by Elsa Jade
Though it was early morning on the coast of Azthronos’s second largest landmass where the ducal estate was located, she accepted his call immediately. She smiled at him, her blue eyes crinkling. Behind her, the floor-to-ceiling windows were open, framing the tidy courtyard garden with its sculpted hedges nurtured to year-round blooming under the protective energy dome. “You rescued the Earth girls. And you looked very heroic doing so. I’m delighted.”
He grimaced. “Do you have a spy on my ship?”
“I’m the Dowager Duchess of Azthronos. I have spies everywhere. And I’m your mother. So yes.” She waved one hand dismissively. “Public interest is piquing. We’ve already booked three conferences at the south coast resort. We even had a call from the Octiron Corp about recording a segment about the Duke of Azthronos and the Black Hole Brides.”
This time he blanched. “Is that what Octiron is calling them? The Black Hole Brides. As if the Earthers chose to be abducted. Although I suppose that fits Octiron’s usual antics. They produce that trashy—and dangerous—Great Space Race reality show.”
“Indeed,” she said blandly. “Very popular.”
Maybe he wasn’t interested in listening to all her ideas… Moving on, he asked, “Did your spy also tell you about the station? It was running on autopilot and most of the systems were shut down or functioning on minimal power. Hardly better than abandoned.” Except for Rayna and the other Earther females. “But the structure is in acceptable shape and should bring in a tidy sum. Considering the questionable provenance and unsavory previous ownership, I imagine we won’t have any appreciable challenge to our salvage claim.”
She pursued her lips over a sip of pixberry tea. “About that…”
He stiffened. “What?”
“I just mentioned that public interest in the girls’ case is high because their abductions were connected with the Intergalactic Dating Agency. The IDA outposts on Earth already garner a certain prurient excitement among lesser beings with their unseemly emphasis on lust and libertinism. Not to mention love.” She gazed past the screen, her focus on something he couldn’t see. “Did you know, they call it ‘hooking up’. Hooking, as if it was a hunt for some wild erotic beast.”
Wishing dearly he might never learn his mother’s position on eroticism, he drawled, “And so?”
“Deplorable, really,” she murmured, torpedoing his dearest wish. “Lust and love are for the people. The peerage, such as ourselves, must hold to a higher standard.” She took another sip of tea.
He waited impatiently, knowing her and her tea and her intrigues. “By any chance, would that ‘higher standard’ have a galactic credit limit attached?”
She sighed. “I gave you this opportunity to tour the system so you could see where we stand.” She set her teacup down with a decisive click. “On the brink of ruin, in case you missed it.”
He hadn’t. The central planets were settled, established, and secure enough, but the outer planets—always more marginal with their environmental extremes—and the moons were in dire straits such that the support from the successful planets was strained. Advanced terraforming and high-end engineering, both mechanical and genetic, would allow those territories to prosper—and profit—but only at great investment. “That’s why I’m out here, claiming this salvage,” he reminded her. “It will net us—”
“Nothing,” she said bluntly. “We can’t claim it, not with the universe watching.”
Frustration tightened his shoulders. “Why would anyone even care?”
“An open-worlds’ rights organization has been pushing to overturn council rulings on closed worlds, declaring that keeping them in the dark is cruel and unconscionable, amounting to genocide in some cases. In this case, they are saying, Earth never had a chance to protect their citizens from Blackworm because they didn’t even know alien abduction was a real threat. This organization—Open Worlds For All—has taken on the Black Hole Brides as their cause, and they are proposing that the station and its environs be turned over to the girls as a sort of compensatory dowry.”
He laughed sharply. “What are a handful of closed-world females going to do with a space station in a decaying orbit around a black hole?”
His mother shook her finger at him. “I hope you aren’t suggesting that females couldn’t run a station.”
“Of course not.” He imagined Rayna would make an excellent station manager. She just wouldn’t want the responsibility. “But they’ll want to go home, not stay here on the edge of Azthronos space in a derelict station.”
“Good,” she said. “So when you take controlling interest, you can do whatever needs to be done to maximize profits on their behalf.”
“Take control…” He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gave a delicate shrug. “Why, my dear boy, when you marry one.”
Chapter 5
Raz stalked down the Grandy’s main corridor, his mind whirling so hard it seemed the artificial gravity had failed. He was forced to stop and lean against the bulkhead, taking gulps of air.
Luckily no crewmembers saw him in such a state. How humiliating.
He’d always known he’d marry for the duchy. That was the way of things. His sire and mother had had a cordial relationship, but it hadn’t been based in love. Or lust.
And larf it, why had he even pictured that?
With another muttered curse, he pushed away from the wall and resumed his fuming trek.
Marry! Marry an Earth girl. So he could claim her portion of the dilapidated space station and magnanimously offer to run the thing for her and the other hostages who only wanted to put the horrors of the place behind them.
That wasn’t piracy. It was lunacy! Worse than lunacy. At least lunatics got a full moon while he would get…nothing. A station they would break down for parts. A black hole—which literally sucked. And a runaway bride he’d never see again.
If Blackworm hadn’t been already incarcerated, Raz swore he would’ve hunted down the larf-licking ex-nobleman and put a black hole in him for causing this conundrum.
Although it wasn’t really a conundrum. Raz had never questioned that he would one day return to Azthronos and take up the reins—and ruins, apparently—of the duchy, with all that entailed. If this was what was needed…
He would do it.
“Of course you will, dear boy,” his mother had responded to his teeth-gritted agreement. “I’ll be in touch once I work out the agreement with Open Worlds For All, who’ve been appointed the girls’ guardian by the transgalactic council.”
“I await your word,” he said grimly.
“Well, don’t just wait. You need to woo one.”
He wanted to smash his head on the Grandy’s pointy prow. Even if that meant spacing himself. Which actually sounded like a reasonable choice at the moment. “Woo one?”
“Earth is sending representation for the girls too, and you’ll need to convince that envoy that our plan is in the girls’ best interests. And Earth’s too,” she added with one of those nonchalant waves of hers. “Show them how much they need this, how desirable this deal will be. Those closed worlds can be rather backwards, so don’t be subtle.”
“Why, I might even need to play the lustful libertine,” he said acidly.
She nodded. “I imagine that would be very effective with an Earth girl. Consult Captain Nor. He used to be a pirate before I appointed him to the Grandiloquence. No doubt he will have some guidance. It would probably be best if you are engaged to the girl and the union consummated before the OWFA guardian and the Earth envoy arrive. Less quibbling if the girl is already in love with you.”
Raz sputtered. “I am not consulting anyone about consummating an engagement.” And as for love…
His mother had signed off with a smile that would’ve been a smirk on a less aristo countenance.
And now he was marching back to the Black Hole Brides to choose one to claim as his bride.
Trixie was too young. Lishelle too stabby. Carmen and Anne
too… Well, they were perfectly nice, but it didn’t really matter what they were.
It had to be Rayna.
He already had a connection with her, or so it had seemed to him. Although maybe that was just because he’d held her half-naked in his arms. That probably felt like enough of a connection to the lusty libertine he was about to become.
With a curse under his breath, he paused outside the door to the suites where he’d assigned the Earther females. He’d checked with the med bay officer on duty and been told the abductees had all been cleared by Doctor Boshil and relocated to the suites. As he’d told Rayna, the niceties added to the Grandy for his tour had been easily repurposed for their comfort, but now he realized how odd it was to stand outside the door to what had so recently been his rooms and realize his future bride was within.
Not that she knew it yet, of course.
In lieu of smashing his head on the ship’s prow, he banged it on the door.
The panel slid open to reveal Trixie, looking smaller than ever in a large Thorkon day robe. She gazed up at him. “Hi.”
Lishelle loomed over the smaller female’s shoulder. The robe fit her perfectly. “Trix, what are you—?” Her dark eyes snapped up to Raz and narrowed. “Sweetie,” she said—not to him, obviously. “You shouldn’t open the door to just anyone.” Her tone was as gentle as her gaze was fierce, and Trixie nodded obediently.
“I’m not just anyone,” he pointed out. “I’m your savior. Also, commander of this ship. Also, bearer of good news.”
Trixie stood back, and though Lishelle seemed inclined to keep blocking the entrance, the arch of her sculpted brow told him she was curious.
“No attacking,” he reminded her as he stepped past her.
“I suppose,” she said reluctantly.
Although if she found out what he had planned, he doubted that desultory agreement would hold.
As he walked, with Lishelle and Trixie trailing behind him, toward the sunken sitting area where a variety of cups and plates were gathered along with Carmen and Anne, he noted the viewport in the main gathering room was wide open to reveal the space station and the singularity beyond.
Following his gaze, Trixie dropped into the deep cushions and pulled one of the pillows into her lap. “I found the controls for the viewer,” she said. “I wanted it to show a picture of home, but Rayna said it should show us what really is, not just what we want.”
“Lady Rayna is wise and brave,” he said gravely. “However, sometimes it helps to see what we want so we can make our dreams come true.”
The voice he was unconsciously waiting for sounded behind him. “Spoken like a Duke of Azthronos.”
He spun slowly on his heel to face Rayna. “Not a duke,” he corrected. “The Duke of Azthronos.”
“And I already told you,” she continued, “I am no lady.”
Lishelle snorted. “Good thing. No lady would’ve stuck around to rescue us.” She descended into the seating area, managing to make her slippered feet sound like stomping even on the lush Thorkon rugs.
He inclined his head to Rayna. “You look…” Not like a lady. In the plush robe, with her brown hair sleeked back from the sonic shower and a flush buffed into her tawny skin, she looked like something a libertine would lust after.
At least he wouldn’t have to lie about that part.
He cleared his throat. “Better. You look better. Your arms?”
She held out her hands and pushed back the sleeves of the day robe to display the bandages spiraling up from knuckles to elbows. “The medics took care of all of us.” She lowered her voice and her eyes. “He didn’t… There was no assault while we were unconscious. No physical abuse. I mean, besides the initial abduction.”
Her lower lip trembled, and that tiny tell speared him. Was this the hooking his mother had mentioned? It hurt, in his heart.
Gently, he put two fingers under her chin and tipped her head up. “I thank Azjor, God of Oaths, that you are unscathed.”
After a moment, she lifted her head a little higher to evade his grasp. “Okay, well. I don’t know that god, never heard of him, so… I guess thank him for me too?”
Raz shrugged. “Actually, I suspect he doesn’t even really care about thanks. Oaths are made from the deepest heart and enforced by the unfaltering hand. Poetical words are just frosting on the pixberries to Azjor.”
As he intended, she gave him a smile, just half of one, but it eased the ache in his chest. “I suppose I can thank you for the pixberry suggestion.” She gestured at the plates scattered around the long, low table. “A little sweet, a little tart. Very tasty. And all oaths aside, we ordered the pie with frosting.”
He laughed. “Fair enough. And the coffee?”
“Rich, full-bodied, fresh. Honestly, better than what I buy for myself at home.” She shook her head. “And to think it came all the way across galaxies…”
“You came all the way across galaxies too,” he said. “So drink as much as you want.”
Coffee was an exotic export, one Azthronos wouldn’t be able to afford soon, so she might as well drink up because she’d be lucky to get the cheap imitations if she married him.
But if he was honest, with himself at least, he didn’t give a larf’s ass about the berries or the beverage. He was stuck on watching the curve of her mouth: a little sweet, a little tart. Rich, too, now that she was bequeathed a fifth of a space station. As for the rest…
His gaze dropped when she turned away from him to descend into the seating area.
Yes, definitely full-bodied.
He followed the sway of her hips as if hooked again, although the ache this time was lower in his body. Ah, the curse of libertines…
She sat down and gazed at him expectantly. “So what is this good news?”
She’d seated herself between Trixie and Lishelle, as if she sensed on some instinctive level that she was being hunted. So he took the cushion across from her and was careful to spread his gaze evenly among the Earthers.
“My people are in contact with a representative from your planet Earth who is coming to take you home.” He waited for the grateful buzz to diminish before continuing. “The envoy will explain your options to you.”
Rayna—who hadn’t been quite so buzzy as the other females—studied him, her expression unreadable. “The doctor said there were formalities.”
“Because your Earth is a closed world and rather backward, meaning the populace as a whole is unaware of the existence of sentient, spacefaring life elsewhere in the universe, your repatriation—should you choose it—requires some accommodations.”
“Choose it?” Carmen straightened in her seat, and beside her, Anne blanched. “Why wouldn’t we choose to go home?”
“That is a possibility,” he said hastily and then had to raise his voice over their objections to the word possibility. “Some Earthers choose to stay off-world,” he said, aware of the defensive note in his explanation.
“We didn’t get a choice,” Lishelle snapped.
“Not before,” he acknowledged. “But now you do.”
“And if we still want to go home?” Rayna’s dark gaze was piercing, as if she knew he wasn’t being forthcoming.
He held her gaze. “You go.”
Whatever else happened, he would hold that oath sacred.
He forced his gaze round to the other females. “All of you can stay. Or go. However, if you return to Earth, you cannot take these memories with you.”
“God, why would we?” Lishelle burst out.
But Rayna tucked her chin in confusion. “How could we not?”
Ah, his wary little soonyili, sensing the trap. Honey-birds fed exclusively on the soonyipang flower—and gathering psychedelic nectar from the carnivorous plants was a precarious existence. “The memories would be erased.”
Trixie clutched the pillow higher, as if she wanted to disappear behind it. “What? All our memories?”
“Only the recent ones, since you awoke, would be targete
d,” he said. “The Earth envoy will explain more, of course, but I feel you should know your options now. For all our advances—spaceships and whatnot”—he cast a faint smile at Rayna—“altering memories is…not foolproof. Beings such as ourselves are the end products of sentience and reason, and memory is intimately entwined with both concepts. In a very real way, we are our memories. So larfing with memories…” He shook his head.
“Larfing?” Trixie said faintly.
“Fucking,” Lishelle guessed.
He gave her a nod as his universal translator agreed. “Refocusing memories isn’t always exact or easy. It can be painful for some, not just from the procedure but because gaps—although false memories can be implanted—may remain, never to be explained.”
“That sounds like hell,” Lishelle said bluntly.
Into the others’ stunned silence, he said, “We would do our best but there would be no guarantees. And to get the best results, it’s recommended that the unwanted memories be as short and as few as possible. Meaning, should you choose to be repatriated, we would put you in suspended animation now, to minimize memory contamination, and not revive you until the envoy arrives to take over.”
“Take over?” Rayna repeated. “Take over what?”
“Your return, specifically,” he said. “But in essence, everything else. You wouldn’t be in any state to make decisions, and you’d need to be reintegrated to your communities, perhaps under new identities, depending on how long you were missing—”
Lishelle jolted to her feet. “New identities? New memories? No memories! What the fuck? I liked who I was.”
He was glad she didn’t have the glass shard in her hand since she’d obviously liked that too and she looked mad enough to use it on him.
“I’m sorry,” Rayna said dully.
Her low voice cut through Lishelle’s vehemence.
Raz looked at her, aghast at the pain in her eyes. “What?”
She turned her stricken gaze to the others. “I shouldn’t have gotten you out. You’d still be asleep and then you wouldn’t have to make this choice.”