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Gabriel Lorca doesn’t quite understand why they are sending him a child bride. La’an Noonien-Singh is barely twenty and Gabriel is in his fifth decade.
He knows the Augments want his genes. He’s wildcaught after all, not tinkered with until someone decided his genome had reached perfection. He’s wildcaught and he held the Augments off for three years before they came to the negotiation table.
And so now he has an Augment bride. A child who will be bound to him for the rest of his life. Someone who will share his bed and carry on his bloodline. The weight of it settles heavy in his gut as he watches the shuttle approach. She is probably terrified. He knows how Augments view wildcaughts. Primitives. Violent. Barely civilized.
The shuttle settles onto the landing pad with a hiss of hydraulics. The ramp lowers and there she is along with her two attendants.
She isn't what he expected. There's no fear in her posture. She stands straight and proud, her dark hair pulled back in a severe knot at the nape of her neck. Her uniform is crisp and immaculate. He doesn’t know what else he expected of a member of the ruling dynasty.
Gabriel forces himself to walk forward. He’d agreed to this after all. He’d negotiated it.
La’an descends the ramp, her steps measured and precise. She might be young, but she is a warrior.
“I am La’an Noonien-Singh,” she announces in a voice trained to command. “My attendants: Christine Chapel and Nyota Uhura.” She gestures and the two women step forward, their expressions just as unreadable as hers. They are all breathtakingly beautiful and terrifyingly young. None of them look particularly happy to be here either.
“Welcome to the Discovery,” Lorca says. His voice is gruffer than he intends. He clears his throat. “I’m Gabriel Lorca.” He doesn’t offer his hand.
La’an gives him a single, precise nod. Her eyes flicker over his face, then down his body, an appraisal that is both clinical and unnervingly intimate. She seems to have come to some internal decision.
“The terms of our agreement were quite specific,” she says. “We are to be bound immediately.”
Lorca’s stomach tightens, though nothing. Shows on his face. This is the part he has been dreading. The binding. A psychic link, a deep and profound connection that is supposed to make their union unbreakable. The Augments claim it is a gift. To Lorca, it sounds like a curse, but it’s a curse that is saving hundreds of thousands of his people’s lives.
He nods, ”We are prepared.”
“Lead the way, Captain,” she says. She’s not here for love or companionship or children. She is here for politics and diplomacy.
He turns and leads them into the heart of his ship, the corridors humming with the quiet efficiency of his crew. He can feel their eyes on him, on the three women who follow in his wake. He can feel their curiosity, their pity, and their disgust. He ignores it all.
The binding chamber is a small, sterile room in the medical bay. Two chairs face each other in the center of the room. A single light illuminates the space, making it feel emptier than it is.
Dr. Culber is already there. He gives Lorca a look that he quickly masks with professional neutrality.
“Captain,” Culber says, his voice gentler than usual. “Everything is prepared.”
La’an’s attendants move to stand at the edge of the room, their backs to the wall. They are her guard, her witnesses, perhaps her sisters.
La’an walks to one of the chairs and sits, her spine ramrod straight. She looks at Lorca, her expression unreadable.
“Begin,” she orders, so sure of her own authority, so serious about it that Gabriel almost laughs.
He does sit, the chair cool against his back. The space between them is tense.
Gabriel wishes they’d had a chance to speak to each other before the bonding, but that’s not what anyone negotiated.
Culber steps forward, a small, silver device in his hand. “This will create the link,” he explains, his gaze flicking between them. “It will be disorienting at first. A sudden influx of information. Emotions. Memories. You’ll need to stay calm. Let it wash over you.”
Lorca nods. He has been briefed. He knows what to expect in theory. It’s the practice that has him worried. He’s never been a man predisposed to sharing his own self.
“Ready?” Culber asks, looking at La’an.
She gives him a nod and bend her head up to receive the device.
Culber touches it to her temple. A soft blue light pulses.
He then moves to Lorca, and repeats the process.
That’s it? Lorca thinks to himself.
“Breathe, Captain,” Culber says.
Lorca takes a breath. And then the world dissolves.
It’s not a gentle wave. It’s a tsunami. A cacophony. The worst sensory overload of his entire life. He is her and she is him. He sees her life through her eyes. A childhood spent in sterile halls, the constant pressure to be perfect, to be more. The way she was pitted against her siblings and cousins. The year she was dropped on an undeveloped planet with her age-mate relatives and killed them all so she could live. He feels the thrill of her victory and the hollowness that followed.
Gabriel feels her grief for a mother she barely knew and a father who was a concept more than a man. He feels the weight of the Noonien-Singh family name demanding perfection. There can be no accidents, no slips, no miscalculations. There is only the one right way, done exactly as it ought to be done.
He feels her love for the girls with her. They are her only family and her only friends. They were modified at birth to be loyal to her and only her.
He feels her appraisal of him. The disgust for his primitivism. The pragmatism that overrides it. He is strong. He is resilient. He has fought the Augment forces to a standstill. They could have brought more ships to bear. More than Gabriel had known or planned for even at his most pessimistic.
But the Augments are always looking for new genetic strands to perfect. Gabriel’s are apparently a treasure trove.
He feels her fear, the feelings she had carefully folded away as the ramp lowered on her shuttlecraft. She was afraid of him. Of what a wildcaught might ask of her. Of what he might do to her that she was treaty bound to allow. Of how she might be forced to kill him too, if she could not bear what he demanded of her or of the children she would bear for him.
It fades with the rest of the connection, rudely dumping him back into his own head. He’s gasping for breath but he has no idea why. He just has to wait out his lungs, wait until his body settles.
Gabriel meets her eyes then, holds her gaze.
“Hello, wife.”