His mother in complete Alliance fashion dismissed his suggestion by drawing a hand down her left cheek, “It’s probably for the best then that the only traits you inherited from your father were his eyes and his wonderful sense of adventure. The rest is all me. You’ll live well past two centuries as long as you don’t overindulge in alien food,” Rica assured him.
Valentin allowed her to change the subject, but he brushed off her comment about his eating habits in the same way, he wasn’t so sure about his longevity, not because of the food he ate. But because he lived a dangerous life and that was certainly something he never discussed with his mother. It was always a mist that filled their air around them as they spoke.
“And did you meet any human women?”
“Mother?” he asked feigning ignorance.
“With so many human women wanting to leave Earth for an Alliance man, I thought you might have met someone,” Rica’s biggest fear was that her son would be alone forever. He was one of the smallest minorities in the galaxy of half-human and half-Alliance men. Of course, in 20 years there would be many more people like him, but all those children would belong to Alliance Houses and technically off limits for Valentin, and realistically he would be too old and set in his ways to find his true other half by then.
“I don’t think I’m the kind of man any of them are looking for,” Valentin told her flatly. The truth was that the few human women he spoke to, although beautiful with all their different colors of skin, eyes, and hair, were too provincial for his lifestyle and what he imagined he needed in a wife. He hoped one day to find a suitable Reima Two woman or at the very least an Alliance woman who would leave her House for him. He had a lot to offer, he was the Commander of the Nage Horde, one of the largest and wealthiest trading and privateering groups in the galaxy. He also had a high status on the cosmopolitan planet of Reima Two, the first habitable place just outside the Imperial territory. But what many Reima Two women didn’t approve of about him was that he was often involved in somewhat dangerous activities, too dangerous for their liking. And what Alliance women from the Empire didn’t like was that he was not a citizen of the Empire, contrary to Reima Two women, they found his line of work attractive. As such, most of his past romances had been with Imperial women of middling and even maximum class.
“You never know. Some human women are so desperate they are even coming over illegally. Did anyone ask you to take them for UCs?” Rica asked wanting to breach a subject she had heard rumors about throughout the galaxy.
“No and I would’ve told them ‘no’ as well. It’s one thing if humans want to live in poverty on their desolate side of the galaxy. It’s quite another thing altogether to take their meager sums of UCs to sneak them across the border into an intergalactic jungle, they know nothing about.” He didn’t mention that he had murdered one of his captains half a year ago for trafficking human women to be sold as slaves or that the best he could do for those unfortunate women in the end was to have them killed as well. Any day now he expected retribution, but that wasn’t new to him, when you played big, the stakes were high. And he looked forward to the fight. He didn’t like what he had to do even though it was right, and he wanted to hit someone every time he thought about it, so why not hit an Octopod looking for the fight?
Rica looked into the screen into her son’s eyes wondering if he really had killed those humans, “When I read about the Head of House Human’s daughter running away it made me so sad for her family. And now her mother’s dead and she’s more or less a prisoner to Admiral Jei. What a nightmare. Then I heard about what had happened to the other trafficked young women that came over on the same ship as she did and that after all that had happened to them, the Empire turned them away to be sold at a slave market on Oiro and bought by Octopods. I’ve always told you the Empire has no heart. I thought it might have been…” she trailed off wondering if Val was going to admit to the rumors.
“Yes, it’s so sad,” he said dismissively. “Where’s father?”
Rica paused and then decided that it was probably better he never tell her what he really did because she didn’t know if she could forgive him if it was true. She took a deep breath then gave him a fake smile, “You’re never going to believe this.”
“Try me,” Valentin fake smiled back.
“We were transporting the new human chef to Alliance Planet Two from the Capital City,” Rica explained.
Valentin thought, That’s why Admiral Jei is on your mind. It was no secret that there was a constant run between the Capital Planet and Alliance Planet Two just to meet the material needs of the Ward of House Rega.
“And the young human woman, who I must say is very charming, had a pet a cat and the cat gave birth to little cats and we kept one. Your father had to have it. It’s cute, but I worry about pets,” she admitted.
“Father’s parents have a cat. I think it’s just an animal,” Valentin reassured her. In the past, Alliance people had purposely kept many sentient beings as pets and it was something that haunted most of them, so they rarely wanted any kind of pet around, just in case it was not really a pet.
Rica continued, “Anyway, the little cat is lost in the engine room now and your father is looking for it. He’s trying to coax it out with some treats, the same way he did with you when you were a toddler.”
Valentin honestly grinned at the thought, “I hope he finds it.” Just then his mother forwarded him an image of an adorable little black and white kitten. “It’s cute.” Valentin was just about ready to sign off when his mother asked him another question.
“Oh wait, one more thing, I saw your name down for the Yoli race on Alliance Planet Two, you’re not really doing that are you?” The Yoli race was a three-day endurance race for single men. The race included not only long treks through mountainous terrain and swimming through a rough lake, but also dagger throwing competition and a surprise duel with one of the gamekeepers, who were expert swordsmen, at any time during the competition. Each year thousands of men entered and less than 500 finished. All species were welcome to compete, but it was usually won by an Imperial citizen. Young men entered because it was prestigious, a way to show off their physical strength, as it was shared in real time throughout the galaxy, in addition, the winning prizes were substantial. Men placing in the top ten usually married within a year after the competition.
“I am,” he said firmly.
“So, you are in the market for a wife?” she said hopefully.
“Or I’m just bored,” he countered evenly.
“Pah,” Rica exclaimed. “Your father said you would say that. We may only be small-time traders, but we aren’t fools, Val. Who’s the woman you are trying to impress? To which House does she belong?”
“There’s no specific woman. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I just want to do the race as something to mark off from my list of experiences I want to have in life. I’ve always wanted to do the Yoli race, to see how I measure up to other men, and now I have the opportunity. It’s nothing more than my own hubris.”
Rica took in her son’s face expression, “Good luck in the race and be careful,” the Yoli race was known for its extreme violence between the competitors because so much prestige was at stake.