The Tribari Freedom Chronicles Boxset

by Rachel Ford

  He smiled at her. “You know that’s not true. I’d like kids. But it would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, if my wife – if I ever get married – wants kids.”

  She nodded. “I’d like more kids too, someday. But Doctor Kel says…well, he’s not sure I should have another one. Not after this pregnancy.” She watched his face as she spoke. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she felt that his reaction would matter a great deal to her.

  His brow creased, and he said, “Oh, Nik. I’m sorry.”

  He was. There was sympathy in his eyes. But she didn’t see anything worse: no distance, no disappointment. She shrugged. “So, you see, I’ll probably never marry again. Even if I did meet someone…well, he probably wouldn’t want to take a chance on someone who might never be able to give him a child.”

  “Then he’d be a damned fool, Nik,” he said, and this time, she did see more in his gaze. Anger, at that sentiment; and something soft, something tender.

  She leaned into his shoulder, and slowly, hesitantly, he wrapped an arm around her. She lowered her head onto his chest. His heart was racing.

  So, she realized, was her own. “It might be possible,” she said after a minute. “The complications this time, they started after…well, after everything. Before that, there were no issues.”

  “If someone loves you, Nik,” Brek said slowly, as if picking his words carefully, “he wouldn’t ask you to risk that. Especially…well, especially if he knows what almost happened to you. Being with you – that would be enough.”

  Now, she tilted her head, so that their eyes met. “I suppose,” she said, “there’s always surrogacy, too.”

  He nodded. “Yes. If that’s what you wanted.”

  She let the topic drop, and the hours passed quickly. They stayed there, his arm around her, talking until the early morning. Sometime before dawn, Brek finally succumbed to sleep.

  Nik, wrapping an arm around him, followed soon after.

  She was grateful for the nurses, tending Grela. She was grateful for Doctor Kel, who must have decided her morning checkup was not worth waking them.

  And she was grateful for Brek, for his arm around her, for the steady thudding of his heart lulling her to sleep, for the warmth and affection he showed her. It had been a long time since she felt truly safe, and truly happy.

  But as she drifted off to sleep, and when she woke the next morning still in his embrace, she did.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Governor Nees smiled, and Tig prompted, “Well? What’s got you grinning then, beautiful?”

  Tal rolled his eyes. Marriage was supposed to cool a couple’s ardor, wasn’t it? He’d never been married, but he had plenty of friends back home who had. And, inevitably, it was the legal equivalent of throwing water on fire: like clockwork, it extinguished whatever passion had been there. Routine replaced romance. Where before they’d craved each other’s time, having it all to themselves took away the magic.

  It seemed to him that marriage was like winning a game, and once having actually attained the prize, it diminished in value in the victor’s mind. Knowing a person so intimately knocked them off the lover’s pedestal, until they became just another person, as flawed and aggravating as anyone else.

  At least, that’s the way it had always seemed to work. Tig and Nees, on the other hand, were getting more obnoxious by the day, not less. He was happy for them – he would remind himself of that fact, now and again, when they got to be a little too much to stomach. But there were only so many simpers and pet names a man could rightly be expected to endure.

  “I’m reading the reports from Central. Captain Elgin’s report, about Echo Nine.” She shook her head. “He’s insane.”

  “I take it that’s a good thing?” Tig wondered.

  “Definitely. He jumped to full power, in atmosphere, straight into Admiral Lenksha’s flagship. In his report, he says, ‘I am pleased to convey my compliments to the engineers of the Supernova, for having created a ship that could sufficiently withstand said conditions, such that I can presently convey my compliments.’”

  Tig smiled into his coffee mug. “That’s not as funny as you think, darling.”

  She made a face at him. “Don’t you ‘darling’ me, Tig Orson. Not after drinking a cup of coffee in front of me, when you know full well I can’t have one.”

  “I offered to make you decaf,” he reminded her.

  “Decaf,” she repeated with a harrumph. “What kind of monster did I marry, anyway?”

  Tal felt it best to intervene now, before he barfed. He had just eaten breakfast, after all. “Governor?”

  She glanced up. “Tal?”

  “I was just wondering…now that the war’s over, where does that leave us, with Central?”

  Nees considered for a long moment, then shrugged. “Right back where we started, I guess. I’ll wait for the official declaration of cessation of hostilities…but then, I’ll renew our push for recognition.”

  “So you don’t think we should reconsider?” Tig asked.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “They won the war.”

  “The empire always wins its wars.”

  “Yeah, but not this quickly. This new parliament, they seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “That wasn’t parliament,” she reminded him. “That wasn’t even the military. That was one man.”

  “And that was more blind luck than anything,” Tal mused.

  “I don’t know about that. Something tells me, Elgin didn’t enter the Wastes with the idea of him and Lenksha both coming out alive. But, either way, it’s not parliament’s doing.”

  “They approved his mission, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Barely, from what I hear. But they did approve it. Still, that doesn’t tell me they know how to govern. That tells me they know how to win wars – or, at least, they were damned lucky to have someone on their side who did.

  “But peacetime is a lot more complicated than kill-the-other-guy. And if I’m going to sign our world back to the Empire, I need to know they can do more than kill-the-other-guy.”

  Tal nodded. “What’ll that mean for the oil rig crews?”

  She shrugged. “Depends how Central responds. If they’re decent – and it’s in their best interests to be, because they need the oil as much as we need the trade – not much. If they aren’t, well, they might have to choose between immigrating here permanently and returning home.

  “But production will be winding down anyway, now that the war’s over. Some of them will be going home, whatever happens.”

  “They’ve been pretty good so far. Not much crime, not many problems. Still,” Tal admitted, “I don’t think I’ll be sorry to see those camps go. That many people, all clustered together like that? If they wanted to cause problems, there’s not much we could do to stop them. Not with the force we’ve got here.”

  Tig snorted. “Spoken like a Protector.”

  “I am head of security,” he reminded his friend. “It’s my job to consider the what-ifs.”

  “It is,” Nees acknowledged. “And you’re right. I’d love to have that kind of immigration influx. But not in camps. You don’t see a place as your own when you’re living in a camp. How can you? You’re not committed to its future when all you do is work and sleep, day in and day out. That’s no life for anyone. That’s not the kind of world I want to build.”

  Tig nodded slowly. “So we’ll be independent, then.”

  “For a while, anyway.”

  Nik smiled at Brek as he returned to her room. “Well?” he asked.

  “I got the all-clear,” she beamed.

  He smiled too. Dr. Kel had finally cleared her to return to parliament, then. “That’s fantastic, Nik.”

  She crossed the remaining distance between them, wrapping her arms around him. Brek felt his heart tremble a little at this.

  Since he’d spent that first night in her arms, he didn’t sleep in the chair a
nymore. He slept beside her, in her bed. There was nothing sexual in that, of course. They were guests of the Kels, and she’d just given birth; and he wasn’t entirely sure if her thoughts, her feelings, ran in the same direction as his. They didn’t talk about it, like they didn’t talk about the way she would hold him, or the way she’d lean into his embrace when he held her.

  He and Nik weren’t the only ones to avoid the topic, either. Since their conversation in the clinic, so many weeks ago, Dr. Kel had never mentioned it again – not even when he discovered the change in their sleeping arrangement. Mrs. Kel pretended not to notice too. Everyone carried on as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

  Brek wasn’t sure what it meant. But he knew he craved the intimacy of holding her, of falling asleep and waking with her. And until she wanted more, well, he would content himself with that. He would take his cues from her.

  He did so this morning, wrapping his own arms around her in turn. Nik turned bright eyes to him, and they were a deep blue-green as they studied him. His heart trembled a little more at the affection in her gaze. “Are you ready, my Brek?”

  His voice proved in the moment unreliable, and so he nodded. He was ready to take his arms from her, but she made no move to pull away.

  Instead, she stood there, studying him. A touch of amber mingled with the color of her irises, and she stood now, on tiptoes. Slowly, very slowly, she brought her face to his.

  Brek felt his heart hammer in his chest as their lips met. This was his first kiss; it was their first kiss. She was incredibly soft, and the contact of her skin against his made him almost giddy. He drew her closer, breathing, “Oh Nik,” when their lips parted. “My darling Nik.”

  She nuzzled her head against his neck, and for a long moment, they stood there unspeaking. Brek had been on the receiving end of a submission prod once, a lifetime ago now; but there had been less energy coursing through his veins then.

  Finally, she drew back, and looked him in the eye again. “Brek?”

  “Yes?”

  “Now that – well, I’m getting stronger…it won’t be long before I can start looking at a place of my own.”

  He nodded slowly. He knew Nik wanted to be independent. Still, having a doctor on hand at all times wasn’t a bad thing. “You’ll be leaving the Kels, then?”

  She smiled at him, the kind of smile that sent another jolt of electricity through him. “Don’t you think some privacy would be nice?”

  He blinked, taking her meaning – and feeling very foolish for having missed it in the first place. “Oh. Oh.” He flushed. “Well, umm, yes. I do. Very nice.”

  Nik’s smile broadened, and she inclined her head again. This time, he brought his own to meet her, and they kissed. Then, she said, her tone low, “Good. So do I.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Feast Week came and went. Parliament adjourned, and Nik and Brek spent their time looking at houses and taking care of Grela. Now, her daughter slept, and she lay in Brek’s arms.

  They were at his apartment. They spent a lot of time here, now. She loved the Kels almost like parents, and there was something about taking a lover under her parents’ roof that didn’t sit right.

  She knew they suspected. Dr. Kel suspected long before anything had actually happened, advising her that her body wasn’t ready, and so on. But he’d also, quite straightforwardly, informed her when she was sufficiently healed “to resume sexual relations, should you be so inclined.” He’d renewed her birth control prescription, too – a progressive step, considering she was an unmarried woman. He didn’t ask any questions, and she didn’t volunteer any answers. She just took the prescription.

  Brek had fallen asleep, and she studied him in the afternoon light. She studied the angles of his face, and the lines in his skin. He was handsome, her Brek. She hadn’t really noticed, except perhaps in passing, when they’d first met. She’d grown more keenly aware of it lately.

  But he was good, too, in a way that few people were. He was a better man that any she’d ever known. Any, save one.

  A stab of pain shot through her at that, and guilt, too. A thousand memories flooded her mind – memories of the lazy afternoons she’d spent in Grel’s arms, memories of making love and making plans. Memories of all the things she was doing now, with someone else.

  And for a long minute, she felt sick. Oh Grel. She loved him still. She would always love Grel.

  But Grel was dead, and life? Well, that was for the living.

  And she loved Brek, too. She didn’t use the word. She couldn’t quite bring herself to think it. But the truth was, in her heart of hearts, she knew she loved him. It was a different kind of love than she’d felt for Grel.

  She’d fallen for Grel in the spring of her life, when she was still full of wide-eyed dreams, when she had no idea of how cruel and terrible the world could be.

  Her love for Brek was different. It was a love forged out of fire. It was a bond that flourished in adversity, when she’d least expected it. But it was as strong and true and passionate as any love could be.

  It didn’t drive the guilt away entirely. Some part of her wondered if she was not untrue, if in feeling what she felt for Brek, she’d not betrayed Grel’s memory.

  But life is for the living. Grel was dead. There was no more Grel and Nikia Idan. There could never be.

  She settled back onto Brek’s shoulder, wrapping an arm around his torso. He stirred a little, and she murmured, “Sleep, my Brek. I’m right here.”

  Parliament had been back in session for two days, and already Brek was tired of it. Some days, he wondered if standing for his seat was the right call after all. It seemed the longer they were in session, the less they accomplished.

  The point of conflict today had been Trapper’s Colony. Again. Governor Nees had renewed her formal application for recognition of the colony’s independence. It had been tabled for discussion after the long holiday.

  Now that the holiday was done, and the issue resumed, all they’d accomplished were shouting matches. Nik was livid, and she’d given an impassioned address reminding the ministers of their promise to respect the will of the people. They’d promised Trapper’s their independence, and stonewalling now was a complete abdication of that promise.

  He agreed, but many of the ministers did not. The war, they argued, changed things. The war demonstrated the empire’s weakness. Trapper’s Colony, and all its oil, was an Imperial holding. Nees and the other residents were immigrants, visitors – thieves, even. “You wouldn’t let your cousin move into your orchard, and declare ‘independence’ for himself and your fruit trees,” Mira Gretchen argued. “Would you? So why would we let immigrants take over one of the most powerful natural resources the empire has, and declare it ‘independent’? It’s madness.”

  The lines were drawn much as he would have expected. Though he had himself been largely quiet on the topic, Telari’s loyalists opposed independence. Nik’s allies supported it.

  Now, a group of the latter were gathered back at his apartment, eating a dinner they’d had ordered in. “I knew we couldn’t trust Telari,” Niil declared with an emphatic shake of his head. “I knew he’d try to go back on it.”

  “I don’t know why you keep putting the blame on him,” Niyol said. “It’s Mira spearheading the whole business.”

  Nik glanced up from Grela. The day nurse had left, and she was nursing the baby. “She’s getting her orders from the top. This is all coming from Davis.”

  “Didn’t you see him earlier?” Raylor wondered. “Just watching everything unfold, as cool as a cucumber.”

  “She’s the front man,” Niil nodded. “But Telari’s the brains.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Giya said. “They don’t have the votes. Not after your address today, Nik.”

  Brek nodded. “It was brilliant. I don’t see how anyone could argue with you.”

  Raylor shot him an amused glance. “I don’t think you’re an unbiased authority, Minister Trigan. But
I do have to agree all the same. Anyone who gives a damn about the empire won’t vote against recognizing independence. Not after that.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Nik sighed.

  “I am,” Giya nodded. “And it’s another reason it’s such a damned shame you’re handing the leadership over to Telari without a fight. These people believe in you, Nik. They listen to you.”

  “Giya,” she started.

  But he held up a hand. “I know, I know. You’ve got other priorities in your life.” It wasn’t said with resentment, exactly, but there certainly were traces of bitterness in the expression he threw Brek’s way.

  “I don’t know who is going to keep him in line once you’re gone, Nik,” Raylor sighed.

  “You will. All of you. You don’t need me there to do that.”

  “Maybe. But it sure helps to have a hero of the people talking sense. It makes people stand up and listen.”

  Nik’s brow creased, and Brek wrapped an arm around her. “Well, they’re just going to have to get used to thinking for themselves, I guess. Nik made her choice.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The vote went exactly as Giya predicted. The chamber affirmed independence for Trapper’s Colony by a margin of two to one.

  Gretchen Mira let into the assembly for their alleged shortsightedness, but even Davis Telari’s careful façade cracked. Images of his scowling face as the final vote was handed down made the news, with pundits and analysts wondering if this defeat predicted a rocky start for the front running Supreme Leader candidate.

  But then, business went on as normal. With the Consortium still on the run, parliament okayed additional border patrols. The MP’s debated the fate of the loyalist troops at length.

  In a few days, the business of Trapper’s Colony seemed to be behind them. Telari even congratulated Nik on rallying the vote she needed. “Can’t say I agree with the outcome, but well done, Nik: you’re a first-rate leader.”

  Things seemed, as near as Brek could tell, to be returning to normal.