Maryam Read online

  It was a shock when his fan­tasy changed. In­stead of Briel, he en­vi­sioned the Earther Maryam be­tween his legs, her bright blue eyes watch­ing him as she en­cour­aged his sur­ren­der. Her round-cheeked face, ripened by knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, speak­ing to him as Briel’s ea­ger naivete never could. Framed by that wavy mass of re­splen­dent red hair, re­sem­bling liv­ing fire. Kels won­dered if it was as soft to the touch as it looked, or if it would crackle like the flames its color re­minded him of.

  What of the freck­les that sprin­kled over that gleam­ing pale skin—did they ex­tend be­yond her cheeks and nose? Did they splash over her soft, rounded body, over her plump breasts and but­tocks?

  Mother of All, why am I think­ing of that woman when I have my own beau­ti­ful Matara of­fer­ing me plea­sure?

  His eyes opened wide, and the fan­tasy of be­guil­ing Maryam was re­placed by the re­al­ity of dark, stun­ning Briel. She grinned around her mouth­ful of him, un­doubt­edly mis­in­ter­pret­ing his star­tled gaze as a ver­dict on her oral skills. She sucked him in deep, swal­low­ing his pri­mary cock. Bless­edly, co­her­ent thought van­ished, tak­ing the last ves­tiges of the Earther fan­tasy with it.

  “Come up here,” he whis­pered when he could sum­mon speech again. “Ride me, my beauty.”

  She clam­bered up to strad­dle him, trad­ing wet, clutch­ing warmth for wet, clutch­ing warmth. Briel rose and fell over Kels, meld­ing him to her, join­ing them phys­i­cally.

  As al­ways in such in­stances, Kels found hope they could unite on a more pro­found level. Per­haps they would dis­cover mid­dle ground, with hap­pi­ness and love in the end.

  The in­stant be­fore he shat­tered, rib­bons of pas­sion erupt­ing to make him a part of his life­mate, Kels vowed he’d some­how make it hap­pen.

  An hour af­ter Briel’s apol­ogy, Kels set­tled in to watch a vid con­cert. The sound sys­tem was high qual­ity, fill­ing the com­mon room with soar­ing melody—punc­tu­ated by the sounds of Briel splash­ing in the bath down the hall.

  He al­ter­nated be­tween watch­ing the or­ches­tra and check­ing his hand­held, scrolling through en­ter­tain­ment op­tions his clan could in­dulge in on the sta­tion the next day. He’d have to con­firm what Briel had al­ready en­joyed be­fore the men’s ar­rival be­fore mak­ing reser­va­tions so she wasn’t stuck re­peat­ing any ac­tiv­i­ties.

  As he scanned the list­ings, his com buzzed on his belt. Kels checked the fre­quency and rec­og­nized it im­me­di­ately. His spir­its rose higher.

  “Se­bist! Check­ing up on me?” he greeted his long­time friend and em­ployer.

  “You re­quire a short leash.”

  They laughed. Though Royal Coun­cil­man Dramok Se­bist was of­fi­cially Kels’s boss, their man­ner was easy with each other. They’d spent their boy­hoods to­gether, forg­ing a life­long link that had in­cluded Kels clear­ing Se­bist of a crime he didn’t com­mit. When Kels had told Se­bist he was con­sid­er­ing leav­ing the mil­i­tary’s fleet for the pri­vate sec­tor, the coun­cil­man had begged him to work as his de­fense ad­vi­sor. It had been the per­fect fit for Kels.

  Se­bist’s con­cern rang through the au­dio-only com. “Se­ri­ously though, you found Matara Briel safe and sound?”

  “Pelk Sta­tion re­mains a bea­con of se­cu­rity, even with Tra­gooms and their ilk prowl­ing about. She’s fine and as feisty as ever.”

  “I’m glad to hear she’s all right. You have my sym­pa­thy on the rest.”

  “Is Kalquor func­tion­ing with­out me, or has it fallen into hard times in the last ten days?” With his re­la­tion­ship on an even keel again—for the mo­ment—Kels could tease.

  “With me on the Royal Coun­cil? Kalquor can­not fail as long as I’m here.”

  This time, Kels heard the strain in his laugh­ter. “Some­thing’s up?”

  “You know me too well. I didn’t com just to find out if your clan­mate was okay. I need you and Der­gan for a mis­sion. If you’re feel­ing spry enough for it?”

  “What would my friend and the em­pire ask of us?”

  “It’s big, Kels. We’ve found a com­pat­i­ble species to breed with.”

  Kels’s heart nearly stopped. For a mo­ment he couldn’t breathe. A com­pat­i­ble species? A sign of hope as Kalquo­ri­ans teetered on the brink of ex­tinc­tion?

  “Mother of All! Is this true?” he burst out when he could speak. “The en­tire em­pire must be cel­e­brat­ing. Of all times for me to be away!”

  “It’s a mir­a­cle, isn’t it? It’s also a closely guarded se­cret for the mo­ment.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s the Earth­ers. Earther fe­males have been proven ca­pa­ble of car­ry­ing our chil­dren.”

  Kels’s ear­lier vi­sion of Maryam—on her knees, pre­sent­ing him the op­por­tu­nity for plea­sure—erupted in his mind. His voice was raspy when he told Se­bist, “There’s an Earther fe­male on this sta­tion.”

  “I know. You’ve seen her?”

  “I’ve met her. She’s been play­ing chap­er­one to Briel.”

  Ex­cite­ment col­ored Se­bist’s voice. “That’s bril­liant, Kels. Ex­actly what we needed to hap­pen.”

  “I as­sume you want me to in­vite her to come home with us?”

  The pause that fol­lowed was so long, Kels thought they’d been dis­con­nected. Just as he was about to check, Se­bist spoke. “You can start with an in­vi­ta­tion.”

  Kels sensed a dark un­der­cur­rent to his friend’s tone. “Start with it? Then what, bribery?”

  “If you must. If that doesn’t work—Kels, the or­der came from high­est reaches of the gov­ern­ment. One of the coun­cil’s rul­ing com­mit­tees I’m not on, or per­haps the Im­pe­rial Clan it­self. We must have any Earther women we can lay hands on.”

  It was Kels’s turn to be silent. Surely Se­bist wasn’t telling him to take Maryam to Kalquor by force?

  How­ever, the coun­cil­man con­firmed the stun­ning edict. “It’s ex­actly what you think. You’re a com­pas­sion­ate man, an eth­i­cal man. You don’t have to tell me this is against your prin­ci­ples.”

  “How can you ask me to do such a thing?” Anger sparked with fierce warmth in Kels’s chest.

  “It’s not a re­quest. Kels, we’re less than three hun­dred years from ex­tinc­tion. There hasn’t been a fer­tile fe­male born who’s sur­vived to adult­hood since Briel. The or­der is ab­hor­rent, but Earth’s gov­ern­ment won’t hear our re­quests for test­ing, much less al­low us to court their women.”

  “If they haven’t con­ceded to test­ing, how do we know the fe­males are breed­ing com­pat­i­ble?” Kels strug­gled to con­trol his tem­per. Af­ter all, the ab­hor­rent or­der wasn’t Se­bist’s do­ing.

  “Coun­cil­man Ra­jhir’s clan en­coun­tered an Earther fe­male on Pla­sius. They tested her and dis­cov­ered our sal­va­tion.”

  Kels’s ini­tial in­stinct was to re­quest Se­bist tell whomever had or­dered the kid­nap­ping to go fuck them­selves. Maryam had been kind to Briel. Had pos­si­bly kept his Matara from get­ting into trou­ble. Ab­duct­ing the in­no­cent woman and forc­ing her to Kalquor was un­think­able. Ob­scene. How could any­one sanc­tion it?

  As if he didn’t know. How could they not de­mand it, ab­hor­rent as it was?

  The child Briel car­ried, the fu­ture chil­dren she would give birth to, would be the fi­nal gen­er­a­tion of Kalquo­ri­ans. His species’ cul­ture, their ad­vances in sci­ence and medicine that aided the other mem­ber plan­ets of the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil, would go ex­tinct with them. All the other known species had been tested for breed­ing com­pat­i­bil­ity, and none were a match. Clones had not been a vi­able al­ter­na­tive ei­ther, as the virus that had started the whole mess couldn’t be sep­a­rated from Kalquo­rian ge­netic ma­te­rial.

  His mouth
dry, Kels mut­tered the aw­ful truth. “We have no choice.”

  “We have no choice.” His tone falsely up­beat, Se­bist added, “Look on the bright side: Earther fe­males are sec­ond class cit­i­zens with next to no rights on their home world. Our clans will fall all over them­selves to of­fer beau­ti­ful homes, safety, se­cu­rity, lib­er­a­tion from the re­stric­tions placed upon them.”

  Kels had to ad­mit his friend was cor­rect. Kalquor had been aware of Earth and its peo­ple for only the last seven years. As Se­bist’s de­fense ad­vi­sor, Kels had been tasked with learn­ing all he could about Earth­ers, just in case they posed a mil­i­tary threat to the Kalquo­rian Em­pire. They in­deed had that ca­pa­bil­ity, so he’d gone as far as to learn one of their main lan­guages, Eng­lish. He’d con­vinced Pana, Briel and Der­gan to learn it with him, so he could im­merse him­self in it at home.

  It prob­a­bly made all the dif­fer­ence in help­ing Briel form a friend­ship with Maryam, he re­al­ized.

  More im­por­tantly, Kels had learned about the iron grip Earth’s re­li­gion had on its cul­ture. Women were re­garded more as chat­tel than peo­ple, sec­ond to men in ev­ery way. They were judged more harshly for the same crimes, lived more of­ten in poverty, and died far younger. Kels had come away from his stud­ies of the aliens with con­tempt for Earth’s gov­ern­ment.

  Maryam hadn’t seemed cowed as he would have ex­pected, how­ever. Per­haps she had come to Pelk Sta­tion to es­cape her world’s re­pres­sion. She might wel­come the chance to per­ma­nently es­cape her au­thor­i­tar­ian gov­ern­ment. Maybe Kels wouldn’t have to force her to go.

  “What sort of clans will Earther fe­males have to choose from?” he asked.

  Se­bist sounded re­lieved. “This first in­flux will be placed with high-rank­ing clans, guar­an­tee­ing their pros­per­ity and hap­pi­ness. The woman you’ve met—she’ll join my clan.”

  Kels breathed eas­ier. Clan Se­bist was a trio of good men. The best men, es­pe­cially Se­bist him­self. As dis­taste­ful as the mis­sion was, it guar­an­teed Maryam a pros­per­ous, de­light­ful fu­ture, far bet­ter than what she could ex­pect on her world or Pelk Sta­tion.

  Kels hoped he wasn’t fool­ing him­self about that, be­cause he had his or­ders. It was his duty to fol­low them, and Kels had never ne­glected his duty.

  It’ll be fine. To save Kalquor—and to of­fer Earther women a real life—the ends jus­tify the means.

  He poured his hopes for such in his voice. “Al­low me to of­fer my con­grat­u­la­tions on your up­com­ing clan­ning.”

  Sound­ing re­as­sured, Se­bist in­vited, “Tell me about her, Kels. Is she smart? Kind? Car­ing?”

  “I don’t know much, but I’ll share what I do. Her name is Maryam. Briel adores her, so that counts for some­thing.”

  Chap­ter Three

  “For heaven’s sake, stop breath­ing down my neck, my Imdiko.”

  Pana gazed at Briel in con­fu­sion. “For who’s sake?”

  Briel chuck­led and pressed the door an­nounce but­ton. “Earther say­ing. Maryam’s in­flu­ence is show­ing. Hi Maryam, it’s me with my dad.”

  Pana snorted at the dig and wiped his palms on his pants leg for the mil­lionth time since reach­ing the res­i­den­tial level of the sta­tion.

  Maryam’s in­flu­ence. Briel could have been speak­ing about the strange phrase she’d ut­tered or Pana’s ner­vous­ness. He’d felt plenty of the volup­tuous Earther’s ef­fect dur­ing the brief meet­ing the day be­fore. Full of de­ter­mined en­ergy that was tem­pered by what he as­sumed to be life ex­pe­ri­ence, she’d im­pressed him.

  Life ex­pe­ri­ence, huh? Is that what you were dream­ing about last night?

  No, not even when he’d been curled around the woman he’d pledged him­self to. A wave of con­science made Pana hunch in em­bar­rass­ment. He had no busi­ness think­ing or dream­ing of Maryam the way he did. Those fan­cies should cen­ter on Briel.

  Hard to do that when she refers to me as her fa­ther.

  The door opened, and there Maryam stood. Hair as red as sun­set, eyes as blue as the af­ter­noon sky. The slight lines at the outer cor­ners of her eyes and brack­et­ing her lips didn’t de­tract from how com­pelling Pana found her. Ma­ture. Know­ing. He breathed in the soft, cit­rusy smell of the sham­poo she’d used with ap­pre­ci­a­tion.

  “Good morn­ing.” Her husky alto was low, and she glanced up and down the cor­ri­dor, cau­tion tens­ing her.

  Know­ing where her anx­i­ety came from, thanks to Kels shar­ing his re­search, Pana re­as­sured her. “We used a ser­vice route to come up to your floor. We en­coun­tered none of your fel­low Earth­ers.”

  She smiled at him, her even teeth peek­ing be­tween her lips. “There aren’t any on the sta­tion since the Res­ur­rec­tion left a cou­ple of days ago. Ex­cuse my para­noia. Please come in.”

  He bowed. “Thank you.”

  He fol­lowed Briel into Maryam’s apart­ment. It was tiny, as Soln es­tab­lish­ments tended to be, and not nearly as nice as the suite Briel had taken. How­ever, it had warmth and ap­peared clean de­spite the many piles of items.

  Maryam fol­lowed his gaze. Her fair skin flushed around the scat­ter­ing of freck­les. “Sorry for the mess. I have a bad habit of work­ing on mul­ti­ple projects at once.”

  “I was just think­ing how homey it feels. All these fab­rics give it a soft, com­fort­able at­mos­phere. Sewing?”

  “And knit­ting. The shop I work in sells my de­signs.”

  “Baby and chil­dren’s wares, I un­der­stand?”

  “It’s what drew Briel in,” she chuck­led.

  Her com­ment alerted Pana to the fact he was giv­ing Maryam all his at­ten­tion. With a rush of guilt, he hur­ried to Briel, who had found an open spot on the lounger to sit down. “Do you need any­thing, my Matara? Maybe a pil­low? If Matara Maryam doesn’t mind, I could fix us all some re­fresh­ments, maybe a snack?”

  “Will you re­lax and stop fuss­ing like an old nurse­maid?” Briel shot Maryam an ex­as­per­ated glance.

  Maryam cleared an­other sec­tion of lounger, lay­ing a stack of blan­kets on the floor. “You’re as de­voted as Briel told me, Imdiko.”

  “It’s a won­der he doesn’t chew my food for me,” Briel groused.

  Pana winced. He sat in the spot Maryam had opened when she in­sisted and tried to look un­af­fected.

  Briel knew bet­ter and pat­ted his hand, her smile apolo­getic. “Thank you for your con­cern, Pana. I don’t re­quire any­thing.”

  “I have some goz­aberry juice, if ei­ther of you wants any?” Maryam of­fered. When they re­fused with quiet thank-yous, she switched from po­lite host­ess, her grin bril­liant with de­light. “I fin­ished the gifts for your baby. Want to see?”

  Briel squealed, bounc­ing with ex­cite­ment. Pana couldn’t help but com­pare her ex­trav­a­gant glee with Maryam’s self-pos­sessed joy—and shut down crit­i­cal thoughts be­fore they could fully form.

  “Please!” Briel shouted, bub­bling over with en­thu­si­asm. “I’ve been go­ing crazy to find out since you hinted at it.”

  With a chuckle, Maryam stood and left the room. Her muf­fled voice came from an open door. “I put them in a closet, so you wouldn’t see them too soon. Oops.” The sound of some­thing fall­ing fol­lowed her words.

  Pana stood. “Are you all right? Do you need help?”

  “I just dropped some sup­plies. Stay there. I’ll be out mo­men­tar­ily.”

  Pana sat again, si­mul­ta­ne­ously re­lieved and dis­ap­pointed he couldn’t fol­low her. To cover his con­fu­sion, he of­fered small talk. “You’ve made quite the im­pres­sion on her, my Matara.”

  “She made an im­pres­sion on me too. What I wouldn’t give to have her strength.”

  Pana knew he shouldn’t heed his cu­rios­ity about the mes­mer­iz­ing Ma
ryam, but he couldn’t help him­self. “What do you mean?”

  Briel stood and walked across the floor. She lifted a plush cre­ation—ap­par­ently a sort of an­i­mal—from the one un­clut­tered shelf. She cud­dled it to her chest, as she might a baby. “Maryam knows the pain and fears of Kalquo­rian women. All her preg­nan­cies ended in mis­car­riage. Her hus­band left her for an­other woman over it.”

  Pana stared, aghast. “How could he do that to her and call him­self a man?”

  “From the lit­tle she told me, her hus­band was a self­ish lout. Maryam de­layed her school­ing to work and earn money so he could fin­ish his de­gree. She’d hoped to be a doc­tor. How­ever, her first year of med­i­cal school, she be­came preg­nant. Her hus­band in­sisted she de­lay her ed­u­ca­tion again. This toy was meant for that child. She lost half a dozen af­ter that.”

  “Half a dozen.” Pana’s heart hurt for Maryam. The funny lit­tle crea­ture Briel held wasn’t so com­i­cal now. “She didn’t re­turn to school at any point? Why couldn’t she be preg­nant and train? I’m con­fused.”

  “You re­mem­ber what Kels told us about Earther women ex­pected to be moth­ers and wives first, peo­ple sec­ond. Be­cause Maryam’s hus­band wanted chil­dren so much, she con­tin­ued to put off her ca­reer in the ef­fort to make him happy. In the end, he de­serted her any­way. She’s never re­turned to her stud­ies.”

  “Stop. This story is mak­ing me nau­seous.” Pana meant it lit­er­ally.

  “Isn’t it aw­ful? Yet she makes beau­ti­ful things for other peo­ple’s chil­dren, though she’s re­signed to not hav­ing her own. That’s what I meant when I wished for her strength. I’ve never known any­one like her.” Briel placed the stuffed an­i­mal on its shelf. Wip­ing her eyes, she re­turned to sit at Pana’s side. “I get frus­trated with your fuss­ing, but I ap­pre­ci­ate the man you are, my Imdiko. Maryam re­minds me of how for­tu­nate I am in my clan­mates. Even if de-clan­ning were an op­tion for us, you wouldn’t leave me be­cause I couldn’t give you healthy chil­dren.”