“Denied,” Kole barked.
Jewel’s new husband wasn’t shouting. He didn’t have to shout to control the situation.
“Do any part of your orders involve showing disrespect to my wife?” Kole continued. His words struck the now-junior officer like hammer blows.
“No, sir.”
“Then what possible reason could you have for doing so?”
Resentment radiated almost palpably from the captain’s face. “Permission to speak free—”
“Denied! Answer the question.”
Obviously humiliated, the captain again offered the only acceptable response. “No excuse, sir.”
“And are you planning to insult every Cartelite we encounter on this mission, or do you reserve your disdain only for women honorably married into our household?”
The captain stared daggers at Kole but remained mute. What was he supposed to say?
“Answer me,” Kole snapped. The blue-black tattoos on his face seemed to pulse with rage.
“I will show no disrespect to the Cartelites.”
Jewel doubted that seriously. Armenites couldn’t help insulting the citizens of other races. But it was still the proper thing to say.
“And what about the other peoples we encounter?” Kole pressed. “What about the citizens of the League, the Confederacy, and even the Fringe?”
“I will not embarrass the Hegemony,” the captain stated.
Kole strode around the table until he stood face to face with the captain. He was actually the smaller man both by height and by breadth of shoulders, but Kole radiated a menace that in Jewel’s eyes more than compensated for his nominally inferior physical stature. “I don’t believe you, Captain. I think you’re too thick and too stupid to even know that your behavior brings shame upon the Hegemony. So let me make this very simple for you. If you displease me out there, I will break you and send you home in disgrace.”
Kole stepped closer, forcing the larger man to retreat before him until his back struck the rear wall of the conference chamber. “And if you dare to insult my wife again, I won’t be nearly so pleasant about it.”
He straightened his back. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Captain?”
The captain recovered his balance so that he was no longer pressed back against the wall. “I understand, Major.”
“Good, because believe me, you do not want to have a follow up conversation with me on this subject.”
Kole turned on his heel, walked back around the table and offered Jewel his arm. “Are you ready to interview our new thetes or would you like to retire to our quarters and recuperate from our morning?”
Unless Jewel was very much mistaken, there was a twinkle in her husband’s eye. Could he be secretly coming on to her with all his seemingly innocent speech? And could the man Ina Adel wasn’t certain would be able to get an erection really be ready for a fourth round of love making this morning?
Jewel decided to find out. “I am feeling a little bit tired,” she admitted as she took his arm.
“It would be ungallant of me not to see to your needs.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Captain Delling, what are the current plans for transporting us to the Cartel Worlds?”
Delling still looked angry after his dressing down by Kole, and Jewel could hear remnants of his grudge in his speech. “It is expected that your wife’s parents will offer transport on their private yacht.”
Jewel frowned. “We really do not want to spend our honeymoon with Mama and Papa,” she told her husband.
Kole immediately supported her. “And do you have a backup plan that does not depend upon the charity of the Cartelites?”
Delling continued to bristle. “We’ve optioned passage on freighters from Prescott, to Arch to Luxor,” he informed them.
“Oh, no,” Jewel disagreed. “I’m sorry, Kole, but I just spent a good chunk of my life working on a freighter and now that I have my own money, I don’t plan to travel that way ever again. I realize that your people don’t value personal luxuries, but I’m a Cartelite and this is our honeymoon, and we’re going to do better than that.”
Kole immediately supported her objections. “Inform Captain Wynne that she must find a more suitable option,” he told Delling.
Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and escorted Jewel out into the hall.
The moment the door was closed, Jewel asked the question that had been bothering her since the interview began. “Who was that void-spawn and why does he hate you so much?”
Kole raised an eyebrow in surprise. The gesture made the tattoos on the whole side of his face move in a fascinating manner. “I thought you knew. That was my elder half-brother, Hollis.”
Chapter Six
The Possibility before Us Is Uncharted Territory
Kole unbuttoned the jacket of his uniform with swift, sure movements and slipped it off of his broad shoulders.
Jewel had waited to ask the rest of her questions until they reached the relative privacy of their assigned quarters, but now that they were here, she couldn’t bottle them in any longer. “Why does your brother hate you so much?”
Kole hesitated as he pulled a hanger out of the closet, then consciously made a decision to continue the motion. He didn’t ignore Jewel’s question, he just didn’t give her his full attention while answering it. “He’s my half-brother. If you’ll think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that our mating customs in the Hegemony made it very unlikely that anyone will have a full-blooded sibling. It does happen—even outside of marriage—but it’s not typical.”
Jewel thought the distinction was completely irrelevant to the information she was seeking. “Half brother or full brother, who cares? He’s still your brother. He should be on your side. Why is he acting like he’s your enemy?”
Kole finished hanging the jacket in the closet, automatically checking that the lines were perfect so that there would be no wrinkles. Then he turned to face her and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Well? Are you going to answer me?”
“He’s not my enemy,” Kole said in a tone that brooked no disagreement.
Jewel objected anyway. “He certainly was acting like one.”
Kole pulled off his uniform shirt and began to carefully hang it in the closet beside the jacket. Muscles rippled on his back beneath the t-shirt. For just a moment, Jewel wondered how many hours a day a man had to work out to have a body like that. Then she pushed the stray thought behind her and continued their budding argument.
“Well he was.”
“No,” Kole corrected her with what might have been a suppressed sigh, “he was acting like a brother—or at least he was acting like a brother in the Hegemony.”
The more Jewel learned about families in the Hegemony, the less she liked them. “What does that mean?”
Kole pulled his t-shirt off while still facing the closet. The tattoos almost danced atop his muscles. There was, Jewel realized, a faintly iridescent quality to the markings that she really hadn’t appreciated before. It wasn’t that they glittered when Kole moved, but there was a subtle layering of color that made blue-black completely inadequate as a descriptor. There were so many shades involved that it was dishonest to say the tattoos were only one color. They might not actually be black anywhere and they certainly were never as bright as blue, but every imaginable dark combination of those two shades seemed to be intricately woven into the ever broadening or thinning bands. The more she looked the more impressed and enthralled she was by the art work: midnight, Prussian and Oxford blues, woven together with licorice, jet, and cool and smoky blacks. There was a never a point in which one shade clearly ended and another unmistakably began. Instead all were woven together into one seamless masterpiece of artistry. She couldn’t figure out how it had been done.
Kole had just said something but Jewel had been so mesmerized by her discovery regarding his body art that she missed it. “What…what did you say?”
Somehow, Kole
had crossed the tiny stateroom to stand in front of her without her noticing. He took advantage of his proximity now to wrap his strong arms around her, pulling her firmly up against him so that she had to look up to see his eyes. “I said, can we please talk about this later? I have something else on my mind right now.”
Before Jewel could answer, Kole’s lips descended to hers and the man who a few hours before had thought that sex between them could only be a cold mechanical process began to make love to Jewel’s mouth.”
She still wanted answers to her questions, but there was no way to deny those lips and that tongue. She kissed him back, stretching up on the tips of her toes to increase the pressure locking their lips together and letting her tongue dart just a little deeper into Kole’s mouth.
It occurred to Jewel that this was a man who’d lived his entire life under very tight discipline—both external and internal—fighting his way toward his chance to become an Empyreal. All of that discipline had bound up his emotions and desires deep inside of him, thoroughly suppressing them so they couldn’t knock him off his course. And somehow this morning she’d shown him that those desires were an asset—not an impediment—to the duties created by their marriage and he’d finally become free to indulge himself as he probably never had in his life. Four children and she bet he’d never taken the time to enjoy a woman’s body. Four children and he’d likely never licked a tit or kissed or sucked upon his partner. She’d seen it in his face. Before today he’d viewed seeking carnal pleasure as a sign of weakness.
She was very glad he’d begun to view it otherwise.
****
Kole might have been lightly dozing on top of Jewel. She couldn’t tell for certain. His breathing was certainly heavy enough but every so often he gave her breast a little squeeze with his hand that might have resulted from his unconscious dreaming and might have been a sign that he was still at least partially awake. It was a remarkably comfortable experience. Jewel felt cherished in a manner she had never experienced before. Was this what it felt like to be loved? Or was it more likely that all her parents’ tampering with her body had succeeded as designed and Kole’s unexpected virility and clear physical interest were the simple consequences of overpowering lust.
She didn’t know. What was worse, she didn’t know how to find out or if it even mattered. This was an arranged marriage, the fulfillment of a decades old contract of alliance. So on one level, love clearly did not matter so long as neither bride nor groom invalidated the contract and the alliance remained in place. Yet on a personal level love was important to Jewel. Kole and she needed to learn how to live together and falling in love would make that substantially easier and more pleasant.
But did love matter right now? As to that Jewel wasn’t so certain. Kole and she didn’t really know anything about each other yet except that they were both stubborn and that they found each other’s bodies exciting. That might not be enough to make a marriage work, but it was probably enough to start building upon.
She took a deep breath.
“Oh, so you’re awake, are you?” Kole asked.
Jewel hadn’t realized he might think she was sleeping.
She stretched her muscles, enjoying the languorous pleasure. “Mmmhmmmm,” she murmured.
“And here I thought I’d found the perfect way to wake you,” he said.
He leaned closer to kiss her and the stateroom intercom buzzed.
Kole pulled back in a Pavlovian reflex, annoyance filling his features even as he moved to answer the com.
“Don’t they know we’re newlyweds in here?” Jewel complained.
Kole hit the com switch. “This is Major Delling.”
“Major Delling, I have a call for you from Empyreal Physician General Ina Adel on board the Vigilance.”
Kole met Jewel’s eyes. As usual, it was hard to read his expression behind the swirling bands of blue-black tattoos, but she would go out on a limb and suggest that her husband was surprised by this news. “Put her through.”
“Right away sir,” the communications technician said.
About ten seconds later, the panel emitted the soft tones of Ina Adel’s voice. “Congratulations again on your marriage, Major Delling. May I assume that your new bride is with you?”
Still looking to Jewel as if he didn’t understand why the Empyreal was calling, Kole confirmed Jewel’s presence. “Indeed she is, Physician General. How may we be of service to you?”
“It’s good to hear your voice again, Physician General,” Jewel added. “Is there a problem?”
She could not help but suspect that this call boded ill for Kole and her. Ina Adel had been generally sympathetic to the two of them, but nobody looked forward to a call from their effective superiors.
The delay time between Jewel’s response and the Empyreal’s answer was several seconds longer than it had been when Jewel had held her conversation with Justiciar General Farl earlier that day. “Not this time, Ms. Delling, I have some important information to share from Kole’s medical report.”
A shiver of dread worked its way up Jewel’s spine despite the fact that the physician general had stated there was no problem. She decided to work on the personal side of her relationship with the Empyreal, trying to build credit for the problems that would doubtless appear down the road. “Excellent, Physician General, and please call me Jewel. After everything we’ve already experienced together, I think you’ve earned the right.”
Kole looked at her as if she’d just breached an important protocol.
Maybe she had, but Jewel was not an Armenite. She was an important shareholder of the Khaba Cartel, positioned to take a seat on the Board of Directors at the next election if she wanted to do so and she and Kole were still living in the Cartelite Worlds. That might not be the case. Jewel was toying in the back of her mind with a half formulated thought that might just prove to be more lucrative, more interesting and more personally comfortable than a traditional Cartelite career would provide. It would take a lot of work to pull off and so much depended on the Armenites and the deactivated bioware in her temple, but it was certainly worth considering.
“Thank you, Jewel,” Adel responded. “That is very considerate of you.”
This time Jewel could definitely read her husband’s surprise.
“Now for my news,” Adel continued, “which I remind you falls under the secrecy clause in your marriage contract. During her examination of you, Jewel, Physician Lieutenant Bree took a significant number of semen samples deposited by Major Delling inside of your body. This is not normally the best way to test the vitality of sperm cells, but we’ve run statistical models on all the samples and the findings are both significant and highly encouraging.”
Adel paused but started speaking again before Jewel or Kole could respond. It was difficult to tell with the time lag and the lack of a video component to the standard Armenite communication console, but Jewel figured she was probably checking her notes or looking directly at Bree’s report.
“Major Delling, congratulations are in order. You have three million live sperm per milliliter of semen with a motility projected at twelve percent.”
Jewel stared blankly at Kole for a moment wishing she had some clue what those numbers meant. It was the sort of detail that had probably come up in a biology class back in school, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time. In the Cartel Worlds, one live sperm cell per milliliter was probably enough to create a child. Cartelite medicine, including artificial insemination techniques, were the best in the galaxy. But one of the peculiarities of the Armenite philosophy was that they abhorred what they termed unnatural methods of procreation, so the sperm count would be far more important to them.
Fortunately, Kole asked the question necessary to put this information in context.
“Those numbers are about twenty percent of my pre-ascension counts,” he noted.
Jewel couldn’t tell if he was upset or not by this admission. She’d been warned that his fertility wo
uld be low, but she just couldn’t summon the information she required to compare these numbers to a typical Cartelite or League male.
The time-lag before Adel’s response stretched out interminably. “Yes, you were a particularly fertile man pre-ascension with counts nearly fifty percent higher than that of most Armenite males. It is doubtless one of the reasons you were in such high demand as a procreation mate.”
Jewel didn’t like the sound of that at all. Kole had told her that he had four children, but before this moment it hadn’t occurred to Jewel that he might have had sex with more than four women to sire those kids.
“Physician General?” she asked. It annoyed her that the woman had not reciprocated her permission to use her first name. “How do those numbers compare to a typical male in the Cartel Worlds?”
This pause was slightly longer than the last one. Perhaps Adel had needed to look up the requested information on her computer console. “Average sperm count for a typical Cartelite male is eighteen million live cells per milliliter with a motility of sixty-two percent.”
Jewel gaped. She couldn’t help herself. Kole had apparently been an Armenite stud before his ascension, but his original numbers still sucked by comparison to the men of her own nation. Now they were positively abysmal. How the hell were they going to have a child if Kole truly was effectively sterile? And why the hell did Adel sound as if she’d just announced a three hundred percent increase in quarterly profits?
“I’m still having difficulty putting these numbers in context,” Jewel informed the physician general. “These sound improbably low. What sorts of numbers would you expect to see in a typical Empyreal after his ascension?”
Again the long pause, but not so long that it suggested Adel didn’t instantly know this answer. “Only one in twelve Empyreal males can achieve erection. Of those, the typical sperm count is five hundred thousand per milliliter with a motility of two percent.”
If Jewel had been astounded before, she was absolutely flabbergasted now. “Holy stars,’ she exclaimed. “You said there were problems, but I hadn’t realized that Empyreals were effectively sterile.”
Bride (The Unity Book 3) Page 7