Part Seven: Bulma

The Saiyajin woke to find all their slaves gone. Disappeared. Vanished without a trace. Every last one of them, except for me.

The entire thing sent them into a sort of baffled inaction. They are like spoiled, revolting children, and without the slaves on board they seemed at a loss to even feed themselves. Their priories were obvious; instead of questioning me about what I might know about the disappearances, they sent me to the kitchens. I debated using the opportunity to try and poison them, but decided it was too risky. Better to stick to the plan.

Keeping two dozens of these monsters fed single-handedly would have been an overwhelming chore even under the best of conditions. As it was, I'd had a long and sleepless night wrangling with a computer system that up until very recently I'd only seen operated second-hand. But I'd learned to make due with a lot less since coming to this place, and no one seemed to notice how tired I was, anyway. In fact, aside for the obvious matter of the missing slaves, no one seemed to notice that anything else was up for the longest time.

The Saiyajin aren't used to being responsible for their own vessel. The ship travels on the course I've set for it for nearly three full days before they realize that computers have been tampered with. Even then, they only caught on because one of the external temperature alarms that I'd somehow overlooked started to go off. But by then we were already a lot closer to the star then we had any sensible right being.

Things started to get out of control fast when they realized that the navigation system was locked down. Once the fact that they couldn't change the ship's course started to sink in they quickly began to lose their shit. From the other side of the kitchen walls I heard them shouting at each other, arguing in loud voices. It was starting to get sort of warm in the kitchens, so I turned ovens off. Way I saw it, pretty soon even the Saiyajin were going to agree that a late dinner was the least of their problems.

They spent another hour just trying to figuring out that every last one of their escape pods had become completely uncooperative. So far I was able to tell none of them thought to open one of the pods up to look inside. If they had and if they'd known what to look for they would have seen that certain key components had been removed from the engines. Said parts had been broken into several additional pieces by yours truly, and were currently sitting at the bottom of the ship's waste receptacle. By the time it occurred to someone to question little old me about all this, I'd already retreated inside the walk-in freezer - it was a little bit cooler, though by then it was more or less a matter of degree.

They burst into the kitchen, the Prince at the head of the crush. A big part of me hoped that they'd make a mistake as they pulled me out of the freezer, that some stray blow might catch me in the side of the head, cave my skull in - none of this was going to be pretty and there wasn't much reason for me to stick around for the final act - but the Prince was too careful for that. All around us his men were turning on themselves, lashing out at one another with impotent rage, but once I fell into his arms he made certain that no one got close enough to lay a finger on me. He dragged me through the corridors and up to the ship's bridge, and the other Saiyajin followed behind in a rioting mob.

In the bridge, the star shone blindingly in the view screen, growing larger and brighter with every passing moment. Balls of flame danced wildly across its swirling blue surface. We were all sweating by then, and pressed against the Prince's chest I could smell his sweat, hear him breathing heavily, almost panting. It brought a sick twist of panic, but I tried to bite it back, because I didn't want to be scared right now. They were scared as hell, yeah scared of me for a change, of what I could do to them but I didn't want to be scared with them.

This is all I could do. I couldn't bring my family back, or my home, or my world. Son was gone, and he wasn't ever going to live again, and there wasn't anything I could do to fix that. And I couldn't make an end to the Saiyajin either there were other ships full of them right now, the gods only knew how many, and after all this was all over they were just going to keep on doing everything they'd always been doing, and there was nothing I could do to stop that.

But I could make them this ship full of slavers and rapists and killers feel a little taste of what it was like. And I could make the Prince be afraid.

"You will correct this," he said, dropping me in front of the control panel. Behind us, a brawl had broken out among the others. Somebody shoved Raditsu backwards, and his arms pinwheeling wildly as he tried to catch his balance he stumbled up against Vegeta. The Prince turned, almost causally, and pressed his open palm against Raditsu's stomach. The palm glowed with a blue light, not unlike that of the approaching star, and then that light bore through Raditsu's center and shot out his back. Raditsu fell, and didn't move again, and for a instant everyone else was still and silent too.

Then the thing seemed to be forgotten almost as quickly as it had happened, and they were all shouting again at the Prince, at each other, at me. Nappa was repeating the Prince's name over and over, as though it were some sort of mantra; Vegeta did not seem to even to hear him. Turlus was closer by, and he was trying to bargain with me he promised me worlds, and riches, and power, anything I wanted; as though there was anything in this world or the next that I wanted more than to see his face that face that he had no right to have reduced to ashes.

"You will correct this," the Prince repeated. "You will unlock the controls."

I couldn't if I wanted to, and I sure as hell don't. The password I put on the navigation controls was nothing more than a long series of random keystrokes I hadn't even looked at the screen when I typed it in. They could skin me alive right here and I still wouldn't be able to change the ship's course.

I could feel the heat radiating up through the soles of my shoes. Something inside the view screen exploded with a hollow popping sound, and the screen went dead. Suddenly, it was much darker on the bridge, but no less hot.

"No," I said.

"You will," he said again, grating out the words through clenched teeth. He grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me around, shoving me toward the control panel. My hands came up to catch myself from falling. But when my palms touched the panel I jerked them away the keys were blisteringly hot, and as gummy as half-melted marshmallows. "You will do as you are told."

I turned back around to face him. One of the bigger Saiyajin was swaying. His eyes rolled up into his red face, and then he fainted, crumpling to the ground with a heavy thump. The ship groaned, as though in sympathy, as though it were coming apart.

"No," I said again.

Vegeta brought his arm up over my head. There was a flash of blue light I couldn't tell were it came from, if it was the star or the Prince and then for what seemed like a terribly long time there wasn't anything else at all.