Chapter 24: Duplicity

There was a knock on the cabin door. Nora rose and walked over and opened it. A junior officer stood to attention. "The Captain requests the pleasure of your company in her cabin for dinner." Nora glanced back over her shoulder as Varna rose and walked over to her. "All right, Lieutenant, please lead on."

As the officer turned away, Varna whispered to Nora, "Don't forget, let me do most of the talking."

"Okay," Nora replied with a slight dip of her chin.

They followed the lieutenant along a corridor to the captain's quarters. He knocked, and on hearing the captain say enter he opened the door for them and stood back, allowing them to walk through the door. The captain's cabin, while not as large as the admiral's quarters, was nonetheless well appointed. Varna noticed the cabin looked more lived-in, with pictures and personal items scattered about. A table was placed in the centre of the cabin with three place settings. The captain sat at the head of the table and gestured to two empty chairs either side of her facing one another.

"Ladies, please sit down and make yourselves comfortable."

As Varna and Nora settled themselves the Captain asked if they would like something to drink. Varna settled on wine, as did the Captain, and Nora fruit juice. A steward had just served the first course when ignoring Varna's glare Nora turned to the Captain and asked her why she had destroyed the bounty hunters' ship.

The Captain steepled her fingers and rested them on her lips and took a breath before answering. "This is not the ship that was sent to collect you."

Nora's eyes went wide, and at the same time Varna coughed on her mouth full of wine. "What!"

The Captain waved the steward away, told him to bring in the next course in ten minutes and waited until he had closed the door. "The Empire is splitting into factions, it had started before first contact with the humans, but the war has opened the cracks further and polarized many families. The ruling five are maneuvering for position and forming alliances, a consortium of lesser families are also making their presence felt. The power struggle is threatening to plunge the Empire into anarchy. Part of the problem stems from the falling birthrate. Some of the ruling families are shrinking in size, and due to the lack of heirs power is increasingly falling into the hands of fewer people, some totally unsuitable to the role being thrust upon them.

"Silently in the background, out of sight of the feuding families, a faction has been building who believe our future and that of the surviving humans is linked. Grojan and human hybrids are the only way either species will survive. Even the Grojani, with their almost symbiotic relationship with Grojan, will eventually slip back into pre-space societies and their birthrate is declining almost as fast as Grojan." She took a sip of her wine and continued. "Some believe that the hybrids can even mate with the Grojani, but that is just a theory for now. Anyway, at the present time we are at a tipping point; if the ruling families found out about the hybrids they would unite against a perceived common threat, search them out and destroy them, in much the same way as they tried to destroy the humans.

"The Grojan decline is accelerating and the birthrate is not the only problem. Currently female births are outnumbering male births by nearly three to one. The secret planting of genetically modified humans will not be sufficient to make up for the decline."

"How do you know about the modified humans, Captain?" Varna asked.

The Captain smiled. "Because Nora's mother was a distant cousin."

Nora glanced at Varna and back to the Captain. "Then we are..."

"Cousins, Nora," the captain finished for her. "You and your brother are more important to us ... both human, Grojan and even Grojani than you can possibly realize. Our spies intercepted the communication between your uncle and the bounty hunters. He is a hard liner and in league with the Carask family. He intended to use you as bait to get your brother, then kill you both in a public execution after exposing you both as hybrids. Once you were proved to be hybrids it would be easy for him and the other hard line families to organize a program to systematically hunt and kill any families with multiple births, which is evidence of cross breeding without DNA testing. Quick, effective, and elegantly brutal. At the moment they are an anomaly that is un-noticed by the central authorities."

Nora raised an eyebrow. "The sensible thing would be to let me go, or just kill me like you did the bounty hunters, if I'm such a risk to your plans."

Varna's head snapped round to look at her. "Nora! What the fuck?"

The Captain smiled. "You are the rightful heir to the Rmaxis fortune and power." She turned to Varna. "As you are the heir to the Carask family."

"That is ridiculous, Captain, I was disinherited." She tapped her teeth for emphasis.

The Captain ignored her comment and continued. "You could both help to bring about change, but it would be best if you keep further questions for when we reach our destination."

"Captain, you did not answer my question regarding the ship you destroyed," Nora reminded her.

"Ah yes, as I said before, messages were intercepted and luckily I was close enough to the rendezvous point to arrive before the ship sent to pick you up. We cannot afford witnesses, too many lives are at stake, in fact our whole future hangs in the balance. When the ship arrives it will find nothing but a few scraps of metal and no way to know what happened to you."

"What about your crew, Captain, can they be trusted?'

"I trust them all, they have been with me for years and only a small handful of my inner command circle know what is happening anyway." She keyed her coms patch. "Now let us continue our meal."

At the Captain's request they both kept to the admiral's suite for the remainder of the voyage, only leaving to clean out and feed the deecrets. As the days wore on, Varna found herself becoming more and more convinced Mark had intended to reject her just before she had been snatched. She had listened to Minara and Theasa, and to complete the bonding had appealed to his base Grojan instincts. Once they had mated the imperative had gone and his human side could regain control. The thought of how she had forced the issue, in hindsight, depressed and embarrassed her.

They had just returned from exercising Nora's deecrets and had settled down in their lounge when Nora looked at her in a way she did occasionally that gave Varna the impression she was looking into her soul. "Varna, there is something troubling you. What is it? I know it has nothing to do with our captivity, it is something to do with my brother isn't it?"

Varna blinked at her and shrugged. "It's nothing, Nora."

Nora's brows knitted together. "Varna, I know that is not true. If you don't want to talk about it then fine, but sometimes it helps rather than bottling up whatever is troubling you."