Bride (The Unity Book 3)

by Gilbert M. Stack

  Kole interrupted him. “What was Captain Delling doing with my thetes?”

  The question clearly off footed the lieutenant destroying his aura of efficiency. “I don’t know, sir.”

  Kole stopped walking and turned a truly withering stare on the man.

  The lieutenant backed up and reached for his slate. He hit a few symbols then looked up at Kole. “It says here that Captain Delling met with the thetes as part of his security preparations.” The lieutenant paused clearly hoping that that answer would be sufficient for Kole.

  Kole continued to stare at him. “In the future no one sees my thetes without my specific approval, understand?”

  “Yes, sir!” the lieutenant said before saluting again.

  Kole saluted back—the crisp perfect salute of a younger officer. He hadn’t yet developed that careless wave of the hand that marked the response of a senior officer to those beneath him—maybe Armenites never did.

  He turned and strode purposefully down the corridor toward a line of enlisted men who snapped to attention as he passed, finally reaching an interrogation chamber where medical teams were working on Erik Gunnarson. Jewel’s first lover was lying on the floor beside a small functional table. His beautiful blond hair had been cut back so severely he was almost bald leaving nothing to conceal the cuts and contusions marring his handsome face. The splinted hand on his ribs suggested there was damage there as well. Against the back wall of the cell, Captain Hollis Delling came to attention together with two of his men, their faces a mask of stoic professionalism.

  “Report,” Kole ordered the medical personnel.

  “An efficient chastisement, painful but not particularly damaging,” the orderly answered. His approval of the beating was evident in his tone.

  Jewel crouched down beside Erik and took his hand. “Erik, what happened?”

  “Bastard Armenites, jumped me,” he muttered. A stream of blood dripped over his lip and rolled down his chin.

  At the sound of the term bastard Kole’s half-brother bristled and stepped forward as if he intended to continue chastising Erik.

  “Oh control yourself!” Jewel snapped at him. “It’s true isn’t it? Your parents weren’t married, were they?”

  “On Armen,” Kole observed, a wry tone coloring his deep voice, “a bastard is a crass way of referring to a child conceived between a person of pure Armenite descent and a member of a lesser people.”

  The definition really disturbed Jewel. It was so overtly racist. “And what about children born of Armenites and allied people such as mine? Are our children going to be considered bastards by your people as well?”

  No emotion whatsoever appeared on Kole’s face when he answered her. “Technically our marriage elevates you to the status of full-blooded Armenite.”

  Jewel was not fooled. “In other words, yes,” she said. And then because she was tired of the snobbery all around her, she couldn’t resist adding. “The attitude is not all that different among my own people. You Armenites with your pale skin and gray eyes may look exotic but that doesn’t make you our equals.”

  The smile that had been creeping over Hollis Delling’s face abruptly disappeared as Armenite faces around the room hardened in instant antipathy.

  Jewel didn’t care. She wanted the bastards to feel insulted.

  “How much more time will you need with him?” Kole asked the medical technician.

  The technician gave Erik a final cursory glance and stood up. “We can go now, sir. The worst of his injuries is a little bruising to the ribcage. We’ve just finished sealing his cuts and the contusions will heal naturally.”

  Kole nodded at the man and the medics left, leaving Jewel kneeling on the floor still holding Erik’s hand.

  Kole turned to his half-brother. “Explain yourself.”

  Hollis was clearly enjoying himself. There was nothing specific about the man’s expression that Jewel could point to that would justify her assessment, but she knew it was correct just the same. The bastard was enjoying himself.

  He spoke in quick, professional terms, explaining his actions. “This thete’s behavior at the reception after your wedding this morning raised concerns that he could threaten the honor of our House and the longevity of our relationship with Khaba.”

  Jewel didn’t believe that for a moment “As if he cares—”

  “Jewel.” Kole cut her off with one crisp word and she definitely did not like his tone.

  The Empyreal had never glanced away from his half-brother and he resumed questioning him now. “Explain. What threat? What actions?”

  Hollis picked up his explanation with the same blank expression on his face, but his tone twisted sickeningly, giving away the satisfaction he was feeling. “You are aware, of course, that this man is one of the long-term lovers of your wife?”

  Kole started and glanced quickly at Jewel. His normally stoic features showed shock—perhaps even outrage. “No,” he answered Hollis, but he was still looking at Jewel, “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  Jewel became acutely aware that she was still holding Erik’s hand. Part of her wanted to push it away now in guilty response to Kole’s unspoken questions, but she was made of firmer stuff than that. No Cartelite was going to give an opponent an advantage that easily—and based on the hard expression on his face, Kole was definitely her opponent right now.

  “Long term,” she told him, “is only accurate if you count my years in cold sleep.”

  Hollis pressed his advantage. “You know how these Cartelites are—”

  “No, you don’t,” Jewel cut him off. “The one thing that is glaringly obvious from my brief time on this vessel is that no Armenite has even the slightest understanding of what makes a Cartelite tick. Your mental software is written for a completely different platform. You simply do not understand us.”

  Hollis did not back down. “It is well known that you indulge in myriad affairs of the body so that your whole society can glory in the resulting scandals.”

  “That’s not how any Cartelite would describe our actions, but considering you come from a people who shun monogamy and rarely have two children with the same partner, I do not understand why Cartelite affairs would trouble you.”

  Kole impatiently interrupted them. “This thete is your lover?”

  “Was my lover,” Jewel interrupted him.

  Kole wasn’t listening to her. “All of your arguments for rehabilitation over punishment were designed to protect your lover?”

  Even through her anger, Jewel could tell that something had gone seriously wrong here. “No, all of my arguments for rehabilitation were designed to achieve justice. None of my former crewmates did anything wrong. They have earned no punishment. And they don’t need to be rehabilitated either—they just need to learn how to survive in the twisted Armenite society you and the other Empyreals have dragged them into.”

  Kole’s face darkened with anger. “Why didn’t you mention he was your lover?”

  Jewel stood up. “What the hell business is it of yours? Have you given me the names of the women you fathered children on? How about the women you tried to father them on and failed? What I did before our marriage is none of your business. Void, Kole! Adel, Farl and Delling acted like it was a good thing that I wasn’t a virgin coming to your bed.”

  Kole took an angry step toward her, but at that moment, his half-brother made the mistake of grinning.

  It was a stupid error on his part because it reminded Kole that there were witnesses to this first marital fight and it gave him a target at which to redirect his anger.

  He rounded on his half-brother. “You still haven’t finished your explanation. What actions did this man take to persuade you he posed a threat to the honor of our House?”

  Hollis lost the grin before it fully finished forming. Jewel could see in his eyes that he realized he’d made a mistake. His eyes were much easier to read than Kole’s because he lacked the elaborate tattooing that marked the Empyreals. Angry as she was
with Kole right now, she was glad to see him put his half-brother on the spot again.

  “He kept trying to speak with your wife at the reception,” Hollis said.

  Kole did not accept the explanation at face value. “And this troubled you why?”

  Hollis filled in the details regarding his concerns about Kole. “He was obviously highly agitated, was in a relationship with your new wife that had been continued on this vessel, and he is a Ymirian who deserted—”

  Erik sat up. “I did not desert!”

  Jewel had already had this argument with both Captain Krell of the Righteous Lightning and Empyreal Justiciar General Ren Farl. “The Armenites are under the delusion that when they forcibly incorporated Ymir’s armed forces into their own military that you were required to return to Ymir, swear an oath of loyalty to them, and resume your military service under their command.”

  Erik’s eyes bulged with astonishment. “They think what?”

  Jewel shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? Their whole culture is clearly insane but they control the armenium flows and the rest of the galaxy has to put up with them.”

  Hollis Delling’s eyes flashed with anger. “Major, I respectfully demand that you control your wife so that she ceases to make these insulting and slanderous statements.”

  Jewel didn’t back down. “What slander? Name one fact that I stated that is not absolutely true.”

  From the set of Kole’s jaw, Jewel was pretty certain her husband was absolutely furious with her. But his voice remained tightly controlled. “Our culture is not insane.”

  Jewel threw that one right back at him. “Insanity is often a matter of perception. From the perspective of the rest of the galaxy, you Armenites are completely bonkers. And don’t pretend you didn’t know that.”

  “The dubious perceptions of subhuman creatures is of no concern to the people of Armen,” Hollis informed her.

  “You’ve just proved my point,” Jewel told him. “The inmates are running the asylum in the Hegemony—and if it were of no concern to you, it wouldn’t insult you that the rest of the galaxy thinks you’re mad.”

  All four of the Armenites in the chamber were enraged with her but Jewel was too angry to care. “You are galactic bullies who would be locked up as delusional if you didn’t also control such a powerful navy. And keep in mind that I’m a Cartelite—we’re generally sympathetic to you since so much of our own wealth depends upon your armenium.”

  “You must stop saying these things,” Kole told her.

  “Or what?” Jewel spat at him. She was never going to let Kole dictate to her. Nothing in her marriage contract gave him that sort of authority over her.

  “Careful, Jewel,” Erik said, “or the bastard might hit you again.”

  The warning-turned-accusation caught Jewel by surprise—so much so that she turned defensively on Erik even before Kole could respond. “What are you talking about? Kole has never hit me.” She wondered if it were possible that she’d bruised herself during sex. She hadn’t seen a mirror since the wedding.

  Erik struggled to his feet beside her. “Don’t try and cover for him. The bruises are already forming on your face.”

  “What?”

  Kole’s whole demeanor abruptly changed. “Captain,” he said to his half-brother, “escort my thete back to his holding cell.”

  Jewel forgot about her alleged bruises. “Holding cell? I thought they were in guest accommodations.”

  “This is a warship and they were prisoners not so long ago,” Kole reminded her. “Accommodations are sparse. The decision was made to keep them in their cells until we reach our transport to the Cartel Worlds.”

  Kole’s half-brother started in surprise. “I’m given to understand that those orders were changed. The rear-admiral—”

  “Was overruled,” Kole told him.

  “But the physician general and the justiciar general are outside of the normal naval chain of command,” Hollis protested.

  “The orders to proceed to the Cartel Worlds stand,” Kole repeated. “Now get this thete out of here, I have matters to discuss with my wife.”

  Jewel thought Hollis was going to protest again, but he surprised her. He stiffened his lip and waved his two subordinates toward Erik. They grabbed Jewel’s former lover rather harshly and shoved him toward the entrance to the interrogation chamber. The guard at the door opened it only after Erik crashed against it. Jewel felt like she was in a bad storm trooper holo. She hadn’t really thought that people acted this way.

  Hollis saluted, followed his two men out of the chamber and activated the security screen before striding down the corridor.

  Jewel immediately turned on Kole, the violence toward Erik driving her personal concerns momentarily out of her mind. “What do you think you’re doing? Why are you letting them hurt Erik this way?”

  Kole hesitated before answering and Jewel, still angry over everything that had happened in this chamber, got right up in his face. “I’m not going to stand still for this. We’re going to the Cartel Worlds. You can’t act like some Neanderthal knocking people on their heads every time they disagree with you.”

  Kole took a deep breath. “None of that is important now. Your former lover—”

  “Not important?” Jewel interrupted. “You people are—”

  Kole grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jewel, listen to me. The marks on your face are not bruises. You need to know—”

  Jewel touched her face. Nothing felt like it was wrong with it. “What marks?”

  Kole let go of her, picked up a chair off the floor and set it down in front of the table. “I think you should sit down.”

  Jewel was still running her hands over her face. “What marks? What bruises? What are you talking about?”

  “Please, Jewel, I’d hoped to have more time to figure out how to explain this to you, but the striations are becoming visible much more quickly than was anticipated. Perhaps it’s because you spent all of those years in cold sleep. The menites become dormant in sufficiently cold conditions and I’m not aware of anyone being put into cold sleep so quickly or for such long a duration after symbiosis.”

  Jewel could feel her eyes bulging as she tried to understand what Kole was telling her. What under the stars was a menite? And what did he mean by symbiosis? “What I’m going to tell you now cannot be shared with anyone. It is critical that you understand this. The Hegemony views what I’m about to tell you as more important than all of our relationships with the Cartel Worlds—not just the one between Khaba and Delling, but the Lisht/Austri, and Nuri/Vili partnerships as well. If you prove unworthy of the trust I am about to place in you, it is a near certainty that the Hegemony will not only terminate all active contracts with the Cartel Worlds, but go to war with them as well.”

  Jewel sat down hard in the straight-backed interrogation chair. “What are you talking about, Kole?”

  “I’m talking about the reason that Empyreal Physician General Adel and Empyreal Justiciar General Farl are convinced that your arrival at this time is a propitious sign from the Unity.”

  “They kept saying that,” Jewel remembered, “but they wouldn’t explain what they meant by it.”

  “I’m ready to do that now,” Kole informed her.

  He picked up another chair and sat down directly across the little table from her. Then he reached forward and took her light brown hand in his pale ones with the blue-black tattoos. For the first time, Jewel noticed that there were blemishes upon her skin—markings that would look very similar to bruises if their edges weren’t so regularly and cleanly drawn.

  She pulled her hand back from Kole’s to look at it more carefully. The bruising started on the back of her right hand, wrapped around to her palm and then swirled up the second and third fingers to completely cover the tips.

  Kole enfolded her hand in his again so that the blue-black tattoos on his pale skin covered the mottled discoloration of her own hand. Her flesh began to tingle in response.

&nb
sp; “Kole, what’s happening to me?”

  He reached forward with his right hand, still gripping hers with his left, and touched her chin with his index finger, gently persuading her to look into his gray eyes. “When you dove into the depths of the Northern Sea on Valkyrie to save those miners, you submitted yourself to the judgment of the Unity—as all who seek the holy armenium must.”

  Memories flashed before Jewel’s eyes—the all-encompassing darkness of the Northern Sea, the heaters in her all-environment suit struggling to keep her warm, the inky cloud of armenium-enriched dirt surrounding her as she sank toward the bottom, the terrifying realization that water was flooding her suit followed by that horrible caustic burn…

  Kole was still talking to her. “To the great surprise of the Council of Elders you were not found wanting. For the first time in history, a person not of Armenite descent has been chosen to fully join the Unity. The menites tested you and found your heart pure, your body strong, and your spirit ready.”

  As Kole talked, Jewel’s eyes dropped from his face to the place where his hand held hers atop the table. Her eyes focused tightly on the mottled bruising on her skin and noticed for the first time how remarkably similar the pattern was to the tattoo on Kole’s hand—the blue-black tattoos that covered his body including places in his anatomy that it made no sense to decorate.

  She let go of him and looked at her other hand, and then frantically pulled at her sleeves to see the same tribal lines beginning to appear on her wrists and forearms. Feeling a surge of panic, she opened the top of her coverall to see her breasts—still bare of any undergarment—beginning to reveal their own dark bands radiating out from her nipples to circle the swell of her bosom. Barely remembered modesty kept her from ripping off the garment to examine the rest of her body.

  Across from Jewel, Kole waited patiently for her to lift her eyes to his again. “What’s happening to me?” she asked him. Deep in her heart she feared she knew, but the answer seemed so ridiculous that her rational brain rejected the possibility out of hand.