Chapter Four
Avery gasped. “What? No. I need them.”
“You don’t, and they don’t need you. Your presence will hold them back, and it will be confusing for the bond, as you aren’t linked to either of them.
There is no tether, legal or physical, to bind you three together.
The station can’t do anything about it. Nor could it for the thousands of friends or travel companions who have come through.
You either do what is right for you, or you go into a menial batch together. Your choice.”
Avery flinched at the word menial. When she was called, she looked at Aubrey, nodded, and got to her feet. “I am going to blow you out of the water.”
Aubrey nodded. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
Avery looked at her, startled, and said, “You did it. It can’t be that hard.”
Aubrey grinned and inclined her head.
One of the ladies who had been through assessment said, “How did you do that with a straight face?”
Aubrey grinned. “I knew she was watching, and she is going to twist herself in knots trying to keep herself as calm as I was while her thighs rub like cricket legs.”
The woman laughed and then sobered. “She said some horrible things about you before you got there.”
“I have no doubt. She and her little buddies left me tied to a disabled jeep in the cold and wind, three days before I worked loose, tore my lycra leggings up to replace the belts on the jeep, and then got here to the site as fast as I could. When the car died, I ran with everything I had left.”
“Holy shit. Why?”
“Me? I wanted to live. Her? She gets off on watching me in the dirt and putting me there by convincing friends and family I was a bully. It was a fucking hobby.”
“Geezus,” Molly said.
Aubrey smiled. “My fondest wish was never to be confused for my sibling again. We started with a haircut, and the repair machine went a little further. So by this, you can tell what kind of overkill the other races can manage. I tripped something that had been waiting for thousands of years. If I hadn’t been bruised and torn up, I might never have been in that machine, and it might not have started this, but I was, and it did. ”
Molly blinked. “Oh, wow. So she’s nasty.”
“To me, yes. To everyone else, sweet as pie. She’s been framing me for stuff since we were six.”
“Twins?”
“Sisters. A day short of Irish twins. Our parents held me back so that we both went to school together.”
Molly blinked. “That’s not right.”
“No, but our parents are off running a beverage kiosk on a distant world and happy as they ever wanted to be. I looked them up.”
Molly paused. “Can you look someone up for me?”
“Sure.” She pulled her tablet out of the pouch at her side and tapped to get the station records open.
“Names?”
Molly’s eyes were wide. “They let you have access to that?”
Aubrey snorted. “No. This is just a little creative access manipulation. Names?”
She started running status checks on folks who were either in the system or not. One woman learned that her husband was linked for colony transport with another woman, and she cried and then dragged in her breath. “I am a three-oh-seven. Does that make me Hmrain-compatible?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I want a man who will be there. Do they stray?”
Aubrey winced. “No. Definitely not. Once they have their companion altered to fit them perfectly, you are their only energy food group. They are yours for one hundred years, during which you won’t age or until you have a child with them, and then you have the option to stay or go.
Few choose to go.” She smiled. “Would you like me to check your future?”
The woman nodded. She was clutching Molly’s hand.
“Let go of Molly, or this becomes a poly situation.”
The woman smiled and let go. Aubrey touched her forehead with a fingertip and smiled.
“He’s a soft green, coppery hair, bat wings, and a slow smile.
The smile gets faster the longer you are with him.
His world is green and alive, and his people were rescued from disaster and disease themselves.
They will be kind to you. Sorry, but I don’t see names. ”
The woman said, “Can I put in a request?”
Avery came out with tears streaking her features. It had been a rough ride.
Aubrey smiled. “Yes, you can put in a request or ask the station to keep an eye out for the male that matches that description.”
Aubrey paused. “Hang on. I am having a thought.” She tapped through her tablet and grinned. “I knew it. Those buggers had to have a registry.”
She flicked through it, and she found the one she was looking for.
“Lomaric. He’s the minty one. He’s been on his world for seven hundred years but has three other worlds under his care, and they are all advanced tech and doing well.
He had one companion over five hundred years ago.
She grew tired after her family and village all passed. ”
“Grew tired?” The woman was curious.
“It is a phrase that will freak out any Hmrain hearing it. If you say you are tired of life, they are going to either panic or withdraw their maintenance to let you die. Don’t use that phrase unless you want to change a good relationship, since your lifespan is supported by theirs, and they are functionally immortal.
The current record for a companion is two hundred years as a companion.
With the newest batch of Terrans, we have no idea how long we will last. I know we want to live.
We did not arrive tired. We arrived at their sides with hope, and that is a very powerful thing. ”
One of the women smiled. “It also makes some of them feel like superheroes.”
Aubrey grinned. “Some of them are actual superheroes. The first generation born usually has wings of some variety, and then it becomes hit or miss. Some are just waiting for a companion who can boost them.”
She flicked and found Dora and her Hmrain, whose wings were made of flame.
She turned the tablet to show them. “This is Dora. She was a manicurist on the space station around Hellaz. She met the general who used to be the overseer, and he had an eye on her for his grandson. This is the current overseer, and his wings sprouted after he ran through a rut with Dora, and this is how he uses the psychic energy he obtained from her. They have twins.”
Molly said, “So we can have kids with them.”
“Yes. There are over a dozen little Terran-Hmrain hybrids running around, including the oldest Hmrain and his queen, Harwin.”
Molly blinked. “Harwin?”
“Her last name. She is the last of her family, so the name is now on walls and cartouches all over Aten and the surrounding worlds that belong to Ra.”
The other ladies who had been classified for Hmrain gathered around. “Can you tell us about the other Terrans and how they are doing?”
“Sure, I can even tell you how to spot an idiot in the Hmrain. He’s better now, but Zell was a moron.
He just kept taking energy without giving anything back.
No touches, no cuddles, no being held after she rocked his world.
” She smiled. “So... she left. The moment her contract was up. It was a thirty-day contract to get Zell up and moving, and when it was done, she left.”
The ladies were hooked. Molly asked, “What happened next?”
“He was irritated and tried to go after her, but he ran into another Hmrain who asked him about how he had treated her, and Symo decked him. Some Hmrain are attuned to the needs of others. Symo is one of them, and now he and Bailey are finally together.”
One of the ladies said, “Zell?”
“Oh, he and Symo went after his ex-companion, and they found the two ladies hiding at the temple. Zell asked politely to be allowed to speak to his companion, they worked out a contract, and he’s getting smarter by the day.”
Molly said, “So you weren’t kidding? They get stronger with us?”
“Oh, yeah. The designers made incredibly strong, powerful, beautiful, and intelligent beings and gave them worlds to watch over, and then they gave them a need for companionship and a desire for family to continue their bloodlines. The need for contact drives them and keeps them from becoming monsters. It keeps them interested in the people around them.”
A shy woman said, “Do they kill their companions?”
“Companions? Very rarely. Casual women who want to ride the lightning? They can drain them until the women are unable to stay alive. Turn them from a grape to a raisin.”
The woman gasped, and Avery snorted. “Right. Like you know all this.”
Aubrey looked at Avery. “I wasn’t talking to you. Your minimal rating will get you comfort but not prestige. Enjoy being a lower-tier companion, and don’t mess with your bondholder.”
Avery looked a little wary, but she stiffened her shoulders.
Aubrey said, “Don’t you want to know where Desmond and Paris will be?”
“They are coming with me.”
“Oh, definitely not. They have their own destiny, and the moment you set foot on that shuttle, your lives went in different directions. They will not be there to catch you or protect you from your own actions. I congratulate you; at twenty-seven, you are all grown up. It just took the world ending and you losing everything you knew to boost that along.”
Avery stepped forward and swung to slap Aubrey. Her hand froze midair. Aubrey looked at her with a slight smile. “You dare to strike the oracle?” She rose to her feet and towered over her sibling, locked in place by the field Aubrey had learned to generate.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Aubrey looked at the station guards, who grabbed Avery and hauled her away. “You will learn.”
Molly blinked. “What did you do?”
“It’s a restriction field. Some of the others on the station want to either destroy me or kidnap me, so I had to develop a defense.
This works.” She didn’t explain how it worked.
It used the compression of air around Aubrey to create an electric shock that locked the nervous system of her attacker.
She liked the humans, but life had taught her that her own kind was treacherous if they thought they could benefit from it.