Prohibit (7 page)

She nodded to Helbri, and he took the tablet back, sending the document to the Lrrko archives.

Elder Lynni smiled and leaned forward. “It has been delayed, but may I say, welcome to Lrrko, Cleo.”

“Thank you, Elder Lynni. It has been an odd journey.”

The other Elders looked irritated, but Lynni was amused.

“I have been asked to tell you that the Elder Council wants you up on charges for disregarding your safety and endangering a generation of your offspring.”

Cleo cocked her head. “What would that entail?”

“House arrest for six months.”

“No. That won’t be possible. I want to go exploring.” She smiled brightly.

One of the Elders slid a tablet over to Lynni. She glanced at it and started reading the charges.

Helbri cleared his throat and asked, “May I address the council?”

The men looked to each other, and Lynni waved her hand. “Go for it.”

“The list of infractions is indeed grave, if Cleo was a Lrrko citizen and registered Bride when she committed them. However, she was not a volunteer; she was kidnapped. Nothing that has been done to her was by her will, and no one in this room will fault a prisoner for trying to escape.”

One of the male Elders blinked. “In that case, we shall charge her as an escaped slave.”

Helbri inclined his head. “That would be possible, but she is now a citizen of Lrrko. She signed the Bride contract when she entered this room and nothing that happened before is admissible in disciplinary hearings.”

Lynni was chuckling. She clapped her hands slowly. “Well played.”

Helbri shifted close to Cleo and put his hand on her spine. The worst was over.

Helbri proved her wrong. “Cleo will not be able to be separated from me, so there must be an alteration in our particular contract. If I am sent on assignment, she will go with me.”

The council erupted into an uproar. Cleo and Helbri watched the others argue while Lynni looked at them closely.

Finally, Lynni clapped her hands together. “As you fall under my purview, I will state that if you produce fifty healthy eggs, you are free to travel with Helbri on assignment. If you are not with him during the initial period, you will be fostered to another Bride and Familiar for safety.”

The Elders stared at Lynni. The man nearest her muttered, “You overstep your bounds.”

A monitor flared to life, and another male Lrrko was featured there. “I have to agree with Elder Lynni. Her solution covers the issues. Bride Cleo cannot be stored like an unused weapon. She has a right to her freedom and that is what needs to be addressed. Also, take into account the rare nature of Helbri himself. If her eggs can provide the stabilization that his kind needs, the shadows may see a resurgence in our population. We all know that they are an asset.”

The other Elders murmured together, but Lynni smiled. “Thank you, Elder Hrakin. That is my view of the situation as well.”

“Excellent, Lynni. In that case, I reiterate our choice of Helbri as her Familiar and wish them an enjoyable rest in the Bride quarters. They have had a long journey. They must be exhausted.”

Cleo took the hint and leaned toward Helbri. His hand kept her upright, but she could feel his amusement.

Helbri cleared his throat. “Alveck has harvested ten eggs from her already. We went straight to medical before coming here. She has had them extracted, and you are aware of how taxing that can be.”

Lynni sat with amusement while the other Elders murmured in concern.

“Familiar Helbri, take your Bride to her quarters and make sure she rests. We know where to find you if we have any other questions.”

Elder Hrakin spoke from the monitor. “Get some rest and enjoy the training facilities. I am guessing that several of the ranges and equipment would help work off some of the stress of your recent adventures.”

Cleo knew a dismissal when she heard one. Helbri escorted her out of the room, and then, he whispered, “Do you want to see the gestation tanks?”

“Yes.”

“Come with me.” He took her hand, and they walked to the lift, entering and going down three floors. “Here we are.”

She chuckled at his eagerness. “You don’t come here much?”

“They bring us here when we are children, and they show us vids of our decanting. It is the last time that the mission specialists get to see where we come from. Only the technicians and designers are allowed to see them on a daily basis.”

“So, why are we here?”

“Ah, technicians, designers and Brides. You have full access to all of the gestational levels, and I want to look around.”

He had all of the enthusiasm of a child going to Disneyland.

They found a startled technician, who got authorization to take them on a tour of the facility, starting with the cells that had just been extracted from Cleo.

“We are bringing Familiar Helbri’s genetics out of storage, and it will be used to activate eggs. A little bit of modification and they will be ready to set into a unit.”

Cleo blinked. “So quickly? I thought I got to pick an heir.”

Helbri chuckled. “Who gave the order?”

The technician checked the files. “Elder Lynni.”

“When?”

“Just before you arrived. Here is your treated material, Familiar Helbri.”

A tray with small vials on it was brought out, and the miracle of technological birth began to happen on the screen.

“What do they mean by treated?”

“All offspring from the Brides will be female unless the Familiar wishes to have a male heir as his payment for his service.” Helbri’s hand was warm on her spine.

“Do the Bride’s get to pick?”

“Of course. She will have one direct copy of her own genetics, and the official heir will be of a gender of her choosing. You can either gestate yourself or have it grown for you.”

He rubbed his chin against her head. It was a weird habit that he had picked up, but she liked it. It let her know that it was he behind her and no one else.

“I am thinking that until I finish training, I don’t want to be carrying anyone. I was never planning to run off and have a family, but being a sort of big sister to a small horde has an appeal that I can’t deny. They can do what they like with my eggs as long as I can visit the growing embryos.”

The technician smiled as he watched the two different cells on the display. “Of course you can. It is why Brides are given full access to this facility.”

She watched the eggs in their dishes and the drops of sorted semen that had been added to them. The increased magnification allowed her to see the moment of conception in all its cellular glory.

She smiled as they stared and one cell after another sparked with the start of its own development.

“Nice. Ten little girls with charcoal skin. That is going to be fun.”

“The precise outcome of these little citizens is unknown. This is the prime test to determine the known outcome of the combination of your genetics and Familiar Helbri’s.” The medic was helpful, and there was an excitement to his tone.

The completed combinations were sitting under the monitor, and when the first cellular split happened, the medic whisked the subject out of the field and into a storage device.

“What happens to them now?”

The medic nodded as he put another disk into the case. “They are going to be observed until they reach a hundred cellular splits, and then, we will place them in a tube. From there, nutrients will be given and scans will be taken to make sure that the little ones grow strong and healthy.”

Cleo felt a strangely anxious feeling as the medic put the last of the eggs in the case and walked into the next lab.

She and Helbri followed the medic and he removed the eggs from the transport case and he set them carefully into a wide rack. Each station had a lens over it that displayed the activities in the dishes.

“I thought it was supposed to take half a day before the first split of cells.”

The medic grinned. “We accelerate the first days of development to ensure that we have a viable embryo before we place it in for undisturbed growth.”

She nodded. “Right, well, keep me posted. I would like to be here when they go into the tubes.”

Helbri rubbed her back again. “Would you care to see the different developmental levels?”

She smiled. “Please. I would love to see the rest of the facility.”

They went through the levels of development for the Lrrko population. The tiny citizens were floating under soft light, and an artificial heartbeat was thrumming in the walls around them.

She touched the tubes and hummed lightly to the six-month-old developers. A few kicked out a little at her contact, and she hummed again and again until she had made the rounds.

The medic giving them a tour was excited. “There is to be a decanting in a few minutes. It would be an honour if you would be there with the Elders.”

Helbri tensed, and if he was excited, Cleo needed to see this.

“I would enjoy that. Please, lead the way.”

They went up another level, and the Elders were gathered in a large room where a series of tubes were on a gurney with a power supply. Lynni smiled and waved.

To Cleo’s surprise, the babies weren’t identical. A few had dark hair, some had light but most kept to the grey-cast skin shades, though none as dark as Helbri.

The technicians extracted the first of the little boys by the expedient means of putting his tube on a drain table, unplugging it and removing the bottom, lifting it away from the infant.

Everything went smoothly. The medics suctioned the mouth and nose, waited until the pulsing umbilical had ceased its work and they tied off the cord.

Lynni stepped forward and lifted the little squirming fellow. “Hello, citizen.”

The Elders each greeted the new baby, and when it was Cleo’s turn to hold him, she grinned and tapped his nose. “Boop!”

The blink of surprise in the dark eyes showed intelligence that she hadn’t anticipated in an infant.

With a grin, Helbri took the baby and chuckled as he whispered, “Welcome, brother.”

The medics wrapped the baby in cloth and whisked him out of the room. The same ritual was enacted with the other babies, right down to Cleo’s
boop.

After the ceremony, Helbri took Cleo over the city and into the Bride facility. If she thought security was tight at the Elders’ building, it was nothing to the scans and prints that she had to give to get into what would be her apartment.

It was a whirlwind of events, but she was finally home, and her Familiar was with her every step of the way.

She watched her father in the recording and leaned against Helbri while her father explained why he hadn’t wanted her to leave.

“Your mother and I met one night, and it was only one night. She dropped you off when you were days old and Mel had just miscarried. It wasn’t a great situation, but Mel said that it was meant to be. She would have my baby, and there was no doubt that it was mine.” He cleared his throat. “That you were mine.”

He shifted in his chair. “I didn’t know that those DNA reports were still around, but when you mentioned the Volunteer Project, I knew that they would do more tests and dredge it back up.”

He leaned forward. “Mel is your mother. Never doubt that, but that other woman, Emily, she just gave birth to you and abandoned you. You owed Mel. You owed us for staying with you, for raising you.”

Cleo sighed and waved at the screen. It shut off.

“Don’t you want to see the rest?”

She rubbed her forehead. “No. I wanted to know. I know. I am sure that the Alliance is stalking my birth mother in an effort to find another Lrrko offspring to bargain with.”

“Probably. Why don’t you want to see it?”

“A child owes nothing to the parents. They are the only part of the equation that has no say. My little shadows will be mine. I will visit them as often as I can and do what I can for their education. Of course, that means I need to slow down on the fooling around with you.” She winked.

“Thank you for not saying stop.”

She laughed and turned to him, crawling up his chest and kissing him. “Never stop.”

He kissed her and rolled her to her back. “That seems like something to have emblazoned on your skin. I love to hear you whisper it to me while I am inside you.”

She stroked his cheek. “That is why I say it.”

She lost her smile as she kissed him. She had been brought to the world and given to those who could raise her. She would do the same for any of the little half-Terrans growing in the lab. She knew who to trust on Lrrko, and it was definitely the Brides, Familiars and the new little crosses growing in the tanks.

The little shadows that were growing all took after their father, and she couldn’t be happier. She would be a mother a hundred times over and love them all just because they existed, not because she was owed anything. Helbri had demonstrated to her that giving out of duty could turn into something else, and she was anticipating being able to pay it forward.

Whew. Well, with
Prohibit
completed, there is just one set of five books left for the Terran Times Second Wave.

I am not shutting the door on the series, but I definitely need a break. The series began ten years ago with
Arena Station
(Champions of Terra) (which needs a facelift but that is up to me), and it will run its course with Quit.

Thanks for reading,

Viola Grace

Viola Grace (aka Zenina Masters) is a Canadian sci-fi/paranormal romance writer with ambitions to keep writing for the rest of her life. She specializes in short stories because the thrill of discovery, of all those firsts, is what keeps her writing.

An artist who enjoys a story that catches you up, whirls you around and sets you down with a smile on your face is all she endeavours to be. She prefers to leave the drama to those who are better suited to it, she always goes for the cheap laugh.