Married to the Alien with No House: Renascence Alliance Series Book 3 Page 2

  Babette had had a tough beginning to life, so she was proud of the fact that she had been able to pull herself up enough to have a decent job in a beautiful place with friendly people. She did not ask much from life except for decency. She knew firsthand what life was like without it, so she was grateful that she had it now. But it was because of her past experiences that she had the tendency to be cautious. Babette was no fool. She could lose everything if she jumped and fell. She only had herself to rely on. And because of this trait of being overly cautious, she was often teased by her friends for being ‘too good’.

  Babette, like the other women around the table, was in her early twenties. And like the other women, she enjoyed shopping, entertainment, and travel. Unfortunately, she had never been able to travel very far because she never was able to save enough UCs to get much further than a day away from where she lived. But in her fantasies, she saved enough money to see Mars or even Enceladus. She had seen so many advertisements about those places and had often wondered what life must be like there, that she told herself if she ever got the chance to go to any one of those places with a decent job, she would just move. But no one was ever looking for a shop assistant to work on any of the colonies in the galaxy. So, this was only a fantasy that she held with her wistfully.

  As Babette sat, she noticed her colleagues were atypically watching the news on a 3D screen in the center of the breakroom table, “What’s going on?” she asked casually, wondering if there had been a major disaster or something that would inspire her colleagues to watch the news rather than a reality or fashion program on their break.

  “Shhh,” the oldest of them hushed Babette.

  But one of Babette’s friends whispered to her excitedly, “A man from the Alliance Empire has a message for all the human women of Earth. That’s what we are waiting to see.”

  Babette’s attention was fixated on the news now, as well. Her mind was racing, Were they going to take us over? Colonize us? Make us slaves? What message could he have for only the women and not the men of Earth? The news anchor seemed to go on and on about some woman being caught as a spy in the war with the Alliance. Babette did not care about whoever Kara Rainer was, all she wanted to know, was what the message from the Alliance was to human women. The news anchor then said a sentence that floored them all, “Married to Admiral Tir of the Alliance Empire.”

  “What the … ?” the oldest shop attendant asked rhetorically.

  “Who gets married anymore?” asked Babette’s good friend. “Isn’t that slavery? How can they do that to her even if she is a spy?”

  “I think she wants to be married to him.”

  “She’s not ugly. Why would she do that?”

  “She must be a spy.”

  “They say she is a spy.”

  “Her husband isn’t bad looking for a grey man zombie,” commented the oldest shop attendant.

  “No, he doesn’t look like a zombie at all,” Babette’s good friend agreed. “Almost handsome.”

  “And the rest of them, look at them all there, have you ever seen so many tall, strong men before?”

  They all looked, and someone zoomed in on the Alliance men from the courtroom. The Alliance men were all in their prime and looked taller and healthier than their human counterparts. They stood together in matching black uniforms, long black hair braided in various styles, and a lot of beautiful silver ranking jewelry that only added to their foreign but pleasing appearances.

  “Are they wearing swords?” Babette’s good friend asked.

  “Yes,” the older shop assistant said. “They use them too. I heard they fight with each other with them.”

  “And still get married. How archaic,” Babette commented while looking at their exoticness on the television. “I wonder what it must be like for that woman to be around them. Do you think it’s scary?”

  They zoomed out to look at the human woman in question again.

  “She doesn’t look scared at all. She looks angry.”

  “Angry at who do you think?” Babette asked, amused. “Our government or her zombie husband?”

  After a few minutes of just watching, Babette’s good friend asked, “Where are the older men do you think?”

  “I think they are dealing with the Jahay,” one of the other women said authoritatively, “The Jahay is the real threat to the Alliance Empire, not us. I think this guy came to get his wife.”

  “With all of his friends,” Babette added for a laugh. It was so odd that they were a group of young, good-looking men.

  “Do you think she loves him?” Babette’s friend asked honestly.

  “She’s pregnant,” reasoned the older shop attendant. “And she had the opportunity to get an abortion twice, once onboard the Silverado and now and she didn’t take either. Why would you do that if you didn’t love someone?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was listening,” replied the older shop assistant defensively. “And her husband,” she said the word ‘husband’ as if it was the strangest title she could ever imagine, “is the successor to the Imperial Alliance throne, who wouldn’t want to be associated with him?”

  All the women looked at the news curiously then, but before they could comment on anything else, the screen went black, and after a few seconds, the Alliance symbol appeared in green on a black background. The emblem was renown throughout the galaxy, a slash with five lines through it, signifying the five homeworlds of the Alliance Empire. Then the video cut into beautiful sweeping scenes of cityscapes from all of the Alliance five homeworlds. After a few seconds of scenery and silence, a deep-voiced narrator said, “Human women of the Solar System, Orion Spiral Arm of the Milky Way, are you looking for stability, security, and structure in your life? The Alliance Empire is now offering citizenship to a few select human women. If you pass our simple, standardized health tests, you will be provided with a suitable place to live in one of our beautiful metropolises, for example, at House Human in Residential Ring Four of the Capital City on the Capital Planet,” images were then shown of a beautiful and insanely modern, but just as equally plain interiors of large communal building. “You will also be assigned a job that matches your skill sets, marriage to an illustrious Alliance man of your choosing from the maximum class, and 5UC compensation per month into your Alliance account, all in addition to the gift of Alliance citizenship. All interested women between the ages of 22 and 30 years of age should come to the Alliance Embassy to make a formal application by the end of this week, Alliance date, 38th week of the year 18904, Earth date March 25th, 2635. The end.”

  “I’m going to apply,” Babette was the first to speak.

  “You want to marry a zombie for UCs?” asked her friend, perplexed. “Why would you do that? This is so unlike you.”

  Babette felt all the other women’s eyes on her. She could not understand how they would not jump at this opportunity. “Five UCs a month is a fortune,” her annual income was 10MCs, and 1,000MCs made a one UC. “And they will provide a job and everything else.”

  “You would marry a zombie for that?” the older sales assistant asked Babette in disbelief.

  Babette looked back at the 3D projection where the grey-skinned men were shown just a few minutes ago, “We could all agree, I think, that they didn’t look so bad and the arrangement says, ‘a man of your choosing’ so maybe we don’t have to marry at all if we don’t find someone of our choosing.”

  “Why do you think they want human women all of a sudden?”

  “Maybe their gene pool is too inbred,” all the women laughed.

  “No,” said Babette’s friend, “That can’t be it. They are how many trillions in the galaxy?”

  “I don’t know, but a lot. A million times more than humans,” another woman said thoughtfully.

  “But we are genetically compatible,” said Babette. “And look at that Captain whatever her name was. She is keeping the baby.”

  “Maybe she has been brainwashed?” Babette’s friend su
ggested wondering if her friend had also just been brainwashed by the Alliance advertisement.

  “No, come on, don’t you think our people would have checked for that before putting her on trial as a spy?”

  Everyone was silent.

  Babette broke the silence after a minute, “Well, I think it is a once and a lifetime offer, and I’m at least going to make an application. So, I won’t be at work tomorrow.”

  The older sales assistant nodded, “Fine, but I am sure it will just be a waste of time. Even if all of this is true, they will only want the best of human women and that” she looked around at all of them, “is unfortunately not us. Those kinds of UCs are only given to people who already make that kind of money.”

  “You never know,” said Babette, “maybe the Alliance is different. Maybe they are looking for something else.”

  All the other women just looked at Babette and made some comments about remembering all the details about the Alliance people she would meet tomorrow as they went back out on the floor to work. Most regular humans had never seen an alien before in person. The human government went to great lengths to keep their general population away from aliens, but of course, it was sold to the human population the other way around, that the government was keeping them safe from aliens. However, everyone had a feeling that there was something that the human government was hiding about everything, but life was not terrible enough for anyone to start questioning the alien policies. Naturally, people were curious about aliens, though, but rarely enough to overcome their distrust put there by government propaganda.

  Babette’s friend said to her as they walked out into the shop, “I hope you know what you’re doing, and this isn’t a trick to abduct you all.”

  “Why would they have a commercial if they were going to do that? It doesn’t make sense. They have the technology to take what they want from humanity.”

  “I guess so. Just be safe, okay? I don’t want to have to worry about what happens to you tomorrow. If it looks dodgy, it probably is and just run.”

  Babette gave her friend and little smile, “Okay, I’ll just run away from aliens with superior tech. I’ll be sure to wear my running shoes, just in case.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Babette gave her friend an absent wave dismissing her friend’s fears as she walked towards the other end of the shop. “I’ll be fine. No doubt it’s just a fool’s errand anyway.”

  Babette straightened her shirt under her jacket and looked at herself in the mirror. She was ready to go to the Alliance Embassy. She wanted to make a good impression, so she was wearing a white shirt with a smart jacket and some well-fitted trousers. She was tall and thin, so these clothes showed off her slim figure. Her long hair was pulled back in a messy bun again, and she wore only a little black eyeliner around her blue eyes. She did not want to look overdone nor dress up too much and look like a country bumpkin.

  Babette took the fast train to the Alliance Embassy in Paris. She normally would not be able to afford such an extravagance, but the Alliance said that they would reimburse every applicant no matter how near or far they traveled to get to the Embassy for the application and regardless of whether or not they were successful or not.

  Babette enjoyed the fast train. She was able to get from Atlanta to Paris in less than 40 minutes. Usually, she would have had to take the slower overground train to New York and then cross the ocean on the slower underground train. Altogether it would take at least four hours and was always overcrowded because those tickets were the cheapest.

  As Babette took a seat on the fancy fast train, she could not help but notice that she was not the only young woman on the train and suspected that there would be many on this train also making an application at the Alliance Embassy today. She sized of her competition and decided that maybe her colleague was right in saying that they were looking for a higher quality women than what she was. Babette looked at the other young women and was humbled by their styles, and it was evident by the way they behaved; this was not their first time on the fast train. Also, they had all dressed in a more sophisticated manner than she had. They had real style, whereas her clothes were elegant but plain. By the end of the train trip, she had already resigned herself to the fact that today might be a complete waste of time, and she was a fool for thinking that she would even have a chance at success. Good things happened to good people, she thought and then followed that by, and in the same way, UCs fall into the laps of people that are already rich.

  Babette was not in the least bit surprised when she followed the crowd of young women from the Paris train station on the short walk to the Alliance Embassy beautifully located on the Seine. Babette had only been to Paris once before, and she decided that even if today was a complete waste of time and yet another lesson in humility for her to know her place, she would at least enjoy her day off from work and a free trip to Paris. As she walked along the river, she thought that if she had time after the interview, she would have lunch in the Latin Quarter and maybe visit a garden. The weather was gorgeous, and it was a beautiful day to be in Paris, regardless.

  Outside the impressive Alliance Embassy, Babette joined the long line of young women, all waiting to make their application. She was told by a passing Alliance man who was handing out bottles of water, that it would be a long wait but that there would be time for everyone so to remain patient. Babette took the small water bottle with French writing on it and decided that she would have to wait for the interview as they were going to provide her with the UCs to reimburse her for her journey over, so she had to abandon her idea of lunch elsewhere.

  As it seemed like they were going to be in line for a long time, Babette addressed the young woman directly in front of her, “I hope it’s not too long of a wait.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure it will be worth it.”

  Babette smiled, thinking, Finally, someone else who feels the same, but then chastised herself. Of course, she feels the same; she’s here. “I hope so. When I saw the advertisement, I thought it looked almost too good to be true,” she wanted to say that, so she didn’t sound like a complete fool in case it was. “But I still had to come and check it out, just to be sure.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it is,” the woman said confidently, and then leaned closer to Babette and whispered, “My uncle Frank owns the Earth Store in the Capital City on the Capital Planet. He says that they have a little demographics issue, and as humans are almost genetically the same…” she trailed off.

  Babette leaned back and looked into the little woman’s hazel eyes and mouthed the word, “Really?”

  The woman nodded her head and then said out loud, “That’s why I’m going. I know what this is, and it’s for real. But you need to be healthy.”

  “And do you really think we will have to marry?”

  The woman nodded again, “Yes, that’s the whole point, but look at these men,” they both looked at some of the guards patrolling up and down the long line of women. “They are not bad looking, despite being grey, and the Alliance is a matriarchy after all.”

  “What does that mean?” Babette asked and then corrected herself, “I mean, I know what that means, but what does it mean in the galaxy for the Alliance? Do you know?”

  “From what I’ve heard from my uncle, it means that women are the dominant sex. As human men used to be here.”

  Babette laughed a little, thinking about a strong woman in the bedroom with a little grey Alliance man, “I can’t imagine that being attractive.”

  “Not like that,” the woman replied, knowing exactly where her new friend’s mind jumped to, “I mean in terms of society, laws, and all those important things.”

  “But the men,” Babette countered, “They don’t allow the women to leave the planets they were born on, and they wear those hideous dresses. I can’t believe that women dominate the men. I think it’s the other way around.”

  “I know it doesn’t look like it to us, but that’s what my uncle has told me, and
why would he lie?”

  Babette shrugged, still not believing this woman.

  “My name is Jade, by the way. What’s yours?”

  “Babette.”

  “Are you French?”

  “No,” Babette hated it when people asked her that. “My mother just liked the name. Most people call me ‘Babbs.’”

  Jade smiled up at her new friend, “Babbs, it is then.”

  Finally, it was Babette’s turn. She was ushered into the stone embassy, devoid of any decorations, and shown into another room that had medical equipment in it. Surprisingly a human doctor was there.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Babette Lynn Thomas.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two years old.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Natchez, Mississippi.”

  “Where do you live now?”

  “I still live there.”

  “With your parents?”

  “No, my mother died a few years ago. I never knew my father,” when Babette saw the doctor’s frown she added honestly, “But my mother never said a bad word about him, he just wasn’t around.”

  “Any siblings?”

  “No.”

  “To the best of your knowledge, did your mother struggle to conceive you, carry you, or give birth to you.”