Chapter 3

Cadet Academy Imperial date 7933 E

The next day, when I reached the showers at my cadet dormitory, my friends who gleefully stripped me of my clean clothes and dragged me into the showers, were stunned into shock and marvelled at the shredded finger nail scratches on my back, the hickies littering my neck, shoulders, thighs and nipples, and the lipstick marks up and down every inch of my penis, fast made me the most respected ex-virgin in the cadet school unwritten record.

Now I remember nothing from the point I fell asleep in Genene’s bed until we were woken in the morning by my fellow officer cadets. But I do clearly remember both that I was washed more thoroughly than a mother washes a newborn and that when Genene got me to wash every single delightful part of her body, her beautiful face, including her lips, were made clean of every speck of painted enhancements.

I checked up the records held on this Genene Probyn. She came from solid stock, born 7892 E to a civil servant on her home world, a mining planet. Her grandfather was a mining union official, managed to obtain a union-sponsored scholarship for his son who showed promise, sending him off world to become an accountant. Genene’s father returned to his home world and married a girl, who lived in the same street of tenements as he lived and they had a large family. He worked as an accountant in the planet’s mining company until he retired, when the local 3DNewscast noted that they had won a luxury retirement home on a distant system in a lottery that they couldn’t remember entering and were now in happy retirement.

Genene was a bright child and had also won a scholarship to college on Conrad Quarto where she was recorded as studying law, passing her bar examination on another world, Archangel Prime some five terran-years later. As a Noble and home world security officer on Como Prime, I had high-level security clearance and able to access criminal records and found that she had two misdemeanour convictions on Conrad for prostitution and sued the potentate on Archangel Prime almost immediately after passing the bar exam with flying colours, for damages for assault, which was settled out of court. Coincidentally, the retirement home her parents won twenty years later was on a prime location moon around Archangel Tertio.

Genene disappeared from the records for several years until applying for residency close to the Navel Academy, registering as a practising lawyer and passing the bar exam here with a record high score. She practiced alone, rather than join a big firm, as most barristers did, and cherry-picked cases, usually defending people in the entertainment business who were mistreated by customers or cheated by their employers; she had such a high success rate than more commonly cases she represented clients on were usually settled out of court. I was impressed by this woman and, wanted to get to know her better, perhaps as a friend or an ally.

It was almost two weeks before I was sufficiently released from duties, imposed by the imminent Rebel threat, to revisit Genene’s apartment. This time I went completely sober and with a gift of flowers, the fabulous Teeheye Bride Rose, boasted by florists to be the most fragrant rose in the galaxy. I had called her ahead of time, the Flag Commandant having quietly passed me her contact number along with his suggestion of the roses, and I booked her for the whole night, to include collecting her in person and escorting her to a night’s stay at the ‘Landing Station’, a hotel near the space port, which had exclusive luxury suites available, and boasted a restaurant whose chef was a celebrity known throughout the Lottis Sector, where the Imperial Naval Academy was based.

If I thought we could spend a platonic evening with me thanking her suitably for her kindness, and her accepting a pleasant evening without her seducing me into surrendering my precious virginity to her, I was very wrong. I attribute my easy surrender purely to my naivety and unworldly upbringing in a family-orientated environment whose parents were devoted entirely to one another, other than the three years apparently I was now privy to, that my father spent in the arms of a much younger Genene.

Yes, I was seduced and fell easily under her power. I felt that I was in love with her and I indeed felt dearly loved throughout every moment of our time together. The expensive hotel suite in which I lost my virginity became our home for more than two years. The hotel management were amenable to a deal which ensured the suite was occupied at a rate which was acceptable to both sides of the arrangement. Although I was the son of a Duke and not yet fully inherited of my family’s worth, I was wealthy enough in my own right, through my parents’ allowances and gifts from my birth guardians and grand parents which had long been invested in businesses which supplied more than enough dividends for me to keep a kept woman without dinting on my homeworld household, other expenses and, in her fading years, set Genene up in modest but independent living, which I hoped would last her for life. I suppose I did this in jealousy of her finding a younger replacement from the following cadet cohort, who would fill her heart more than I had or that she had held in mine. We both knew I had to give her up and she seemed to accept this with a few tears and a final night of lovemaking that could easily come close to carrying both of us off to the grave.

My thoughts over the past twenty and more years often wondered how she had fared after our sweet parting. It had to be a clean break. I think our separation broke her heart, and I was certain that it broke mine.

I didn’t go home at all during the recess at the end of my second year either, because by now all Imperial Navy hands, including officer cadets, were desperately thrown into the battle against the rising tide of the rebel rising and we were only able to put down that particular phase of the rebellion by extreme sacrifice of the cream of the Imperial Navy, distinguishing myself in combat in the process. But I know it damaged the Empire irreparably and we all knew, or should have realised that the next uprising would be the last of a continuous series which had combusted every few years over the previous 65 years, after several millennia of relative peace.

Imperial date 7935 E (or Minus 6 R, 26 years ago)

With the civil war at least for the moment at an end, I was offered graduation from officer school as a buck lieutenant and put out to grass on the reserve list for five terran-years, or I could step up and enlist as a career officer with a fast track to Post Captain in five terran-years and Rear Admiral in fifteen. But I was sick of the war and so I took the Naval Reserve offer and was shipped home in a troop ship with a broken ankle from a projectile round and arm in a sling from several blade cuts sustained in the deciding battle that finally destroyed the latest manifestation of the continually evolving Rebel Resistance.

I returned to Como Prime for the first time in three years and was dreading meeting my wife again after such a time and bearing the burden of disloyalty to her in my heart and mind. There was no question of trying to hide this from my wife, if we were to remain married, we had to be completely honest with each other.

Of course we had conversed regularly through Pynom and Pynom II, a clone zulon of Pynom who Velda constantly referred to as ‘Pippa’, so we were not strangers. In fact, my platonic love for this beautiful, intelligent and utterly charming young woman had grown over the three years into something approaching a deep and yearning affection, with the potential and wish to turn it into an enduring love.

I had always been open about my growing love for Velda to Genene and she witnessed its slow and steady emergence from the quiet background of many of my conversations with my distant bride. Genene encouraged me to give my lover up with a clean break, my eventual financial settlement being a joyous surprise to her, something that she said my father had neglected to consider at their moment of separation many years earlier. She applauded my maturity, she said.

I was under orders not to disclose to Genene that my father and I also conversed regularly, when Genene was not present, and that I had soon made him aware of our mutual relationship with this singularly beautiful and deserving woman and the final settlement included more assets than I could possibly have had access to without his complete, in fact insistent, connivance, along with his insistence of not including Genene in the knowledge of his belated generosity.

On graduation from the Cadet School, having left Genene forever on that final dawning together, I was collected in a small double-hulled craft that Velda was comfortable flying, this journey being the longest she had embarked on since learning how to be a pilot on my home world, largely conducted in secret except for my father and a few trusted technicians. I was shocked in how stunningly beautiful a woman Velda had transformed into, our communications up to now being completely inadequate to convey her beauty. She was shy at first, but her bubbly sass and cheek, that she had hinted at during our first few terran-months together, soon came delightfully to the surface and, during our flight home, eased us both into a comfortable relationship, although each of us was unable to broach the subject of our impeding nuptials that were inevitable but as yet unscheduled.

I knew that I had to be completely honest with Velda about my behaviour over the past three years, not only at a physical level, but my involvement emotionally with Genene, too. So, before we reached Como Prime, I asked her to redirect the craft to a small but beautiful moon that we had once happy memories of visiting when we had spent our first few months together three years earlier. I was impressed by her flying. She made the difficult landing look easy, as this was a jaggedly mountainous moon, that gave spectacular views of the gas giant below and its magnificent ever-changing cloud patterns. The difficulty of the terrain was one reason why it was seldom visited by small craft, while larger cruisers would find it difficult to find a suitable and safe landing point. We settled and sat for a moment, admiring the view before I spoke.

‘Velda, I must speak to you and make confession of my behaviour over the past three years.’ I opened with, as I took both her hands off the steering yoke and held them gently in mine.

‘I know, my husband,’ she replied looking deeply into my eyes with those huge blue orbs of hers, like twin water planets. ‘You have been what you believe is unfaithful to me during your time away from me and feel some guilt for doing so, especially after swearing loyalty to me before you left.’

‘Yes, Velda, you have guessed correctly, but it is worse than that, I actually gave my heart to another woman for much of that time and it has been a wrench to separate from her. It has been difficult for me to give her up, heartbreaking to do so, but I have sacrificed her and my feelings for her because, if you will only agree to take me back, I wholeheartedly hope for your forgiveness as I desire to spend the rest of my days as your loving and forever faithful husband.’

I gripped her hands, hoping she would respond positively and I was pleased that she squeezed me back in reply.

‘There was very little guesswork on my part, Ivan. I have become a doting daughter to your loving mother and father and a devoted sister to your own dear sister during your long absence in the service of the Empire, so I am as much a part of your family now as you have always been. Although your father did not admit anything directly to me, he has confessed to his time at the Academy with the Lady Genene and has been forgiven those trespasses by our mother Jeneve, as I in my turn forgive you all of your transgressions.’

I must have sat there open-mouthed at her unexpected response, and was still stunned as she kissed me lightly on the lips and continued to speak.

‘I have spoken to the Lady Genene this morning, timed, as I arranged, between the time you left her side for the last time and the time you had to report for graduation muster at the Academy. We spoke for at least a terran-hour about you and her and you and me, and what we both planned for our future together. Genene has given up on you completely, my love, though it pains her deeply to do so, her love for you running so deep. Although it may be that her pain is so fresh, but she really believes she loves you more than any man she has met. Even your generosity, as well as your father’s, although she is unaware of his financial contribution to the pot that you managed to package for her. But in addition, Duke Jolyon has bought her a title and a stake in a small, but potentially rich world close to merchant and passenger routes, which could prove to make her a good marriage should she wish to take that option in the near future. She is still a beautiful woman and even I found myself warming to her during our short conversation. She loves you deeply, more than she could ever admit to you and promises that in forgiveness and honesty, we have a wonderful future ahead of us, if the politics of imperialism or republican upheaval allows.’