CHAPTER NINE
AIDEN
“Thank you so much for coming so quickly,” I said to Kara and Teshra, the two Solof women who had just adopted Bil, the final domestic servant.
“It was great to meet you.” The pair of them owned a large Bed and Breakfast on the northern edge of the city, and Bil would fit right in helping them keep the place clean and presenting a welcoming face to the guests.
At the same time, the couple was very open-minded about having an extra bed companion in the middle of their relationship.
They were both bisexual, and so they had no objections to inviting a man into their shared bedroom.
Bil was already looking at the pair of them with stars in his eyes. They’d given him a thorough rundown of their business and their relationship, and where Bil would fit into that.
“I know you’re bonded to me,” Kara had said, as part of her introductory speech, “but you are to follow Teshra’s orders as well, to the best of your ability, on condition that nothing she tells you to do contradicts anything I’ve already said.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bil had answered enthusiastically.
For households with more than one ‘leader’, that was a very important order.
Kara couldn’t just tell him to follow Teshra’s orders regardless of circumstance, because that could easily cause him distress as he tried to follow two conflicting sets of orders.
In such situations, I always made sure the dimari understood how the lines of hierarchy worked.
“I’ll be in touch in a week or so to make sure everything’s running smoothly,” I told the three of them.
“But if you have any serious questions before then, please feel free to contact me. You’ve all got my contact details in your comm.
I know you’ve got a long drive back home, so I’ll get out of your hair.
Best of luck, and please let me know if you need any help. ”
A security guard led the three of them away, all smiles and satisfaction, and once they were out of sight, I let my smile drop and my shoulders sag.
It felt good to have one more dimari on their way to a good home, but we still had a significant problem to solve in finding a home for Jai.
A quick check through my messages this morning hadn’t revealed any new options on that front.
Henderson stood up from his seat at the end of the table, stretching in a way that made several of his joints crack.
“They seemed quite capable,” he said, of the couple who had just left.
“For that matter, all of the masters you’ve chosen have seemed like very sensible people.
I’m hoping that means we’ll still be able to get you and Kade back into active duty sooner, rather than later.
I’ll try to leave you enough time to follow up with the new owners, but that manual of yours is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. ”
“Getting back into the swing of things would be great,” I said, with no small measure of enthusiasm.
Back before I’d met Kade, I’d been on standard active duty.
Rendol 4 was a planet on the fringes of Alliance space, and so we had a fairly steady stream of space pirates, diplomatic arguments with neighbouring star systems, plenty of natural disasters, given the erratic weather on the planet, and a variety of other minor security issues that needed experienced hands to deal with.
But for the past year and a half, Kade and I had been spending most of our time teaching the planet’s one hundred or so dimari owners how to look after their charges, as well as providing advice and assistance to a number of other Alliance planets who had also ended up accidentally housing a handful of dimari.
Now, though, with the help of the instruction manual I’d compiled, everyone had a fairly good handle on what they were doing, and there were enough people with experience caring for the dimari that they could handle briefing the handful of new owners we had each year without my direct involvement.
Henderson was particularly eager to get Kade back into active duty, given his thoroughly impressive combat skills.
“What about Jai?” Henderson asked next. “Any progress on finding him a home?”
“Not yet, sir,” I replied, feeling my enthusiasm dim. “We’ll spend a couple of hours trying to work something out, then we’ve got Lieutenant Drevarious coming at one o’clock this afternoon. How is Jai this morning, by the way?”
“I haven’t seen him myself,” Henderson said.
“There have been warnings of a hurricane heading for the coast south of Adavi, so I’ve had to arrange emergency backup troops to assist them down there, depending on where it ends up making landfall.
Ask Soka, if you can find her. She was on breakfast duty with the dimari.
And let me know if you need any help with Jai.
I’m busy, but I know this is still a problem we need to solve. ”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll let you know where we get to this afternoon.
” I sent a message to Soka, asking if she was busy, but got an immediate auto-response saying she was in a meeting and wasn’t currently available.
“Fine then, be like that,” I muttered to myself, with more frustration than annoyance, and then I resorted to my backup plan of checking the video feed in the dimari’s room.
The image came up and I immediately groaned.
It was a combination of frustration and concern, with an equal part of fear mixed in, now that Kade had mentioned the possibility of Jai being difficult on purpose.
Because this morning, instead of standing by his bed like the two remaining dimari, Jai was sitting on a chair beside the table.
I shut off the image. “Right. We’re going to go and call every contact I can think of in order to find a master for Jai,” I announced to Kade, as I was already marching in the direction of my office.
“I want a stable future for him, and I want to know what the heck this behaviour issue is about. Something weird is going on here, and I want to understand it.”
At one o’clock in the afternoon, Lieutenant Han Drevarious arrived to meet Rov, the domestic companion.
Zeke had briefed me about Han’s various mental health issues, and the end result was that after Rov had met and bonded to Han, Kade and I spent a good half an hour explaining to Rov the sort of care that Han would need, since Han himself had said he probably wasn’t a good person to be explaining it.
By the time that was finished, the triad were back again to adopt Nol, and I spent a few more minutes going over the details with them, including cautioning Torry that it would be wise for her to have sex with Nol privately the first time, before involving the others, in order to cement his bond to her.
That was the way most off-world masters would have done it, and though I didn’t have a great deal of experience with erotic companions, I felt it would be appropriate to follow the lead of other species who were more familiar with them.
After that, it was back to making dozens of frantic phone calls, each one coming up with a solid dead end.
At half past five, Henderson knocked on my office door, giving me a stern but weary look. “Hill? Go home,” he told me bluntly. “You’ve been working for pretty much forty-eight hours straight. You need a rest. In your own bed this time, not the lumpy rubbish in the barracks.”
“We still don’t have an owner for Jai,” I told him. “And if we don’t find one by the end of tomorrow, Jai is going to be the one to suffer for it.”
Henderson huffed. “Ultimately, if we really don’t have any other options, then I’ll adopt him myself.
It’s far from an ideal solution. I don’t go into active combat much these days, and I have no use for an erotic companion.
But if it means Jai has a master – even if it’s not an ideal one – then it’s better than nothing.
But I’m going to stress that that’s an absolute last resort,” he added, not looking the slightest bit happy about it.
“We still have most of the morning tomorrow to come up with a better plan. But that’s not going to happen if you’re so tired you can’t see straight.
So go home, get some bloody sleep, and then come back in the morning.
I’ll make sure we’ve got staff on hand to keep an eye on Jai tonight,” he promised, before I could say a word about it.
“He’s alone in there now, and I’m not thrilled about that, so I’m having security monitor him throughout the night.
And I’ll be staying here at the base to take care of any unexpected problems that crop up.
” He stared at me expectantly, then barked, “Home!” when I didn’t move.
I stood up, stretching my stiff muscles. “Fine, I’m going,” I grumbled, rolling my eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
? ? ?
When we got home, it was as much as I could manage to heat up a couple of frozen meals.
I always kept half a dozen on hand, for nights just like this, when it was too late to cook or we were both too tired to bother.
We ate in silence at the dining table, then tossed the plates the meals had come on into the organic waste bin.
The ‘plastic’ was biodegradable and would break down in about six months, in one of the city’s communal composting facilities.
We both took a shower, then all but collapsed into bed.
I yawned as I sat there, contemplating whether it was worth trying to do any more work tonight.
Or if not, was I in the mood to watch a movie?
Or just fall asleep? I stared at the wall, contemplating the options…
and inevitably, my mind wandered back to Jai.