts across my face with a faint grin. "It's not as though you do not have enough to do."

I am a free royal concubine. That's what Bardock called me today. I've known that intellectually for two weeks now, but haven't really tried it on for size yet.

Today, as we ate lunch in the staff commissary, one of Mousrom's top aids, Oriff, payed Med Center a visit. He came with a requisition order from Mousrom to round up five new medics for the 'Kharda facility'. He marched in on us, his personal guard of a dozen men behind him. Bardock told me Mousrom and all of his aids have to take bodyguards with them wherever they go these days to be safe from their own people. Big surprise there, though I have a private suspicion that Bardock and Zarbon know a lot more about Mousrom's top people dropping out of sight lately than they let on.

"I'll take this one," he said, grabbing the arm of a woman I knew was Red Network and pulling her to her feet like a rag doll. "And...let's see. You!" He pointed straight at Scopa, who sat beside me, open-mouthed, feeding Rom-kun his share of paya pudding.

"You can't take the head of surgery!" I was on my feet before I realized what I had done. "Who the hell is going to lead the surgical unit the next time we get a rush of wounded?"

"Not him, pretty!" He said, looking me up and down. "I think I'll take you too," he leered unpleasantly and grabbed me by the wrist so hard I cried out.

"We should not fight our own kind in time of war," Bardock said dangerously from just behind me, "So, I will not kill you if you let the woman go now."

Zarbon was standing beside him, poised like a cocked gun, and I could see that all of Bardock's squad was moving in, teeth bared like a wolf pack in anticipation of a fight. Everyone not Saiyan was taking cover beneath the dining tables.

"I am a servant of the Lord Inquisitor Mousrom, soldier," Oriff said, his hold on my wrist tightening painfully. "I will take your woman and there is nothing you can do to stop me."

"I'm not Bardock's woman," I hissed into Oriff's face. "I am Bulma of Chikyuu, royal concubine to the Saiyan no Ouji." His sneering face froze. He had seen the show over the Capital two weeks ago. He knew, despite the nasty rumors and whispers Mousrom's people have been cranking out, that Vegita was back and well and stronger than ever. "You're not taking anyone from Med Center, Oriff." I said coldly. "The wounded, the true soldiers of Vegita-sei, need them more than your torture factory. If you turn around and leave right now, I might find it in my heart to beg my Prince to spare your life for having laid hands on me. If not, I'll step back and let Bardock and his brothers kill you now." I let that sink in. But the shock had worn off. Or maybe Oriff just knew Mousrom would kill him for coming back empty-handed.

"Do you think, you jumped up little whore," he spat softly at me. "That Mousrom fears a mad raving weakling?" He twisted my wrist again, and this time I felt the bone give way with an audible pop.

A hand closed over his forearm and crushed it like brittle kindling. Then he was flying backwards through the wall behind him, bright sunlight filtering in through the hole his body had just made, a the new, ragged door onto the tranpo landing pad. I was falling backwards into Vegita's arms. Rom-kun was screaming in the background, and Scopa's voice was hushing him in soothing tones. He ran forward and put Rom-kun in the good arm I was holding up, beckoning him to bring me my baby.

"Momma's okay, sweetie!" I said over and over as Vegita eased me down to the floor.

"Bardock," Vegita ground out. "Take the fight out onto the landing pad. Send their bodies back to Mousrom."

"Yes, my Prince!" Bardock said with black joy.

I could hear the men's angry voices cursing and the sound of ki blasts being fired behind us. Scopa was telling Nail this was something he should take care of, and Rom-kun was still screaming in fear for me. Then, Vegita snatched him out of my arms just before a white glare blinded me.

And I lost it.

The sensation of having a terrified screaming baby torn from my arms, the sight of Vegita's face twisted in a towering rage, even if it was for my sake, was too many memory triggers back to the night of Karot-kun's death.

"Give him back!" I was shrieking like a mad woman, deaf to Scopa's soft voice, struggling in Vegita's gentle grip as he held me in one arm and Rom-kun in the other. "Give me my baby! Give him to me!"

"Not until he calms," Vegita said in an even voice. "His power is too close to the surface. Romayn." That soft voice of command made Rom-kun stop squirming to get to me. If I hadn't flown into hysterics, I'd have noticed before that moment that Rom-kun's wails had stopped the instant Vegita took him from my arms. Now, my son was looking up at Vegita with wide attentive eyes, wiping tears from his face with one chubby fist. Vegita touched Rom-kun's forehead lightly, concentrating.

"Do you feel that, boy?"

"Uh-huh," Rom-kun sniffled.

"Push it down, back down to where it was before, and I will let Bulma hold you. If you touch her while it is still out of control, you will hurt her."

"...'kay." Rom-kun's little face screwed up in concentration, and I watched, fascinated, as Nail gently probed the bones in my wrist. I heard him murmur, "Simple fracture..." softly, and felt a warm streaming pulse as he healed the break. I wasn't even looking down at the miracle of Nail's healing power. I was too focused on the small miracle in front of me. Vegita's face wasn't soft or loving, it wasn't the open expression of the man who had lived in Bardock's house, but... You could see the love there, evident as the sun on a cloudless day. Love for Rom-kun.

He sat Rom-kun in my lap, his face a portrait of Saiyan stoicism, and I smiled up at him with my whole heart. And he smiled back.

All of Med Center saw it.

They were hanging back, most still in their lunch chairs, or under them, though some had crowded through the hole in the wall Vegita had made with Oriff's body, watching Bardock and his brothers beat the stuffing out of Oriff's men, cheering like kids at a baseball game. But people saw. Saw it and marked it and tucked it away to tell later to whatever side of the conflict they served. Though the interpretation was pretty much the same universally.

They think Vegita's out of his fucking mind. That he's completely in my power. Which adds merit to the lies Zarbon has told all the Red Network operatives in his planetwide cell, but is very, very bad for Vegita’s reputation among his own people. It lends credence to everything Mousrom had been whispering in the ears of the Elites since Vegita returned.

Dammit. It's a sign of the madness of Saiyan society in general that he is being smeared as someone who's become soft-headed for the sin of not behaving like an insane bastard from Hell. For act