Anna and the Three Generals Read online

  Anna and the Three

  Generals

  A Profortuna Story

  By Suzanne Graham

  Resplendence Publishing, LLC

  http://www.resplendencepublishing.com

  Anna and the Three Generals

  Copyright © 2012 Suzanne Graham

  Edited by Jessica Bimberg and Venus Cahill

  Cover art by Les Byerley, www.les3photo8.com

  Published by Resplendence Publishing, LLC

  2665 N Atlantic Avenue, #349

  Daytona Beach, FL 32118

  Electronic format ISBN: 978-1-60735-508-3

  Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Electronic Release: May 2012

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

  To my four boys who love sci-fi so much.

  Live long and prosper.

  Chapter One

  “But don’t you think women should get some say in the selection of their three husbands?” Anna asked her best friend before sipping from her midday nutrishake in the bio-domed cafeteria. She couldn’t wait for the evening meal when she’d get to actually chew her daily serving of fresh vegetable leaves. Though, she still had another week before she got her moon cycle allowance of meat.

  Mastication was overrated some people believed, and they forewent their daily whole food portion, electing a third shake of the day instead. Anna couldn’t imagine ever giving up the pleasure of chewing.

  Planet Profortuna’s atmosphere and soil were rich in chemical compounds, which were used to make nutritional meal replacement shakes, but it was impossible to grow traditional plant-based food, which had to be grown within the limited space of the bio-domes. Even the small animals raised for their meat existed predominantly on a liquid diet.

  “You’re so antiquated, Anna.” Bella brought her attention back to their conversation. “Husbands are so last millennium. You’re not picking a romantic partner. Those are the stuff of fairytales. You’re getting matched to your mating partners.”

  Anna sighed. “I know.”

  Bella nailed Anna with her steely gray eyes. “You’re already twenty-five, seven years past full maturity. It’s time for you to face reality. I still can’t believe you’ve managed to put off the Council’s edict this long.”

  Anna straightened in her chair, ready to defend her long-standing single status. “They understood my research was too important for the continuation of our bio-ecology to interrupt it for procreation.”

  Bella seemed to shrug off Anna’s explanation, and Anna couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t new information to Bella. She’d stood alongside Anna for years, as she’d explained her single status to their peers who’d been mated since coming of age.

  Anna took another sip of her nutrishake and grimaced. She really needed to talk to Nutrition R&D about coming up with some new flavors. There had to be more to life than chocolate and vanilla.

  “So have you seen their holograms yet?” Her eyes sparking with interest, Bella tucked a length of red hair behind her ear as she leaned closer to Anna. “Anyone we know?”

  Anna shook her head. “They went the international route with me. I guess the political climate has shifted back to mixing the races rather than keeping the lines pure.”

  “So, who’d you get?” Bella prompted.

  Anna’s poor friend had been matched five years ago with three men they referred to as Dweeb One, Two and Three. Because of Bella’s exceptional intellectual capabilities in mathematics, the Council had hoped to perpetuate her genetics in her offspring and matched her with the three highest scoring IQs among the intellectual elite.

  They were incredibly smart, and incredibly dull. During her monthly mating cycle, Bella said they gave off about as much emotional response as her calculator app. In five years, she hadn’t developed anything more than a general fondness for them.

  Anna couldn’t help it if she was old-fashioned, but she’d hoped to be matched with someone she’d have a chance to bond with emotionally. The bio-researcher in her wondered if their planet’s low fertility rates might turn around if love was brought back into the equation. Perhaps the hormonal changes triggered by the emotions contributed to better fertility.

  She considered the change in policy that had occurred in her grandparents’ generation when the number of selected male mates increased from two to three due to the precipitous drops in fertility. For seven generations before that, the convention was two male mates for every female, as the ratio of female to male births fell.

  The celebrated population growth on ancient Earth seemed like part of the old legends. Few of Anna’s contemporaries actually believed their antecedents on Earth were so productive with only one male mating per female. But Anna found it hard to deny the evidence in the old data records. Marriages were between one man and one woman, and the world population grew until 2400, when it flatlined.

  Bella snapped her fingers in front of Anna’s nose. “Come back to me, baby.”

  Anna shook her head. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.”

  “I know. I’ve seen that dazed look in your eyes thousands of times. Now spill. Who are the men?”

  Anna rubbed her thumb over the condensation on the outside of her plastic cup. “Did you ever see that ancient film from Earth about the American boxer fighting the Russian guy?”

  Bella scrunched up her nose. “Stars, Anna. You and your love of history.”

  She shrugged. “Never mind.”

  “So, he’s American? I thought you said they were going international.”

  “Why do you think we’ve continued to identify with the countries we left nearly a millennium ago on Earth?” Anna mused.

  Bella groaned. “Anna, sometimes you make it really hard to be your friend. Stay focused here. Who is mating partner number one?”

  “A Russian, I told you.”

  Bella shook her head and let out a put-upon sigh.

  Anna continued, “He looks exactly like that boxer in the old movie—super tall, solid muscle, short blond hair, square jaw and a hard look in his icy blue eyes. Honestly, it was scary just looking at his hologram. I don’t know how I’m going to get naked in front of him.”

  Bella patted Anna’s hand resting on the table. “You don’t have to get completely naked, honey. In fact, you hardly have to remove any clothing at all. Me and the Dweebs have gotten it down to a science. On our mandated days, I drop one leg of my trousers, they unzip and each make a deposit. I lay still for the requisite twenty minutes. Then I get on with my day.”

  Anna covered her eyes with her free hand. “Thanks a lot for the visual of Dweeb One, Two and Three with their flies open.”

  Bella swatted Anna’s hand away. “Come on, I want to hear about two and three. Besides the frozen man from Siberia, who else did you get?”

  Anna thought about the second man. “Number two appears to be Latino.”

  Bella’s eye widened. “Oooooh, there’s some potential. Latin lovers are legendary.”

  “You don’t believe in legends.”

  “I’m talking living legends, baby.”

  Anna shook her head. “You’ve been comparing notes with Grace again, haven’t you?” Their classmate from the Academy of Science had been mated for two years to three men who liked to visit her more frequently than just on the days mandated for reproduction.<
br />
  “Us, females, have to stick together.” Bella waved a hand at Anna. “And number three is?”

  “Tall, dark…really dark, like from some ancient African country. I don’t know how he’s kept his pigmentation. He must be a product of all those generations of racially pure mating.”

  Bella squeezed Anna’s hand. “Oh, you lucky blaster.”

  Startled, Anna looked at her friend. “What?”

  “You know what they say about—”

  “Stop!” Anna interrupted. “Don’t you dare say what I think you’re going to say. That’s so not appropriate.”

  Bella snickered. “Quite the contrary… What’s their professional designation?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have time to listen to all the bio material. Why didn’t they just give it to me in text? I can read a hellitude faster than those video voices speak.”

  Bella raised a brow. “You weren’t curious enough to spend an extra few minutes to find out?”

  “I’m sure they’re either scientists or professors.” And that thought wasn’t very exciting, since she spent all her time with scientists already. Sometimes she felt like she was going to implode like a glass flask from the vacuum of her existence.

  “We gotta keep all them smartie elite genes together now, don’t we?” Sarcasm edged Bella’s words.

  Anna pushed back her chair. “Lunch break is over. I’ve got to get back to work.” She was too nervous, as it was, to spend any more time hypothesizing over the mates selected for her, and listening to Bella’s criticism of the process didn’t help.

  Bella grabbed their empty plastic cups as she stood. “What time is your mating meet?”

  “Six tonight.” Anna wiped the wet cup rings off the table with her cloth napkin.

  “Whatcha wearing?”

  Anna laughed and looked down at her standard issue beige shirt and pants. “You mean my primary or secondary or tertiary uniform?”

  Bella sighed loudly. “You know you could splurge and use some of your tokens at the craft mart. There’s a guy there making some amazing clothes for women. You wouldn’t believe the success he’s having with colored dyes from the chemical factory.”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “I’d rather spend my tokens on database access time.”

  “I know, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.” Bella placed their cups on the conveyor belt for the dishwasher, while Anna deposited the used napkins on the neighboring belt destined for the laundry.

  “Good luck, tonight. I’ll be thinking of you.” Bella headed off to her office.

  “Thanks,” Anna called after her friend before turning down the opposite hallway.

  She returned to her laboratory where she was fine-tuning her lifetime’s work on sustainable bio-ecology for a growing population living under bio-domes. Not that the population had seen any growth in the past century. In fact, they’d been in a sharp decline for several hundred years. Fertility had fallen to an alarmingly low rate, and male infants outnumbered females, three to one—hence, the policy change to three male mates per one female.

  As she checked the petri dishes currently under the heat lamps, she wondered how she was going to get the nerve to drop even one trouser leg in front of the three men chosen for her. With the exception of Bella and Anna’s sixty-year-old lab assistant Eddie, Anna was tense and awkward around most people.

  Thank starlight she didn’t have to get naked with her mates for another moon phase. The Council edict gave them four weeks to adjust to one another before requiring the mating to begin. Though, she’d overheard rumors among her male colleagues that some females could be persuaded to drop trou even before the four weeks ended.

  Whatever. Anna shrugged off the perplexing thought and submerged herself in her work for the remainder of the day.

  If Eddie hadn’t tapped her on the shoulder at five o’clock, she probably would have spent another night at her microscope.

  “You better get going, Anna. Don’t keep the Council waiting,” he warned.

  “Yeah, they’ve already given me an extra seven years. Stars forbid I make them wait a couple extra minutes.” Anna dragged herself away from the comfortable familiarity of her research.

  Damn, she hated meeting new people, and knowing what she had to do with these men in four weeks made it so much harder.

  Eddie shoved her shoulder. “Stop stalling. You’re going to be fine. There’s no way the Council would screw up your matches. You’re too important. They’ve got to keep you happy and productive.”

  “Then why do they want me to spend time procreating?”

  “Because your genetics are too valuable to go to waste. Now, get moving, missy. I expect a full report tomorrow morning.”

  Anna nodded as she headed to her personal pod to grab her supplies for a quick shower in the communal bathing room. She figured she should at least make some effort to look good. First impressions were supposed to be important in these matters, she’d heard.

  Stars above, she hated this.

  * * * *

  Marco paced the tiny reception room, feeling like the trapped tiger he’d seen recently in a documentary datafile from ancient Earth. The square room was made even smaller by the two padded benches that bisected the left and right walls and met the back bench on the wall opposite the door. Triangular shelves filled the two corners behind the benches.

  He circled the room again, running his palm over his slicked back hair.

  Blast, it was getting long. He should have taken the time to get it cut before this meet. What if long hair on males offended her?

  He tugged at the collar of his navy uniform. It felt like it was shrinking on him as the minutes ticked by on the wall chronometer. Where the hellitude was everyone?

  The handle on the door turned and in walked a three star Lieutenant General of the Second Quadrant.

  Marco met the dark-skinned man at the midpoint of the room, and they exchanged formal greetings.

  Kojo’s bright welcoming smile put Marco at ease, and he mused aloud, “What are the chances the third mate will also be sporting three stars?” He gestured at the newly acquired third star on his First Quadrant uniform.

  Kojo chuckled richly. “I’d say that was a safe bet. The real question is will he be Third or Fourth Quadrant?”

  Marco shook his head. “A Fourth Quadrant with a bio-researcher? They’re too hardened and physical in the Fourth. I’d have to go with Third. Though, any of us with a scientist seems like an odd match, doesn’t it?”

  Before Kojo could reply, the door opened again, and Marco’s eyes widened as he realized he’d lost both parts of the bet. Entering the ridiculously small reception room was a nearly seven-foot giant, sporting the four stars of General…of the Profortuna Fourth Quadrant.

  “Holy shiitake.” Marco whistled softly. “They’ve loaded this match with some seriously heavy fighting power.” He extended his hand to commence the formal greeting.

  Tall, blond and chiseled hesitated before offering his hand, and Marco swallowed his anger at the insult. It helped his pride a little when the General paused in his greeting of the other Lieutenant General as well.

  Kojo got the conversation started. “Do either of you have a theory why they’ve matched a bio-researcher with three of the highest ranking, eligible military men on the planet?”

  The General remained stoically silent, but before Marco could offer his own speculations, the door handle turned for the third and final time.

  Anna stood in the narrow hallway in front of the reception room door, taking a final deep breath. Really, there wasn’t anything to be this nervous about. Surely, the Council had done a thorough vetting and found the three most appropriately brain-heavy men on the planet for her mates.

  With that reality crushing her fanciful ideals of a sentimental match, her limbs were heavy as she took the final step toward the door and reached for the handle. Her ridiculous fantasies of finding old-fashioned romantic love—or even lust—beyond this door died, r
ipping away a layer of her self-confidence.

  Her emotional defense mechanism kicked into gear, and she returned to her detached scientific mindset. Straightening her shoulders, she swung the door open and scanned the room.

  Three huge, muscular males aimed their attention at her. Their shoulders seemed to fill the entire space of the small reception room, and their heads nearly touched the seven-foot ceiling.

  “Oh, hellitude,” Anna cursed under her breath and checked the room number on the door again.

  This couldn’t be the right room because she’d never seen brainiacs who looked like these three men. Their holograms hadn’t done any of them true, and they were all wearing military uniforms.

  It didn’t make any sense that the Council would pick brawn over brains for all three of her matches, unless there was a new theory being tested for mixing the genetic pool to achieve better fertility rates, though, she hadn’t read any research on this conjecture.

  A low, rumbling laugh that did strange things inside her belly stopped her from retreating from the room. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, she couldn’t resist the pull of that masculine sound. She took another step into the room, the door closing behind her.

  Her gaze swept over the three distinctively different male faces, searching for the source of that stimulating noise. Finally, she attributed the laugh to the dark-skinned male who flashed a broad smile with brilliantly white teeth. The corners of her mouth lifted involuntarily in response to his.

  “It appears we are not what you were expecting.” His voice vibrated through her. “May I introduce myself?”

  She nodded, as her vocal cords seemed to have petrified since she’d entered the room.

  “I am Lieutenant General Kojo, son of Tayari, Kamili and Badru, mates of Dafina.” His words flowed with an unusual accent she’d never heard before. His consonants were sharp, but his vowels rippled.