CHAPTER THREE #2
We had roughly seventy-two hours to get all eight dimari activated and bonded to their masters.
Any longer than that and it tended to start having a detrimental impact on their mental health.
They were packed into their crate with the expectation that they would meet their masters in the very near future, so a failure of their masters to collect them in a timely manner would trigger all sorts of fears of rejection in the dimari.
And rejection was the one thing they really didn’t deal with well.
“Okay, let’s look at the database,” I said, pulling up a different list of people.
Over the past year and a half, we’d had a grand total of three incidents where a dimari had arrived in a crate and we’d had to find them a new master at short notice.
What had most often happened throughout Rendol’s short history was that dimari in crates would be abandoned somewhere on the planet – usually as a result of a Eumadian ship being critically damaged – and then some hapless hiker or explorer would open the crate without realising what was inside, and instantly find themselves as the designated owner of a dimari.
I’d spent over a year helping them all adjust to their lives together.
But there was a significant difference between helping two people learn to work together when they’d been forced together by fate, versus asking a person to deliberately bond themselves to a slave who would need constant attention and care for the next eighty years.
In the three cases we’d had to deal with, we’d just about managed it, but the first two in particular had been nerve-wracking, panic-fuelled bouts of mental and social gymnastics to find someone who genuinely wanted to care for the dimari, rather than just taking advantage of some free labour.
After the second crate had arrived, I’d spent a great deal of time putting together a database of people who were genuinely willing to take on the responsibility, in preparation for the inevitable day when another crate landed with an activated dimari inside.
But it wasn’t just about having a list of willing people waiting in the wings.
It was also necessary, for the dimari’s long-term mental health, to match them as closely as possible to someone who could allow them to use the skills they’d been taught.
Dimari were not proud by nature, but they did tend to fixate on using the skills they’d worked so hard to perfect for their master’s benefit.
That made it a bad idea to allocate a dimari trained as a pilot, for example, to a person who owned a bakery.
As a simple outworking of the social circles I moved in, almost everyone on the list in front of me was either military, or military-adjacent; the friends, family or business associates of someone who was in the military.
I’d quietly put the word out about six months ago, and spent a significant amount of time screening whoever had volunteered, in order to have a list of people with various different lifestyles ready to go.
“Okay, let’s start with the pilot,” I said, putting a few search words into the database.
“That would necessarily mean a master in the military. They don’t have to be a pilot themselves, but they would need to be working in a role that involved a certain amount of space travel…
” I pulled up half a dozen profiles, then displayed the dimari’s skill list on another screen, and we spent the next ten minutes in silence, scrolling through all the available data and trying to find whoever would be the most appropriate match.
“Perhaps Captain Gell,” Kade suggested finally.
“He’s currently running frequent diplomatic missions to the fringe colonies in the Zoga sector.
Having another capable pilot on his missions would be a good thing, and since he’s also a diplomat, he would be well suited to dealing with the social adjustments of learning to work with a dimari. ”
I nodded. “And it’s also largely a non-combat role.
I know diplomatic missions can turn sour, but I always prefer to avoid putting dimari into combat if they’re not actual combat specialists.
” To be totally honest, I hated the idea of putting any dimari into harm’s way, combat specialist or not.
But I couldn’t say that quite so bluntly to Kade.
He took great pleasure in serving me in a combat role, and had an almost fanatical need to protect me under those conditions.
As much as I feared the idea of him being hurt, I knew that stopping him from serving with me would be like locking a lion in a cage.
“I’ll send the Captain a message and see if he’s up for it.
Okay, next on the list… I think I know someone who would be perfect for the domestic companion. A friend of Captain Rhodes.”
Captain Ezekiel Rhodes had lost most of his crew and suffered severe injuries in a mission gone terribly wrong, and now he and Dax, his bonded dimari, spent a decent portion of their time coordinating support services for other injured or traumatised veterans.
“Zeke mentioned him the last time we caught up with each other. Lieutenant Drevarious lost his leg in a battle with space pirates. He needs the help, just on the side of keeping his house clean and functioning, but Zeke’s worried he’s also going down the path of isolating himself socially.
Having a domestic companion would cut that habit off before it picked up any steam.
” I sent a message through to Captain Rhodes – not to the lieutenant himself – to see what he thought of the idea.
Okay, one more dimari on the way to finding a master, six more to go.