Queen's Ransom: The Golden Bulls of Minos

by Isabel Wroth

  She could see the shock on her mom's face, how she looked up at her iron-jawed husband for help but found him staring straight back at Jalia in stony silence.

  "We wanted to send you to a special school, someplace to help you hone your talents and stop wasting them on illegal card games.

  “You were so upset, I think the whole station heard you arguing with your father, and the next morning you were gone. We thought you'd just skipped school because you were angry, but then you didn't come home, and no one had seen you. You just disappeared."

  "Disappeared." Jalia repeated softly, "It felt that way. How long did you wait to report me missing?"

  "Three days. Your room always looked like a bomb went off in it," Jaclyn said with a hollow smile, "The MP's asked me if anything was missing, but I couldn't tell."

  Jalia nodded, managing a weak brush of her knuckles back against Dhega's shoulder when he gave her a gentle squeeze, reminding her of his presence.

  "I wasn't given the opportunity to take anything. Two of dad's goons jerked me out of bed in the middle of the night, cuffed me like a criminal, slapped a gag over my mouth, and shoved me into a pre-programmed shuttle that took me straight to Scillion.

  “He couldn't even be bothered to take me himself, and by the time you reported me missing, I was locked down at the Telantes Reform School for girls."

  "Jamie, what is she talking about?" not even her mother's imploring question made the General blink.

  *****

  Jalia felt like she was in a staring contest with her father, silently daring him to lie. He was looking at her like he didn't know her, searching her face for any signs of the rebellious daughter he had so harshly punished over the smallest infractions.

  Listening to her music too loudly, not making her bed, staying out past curfew, refusing to wear a uniform to dinner, making friends with other children from lower ranked families.

  Failing to meet the basic requirements during physical fitness tests or failing altogether because she had skipped school that day in favor of playing cards with dockhands.

  Jalia hadn't ever stepped past innocent crimes. She hadn't stolen from anyone; she hadn't gotten drunk or gone to wild parties and slept around with the upperclassmen.

  She'd never hurt anyone or caused catastrophic failures to individual systems in the station, but her friends had, so by association that made Jalia every bit as terrible in her father's eyes.

  He'd told her so often enough, constantly belittling her, pushing her to do better in school, to just apply herself and accept her place in the world. To join the UC and stop acting like an entitled little girl.

  "Telantes was a magical place, where the matrons broke hands and fingers if any of our personal messages were anything but hearts and rainbows, expressing how much we loved it there.

  “If we stole food from the pantry to feed the starving girls who had been sent there to lose weight, we were caned until everything from our ass cheeks down were bloody and bruised.

  "If we were caught out of bed after lights out, if we were caught with contraband, or didn't take our lessons seriously, failed a test, or got a speck of dirt on our clothes, we would be chained naked in the freezer where they stored the meat.

  “Two days after our punishment, the matrons were kind enough to put us in stim-cell chairs to heal whatever damage they did to us.

  "I was told by some of the girls who had been there the longest, it was a new policy after several of the students had died from their injuries and parents threatened to contact the UC.

  “I sent messages to all of you. Begging you to come get me, to help me, to do something to get the other girls and me out of there.

  "The only response I got back was from Jared, telling me, per dad's orders, I could come home as soon as I learned to follow the rules, and behave like a lady.

  “I guess it was just easier to say I'd run away. No one would question five-star General Justus when he makes an official announcement, least of all his family members."

  Jade and the twins leaped at the opportunity to swear they hadn't gotten any messages, the three of them looking to their father for answers, but the General just stood there mutely, gripping his wife tightly.

  As though she were the one keeping him on his feet, instead of the other way around.

  "I was there for three years, and when I finally did manage to escape, someone put out a bounty of two hundred credits to bring me home alive. Two hundred credits!

  “A lost dog would have gotten a higher bounty, and all it did was bring out every low-life, drug-addled, disgusting, desperate mercenary and bounty hunters in the galaxy, and while I'm sure they would have delivered me alive, unharmed was a different story."

  The silence was almost overpowering, humming with tension, with resentment and anger, and all Jalia wanted was to hear her dad admit it.

  “Admit to his family what he'd done, and finally give Jalia some closure. If she was lucky, maybe some understanding of why he'd hated her with such a passion. But it seemed luck wasn't with her today,

  "I enrolled you at the Conservatory, Jalia. A UC accredited school with special programs for someone like you," he finally ground out, that vein in his forehead starting to throb. His only outward tell to betray the depths of his emotion,

  "Someone like me," Jaila repeated slowly, not sure she could put a name to what she was feeling, or how tired she suddenly was.

  "At age four your cognitive skills were so far off the chart, there wasn't a scale they could be quantified on. You could memorize and repeat anything you read or saw with perfect recall, and I mean perfect.

  “Math was extremely difficult for you. Asking you to do an equation in your head was impossible, but if someone wrote out the formula for you, you could memorize it and pass any test put in front of you.

  "And while math was a problem, give you a puzzle or something with a pattern, and you'd solve it in minutes. Sometimes seconds. Jade used to play the piano, and at age six, you sat down next to her and watched her play a sonata.

  “Two days later I came home and thought it was her playing, but there you were, no sheet music, playing like you'd done it your whole life. Perfect time, not a note missed or a stanza skipped.

  "You took to processing probabilities and statistics like a fish to water. You could have become the most formidable lawyer in the galaxy.

  “An intelligence agent, a code breaker, or the communications commander of a covert strike team. All that talent and you wanted to play card games, compete in virtual reality simulations, and run around with all those foolish juvenile delinquents.

  “I threatened you with military school, thinking the routine and repetition would help you. Give you some damn purpose in life, but you wanted nothing to do with it, and we argued.

  "You stormed out of my office, and your mother convinced me you were trying to find where you fit in. She showed me the programs offered by the Conservatory, told me to cool off and let you calm down. The next day, you were gone, and we never heard from you again.

  "I've never heard of the Telantes Reform School for Girls, but I don't believe in corporal punishment, and I would never have sent you to a place like that.

  ‘Once we realized you were missing, I put the entire station on lockdown to look for you. I interrogated your friends, Jared took half the fleet to chase down every ship that had docked and left..."

  Jalia watched her dad's eyes glaze with memories as he trailed off, gasping shortly like he had something to say, but couldn't quite get it out, floundering to grasp whatever it was remembering.

  It was frankly disturbing to see every ounce of expression fade from his face, the blood draining from his cleanshaven cheeks to leave him looking frail. Human.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Okay. This wasn't the way Jalia had been expecting things to turn.

  Her father was supposed to confess to having had her kidnapped and shipped off to the ass end of the universe.

  Not turn to look at
his oldest son, his pride and joy, like he was about to commit murder. Whenever the matrons at Telantes had talked about Jalia and the person responsible for her, they'd said 'the General.'

  It hadn't ever questioned which general, because it hadn't occurred to her Jared felt anything toward her other than annoyance.

  Jared had been eleven when she'd been born, already enrolled in the UC Academy as a junior recruit, on the fast track to becoming an officer.

  He'd never had much time or interest in her and wasn't home much for them to form any sort of deep sibling bonds.

  Jalia wasn't close to any of her sibs, they'd all been doing their own thing by the time she'd come along, but she hadn't thought any of them would hate her so profoundly as to knowingly send her to a place like Telantes.

  "You found a scrap collector with the shuttle. It had her bio-sig all over it, but the computer was fried.

  “No way to track where it had been, no way to tell where she might have been taken. Isn't that what you told me, Jared?"

  Jalia watched her brother fight not to come to attention in response to their father's commanding bark.

  He wasn't facing her, but her father's glare was so severe she still felt a shiver tear down her spine. Dhega gently pushed her to his side so he could take a step in front of her, shielding her with his body as though anticipating a bloody battle, and for a moment Jalia forgot how upset she was.

  She curled her hands around his wrist and bicep, resting her cheek on his arm to steady herself while her anger turned instantly to love.

  Over and over, Dhega had shown her, proved to her, no matter what happened or what life threw her way, she would never have to suffer it alone.

  He loved her, he believed in her, he understood her, he knew her secrets, and he never asked her to be anything other than herself.

  She could fall apart, cry, mourn, and he wouldn't let her do it alone. It was going to hurt, whatever Jared said to explain why he'd had her stolen from her bed and done everything in his power to make her disappear, but so long as Dhega was standing with her, holding her, protecting her, loving her, she could take it.

  "Yes, sir." Jared bit out stiffly, looking somewhere in the vicinity of the space above their father's head despite now being almost nose to nose.

  "Look. At. Me." Even from across the room she could hear her brother swallow, immediately obeying the dangerously soft command,

  "Tell me you had nothing to do with your sister's disappearance, and I'll believe you."

  Jalia held her breath, waiting for Jared to answer, and for a while, she wasn't sure he was going to respond.

  Slowly, the rigidity in his stance eased, his hands unclenched from the fists he'd made at his sides, and his blank expression melted to one of bitterness and contempt.

  "When I took command of my first battle group during the Kednean War, you told me the quickest way to lose the respect of my men and my adversaries, was to make empty promises and empty threats.

  “You told me a commander could talk out his ass all day long, but if he wasn't willing to follow through, he had no business taking a position of leadership."

  "Jared—" Jaclyn's voice broke, but it didn't stop Jared from confessing now that the cap had come off his jar of secrets.

  "How many times did you confine Jalia to quarters for disobeying you, only to turn a blind eye when she waltzed right out the door?

  “How many times did you forbid her from going down to engineering to illegally gamble with the grease monkeys, only to later find out she'd crawled out the air ducts and spent half the night down there cheating those assholes out of their money?

  "How many times did you threaten to let her sit in the brig with the rest of her little gang of criminals, and then send one of your aides or me to bail her ass out?

  “How many times did you ask her to behave during important dinners, only to have her turn right around and embarrass you in front of commanding officers by informing them their interpretation of UC law or codicil was wrong?

  "When her friends shut down gravity in the atrium and caused mayhem in the markets by setting off the fire alarms, I finally thought you were going to do it.

  “I listened to you tell Jalia she was leaving on the next transport for the Vanguard Base Academy, and I was relieved to know after all those god damn empty threats, you finally meant it.

  "She stormed out like the entitled little brat she was, and I thought, thank god. But then mom came in to talk sense into you, and by sense, I mean she put your balls in her pocket and reminded you how special Jalia was.

  “How different from the rest of us she was. How she just needed someplace where she could fit in and decide for herself how to best use those special skills of hers.

  “Only, how special is it really, when a computer could do everything she could at five times the speed?

  "You went from sending her to the toughest military academy in the UC, to some flowery school where she'd be coddled, allowed to choose her own schedule, walk around campus naked if she wanted to, and told at least five times a day how special she was.

  “You were up for promotion, I was up for promotion, and every single one of the other officers up for the same promotions whispered in the ears of our superiors, asking if we couldn't control one rogue teenager, how could we possibly be expected to control our battle groups.

  "I tapped two of my best and treated her the way you should have, and put her ass on a transport to Telantes. Their success rating was ninety-five percent, eight points higher than Vanguard, fifty points higher than the Conservatory.

  “I counted on you tearing apart the station and coordinating every battle group and resource available, showing those doubting superiors exactly what we were both capable of.

  “We didn't find Jalia, but we tore a hole through the Phalgian slave trade, shut down the Yidine supply line getting parts for thermo-concussion bombs into Brara 256 that had destroyed three of our bases, and reclaimed Thalia 4.

  "She was out of the way, safe, learning what it was like out there in the real world where 'special' didn't get the job done. I got regular reports on her progress or lack thereof, and I was honestly surprised she kept trying to send us all messages knowing the consequences. It took her longer than I expected to escape.

  "I figured she'd have been out of there within a few weeks, but so long as she thought you put her in that place, chances were slim she'd come running home and pick up where she'd left off.

  “Just in case, I put out the reward, figuring no reputable hunter would go after such a small bounty, and the ones who would, weren't likely to return her in stable condition. The psychiatrists would say it was residual trauma manifesting—"

  The sound of flesh meeting flesh and the thud of Jared hitting the deck made her flinch, but it wasn't even close to the bare minimum to what Jared deserved.

  Jaclyn was crying silently, her hands pressed to her mouth while her shoulders shook, watching her husband standing over their oldest son.

  Jeremy and Joseph had their arms around Jade, shock having dulled their expressions, but Jalia didn't see disbelief or pain. It bothered them she had been so mistreated, but in the way it would bother someone to hear a holo-report of her kidnapping on the news.

  It was probably more of a surprise to have seen their dad knock Jared out cold with one punch.

  The truth was out now, but the relief Jalia had hoped to feel wasn't present. Jalia wasn't angry. She wasn't sad, she felt...exhausted.

  Drained and more than ready to take off the crown, the beautiful embroidered dress, and crawl into bed to sleep. She squeezed Dhega's arm and looked up at him, strangely touched by the banked fury in his gaze and the desire for retribution so clear in his expression.

  "I'm tired," she told him softly, and just like that his focus shifted to her.

  Immediately, no hesitation, her family drama was dismissed with a jerky nod as he swept her out of the room. Jalia heard her mother call after her, but she didn't have the energ
y to say anything other than,

  "Later."

  As they passed, Dhega gave Zavir orders to see her family taken to the guest quarters to wait, and ensure Jared was put somewhere uncomfortable.

  Dhega got her to their suite, sent Dysis away with a dismissive wave of his hand, and undressed her himself.

  "Are you alright?" he asked as he tucked her into bed, his brow puckered with concern as he stroked an enormous hand over her hair.

  "I don't know. I expected to feel relieved, but I'm just tired. I'm really farking tired." Jalia felt like her bones weigh a thousand pounds, so heavy she could barely move.

  "Then sleep. There is nothing for you to do right now, nothing that cannot wait. Just sleep."

  He continued to pet her hair as her lashes dropped, his other hand covering the small mound of her belly. It made her smile, and she fell asleep knowing she was safe, warm, and loved.

  *****

  It displeased Dhega immensely to allow her parents to remain on board the Kallisto, but they had asked for time to learn more about the daughter they thought lost to them.

  When Zavir had brought their request this morning, Jalia had hesitated, gnawing on her lush lips, honestly conflicted.

  She'd spent ten years believing her dad was responsible for her stay at Telantes, and even though she knew it was Jared's doing, she wasn't sure what to say to her father. Sorry for believing you were such a cold-hearted bastard?

  Jalia had embarrassed him on more than one occasion, citing regulations or codes he and any other UC soldier got wrong or misinterpreted.

  She distinctly recalled a lecture in which she'd been told not to open her mouth unless someone had asked her a direct question.

  Jalia had felt mortified, trying to explain she was trying to help, to prove she'd been working hard to memorize all the material for her tests, only to be told no one liked a know-it-all.

  Nothing she had done seemed to please her old man, so eventually, Jalia had quit trying and gone her own way.

  Now ten years later, she'd found her way, her home where people didn't mind she was a know-it-all, or if they did, they didn't dare say anything to contradict or displease her.