HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) (46 page)

He sighed and looked at her.  “I got old, quartermaster.  I got old.  Before I knew it, I was forty years old and by the mutual understanding that we have with all off world races, I had gotten to be too old to be taken off world.  So, I settled instead for making myself as good as I could at what I do… and here I sit.”

He leaned forward in his chair.  “It turns out that your insistence to get away from this planet has caught the attention of someone very powerful in the outer worlds.  That’s why you’re here.”

The pang of excitement that she’d felt earlier returned and she felt herself trembling at the knees.  “Who might that be, sir?”

He shrugged.  “No idea… that’s not part of the documentation here,” he said, tapping the tablet on his desk.  “All I know is that someone out there is willing to pay to have you taken off Earth as a bride.  That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The look he gave her changed significantly.  It wasn’t the hardened glare of a general, it was softer… almost fatherly.  Like he was worried that she was making a terrible decision that she would only regret.  “You know what your request means, don’t you?”

She gave a quick nod, fully aware of the consequences of her actions. 

“For the record,” he said softly, “I need you to verbally state what it is that you want, why you’re doing it, and that you understand what it means if I give this document my retinal scan.  Can you do that for me?”

She nodded, she had been told what this part of the procedure was like and she had rehearsed it every chance she’d gotten.  “I, Shayla Umbetki, have chosen to request off-world relocation under the xeno bridalship agreements.  I understand that this includes the renouncing of my Terran citizenship and once relocated off world I will no longer be permitted to return to Earth at any point for the rest of my life or even after.”

The general nodded.  “As you wish.”  He picked up the tablet and gave it his retinal scan.  The device chirped and he set it aside.  “That’s it… you’re the property of your future husband now… Ms. Umbetki.”

She couldn’t suppress the smile any longer.

Chapter 3

It didn’t take her any time at all to gather up all of her possessions.  Everything she owned could fit inside of a footlocker, but she knew that the huge box wouldn’t travel well so she opted instead to stow her gear in a duffle bag.  She had no civilian clothing – no one did once they joined the service – so everything that she had was geared specially for her.  That was a soldier’s habit.  She had what amounted to a shaving kit, filled with small toiletries.  She had a change of several different kinds of uniforms, including her dress uniform and that which she wore on a daily basis.  She also had a few books in a computerized reader, some entertainment chips with films that she was fond of.  That was pretty much all that she owned and needed to take with her. 

What few things that wouldn’t fit in her duffle she didn’t mind leaving behind.  It was a simple matter of packing up the few odds and ends, retinal-signing a few documents and then being escorted to the nearest star port.

She was surprised when she arrived at the customs’ port.  There were hundreds of people there, men and women, some of them children as young as fifteen or sixteen.  Some, she saw, were dressed in uniforms of opposing nations but there seemed to be no animosity between them now.  She could well imagine why: they were leaving Earth behind.  That was enough to overcome the bitter rivalry that so many shared these days.

She was walked through several scanners that she couldn’t guess the functions of exactly, but was able to reason out that she was being scanned and cleansed of bacteria or other micro-particle hitchhikers that could contaminate and ruin an alien world. 

She was given over to a long line of medics who gave her injection after injection of things that made her feel increasingly worse.  By the time she reached the end of the line the fogginess in her head began to clear up and she felt almost hollow inside.

“Cleansing agents,” one of the medics said.

“Huh?”

The medic, a twenty-something woman, looked up at her from her computer readouts.  “Most alien worlds can’t handle some of the microorganisms that we have here.  That’s why this delousing process is so unpleasant.  If you get to where you’re going and something survives in your bowels to escape when you take your next shit, you could ruin an entire ecosystem.  Most of the crawlies don’t take too kindly to that.”

“No?”

The medic grinned.  “Nope… some of them ain’t as hardy as we are.”

She was then escorted to a processing station and she noticed that the air she was breathing seemed somewhat medicinal.  A tingling sensation went through her whole body and again she imagined that this was all part of the delousing process.  Bacteria and germs were dying inside of her until her body could make more of the natural things that kept her alive, but the potentially harmful ones seemed to be dying in droves.

She was brought before a flight manager who took her retinal scan and viewed the information that was presented for her.  The manager, a man of perhaps fifty or so, gave a nod.  “Shayla Umbetki?”

“That’s right.”

He clicked a few keys and read off her vital stats which she confirmed and he went on tapping keys and working his computer.  “Do you have any relatives on Earth that we need to contact about your departure?”

She shook her head.  “No one.”

He nodded absently.  “Do you know your flight details?”

He checked his screens.  “Alright… you’re bound for the planet…
Paradiso
?” 

She noted that he sounded impressed by this.  “What’s
Paradiso
?”

The attendant looked at her.  “Well, for one there’s not many xenos out there who give their worlds Latin names.  It means “Paradise”.”

She smirked.  “I like it already.”

“I bet,” the older man said approvingly as he worked with his screens.  “Alright, you’ve got a private shuttle waiting for you on the orbital ring…
Bridal Suite
, it’s called.  Dock 34, you got that?”

“Got it,” she replied.

Her traveling details set and her final bonds to Earth still dying within her; she was walked down a long tube to a departure station.  She didn’t even look back at the world of her birth as she boarded an orbital tram that took her to the lunar surface where a docking station waited with the shuttle that was to bring her to her new home.  She grew more and more excited with every step.

She was barely able to contain her excitement as she walked across the docking station with the other disembarking passengers.  The lunar station was dome-shaped and built into one of the largest craters on the face of the moon.  The air smelled sterile, and was mixed with a blend of something that smelled of machine oil and some kind of organic decay: like something left in the fridge for too long that had begun to ripen. 

The place was a far cry from Earth, she saw at once.  It was populated with more alien cultures than she could ever have imagined.  Creatures with elongated limbs, faces, overlarge eyes, some that seemed to almost slither about on their bellies like snakes, others that looked more cybernetic than organic, some of them that were as transparent as glass, others that looked more like migrating blobs of ooze than anything else.  Some of them wore clothing while others wore nothing at all.  Few of them spoke in earthly languages to humans that they passed while others clicked, whined, or gurgled in languages that she couldn’t imagine ever understanding.

None of these were immigrants to Earth, she knew.  There were laws against that.  But there was no harm in allowing the moon to be a weigh station of sorts.  Travel hubs were few in this portion of space, she knew, so some would make their way here if they could while others would simultaneously be waiting to be sent away from Earth.

None of them seemed to pay her any mind as she walked on, however.

There were other humans around, she saw.  She wasn’t the only one in uniform either.  Those that she saw here were covered in the uniforms of the Terran Guard, a neutral force of humans whose sole responsibility was the protection of Earth from outside invaders.  Though they all looked to come from different countries, they weren’t swayed by on-world politics for one country’s hatred for another. 

She met one of these sentries at the gate to docking port 34 where she was registered to go.  She was retinal scanned and the attending soldier gave her a quick nod as he looked over his screen for her information.  “You understand that by boarding this craft you are formally renouncing your Terran citizenship and that you will not be permitted to return to this planet under any circumstances whatsoever?”

“I do,” she said, feeling a small tug of excitement at the words and that she might one day soon be repeating them again to her future husband.

“I’m required by law to ask you one final time if you’d like to reconsider your choice to leave Earth orbit,” the soldier asked mechanically.   “If so, now is the time.”

“No need,” she said quickly, hefting her duffle on her back.  “I’m ready to go.”

The soldier nodded, keyed a few strokes on his computer, and allowed her to pass down the travel tube to where her ship was docked.

Chapter 4

She walked alone down the docking station terminal, feeling alone for the first time.  She noted how different it was here, being alone in space was not quite the same as being alone on the beach back home.  There was a definitive absence of… substance?  Sounds?  She wasn’t sure.  But it was something different, certainly.  And that she was walking alone felt strange.

She had often wanted to be alone, separate from those of her own race and their daily lives and what that entailed.  Now that she was about to be as far removed from them as one could get she felt the onset of a strange kind of loneliness.  That she would never speak… see… or touch another human again suddenly became a very real and somewhat frightening possibility.

She heard the general’s voice in her head as she walked. 
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Yes, it was.  And it was too late for her to turn back now.  She had turned her back on everything Earthly.  Her own race wouldn’t have her… but there was a male of some other race out there that would.  And that was what she wanted.

She kept walking.  The doubt in her heart diminished with every step that she took.  There was a new life out there waiting for her.  One that was, hopefully, free of death on a daily scale on a planet that was without constantly shifting regimes or battle lines.  That, she found, was what she was looking forward to most of all.

When she arrived at airlock she saw that there was someone waiting there for her.  At a distance she saw only a kind of flickering light, possible from the figure itself.  As she drew nearer she saw, to her shock, it was a human waiting for her. 

As she drew nearer she saw that it was indeed a human.  A woman, she looked to be about twenty or so… maybe a little older.  She had jet black hair that was tied up in some kind of a hairpiece that resembled a flower.  She had beautiful chestnut colored eyes, and mocha colored skin.  She was dressed in a figure-flattering gown of some kind of a white material that sparkled like snow and she stood upright and properly… like a medieval lady in waiting maybe.

“Shayla Umbetki?” the young girl asked.

Shayla nodded.  “Yes, that’s me.”

The girl smiled, almost appreciatively.  “I am Urala.  I will be your personal attendant from here until the end of your days.”  She lowered her head, as if averting her eyes from a goddess descended from heaven.

The profoundness of the statement took Shayla by surprise.  “I’m sorry?”

The girl looked up.  “My master wishes to make you as comfortable as possible.  To that end, he assigned me as your personal aide… your attaché… your slave… however you wish to label me.”

Shayla felt a sting of worry at these words.  She fumbled for a response.  “Uh… I… uh…” she shut her eyes and forced herself to think clearly.  “How about you be my friend?  That’s doable, isn’t it?”

The girl smiled.  “As you wish, mistress.”

Mistress?
Shayla thought approvingly.  She was already growing to like this new life.  She felt a small sense of relief and looked the girl over.  “You’re human?”

The girl lightly snickered.  “No… not exactly…” she lightly blushed.  “It’s difficult to explain.”

Shayla’s brow furrowed.

“I’m sure you have many questions, mistress… but all will be answered soon enough.  I’ll take your bag for you if you like?” Urala offered.

“No, that’s fine,” Shayla replied.  “I can carry it.”

Urala bowed her deference.  “As you wish, mistress.”  She gestured down the boarding tube.  “Come, the shuttle awaits.”  At that, the skinny girl began to walk down the tube towards the unseen ship.

When they reached the airlock she was shown to the inside of the shuttle.  She had heard of what travel between planets was like in most cases.  And she had been expecting the usual fare for people who traveled from one planet to another; she’d heard the stories.  She had thought she would be issued a small compartment to sleep in that was more like a drawer in a dresser than a room.  Perhaps she would have a sink and toilet built into a single unit, like those used in prisons for her use.  An overhead light and a hook to hang her bag on, and that would be it.  A hard way to live, but she had learned to deal with less. 

She found the complete opposite to a cramped and confined space.

The inside of the shuttle was more luxurious than a few of the palaces that she had read of that still existed on Earth.  This was the kind of vessel that a wealthy man might buy for himself if humans were more apt for travel to and from worlds.  She could not guess at the expense that such a thing must have cost. 

The cabin itself was as spacious as a luxury condo, at least ten meters across and twice that in length.  There were no cold and ugly looking bulkheads here.  The walls were neatly decorated in paintings of things that she did not recognize or by an artist’s hands that were not human.  The floor was handsomely carpeted and she felt her boots sink into soft cushioning that was there.  The interior was lit as if by candles, but there were no open flames to give off their soft illumination. 

Everywhere she looked there were couches and high backed reclining chairs and ottomans to rest her feet on.  There was a bar, stocked with bottles of alcohol in labels that she could read and some that she couldn’t.  There was a table laden with food, a steaming turkey in the middle of it, surrounded by steaming bowls of vegetables, a frothing pitcher of some kind of drink, goblets and bottles of wine, and trays of fruit.  All of it just waiting for her dig right in.

At the far end she saw that there was a large bathtub… no, not a bathtub… it was a Jacuzzi.  The water in it was already swirling and bubbling from heat.  The fragrance of jasmine flowers wafted from out of it and she could smell it across the room.  And even from a distance the water was plenty inviting. 

She saw shelves loaded with books or video chips that were the size of her pinky nail.  Thousands upon thousands of films or books rested on those shelves, more than she could watch if she viewed them one after the other for the rest of her life.  There was a holographic projector at the far end overlooking the Jacuzzi, allowing her to watch or read those books and films from the comfort of the tub.

And hanging on a nearby rack adjacent to the bar, was a rack of clothing.  Pants, shirts, dresses and gowns, all made from fabrics that she couldn’t name but imagined were plenty expensive.  All of it was just waiting for her to slip into it. 

“My god,” she said amazed.

“My master wished you to be comfortable on your journey,” Urala said. 

“Your master could be from Earth…” she said, stepping deeper into the cabin and looking over everything there.

“My master is well versed in the culture of the wealthy on Earth,” Urala explained.  “He has an affinity for your world and its culture.  He thought that this would put you more at ease for the journey to your new home.”

She set her duffle down on a nearby chair.  “You mean… my intended isn’t on board?”

“He’s not,” Urala said.  “He had some matters to attend to before we arrive.  Additionally, there is much you must learn before we make planetfall.  The journey will give you time to acclimate to your new role.”

She arched an eyebrow.  “Will it take a long time to get there?”

“The shuttle is fitted for FTL travel, but even so the journey will take nearly two weeks to complete.”

“Two weeks?” she asked, astonished.  “Even for faster-than-light travel?”

Urala nodded.  “Our destination is at the edge of the outer spiral… my master prefers seclusion to anything else.  He will explain his reasons, of course.  In the meantime, this shuttle will be your home for the time being.  And this is merely one of the chambers where you can reside.  There are four decks; the top two are reserved strictly for your private use.  On them you will find your personal sleeping quarters, a private gym, spa, and other recreational areas that you might find amusing during the long journey.”

She felt a flutter of excitement at these words.  “And the bottom two decks?”

“For the crew,” Urala explained.  “And… I might add, mistress, that the crew very much requires their privacy.  They are here to serve you but they do value their own space.”

She sensed that there was a profound honesty in the request.  She found it easy enough to accept and nod at the wish.  She liked having her own privacy.  It wasn’t much to allow other people to have theirs as well.  “No problem.”

Urala bowed her thanks.  “Very good, mistress.  If you would like to make yourself comfortable, perhaps have something to eat and drink – I understand that the disembarkation process for leaving your world leaves one feeling somewhat drained.  I will inform the pilot that we are ready to depart.”  She pointed to a control panel on the wall that Shayla could not read, though it was marked with blue lights.  “That is a summons panel.  If you require anything at all, just press the panel.  Someone will answer and anything that you require will be brought to you.”

Shayla nodded.  “Thank you.”

Urala gave a final bow and quickly scurried away and disappeared behind a second door, leaving her alone in the exquisite cabin. 

There was so much to learn that Shayla found she had little or no time to spend enjoying her surroundings. But Urala had said that once they reached
Paradiso
, she could expect to have considerably more time... all day if she wished.  Even though there would be days where she would be consumed by her impending duties, there would also be days where she would be able to spend time at her leisure.  She assured her that
Paradiso
had no shortage of diversions and temptations. 

Sounds like something worth working for,
she decided.

She planted herself in front of a holo-projector and began coming through the chips that Urala had pointed out as “Mandatory Viewing” before they reached the end of their journey.  The first was the longest and most important.  By the end of the first day of the voyage she had only managed to gain a small scope of the role she would have to fulfill.  From the chip, she had learned a lot.  Some of it shocking, some of it impressive, some of it left her feeling a tad worried. 

Her soon-to-be husband was from a race called the
Exsul
.  From all of her time spent reading the histories of Earth she knew the word.  Like
Paradiso
, it was Latin in origin and it meant “Outcast”.  She had never thought in depth on the subject but she knew that every society everywhere – or ever – had good reasons to throw someone out.  Usually, such an act was done and for reasons that were not very good at all. 
And this is a man that I’m about to marry?
  The realization had sent a chill down her spine.

That was part of the agreement, shew knew.  Bridalship meant renouncing her old way of life and embracing a new one.  Whether she liked it or not
Paradiso
and the man who ran it, was about to become her new life; no help for that now.  Getting off of Earth and getting married to a male of another race was no guarantee of happiness. 

Bridalship laws weren’t always tilted in the human favor, she knew.  Brides or grooms could be chosen for whatever reason that their off-world spouse desired.  Maybe their hair was the right length.  Maybe they were just the right height, weight, eye color… maybe they had a birthmark in just the right place… who knew?  That was reason enough for any one person’s application for Bridalship to be accepted, but again, that didn’t mean that he or she that was chosen would like their new spouse when they got to wherever it was that they were going. 

Fretful as this was, she kept reading and watching, taking in as much as she could.

The history of the moon she was traveling to was short and fairly simple.  Her intended was a man who had registered himself with the Terran Bridalship Laws because of his interest in all things human.  His interests weren’t limited to the things that other xenos had found interesting: music, art, architecture, alcohol or like that.  Her fiancé’s interests extended to the actual
people
.
 

His species title –
Exsul
– was self-imposed and by him, she had learned.  He was the only one of his kind… to a point.  She learned that he’d become so enthralled by learning of humans and absorbing all that he could about them that he’d neglected the studies of his own race and dismissed the needs of his own people and as a result he’d been thrown out for it. 
As far as reasons to be exiled goes, it’s not a terrible one. 
Her betrothed was a man of means, she’d learned quickly enough.  He was
very
wealthy when he was exiled and he’d found a way to make more money still.  And rather than be degraded for his exile, he chose to embrace his newfound freedom and chose to live a life apart. 
There’s something admirable in that. 
And because he was so wealthy, he had purchased his own planet to live on.

Well, not a planet exactly… it was more like a moon.  But it was larger than the Earth itself and that was enough to astonish her. 
He’s
filthy
rich!
  There was some appeal in that as well.

Not only that, he welcomed others from distant worlds to his new estate, which he had christened as
Paradiso
.  Any who applied for citizenship on his world he also claimed were
Exsul
, a race of outcasts. 
That’s interesting too.
From what Shayla could discern there was an army of people who lived on the planet to serve him.  Some of them, she found, were the descendants of those that had left Earth years before.  But by ratio, less than 1% of all souls on the planet were human… and some of them were not
fully
human at that.